Southern Baptists

[Raoul Duke, Jr.]

The ideal difference between Baptists and Southern Baptists? Southern Baptists=Extra Crispy.

[ReinnResauq]

The difference between a southern baptist and a regular baptist is like the difference between a Y.E.C and an Intelligent design proponent. They'll both royally piss you off, but only the Y.E.C will make you question the whole "murder is wrong" thing.

[Steve]

Poor losers, all of 'em.

They're still pissed off because Sherman ripped the Confederacy's guts out.

All hail Sherman and the Army of the West, and their glorious March that eviscerated the evil South!

[Newtonian Fury]

Hell yeah man! Devastating the South's economy and industry was very much justified when you look at the kind of shit they were supporting. Now if we have a crusade against fundamentalism and racism today...Dammit, I need to stop dreaming!

[ReinnResauq]

Hell yeah man! Devastating the South's economy and industry was very much justified when you look at the kind of shit they were supporting. Now if we have a crusade against fundamentalism and racism today...Dammit, I need to stop dreaming!

Excluding the obvious moral relativity example there, I just have to ask how would you crusade against fundamentalism and racism today? I mean, unless you go about it the way people are going about it now, you would pretty much have to stomp on their rights in order to completely stomp them out. You'd be persecuting fundies for thinking differently. Regardless of how we see it, it is their right to be the raging idiots they are.

[ReinnResauq]

Sorry, sometimes I get so jaded by so many strongly anti-atheist and anti-christian people that I lose the ability to see a joke.

[HemlockGrey]

Hell yeah man! Devastating the South's economy and industry was very much justified when you look at the kind of shit they were supporting.

Hey, they called down the thunder.

[Newtonian Fury]

It's alright Reinn. The South did suffer a tremendous lost, and Sherman's tactic was meant to exact fear and surrender. Whether the South deserved such total destruction of property and industry is, of course, up to debate.

As for the "crusade" against racism and fundamentalism, I think the only way to do it is through both political and educational means. You would need Southern politicians who aren't tolerant of the crap in their state, and you also need a strong education program to fight against the racism children might learn from their parents. And the word crusade would describe it perfectly because even if it's executed right now, the results would not be apparent for decades.

[ReinnResauq]

As for the "crusade" against racism and fundamentalism, I think the only way to do it is through both political and educational means.

Gosh, someone who agrees. There are too many idiots out there who are looking for a literal final solution.

You would need Southern politicians who aren't tolerant of the crap in their state

And a population to elect them...

and you also need a strong education program to fight against the racism children might learn from their parents.

And a way to shut up those parents who don't want their children learning any of "dat eqwawlity shit."

I suppose the best way to do this would be to get non-fundie families into those areas. The parents vote and get the right representatives into office and the children affect the children of racists through osmosis and simple peer pressure.

If only this were possible and families wanted to go there. As I can personally attest to, an area populated by southern baptists is not an area to raise children.

[Newtonian Fury]

It's mostly the fundies who look for "final solutions". Hitler's religious background is quite an example.

I think the South is slowly getting better. More and more blacks are moving back south. But the fact that Strom Thurmond was consecutively elected for too many damn terms since the 50s leaves much to be desired. The crusade for true equality is slow and tedious at best, and losing ground at worse.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

The problem with the South isn't , it's all the fundies. But, some of the fundies also seem to be racists as well.

I understand why they're racist, and ever since they lost their slaves, they've been doing everything in their power to keep blacks from voting, but how did there get to be so many religous bigots in the South?

[Steve]

The problem with the South isn't , it's all the fundies. But, some of the fundies also seem to be racists as well.

I understand why they're racist, and ever since they lost their slaves, they've been doing everything in their power to keep blacks from voting, but how did there get to be so many religous bigots in the South?

By indoctrinating their kids when they're young. That's where you get a lot of the caterwauling for "parents' rights" to teach their kids morality. They don't want liberal ideologies getting taught.

I can somewhat sympathize, I certainly don't want the government teaching kids morality... but I would also like to stop bigots from indoctrinating their children and restricting them from learning free thought. It's breeding sheep.

[ReinnResauq]

but I would also like to stop bigots from indoctrinating their children and restricting them from learning free thought. It's breeding sheep.

That's why I hold that families with children should move into those areas. Indoctrinate the children through their peers.

[Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi]

Yes, I know that you become a bigot through a childhood of indoctration, but how come such bigots are more common in the South that in other areas?

[Darth Yoshi]

I could be completely wrong about this, but my guess is that it goes back to the way the South was set up before Sherman castrated them. Back then, the South was composed of large plots of land with a self-sufficient mansion running it. The mansions and their surrounding whatnots are probably more accurately called towns. Roads were shitty, and pretty much all the plantation owners had slaves. The slave owners would be contemptuous of black people, and the roads (or lack thereof) meant that they pretty much stayed to themselves. Ergo, intellectual isolation and stagnation, leading to bigotry. Then after the Civil War the plantation guys would have had to move elsewhere to survive, and they brought their bigotry with them.

Again, I reiterate that I could be completely wrong.

[Johonebesus]

Probably going to get flamed, but:
From my experience, having lived all over the country, Southern racism is badly exaggerated. There is plenty of racism here, and there are places where blacks know which diners to avoid, like in South Georgia and Alabama. However, I believe that the KKK and other such groups have more members in the Midwest than in the South. And, come to think of it, aren't most of the militia/aryan cults in places like Oklahoma and Oregon and Idaho? When one thinks of race riots, one thinks of L.A. and Detroit. There was a little half hearted riot in Atlanta after the Rodney King verdict; they torched a store and trashed a couple of cars one afternoon, but nothing like what happened in other cities. And weren't there some pretty nasty protests of bussing in the North? Even today, it is common for suburban yankees to flee their neighborhoods when a black family moves in. I recently read an article about how teenagers tend to segregate themselves, blacks and whites not interacting much, but I see integrated groups of teenagers hanging out all the time. I see more interracial couples walking down the street than I do on T.V.

It seems to me that racism is a problem all over the country, but northerners and westerners refuse to acknowledge it. Some places in the South can be pretty bad, and there is no excuse for it, but when in the South, one usually knows what one is dealing with. A racist is going to give himself away quickly. Most whites really don't care much about race, and when they do, they are quite open about it. In the North, whites insist that they are not racist, but they don't want to live in the same neighborhood with blacks. Northern racism seems more pernicious. Maybe that's why so many like to go on and on about how ignorant, racist, inbred, etc. the South is, because it always helps to find someone you can point at and say "See? I'm better than him!" I am reminded of a black author around fifty years ago who traveled in Europe. When asked why he would want to return to a country with legal segregation, he said something to the effect that Europeans were worse because they were just as racist but pretended not to be.