Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World

EIGHT. Politics: Is Globalism Liberal? Is a Local Focus Conservative?

Thank God for drunkards, children, and the United States of America. charles de gaulle Yes, I oppose gay marriage. I also oppose marriage of man and woman. dave ‘‘mudcat’’ saunders, Virginia progressive Democrat c h a p t e r e i g h t Politics Is Globalism Liberal? Is a Local Focus Conservative? asserting that the South is orienting itself around the global brings to mind two assumptions we often take as givens: that the South as a region is a bastion of conservatism and that to orient around the global means to become more liberal. We need to examine these assumptions in light of the actual contours of the globalizing South. Obviously, given the South’s influence on the nation and, partly through the nation, the rest of the world, the policies the South favors will matter. I want to suggest that the assumptions I have just brought up are problematic for examining the South’s present and future for numerous reasons. There is a much more productive way to think about the South—and for southerners to think—and that is to think in terms of grounded globalism. 184 Politics 185 “Liberal” and “conservative” carry many meanings, and some argue that they are therefore meaningless terms. This conclusion does not follow , for if nothing else they are politically salient labels, even if used primarily as epithets and insults. Listen to parliamentary debates in Great Britain, where “conservative” explicitly labels one of the two major parties , or follow the blue/red state arguments in the United States. My solution to the problem of the complexity and ambiguity of the labels is to simplify for the sake of analysis. I shall therefore define and illustrate enough of the two orientations to capture their gist as needed to pursue a specific question: how do and how might these orientations interact with globalism in the southern context? Contrary to some stereotypes, neither is necessarily anti- or proglobal, but within the southern context, a certain kind of liberalism or conservatism can fruitfully accord with grounded globalism—which serves not only as a method but also a philosophy. Liberal and Conservative in the South: An Illustrative Text What do “liberal” and “conservative” mean in a southern context? A manifesto, Where We Stand, published in 2004, is an excellent text with which to address this question, for it states the position of liberal southerners , compares it with the conservative position, and explains both the origins and implications of liberalism and conservatism for the South and the nation. Where We Stand addresses the following key questions: (1) What are liberal as opposed to conservative ideals, as perceived by selfdeclared southern liberals? (2) What has been the history and process by which the South has influenced the nation in a liberal direction? (3) What has been the history and process by which the South has influenced the nation in a conservative direction? And (4) what is the impact of this influence on the nation? We shall add a fifth question: How has global identity affected all the above?1 The title, Where We Stand, reflects the liberal stance of the book in contrast to the rather conservative stance of a 1930 work, I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, by “Twelve Southerners.” Anthony Dunbar, who edited Where We Stand, and other scholars see the 186 Meaning and Action earlier work as protesting the destruction wrought by industrialization— in this sense foreshadowing current environmentalism—and as unrealistically trying to turn the clock back to an agrarian way of life that entailed its own abuses, including racism. The new statement instead looks forward. Among the many contributors to the more recent collection, three authors —Jimmy Carter, Sheldon Hackney, and John Egerton—and Dunbar represent the book’s perspective in a certain classically progressive, or “liberal,” stream. Carter and Hackney assumed prominent national roles in the Democratic Party, Carter as president of the United States and Hackney as director of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Clinton; the third, Egerton, a Tennessee journalist, has advanced the influential thesis that the South has shaped America in a conservative direction. All three are white males who are from southern states: Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, respectively. Together they locate liberalism regionally, nationally, and, with reference to foreign policy , globally. Jimmy Carter provides a foreword that states key...