"Born Fighting," Webb wins the first round
Looks like James Webb, my fellow descendant of Ulster Scots whose fine book about our people in this country, Born Fighting: How the Scots Irish Shaped America, is one of the best books of its kind I've read in years, has won the Democratic nomination to take on Sen. George Allen in Virginia this November.
I don't really resemble the portrait Webb paints of the Scots-Irish. In fact, I come from an entirely different strain of the cat from the one Webb describes, and which is generally associated with the term. My parents didn't arrive in the Appalachians two hundred years ago; they moved directly from Belfast and Downpatrick to Chicago only two generations ago. My roots are urban, not rural; I intensely dislike country music, am not a NASCAR fan (though my Scots-Irish wife is), and I identify with the Union when enjoying a book about Civil War (which is fair enough; as Webb points out, both sides had their share of Scots-Irish soldiers, two of them being Ulysses Simpson Grant and Robert E. Lee). Webb describes the instinctive antipathy of the Scots-Irish for labor unions; well, my father was actually a union activist of a kind. And while Grandfather Waters was once a Presbyterian minister, most of the family became Christian Scientists in America; my immediate family turned Lutheran.
Still, I'm grateful to Webb for his recounting of the proud story of the Scots-Irish in America, a story which includes names like Jackson (both Andrew and Stonewall), John C. Calhoun, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Mark Twain, Johnny Cash, George Patton, and John Wayne, to name only a few (more can be found here). Seventeen U.S. presidents have been a part of that story- including my father's namesake, William McKinley, as well as Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and the Bushes. It's a heritage of which I'm proud. For the most part.
Webb, a decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War and Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, has been quoted as saying that he left the Democratic Party in large measure out of disgust over Jimmy Carter's mass pardon of Vietnam-era draft dodgers. He is now running as a peace candidate who opposes the war in Iraq. No inherent contradition, I suppose- though I would disagree with him as to which war was more worthy of support, as well as whether cutting and running when the going gets tough- a pattern our enemies have come to expect of us- is apt in the long run to be a useful precedent for Americans to continue.
Outspokenly pro-choice on abortion, Webb seems to me to be unlikely to attract social conservatives to his banner in a race against Allen despite his martial credentials and his fine choice of ancestors. For some reason, though, there are those who apparently feel that he can. He does come from a military family and a fighting tradition, and his ancestors do hail from the Six Counties (though his family has been in this country a great deal longer than mine). But if I still lived in Virginia, I'd be highly motivated by this result to volunteer for the Allen campaign. I react to Webb much the same way I react to Rudy Giuliani: I respect the guy, but given his positions on the issues I think it's really, really important that he lose.
But I like his book a lot. May he have plenty of time to write more during the next six years.
I don't really resemble the portrait Webb paints of the Scots-Irish. In fact, I come from an entirely different strain of the cat from the one Webb describes, and which is generally associated with the term. My parents didn't arrive in the Appalachians two hundred years ago; they moved directly from Belfast and Downpatrick to Chicago only two generations ago. My roots are urban, not rural; I intensely dislike country music, am not a NASCAR fan (though my Scots-Irish wife is), and I identify with the Union when enjoying a book about Civil War (which is fair enough; as Webb points out, both sides had their share of Scots-Irish soldiers, two of them being Ulysses Simpson Grant and Robert E. Lee). Webb describes the instinctive antipathy of the Scots-Irish for labor unions; well, my father was actually a union activist of a kind. And while Grandfather Waters was once a Presbyterian minister, most of the family became Christian Scientists in America; my immediate family turned Lutheran.
Still, I'm grateful to Webb for his recounting of the proud story of the Scots-Irish in America, a story which includes names like Jackson (both Andrew and Stonewall), John C. Calhoun, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Mark Twain, Johnny Cash, George Patton, and John Wayne, to name only a few (more can be found here). Seventeen U.S. presidents have been a part of that story- including my father's namesake, William McKinley, as well as Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and the Bushes. It's a heritage of which I'm proud. For the most part.
Webb, a decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War and Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, has been quoted as saying that he left the Democratic Party in large measure out of disgust over Jimmy Carter's mass pardon of Vietnam-era draft dodgers. He is now running as a peace candidate who opposes the war in Iraq. No inherent contradition, I suppose- though I would disagree with him as to which war was more worthy of support, as well as whether cutting and running when the going gets tough- a pattern our enemies have come to expect of us- is apt in the long run to be a useful precedent for Americans to continue.
Outspokenly pro-choice on abortion, Webb seems to me to be unlikely to attract social conservatives to his banner in a race against Allen despite his martial credentials and his fine choice of ancestors. For some reason, though, there are those who apparently feel that he can. He does come from a military family and a fighting tradition, and his ancestors do hail from the Six Counties (though his family has been in this country a great deal longer than mine). But if I still lived in Virginia, I'd be highly motivated by this result to volunteer for the Allen campaign. I react to Webb much the same way I react to Rudy Giuliani: I respect the guy, but given his positions on the issues I think it's really, really important that he lose.
But I like his book a lot. May he have plenty of time to write more during the next six years.
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