No "Sign of the Chicken" in "Southern Zodiac"

The time crunch intensifies today. If I'm lucky, I might get to spend a decent amount of time blogging tomorrow when this beast of a short proposal is done. Lots of interesting news is afoot, though I've little time to comment on it.

Idiot Hippies, Murderous Thugs Overshadow Inaugural

In the meantime, while our nation swears in its Republican Commander-in-Chief, the Democrats are showing their commitment to offering us a viable alternative by staging silly protests (The woman lighting the flag reminds me a little of Teresa Heinz-Kerry.), conducting lame counter-inaugurals, and holding clueless boycotts. I wish they'd get serious, because our nation's enemies already are. There are a couple of good posts on terrorism today over at Ego, concerning the dirty bomb threat in Boston and Iran's Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Also, stop by Michelle Malkin's blog. She often does a superb job of keeping an eye on Islamofascists. Today, she provides an interesting look at the goings-on behind the scenes at Homeland Security, discusses the situation in Boston some more, and gives some good news about the detainees at Guantanamo. She also gave me my initial tip-off to the Counterterrorism Blog, a must-read in this time of war. I've blogrolled it so I can check on it daily.

An Amusing Southern Joke

As a Southerner, I reserve the right to make the occasional post about my homeland.

Heh! My use of the term "homeland" should give conniption fits to any blue-staters out there reading this! Those guys are too busy staging anti-war protests to realize this, but they're lucky to have us, as Southerners provide a disproportionate amount of the manpower and bravery of our nation's armed forces. And yes, were I still a Mississippi resident when it came up for a vote, I'd have voted to keep the flag, but that's a post for another day. (Note: The voters kept it by a 65-35% margin. This roughly matches the state's white:black ratio, but despite the article's insinuations, I think there was plenty of "crossover voting", for lack of a better term.) In the interest of disclosure, I am white, but this was not a racial issue to me. (See the Coulter article referenced earlier, but with the proviso that there were additional factors that went into my preference.) And any blue-staters out there can get a glimpse at my views on race here. Unlike Senator Byrd (Guess which blog I spent the most time at today!), I'm no bigot. But I digress....

Something I really like about the South that comes through on this blog is that it has its own regional identity due to its distinctive culture. With this sense of distinctiveness comes a sort of cultural self-awareness and thus the ability to laugh at our culture. We know we look funny through the eyes of the rest of our countrymen, and that fills us with a kind of glee. They may laugh, but they don't know what they're missing! We step back and take a look at ourselves through the eyes of our less-fortunate countrymen, and laugh the knowing laugh of the proud man. (Yes. I know. Southern culture is neither perfect nor homogeneous. But today, I'm focusing on its positive and interesting aspects.)

Without further ado, I received a gag "Southern zodiac" via email from my wife and found it posted here. One last jab at blue-state peaceniks: you'll see no "sign of the chicken" here.

For laughs, my sign is "boiled peanuts," a food that I have found recently canned and sitting on the shelves of a gourmet food store!

I figured I'd be the first Southerner with an Objectivist blog, but Andy beat me to it. (Well, at least he should appreciate the zodiac joke -- unless he's a transplant!) I've blogged a little on Southern culture as it pertains to politics here and here, but I'm a rather atypical Southerner in some ways. It might be interesting some time down the road to test some of the conclusions I drew in those posts by polling the apparently sizable readership at this Southerner's blog.

One interesting atypicality about my background: Though I was raised Catholic -- itself unusual except in parts of Louisiana -- my family was pretty secular. Nominally Protestant, my uncle and his father did not attend church. And before I was an Objectivist, I'd become agnostic after giving religion the benefit of the doubt until college. The day I decided to tell my father I was agnostic, he stole my thunder by telling me he was an atheist! Of course, I am now an atheist, too, but the only professed one in my family. I wonder how common these "secular" families are in the South?

Well, that'll have to be it for today. I've got a couple of interesting things I'm dying to post about, but can't for lack of time.

-- CAV