A Brief History of the Redneck
30th January 2017
Joe Bob Briggs brings the history.
Let me make this clear: I’m not a nativist, I’m a redneck. There’s a difference. A nativist would be one of those snooty New Englanders in the Mayflower Society. Blue bloods in ruffled shirts. Think Adlai Stevenson…Noah Webster…William Rehnquist. Congregationalists. Pointy-nosed moralizers. Some of them could be angry—Jonathan Edwards comes to mind—but they were angry in a sort of clench-jawed Connecticut debutante way. Ewwwww, don’t talk to her, she’s such a Kappa.
The nativist idea of a rebellion is to dress up like Indians and dump tea in the ocean—the 18th-century version of frat boys pranking the archrival football team.
The redneck idea of a rebellion is to lie in wait with a shotgun for the guy who’s trying to tax your whiskey.