Ps 56:4 In God I will praise his word, in God I have
put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
Sometimes it’s important to remember who you are. In our part of the country, we are mongrels. It’s important to remember that. We Appalachians are a soupy mix of predominantly Scots-Irish-Germans that were kicked out of Europe, kicked out of Ireland and kicked out of the Northeast of America. Our forefathers slunk down the spine of the mountains and settled on lands that – truth be told – no one else was much interested in.
Our standard-bearers no doubt came from all sorts of dubious circumstances. Otherwise why would they risk life and limb travelling across the ocean with only the clothes on their backs? They scraped out a living in these mountains and built a life that improved each generation. Yes – we’re a hard-scrabble people and we have our faults. But we have a history of being magnanimous and generous to the weak and oppressed – irrespective of race or creed. (For more on this, I recommend Sen. Jim Webb’s excellent ‘Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America’). We are not an arrogant people. Or at least we didn’t used to be.
Sometimes it’s important to remember who you are. In our part of the country, we are mongrels. It’s important to remember that. We Appalachians are a soupy mix of predominantly Scots-Irish-Germans that were kicked out of Europe, kicked out of Ireland and kicked out of the Northeast of America. Our forefathers slunk down the spine of the mountains and settled on lands that – truth be told – no one else was much interested in.
Our standard-bearers no doubt came from all sorts of dubious circumstances. Otherwise why would they risk life and limb travelling across the ocean with only the clothes on their backs? They scraped out a living in these mountains and built a life that improved each generation. Yes – we’re a hard-scrabble people and we have our faults. But we have a history of being magnanimous and generous to the weak and oppressed – irrespective of race or creed. (For more on this, I recommend Sen. Jim Webb’s excellent ‘Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America’). We are not an arrogant people. Or at least we didn’t used to be.
