Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 29, 1990 TAG: 9006290689
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This apparently ineradicable feature of the human psyche goes by various names: nationalism, parochialism, triablism, localism. It has divided the world, prompted most of the world's innumerable wars, and stood as a stubborn obstacle to the settlement of global problems and disputes that have little to do with isolated interests or national identity - e.g., just last week the brawling eruption of nationalism at the AIDS conference in San Francisco. AIDS, it ought to be obvious, is scarcely a problem limited to this nation or that. But tell it to the noisy partisans of this interest or that.
Nationalism's particular manifestation lately has been the various secession movements across the world. Secession is in the air: Lithuana wants to secede from the Soviet Union, and so do Latvia and Estonia, if with different levels of determination; but so does Georgia, so does Uzbechistan, so no doubt does Azerbaijhan, and so, heaven help us, does Russia itself.
Nor is that all: Quebec has raised the old issue lately of secession from Canada, the benefits of which are difficult to imagine, even for testy Quebec; most of Eastern Europe has already seceded from the Iron Curtain; and even little Malibu, that pretty little enclave of privilege and Gucci, wants to secede from Los Angeles. One hardly dares wonder what secession movement will come next, or how it will or can be rationally dealt with.
My point here is not, of course, to weigh the merits of any particular case. It is only to note that fashions in politics come and go as rapidly as the hula hoop, and often with the same lasting effect. Secessionism, which has often proved disastrous for the secessionists, may vanish by the turning of the leaves - or perhaps go on to change the face of the world.
We who've lived all of our lives in the American South have a vivid - and at best bittersweet - notion of what secession can bring and thus mean. In our enthusiasm for the secessionist dreams of others, it would be well to recall what a mess we made of it 140 years ago.
Virginia suffered especially. Not exclusively, to be sure, but no other Confederate state was the scene of so many battles and so much destruction, not even the path cut through Georgia by Sherman's troops in 1864-65. Many of the marks left by the consequences of Virginia's crucial decision to join the seceding states in 1861 have lingered into our own time.
The economic and political calamity that settled on most of the South after Appomattox was keenly felt in Virginia well into the 20th century. As late as the 1940s and '50s, Virginia was well behind the rest of the nation in almost every aspect of progress.
Schools were almost as poor as Mississippi's. Rates of malnutrition and disease were among the highest in the United States. The political scene was dominated, to an extent not even most other Southern states could rival, by an oligarchy determined to accomplish only two things: to spend as little money as possible and to keep the black man "in his place."
The "massive resistance" movement of the late '50s was the final struggle. What is crucial about it, however, is not that it failed but that it happened at all.
But memories are short, and the clear fact that many of the would-be seceding nations on the contemporary world stage could not support themselves even if secession succeeded has not diminished the emotional bathos into which many of us have plunged at each new effort at separation. We ought to consider not only the causes but the consequences, but we do not.
Look at the Roanoke Valley, from which, it appears, every neighborhood, crossroads and hamlet wants to secede. Yes, and then what?
by CNB