One of the things I love about the American South is that life there seems to play out at deeper and richer levels than Yankee, industrialized-to-the-max tastes are accustomed to.  The Oxford American magazine ran an anecdote several years ago about Southern and Northern cultural differences in raising kids.  I forget exactly how they worded it, but the gist of it was that in the South, a 12-year-old will have a key to the gun cabinet, but he’ll get a whuppin’ within an inch of his life if he dares to breathe a word about sex; whereas in the North, a 12-year-old can buy condoms out of a vending machine at his middle school, but he’ll get grounded for a week if he dares to breathe a word about guns.  That’s maybe a slight exaggeration about Berkeley, but it’s not far from the mark.

In that spirit, on the entertaining Free Speech watch, there’s a new political ad out of Alabama entitled “Gather Your Armies” that is really something to consider.  It features a Tea Partier named Rick Barber who’s running for Congress in the Second District GOP primary runoff.  Great theatrics.  And I’m not unsympathetic to revolutionary sentiment against the evils of the Established Order.  But we tried that one in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and guess what?  We lost.  Liberal ideas went on to dominate popular culture, while conservative ideas drove fiscal and foreign policy.  Now our economy is in the tank and we’re once again mired in foreign wars.

Somehow, within our raucous, wildly diverse society, we need to find a way to work constructively on solving problems.  With all due respect to Mr. Barber, the idea that we must tear down the existing system before we can build is simply a non-starter at this stage of the game.