Free Republic

Calling for the removal of the Confederate Flag from South Carolina’s Capitol in the wake of a national tragedy, the assigned symbol of one man’s hate and paranoia, is ironically both defensible and predictably shortsighted. What rabid activists conveniently forget is that the Confederate Flag – which still wavers at the behest of state law - was never derived as a proud beacon of slavery; after all, even at the height of the Antebellum period less than 2% of all Americans owned slaves. Slavery was a means to an end, an economic mechanism utilized to compete with foreign competitors and...

Next year’s “SEC primary” is taking final shape. On Thursday, Arkansas lawmakers gave final approval to legislation moving that state’s presidential nomination contest to March 1 – to match the same date set by Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. From Andrew Demillo and the Associated Press: By a 67-16 vote, the House sent Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson legislation to move the primaries as part of an effort to create a regional presidential nominating contest that supporters have dubbed the “SEC primary.” Hutchinson plans to sign the legislation into law....

Jefferson, a member of the gentry of Old Virginia, was always regarded as one of the best and brightest of his generation, a gentleman of the finest intellect, taste, and manners. Although Jefferson loved and was loyal to the Union, he was a Virginian first and an American second; Virginia, Jefferson avowed, was his “country.” This order of allegiance – State over Union, or “Society” over “the State” – was firmly rooted in the Old South. Accordingly, in the emerging conflict between the North and the South, Jefferson sided with his own country. “It is true that we are completely...

The most luscious watermelon the Deep South has ever produced was once so coveted, 19th-century growers used poison or electrocuting wires to thwart potential thieves, or simply stood guard with guns in the thick of night. The legendary Bradford was delectable — but the melon didn't ship well, and it all but disappeared by the 1920s. Now, eight generations later, a great-great-great-grandson of its creator is bringing it back. The story of the Bradford begins on a prison ship during the American Revolutionary War. It was 1783, and the British had captured an American soldier named John Franklin Lawson and...

In recent presidential primary cycles, the influence of Southern states — with the exception of Florida, whose "Southern status" is perhaps more locational than anything else — has been minimal. While pundits like to say that GOP presidential nominees have relied heavily on a "red state" electorate based in the South, that same base has had little to say in determining the nominee. After all, neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney had much in common with the region. Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp sensed that voter turnout intensity in the region could be stronger in November 2016 if...

One hundred-fifty years after Appomattox, many Southerners still won’t give up. One hundred fifty years ago, on April 9th, 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House and the Union triumphed in the Civil War. Yet the passage of a century and a half has not dimmed the passion for the Confederacy among many Americans. Just three weeks ago, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) appeared before the Supreme Court arguing for the right to put a Confederate flag on vanity license plates in Texas. Just why would someone in 2015 want a Confederate flag on their license...

“The flags of the Confederate States of America were very important and a matter of great pride to those citizens living in the Confederacy. They are also a matter of great pride for their descendants as part of their heritage and history.”

This morning, Nate Cohn of the New York Times Upshot tries to answer the question asked by many Tea Party leaning Republicans in southern states: Why does it seem that the GOP presidential candidate always ends up being a moderate, rather than a ‘true conservative?’ And, he finds some interesting data about the power of the GOP in the states won by President Obama: But the blue-state Republicans still possess the delegates, voters and resources to decide the nomination. In 2012, there were more Romney voters in California than in Texas, and in Chicago’s Cook County than in West Virginia....

In the latest blow to New Jersey, which is still staggering from the recession, Mercedes-Benz USA said on Tuesday that it would move its headquarters to Georgia from Montvale, N.J.

In the Mississippi Delta town of Tchula, there’s a fading columned mansion that once belonged to Sara Virginia Jones, the daughter of a local plantation dynasty. Its walls were lined with nearly 400 works by artists as prominent as Paul Cezanne, Marc Chagall, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Salvador Dali, and Andy Warhol. Then, in the 1990s, the house changed hands. Today, it is filled with framed photos of the current owner—Tchula’s controversial first black mayor, Eddie Carthan, who was in office from 1977 to 1981—posing with U.S. presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama and the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan.

