The defense would respond to this indictment by saying that all things are relative, and in an increasingly Liberal society, it is only the political center that has moved. The old Conservative instincts remain, and if they have been much corrupted, they still manifest themselves in a hundred ways not necessarily susceptible to roll-call vote. A wise and enlightened conservatism does not resist all change; it resists what it views as impulsive change, or change simply for the sake of change, and this tendency, I believe, remains more apparent in the South than in other regions. We still resist abrupt innovation, in art, music, literature, architecture, religion, public morals. Other regions, in our view, should be the first to lay the old aside. Instead of casting away all our old prejudices, as Burke once remarked cheerfully of English Conservatives, “we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted, and the more generally they have prevailed the more we cherish them.” This process of cultural husbandry, this laying by, has been too long ingrained in the South. I cannot imagine its abandonment any time soon.
The South’s identification with “conservatism” will survive, among other reasons, because it fits so perfectly into the real or imagined Southern manner. These days, liberalism is identified with the masses, and not merely identified with them but equated with them. The race issue to one side, this equation simply is not a process that comes easily to the Southern temperament. Implicit in the conservative faith is a high respect for individual variations, for class, and order, and rank; and all these are implicit in the Cavalier ideal as well. Aristocracy is wasted in a shower room; and to the extent that public institutions are reduced to the level of a public bath, the Southerner is bound to object. The graces, the little elegancies, the privileges of birth and office and position--these too are long ingrained; they persevere.
To be sure, a good deal of cynical evidence may be amassed to suggest that this Southern manner, this Southern romanticism, is as unreal as the myths on which it is based. When a gang of foul-mouthed Mississippi white men lynch a fifteen-year-old colored boy, the Southern manner seems a long way away. And when a rabble of black-jacketed young punks assemble to jeer at law-abiding Negro students, notions of _noblesse oblige_ may seem just that: notions.
