>I seize on a rare opportunity to disagree with Marvin. It is the case
> that southern protestant whites are more economically conservative
> than 'white ethnic' catholics from the northeast or midwest. But
> recently I've come across an interesting assertion. Thomas Edsall, in
> his great book about the backlash, says that before the 60s,
> working-class southern protestant whites were the third most
> left-leaning (on econonomics) constituency in the US (after blacks and
> jews); they were racially reactionary, but the country's most ardent
> new deal democrats otherwise. He says that during the conservative
> realignment in the 60s and 70s, where the republican party took in
> racial conservatives, such southern whites appear to have made an
> ideological conversion to free-market enthusiasm.
[...]
> Lastly- I do believe that pointing to populist fervor in the south and
> west is not very useful. Reading Hofstadter's age of reform shook me
> up on that--- the degree to which the populist crusade was the
> exclamation point at the end of an old society.
==============================
Nuances of difference at most, Jim.
I fully accept that Protestant whites in the open shop South are more economically conservative than the working class in the big cosmopolitan cities of the Northeast with their union traditions. That was an inevitable consequence of their movement to the Republicans for race reasons.
I don't know that it so much the case that they have "enthusiastically" embraced laissez-faire capitalism as that they have have experienced rapid growth throughout the region in the decades of Republican ascendency and have therefore not had cause to date to reject the party's economic program. These workers, in fact, tend to be social conservatives who are suspicious of Wall Street and the more affluent libertarian wing of the party which drives its economic policy.
I've noted the Democratic party bias of previous generations of Southern workers, and view their populist episodes as being part of this more progressive prior tradition.
In general, there's always been an uneasy tension between the gainfully employed part of the working class in all countries and the unemployed "lumpenproletariat", one which transcends religious affiliations. The work ethic is not a strictly Protestant thing, as I tried to illustrate with reference to Catholic workers who support the Democrats and their more interventionist economic policies but who still disdain the non-working poor, especially in the non-white communities, as "welfare bums".