From James Webb's book, "Born Fighting," which I just finished reading, here's a great populist quote for the day:
The ever-hungry industrialists had discovered that...southwest Virginia sat atop one huge vein of coal. And so the rape began. The people from the outside showed up with complicated contracts that the small-scale cattle raisers and tobacco farmers could not fully understand, asking for 'rights' to mineral deposits they could not see, and soon they were treated to a sundering of their own earth as the mining companies ripped apart their way of life, so that after a time the only option was to go down into the hole and bring the Man his coal, or starve. The Man got his coal, and the profits it brought when he shipped it out. Oil made the Middle East rich. Coal made this part of Appalachia a poverty-stricken basket case while the rest of the mountain region remained mired in isolation.
I also found this passage very moving while reading "Born Fighting". (I'll be re-reading the book again this week.)
I've spent time in strip-mained areas of Appalachia where the money flows down the mountain sides like top soil after a rain...
My son's middle name is "Colton" and his grandparents are from Jackson County, OH...
We don't forget. And we don't forgive people who rape our land, lie, cheat, undermine our Constitutional rights and impoverish us with laws designed to turn our country into a plutocracy.
One naive commentator over at "GOTV" blog seems to imagine that "Born Fighting" is about how "tough" the Scots-Irish are. She disparages the book and the author. It's obvious she hasn't read the book or she'd have a clue. But then again, her sympathies are with a steward of the modern Robber Barons named Harris Miller...