All of this leaves little doubt that, in the absence of Southern exceptionalism, the U.S. would be much more similar to other English-speaking democracies, which don’t subject their leaders to religious tests, don’t suffer from high levels of gun violence and don’t rival communist China and despotic Saudi Arabia in the number of executions per capita. Without the gravitational force exerted on the South, American conservatism itself would be radically different—more Bob Dole than Ted Cruz.
The northern progressives who joke about the U.S. jettisoning “Jesusland” and merging with Canada will not get their wish. But there is hope: A combination of demographic change and generational change is weakening the ability of the old-fashioned South to skew American politics and culture in the future. Peripheral Southern states like Florida and Virginia are increasingly competitive, and the Deep South may join them in time. In Texas once-reactionary cities like Houston and Dallas are competing with Austin as tolerant meccas for transplants who prefer the Sun Belt to the Old South. Immigration into the South from other countries and American regions is breaking down local oligarchies and old folkways.
The decline in Southern exceptionalism in time may lead to more of a convergence among the U.S. and other modern democracies. Let us hope so. We have had enough of the wrong kind of American exceptionalism.
LATEST POSTS:
- Yale YT Course: Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) (RLST 145) with Christine Hayes
- Jason Arday – Serial Fabulist, Plagiarist & Dissertation Supervisor
- LAT: ‘Payouts in L.A. County’s $4-billion sex abuse settlement delayed to two largest law firms’
- The Comparator Test: Does Penn Apply the Same Standard?
- PragerU Salaries & Bonuses
- The David Pinsof Story
- Added Context to the Dennis Prager-Cedars Sinai Lawsuit
- The Criticism Was Right and It Did Nothing: Andrew Gelman, Seth Roberts, and the Limits of Being Correct
- What Andrew Gelman Doesn’t Write About
- Andrew Gelman: ‘Computer scientists today are like economists in the early 2000s and Freudian psychiatrists in the 1950s’
- Virtue Signaling and the Amy Wax case
- Revisiting Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality
- The Great Delusion
- Why Do I Instinctively Dislike Erik Erikson?
- WSJ: The Uninvited Guest Who Crashed Our Family Vacation: My Mom’s AI Chatbot
- WEHT to Marc Weisblott?
- WEHT to Moxie aka Madison Slade?
- WEHT to Nicholas Polson’s Archive?
- Cohen Passes His Own Audit (V2)
- Andrew Gelman & the E-Personality
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
