reply by
John Calvin
5/3/2002 (9:43) |
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Why wouldn't I? The term 'redneck' was coined in the late 16th century ( 1500's) in reference to people inhabiting the Borderlands between England and Scotland, a particularely lawless region of the British Isles owing chiefly to centuries of conflict and war. Many of these Border peoples were the first to take up King James offer and settle in Northern Ireland at the beginning of the 16th century- although it must be recognized that the Scots themselves first arrived in their present home from Ireland nearly a thousand years before that. A very large proportion of the earliest European settlers in North America beginning in the mid 17th century but culminating in mass migrations during the mniddle and towards the end of the 18th century were from Scotland and Northern Ireland. Most of these immigrants moved directly onto the frontier, contesting a 'dark and bloody ground' with the natives, despite restrictions technically imposed by the colonial governments and, later, by the new Republic.
Certainly, their history in this country often makes a very nasty picture. Many had no doubts that 'the only good Indian is a dead Indian', many were slaveholders. There religion was often extremely narrow and intolerant, their business strictly philistine. But the red neck tradition is like any other cultural tradition in history and contemporary society: having condemnable as well as redeeming aspects. As I mentioned, although often extremely anti-intellectual, some of America's greatest authors were rednercks: Poe, Melville Twain, William James. Although often very destructive of the environment, the scotch-Irish produced men like John Muir. Although somewhat 'fundamentalist' or extreme, great religious ideas and reforms have been generated by the Scotch -Irish going back to the great revival at Cane Ridge Kentucky in 1801: an event which seems to have defined 'American Religion' per se. A majority of the authors of the Constitution of the United States were of Scotch-Irish Ancestory and Princeton Graduates( New Jersey College: run by Scotch Presybeterians at the time) and got alot of their ideas from developments in Scotland during the English Civil War.
If people understood the dynamics of their own culture and history that would help them understand the dynamics of other cultures and their histories. Understanding the mixed and contradictory context and messages- the ongoing struggle and transformation contained therein- would help them undersatand that other cultures and traditions operate in the same manner and that their simplistic, abstract categorizations of, for instance, 'Islam' or 'Arabs' are entirely inappropriate and not at all helpful in developing an Dialogue of Civilizations, putting an end the madness and slaughter going on in the world today.
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