ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 19, 1993                   TAG: 9301190323
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


NOW IT'S GREEDY TIME DOWN SOUTH

YOUR EDITORIAL (Dec. 16) likening display of the Confederate battle flag above the Alabama state Capitol to the "establishment of religion" is ironic, because the Old South fostered many religions - Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic - whereas much of the defeated South promotes the establishment of one aggressively intolerant heresy, materialism.

I read the Sons of Confederate Veterans' reply (Dec. 29) to your editorial amid a Christmas season pocked by first-hand accounts of the barbarism in Florida, that most Yankee-fied of the 13 states that grace the Stars and Bars: in Miami, where common folks expect to be robbed; also, photos from Orlando of garish houses built by the newly rich flocking from somewhere else to disgrace their millions; also, headlined at the checkout counter: "Vanna Makes Love Twice A Day." And saddest of all, a photo of seven little girls in a Christmas parade who all had different last names from their mothers'.

A simple illustration of the determining atomic structure of the two cultures is the puzzlement induced by that Yankee aphorism, "Honesty is the best policy," in the chivalrous Southerner who thought it was a virtue.

It is this dilution of virtues into social lubricants and dehorning of obscenities in the service of commerce that indicts this disorienting Yankee culture. It was the South's preoccupation with chivalry, grace and style (though, admittedly, narrowly focused), and its consequent irreverence toward materialism's trinity of commerce, progress and power that unleashed the puritanical intolerance of the Yankees.

Perhaps Thomas Dixon's words from a century ago can disquiet that placid sense of history that assumes fattening is a continuous process: "I've studied your great cities. Believe me, the South is worth saving. Against a possible day when a flood of foreign anarchy threatens the foundations of the Republic and men shall laugh at the faiths of your fathers, and undigested wealth beyond the dreams of avarice rots your society until it mocks at honor, love, and God - against that day we will preserve the South." CHARLES PUTNAM VAN BUREN, MO.



by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB