Such boasts from southern nationalists in 1905 were romantic fiction. The North had the power and pride of victory. A century later, however — after great religious and political transformation in both the South and the nation as a whole — the evidence of ascending southern political and religious influence is substantial.
From presidential-election dominance to military adventurism and Southern Baptist expansion to become the leading U.S. Protestant denomination, more Dixie ambitions have been fulfilled than any Confederate war veterans' convention could ever have contemplated.
And as W. J. Cash wrote in The Mind of the South, that region is "not quite a nation within a nation, but the next thing to it." 96
The outlook that Israel, Ulster, and South Africa supposedly had in common — the sense of a biblical nationhood bathed in blood and tribulation — closely resembles the scriptural fidelity and religious nationalism forged by the South but too little understood beyond its bounds. This mentality now has an unprecedented influence in the United States as a whole. Well may Americans — and the rest of the world — ponder what William Faulkner said about the land of his birth: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
-- Kevin Phillips,
Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, addressing an evangelical Christian rally via teleconference, April 24, 2005.
