"THE SOUTH" IS NOT "THE SOUTH" | 2007-08-06
This is not the kind of thing we should be paying big attention to, but southern and Southern are two completely different things. The most heavily populated region in the south is the Los Angeles area, which extends to the Mexican border.
The most southern state is Hawaii. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is to the south of ALL of them. Today, as sign of disrespect, south always starts with a small "s." However it is understood to refer to the Old Confederacy.
The first civil rights triumph of blacks a hundred years ago was to make people write "Negro" instead of "negro." No one would be allowed to write "negro" in a mainline publication today.
Hence the demotion of "South" to "south."
William Buckley, of all people, agreed with me on this.
As several members of my family found out to their amazement, EVERYBODY who was a leader in the Reagan movement knows who I am. There was a cove article attacking me in National Review attacking and a review of both my books, one, at the same time another camp in NR was attacking me, entitled "Read This One!" by a Senior Editor.
I wrote articles and reviews for NR when I was still, albeit barely, respectable.
Bill Rusher, publisher of NR, wrote the Foreword to my first book and GAVE me a lifetime subscription to the magazine. In that Foreword, he had to distance himself from my criticism of his friend William Buckley in the book.
This took guts on Rusher's part. Not only did I attack his employer in that book, I SPECIFICALLY demanded the preservation of the white race in it, probably the last mainline book that ever did so.
I once said to Rusher, "With all the attacks Buckley took for 'God and Man at Yale,' I doubt what I said bothered him much."
Rusher disagreed. He said, "The man is only HUMAN, Bob."
The point of this is that I wrote Buckley about the fact that referring to Old Confederacy attitudes as "southern" is just plain BAD SPELLING. He QUOTED me verbatim in his "Notes and Asides" column in National Review and then asked, "Are you kin to the Caleb Whitaker in Camden?" Buckley was raised in Camden, SC.
This puzzled me. Just to avoid me like the plague, every respectable conservative knows who I am, ESPECIALLY William Buckley. I even had run-ins with two of his brothers. Then I realized how much he agreed with my POINT. To quote me, he had to show he didn't realize who I WAS.
Despicable though he's become, Buckley's a pro. And he REALLY doesn't like the anti-South jag the guys he turned NR over to are on. Buckley knows no one but me would MAKE this point, so it was either act naïve or not mention it.
All this deduction also gives you an idea of what I mean when I say being a pro in this business requires considerable, hard-won, experience.