That's Southern interventionism, of course. Recently I tried to emphasize the reverse phenomenon -- Jacksonian isolationism, to generalize a bit. Helen currently strikes up the contrast:
Identifying the Southern cause with "making the world safe for democracy" is odd (although it might make sense in the context of the shift from aristocratic to populist agrarianism), but, whether attributable to their desire to repudiate technological materialism or to redeem the Lost Cause, Southerners rallied behind Wilson and voted out politicians like Senator James Vardaman of Mississippi and House Majority Leader Claude Kitchin of North Carolina who did not. It might be cold comfort, but paleoconservatives who are baffled at the warm welcome neoconservative foreign policy has received in the South should remember that this wouldn't be the first time.

Comments