Morality, faith, and the South

Another study (from Pew) has come out showing that the US is a major outlier compared to other first-world countries, in that a substantial proportion of our population believes that atheists can't be moral.  Never mind that atheists are under-represented in prisons, less likely to divorce, more highly educated, etc etc.

Writing in Salon, CJ Werelman  puts this down to the religiosity of the Southern US.

Essentially, the Republican Party has convinced tens of millions of Southerners that a vote for a public display of the Ten Commandments is more important to a Christian’s needs than a vote against cuts in education spending, food stamp reductions, the elimination of school lunches and the abolition of healthcare programs. 

....While the Republican Party retains its monolithic hold on the South, the rest of America remains deprived of universal healthcare, electric cars, sensible gun control laws, carbon emission bans, a progressive tax structure that underpins massive public investment, and collective bargaining laws that would compress the income inequality gap. In other words, without the South’s religiosity, “America” would again look like a developed, secular country, a country where it’s probable for an atheist to be elected into public office, and where the other 50 million law-abiding atheists wouldn’t be looked upon as rapists, thieves and murders.

We discussed "what's wrong with the South" a few days ago.   Can we lay it all at the feet of religious fervor?

What's wrong with the south?

In previous blogs, we have looked at maps of various metrics in the US, and found evidence that the South-- well, has issues, and those issues are affecting all of us.  Of course we all know and love many individual southerners, who represent the legendary warmth, hospitality, and loyalty of that part of the country.  But our friends also admit there are problems.

This week, for example, in South Carolina, the legislature voted to cut funding for colleges that assigned pro-gay books.  In the department of hypocrisy, despite fulminating against gay rights, MS, LA, and GA watch the most gay porn.

Over on Salon, there's an article identifying disturbing trends in the south.  And the HuffPo has a series of maps also suggests metrics in which the south fares poorly relative to the rest of the country (with a spur into Appalachia and up into the poor rural west...

These include:

• Highest rates of poverty
• No minimum wage
• Lowest economic mobility
• Lowest per capita spending by state goverments
• Poor access to preventative health care
• High rates of obesity, cigarette use, teen pregnancy, and other health issues
• High rates of gun violence

The New York Times has an article arguing that although the Democrats are presumed to have lost the white working class, the real difference is regional. 

[W]orking-class whites in the South are – no surprise — far more conservative than their counterparts in the rest of the country. Lumping all of these voters together exaggerates this constituency’s overall rightward tilt. ...

White working-class voters outside the South are becoming more open to the Democratic Party because, as the P.R.R.I. polling on abortion and same-sex marriage shows, they are coming to terms with the cultural transformations stemming from what sociologists call the “second demographic transition.” 

...one of the more visible dividing lines between left and right in American politics is the extent to which voters in a particular state or region have adopted the values of this second demographic transition — a lessening of sexual constraint, extensive nonmarital cohabitation, delayed childbearing, reduced fertility, family disruption, a stress on personal autonomy and individual self-expression, declining religiosity and growing acceptance of women’s rights.
...

The declining commitment of white noncollege voters outside the South to conservative values has been masked, politically and culturally, by the continued ferocity of sociocultural and racial conservatism among working class whites in the South. But insofar as the second demographic transition is taking hold among these voters in the North, the Midwest and the West, Democratic prospects may well be better than national polling data suggests.

It's ironic but in some ways, the South won the Civil War.  It increasingly seems like a separate country.

The 11 nations of the US:

Will the South succeed (in destroying the Union) ?

From Salon, a provocative suggestion that the South needs to go.

If you imagine there’s anything even remotely new about the current movement to cripple the government, well, bless your heart....

In fact, it’s the same old obstructionist strategy that’s been pursued by traitorous Southerners in government since long before Robert E. Lee’s doomed charge at Gettysburg. It’s part of the same soiled fabric that stretches from John C. Calhoun and South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification—an argument that essentially said that if a state didn’t like a federal law it could simply ignore it—all the way to the Newt Gingrich-led government shutdown and de facto second paralysis brought about by his presidential impeachment campaign of the 1990s. With stops along the way to roll back Reconstruction, stop black kids from entering white schools, dismember the Voting Rights Act, etc., etc.

The south is disproportionately represented in the Suicide Caucus.

In a piece published earlier this month beneath the headline “32 Republicans Who Caused the Government Shutdown,” The Atlantic tallied up the hardliners who have bent the country into going along with their insidious shutdown. Of the 32 it counted...20 come from Southern states. ... That’s why although we were all supposed to act shocked and appalled when a Confederate flag showed up in front of the White House during a Tea Party protest last week, nobody actually was.

And this strategy is truly harming the US on the global stage.

Obama blamed the shutdown for canceling appearances at sessions where global leaders gather to figure out who’s going to play makeweight in world affairs in coming years and who’s going to sit on the sidelines. 

In the international press, the dominant theme that emerged from the APEC meetings was how Obama’s absence amounted to rolling out the red carpet for China and Russia. Taking the unaccustomed role of dominant players at the event, America’s primary global rivals wasted no opportunity to chisel away at American influence, all while giddily sound-biting about the United States’ torrential loss of financial and political authority in the world’s most robust economic region. 

If the anger and narcissism of an influential part of the U.S. government was preventing it from seeing the big picture—no need for the shaky U.S. dollar to continue on as the world’s standard currency when by comparison the Chinese yuan looks Rushmore-esque in its rock-solid reliability—then let’s get on with cutting deals with the superpowers who actually seem both super and powerful. Or at least who have an idea about how to handle their business....

So our influence wanes, along with our infrastructure.  IN the US, we are un-paving roads, slashing research, and denying climate change, trying to run back to 1862, while in other parts of the world, the 21st century is well on its way.

So you might wonder, did the South succeed, when it didn't secede?  There's a lot of anger building at the Tea Party south, the evangelical south, the south that takes more federal dollars than it gives, the south that seems to be dragging us into the past.  Or is that just a cover for our lingering racism, kleptomaniac plutocrats, and greedy wall street junkies?

Mapping it (updated with more maps)

My brother has a saying: "Maps are our friends." I've been interested in the information available in a number of maps lately.

Following up on our discussion about Mississippi Republicans' lamentable opposition to inter-racial marriage, here's a map showing the date when anti-miscegenation laws were overturned. That big blotch of yellow in the South, those are the states where it took the Supreme Court to do it (in Loving v. Virginia, 1967). (From Mapscroll):

Next, let's look at the frequency of citizens who hold passports in the different states (darker color = fewer passports):
How about Education? Here's one showing the fraction of population age 25+ who holds a bachelor's degree (darker = higher):

Got that? Let's move along to religion, and the distribution of evangelicals:

Nan Hunter, writing at the blog Hunter of Justice looks at the map of the US from the point of view of LGBT rights.The states that have any recognition for LGBT people , such as antidiscrimination laws, and/or partnership/marriage protections, are left white. (However, many of the white states are explicitly anti-marriage so it's a pretty low bar.) The remaining states are blue (for Democratic legislature and governor), red (for Republican) and purple (for mixed). Unsurprisingly, the white states are largely blue or purple.

And here is an over-optimistic estimate of when marriage equality laws will happen in different states, based on data about the polling opinions there (For example, data like this. Map From Mapscroll)

What about economic activity? Here's the per capita GDP by state:


And here's one that shows us who gets the federal money. Values <$1.00 are states that get less from the Fed than they pay in taxes; values >$1.00 are states that get more than they pay.

Finally, this week is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.



Discuss.