[percy-l] AND...just one more post...

Mike Frentz mfrentz at bbn.com
Fri Jan 3 18:01:07 EST 2003


Karey L. Perkins wrote:

> In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to 
> describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the 
> more conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott 
> associates himself.  Will Percy describes, and the article quotes 
> him, that part of the state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and 
> slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and 
> fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards."
>  
> However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion 
> -- Walker Percy's himself.  His Signposts essays dwell considerably on 
> racism and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of 
> their writing -- and the Life in the South section was immensely 
> illuminating to me, as a non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners 
> had with integration (which Percy was for, of course).  His discussion 
> of the fact that the South had no public space probably goes as far to 
> explain the problem as any I've heard yet.

> I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage 
> of political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, 
> northern Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his 
> southern-born relatives spent their lives battling, the fact that just 
> a few years ago the Germans just barely failed attempt to decimate an 
> entire race (and the U.S. did not enter the war to save the Jew, but 
> for other interests), the heated racial conflicts and out-and-out 
> riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of this was playing out 
> on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith entering U. of 
> Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned about 
> racism. 
>  

Hogwash.  I can't help but feel sometimes that peopleon this list 
believe that if Percy were alive today he would be a Democrat.  Even I 
was a Democrat (Deathocrat, Damnednocrat..) around the time Percy died. 
 Percy certainly did not fit the demographics of the current Democratic 
party if you can believe the color chart from the 2000 election (big 
city, Northeast or Pacific coast).  And his beliefs were adamantly 
pro-life (e.g. Signposts 340) (which is why I had to finally switch 
parties in '92, also flushing 100+ years of still rabid Democratic 
heritage down the potty).

 I think Percy was most interested in justice, not political labels ("If 
you want peace, work for justice"  JP II). That's why Catholicism was so 
important to him.  Catholicism is about the pursuit of truth, wherever 
it goes, rather than wherever it "was".  (BTW, most fervent Catholics 
are now Republicans if you believe the polls)

 The Republicans also did not start the Civil War to free the slave, yet 
they did.  Go figure on Lott's remark, it is certainly not 
representative of the Republican party.  Good riddance if there was any 
truth to it.  Nor are the Democrats symbolic of progressive thinking 
(anymore) -- they now represent the special interests that are the same 
bigoted special interests that Percy's ancestors fought.  Only the color 
has changed.


Mike

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