(Reuters) - Americans moving out of state in 2014 were most likely to head to places that were warmer and more affordable, such as the South and Southwest, according to studies by two major moving companies. The 47th annual report by Allied Van Lines showed that Illinois topped the list of states people are moving away from with 1,372 net moves, followed by Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan and New Jersey. The states have remained in the top five since 2010, the company said.

WASHINGTON, December 24, 2014 — For tens of millions of southerners the December 6 runoff loss of Louisiana U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu to Rep. Bill Cassidy represented the epic opening of a new age in America. This region is now a solid conservative south for the first time since Democrats seized control just after the end of the Civil War. For a region of the nation that stretches from the Carolinas to Texas, this is massive and so is the impact of this new Red, White and Blue American Wave. Here a New South Rises. How the new south...

If you have it installed on your computer, fire up Google Earth and click on the icon along the top edge of your screen that looks like Saturn. A menu will drop down. Click on Mars. After Google Mars loads, enter these coordinates into the search bar: -84.2952811,-56.5576401 . Here's what you'll see: At first, I thought someone had photoshopped it. But you can see that isn't true. So what do you think it is? I don't know if the picture is presented in true color, but if it is it sure looks like moss to me!... Moss that can...

The Russians called the EU’s bluff by pulling out of the project instead of accepting the EU’s conditions and are cutting deals with China and Turkey instead.By Alexander Mercouris ~ Russia Insider The reaction to the cancellation of the Sound Stream project has been a wonder to behold and needs to be explained very carefully. In order to understand what has happened it is first necessary to go back to the way Russian-European relations were developing in the 1990s. Briefly, at that period, the assumption was that Russia would become the great supplier of energy and raw materials to Europe....

In Timothy Carney's Dec. 9 article, the Washington Examiner senior political columnist makes the case that the conventional wisdom is wrong when it comes to why white Southerners have fled the Democratic Party. It's not because of the GOP's very successful Southern Strategy, which played up the racial fears and prejudices of white Southerners in response to an increasingly empowered black population. For Carney, the South no longer has a white Democrat in the U.S. Senate for two reasons and two reasons alone: the Democratic Party is hostile to guns and God, two things that every Southerner hold dear. Carney...

Asked why President Obama was so unpopular in Louisiana, Landrieu had responded: “The South has not always been the friendliest place for African-Americans. It’s been a difficult time for the president to present himself in a very positive light as a leader. It’s not always been a good place for women to present ourselves. It’s more of a conservative place.” So because the South is conservative, it’s hostile to women and black candidates? Try telling that to South Carolina Republicans Nikki Haley and Tim Scott.

The Golden Christmas Much to the annoyance of multiculturists, Christmas is still America’s most celebrated holiday, and in the weeks preceding this festive time, traditional Christmas stories will appear on television screens. We can expect to see numerous versions of Charles Dickens renowned tale, A Christmas Carol, O.Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, and Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts like myself look forward to adaptations of Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. As much as I enjoy these holiday offerings, my Christmas season would not be complete without a reading of William Gilmore Simms’ novel The Golden Christmas. Simm’s sensitive...

Much has been made of the fact that when losing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) leaves office in January, Louisiana will not have a Democratic statewide elected official in office for the first time since the 1870s. The Republicans who occupy all of the Pelican State’s high offices are in good company; Republicans now control every U.S. Senate seat, legislative chamber, and governor’s mansion across the Deep South – from Texas to the Carolinas. This condition is giving some Democrats, loyal to the party for whom the term “Solid South” was coined, indigestion. The best example of this phenomenon is an...

With Mary Landrieu’s ignominious exit, the Democrats will have lost their last senator in the Deep South. And that’s a good thing. They should write it off—because they don’t need it. I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I...

Michael Tomasky is not content to argue, in the wake of Mary Landrieu's defeat, that Democrats should write off the South as politically unfriendly territory.  In his Daily Beast item of today, Tomasky goes to great lengths to trash the region in the ugliest of terms. "Reactionary, prejudice-infested, fetid, reject[ing] nearly everything that’s good about this country, just one big nuclear waste site of choleric, and extremely racialized, resentment," is how Tomasky slurs most of the South, saying "almost the entire region" is as he describes it.  Remind us now, Michael: just who's "choleric?" Tomasky then has the temerity to shed a...