SHOW ME? DAMNED RIGHT

My wife bought the Sunday St. Louis Post Dispatch yesterday. I went right to the op-ed page and saw Kevin Horrigan's column. I’ve always enjoyed his writing. Haven’t read it in a while because we seldom get the Post; most of the news is available online and there just isn’t that much local stuff of interest to me.

Horrigan is upset that most Missourians don’t buy into the progressive world view. The condescending tone of his article is incredibly offensive and the way he distorts the history of my state is just wrong. He begins his article with Willard Vandiver’s “Show Me” speech (posted on the side bar) and laments that what it says is still true of Missourians, except for the part about Democrats. DAMN RIGHT. Proud of it, too.

Maybe Mr. Horrigan isn’t aware of this, but the only reason Missouri was a Democrat stronghold for all those years was because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. The Republican Party represented the progressive view. The Democrats were the conservatives, you know, states rights, segregation, leave us the hell alone, that sort of thing. The party of George Wallace, not Nancy Pelosi.

Horrigan fails to say, because maybe he doesn’t know, that most of the old Democrats (at least the rural, unenlightened by progressive ideals and thought kind) that live in the state still have the old views. Maybe, just maybe, this is why most younger conservatives have gravitated towards the Republican Party in Missouri. I spend a lot of time with old guys; farmers, construction guys, auto workers and so on. I would hate to have to tell Horrigan and the rest of his progressive Democrat buddies this, but, these guys don’t believe what you and your progressive colleagues do. They are much closer to John Birch than Harry Reid. They vote Democrat because their parents did; they always have and they’re just too old to change. Political affiliation is as close to religious affiliation as you can get. Most also don’t follow the news deeply enough to understand what the Democrat Party represents today

Horrigan interviews Jeffery L. Pasley, a teacher at Mizzou. Pasley says “There has been a long and throbbing vein of conservatism here..”. Personally, I've never seen anything throbbing, much less a vein, but I will readily concede that Missouri is a conservative state. Pasley goes on to say that conservative activism “does seem to grow up in places where you have lots of transplanted southern and rural whites living in a relatively diverse urban environment.” (Come on, this guy Pasley lives in Columbia, a town that is only marginally urban and an area that is certainly not diverse, at least once one leaves the ivory tower of the university. Do I sense an urban sophisticate progressive wanna be here? But I digress.)

Say what? Transplanted rural and southern whites? Maybe transplanted in the mid 1700’s. We started the damned place. If anything was transplanted here it was the European idea of large centralized governmental control that came with the German immigrants of the 1840’s. The original settlers of Missouri were mostly free traders and people that migrated through Kentucky. Daniel Boone and his wife both died and were buried here. Missouri was a frontier area, controlled first by the French, then the Spanish and then the French once again. It was always a wide open, toughest guy wins sort of place. The first businesses here were mining lead and trading pelts; raping the land in modern progressive parlance. We then had farmers that grew hemp, tobacco and cotton; some owned slaves. We voted to stay in the Union in a constitutional convention held in July, 1861. We still kept our slaves. Our Governor, Claiborne Jackson, refused to supply Missourians to the Union war effort and was chased from the state by Union forces. The Governor and the Congress were forced to convene outside of the borders of Missouri and voted to secede. We are one of the stars on the Confederate Battle Flag. Jackson was the only sitting Governor to lead troops into battle. Sorry Kevin, not much progressivism here.

Pasley goes on to say “The Show Me attitude does exist but instead of healthy skepticism, it seems to manifest more often as extreme indifference to new ideas or critical social and political thinking.”

Maybe we just know B.S. when we see it and due to our lack of education and our hayseed ways we just don’t think we need to waste a lot of time thinking about it. Shovel it up and get it out of the way. Crap isn’t going to turn into gold no matter how long you put your mind to it.

No matter how much urban elitists like Horrigan and his kind want it, Missouri will never be Massachusetts or Vermont. We’re different here; hard headed and independent. Missourians will speak their minds regardless of what anyone thinks. We are much more in the mold of Texas than Rhode Island. Missouri is, for the most part, a southern state, in attitude, outlook and summertime temperatures. We believe in being polite, going to church and helping each other out. We don’t much care for the modern welfare state or the idea that someone from someplace else can tell us what to do. We won’t sign on to the newest fad or belief system just because one of our self appointed betters thinks we should.

Mine and my wife’s families have lived here for over 150 years. I am a Missourian. My state before my country. We are what we are and don’t feel the need to change. Sorry if that bothers you, Kevin.