I Just Hope I Don't Die Before The Alabama - Notre Dame Game

... but I'm going to give it my best shot.

I have a couple of Very Important Things to say today, but fortunately for you, I don't have time for a long-winded bloviation. Instead, I'll share my latest gluttonian indulgence. Pining for something filled with fats and cholesterol, I made biscuits and gravy. Not just any biscuits and gravy, but Deep South Dish's Butter Bombs and Homemade Sausage Gravy.

Of course, it was to die for, possibly quite literally.

My arteries are deliciously doomed.

Thomas Sowell For The Win!

I could add a Tomas Sowell For The Win section every day for a year and not run out of content. I consumed Black Rednecks and White Liberals almost all day yesterday and it was marvelous. It persuasively argues that the culture of the old school Southern redneck as well as the modern urban black came from the immigrants who made up the Antebellum South - Ulster Irish, Scots and the English who lived on the Scottish border. 

What's important is not just where they came from, but also when. Coincidentally, I had recently seen a quote from Scottish philosopher David Hume (b. 1711, d. 1776), exhorting his countrymen to learn and speak English and adopt their customs. Looking into it, I discovered that up until Hume, the rest of Europe had thrown in the towel on the Scots, giving up hope that they could ever be civilized and become more than arrogant, illiterate, lazy, violent drunks. Dittos for the Ulster Irish and the English who lived on the Scottish border.

Poor, Southern whites came from that culture, prior to the Scots adopting the language and much of the culture of England. Consequently, while their homeland grew out of those bad habits, the Southern whites, cut off from that evolution, did not. Immersed in that culture, black slaves abandoned African habits and picked up those of the poor whites. Hooray?

Anyway, I promised not to type so much today so I'll stop with a recommendation that you pick up and read Sowell's excellent book.