Professor Wants Northwest Investigated

Investigate Northwest.  No, not the airline.  The region.  The states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska.  The region is home to dangerous radicals according to Connecticut College history professor Catherine McNicol Stock, who specializes in “rural radicalism.” 

According to the professor’s column in The Philadelphia Inquirer, the fact that Sarah Palin lives in the Northwest and holds conservative views fits the pattern of radicals and hate mongers who thrive in this region.  The professor finds Palin’s beliefs so outlandish that they justify “comparison with some of the most notorious rural radicals of our time.”

It has been years since groups such as the Montana Militia, the Posse Comitatus and the Sagebrush Rebels, and individuals such as Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski have made us wonder why so many “angry white men” populated our rural regions. Many of us have forgotten the threat once posed by domestic terrorists and instead have turned our attention to foreign terrorists. But we should never forget that in the late 20th century, ultra-Christian, antistatist and white-supremacist groups flourished in the states of the Pacific Northwest – called by many the “Great White Northwest” – the very region that Sarah Palin and her family call home.

The professor fails to note that Terry Nichols was originally from Michigan and was living in Kansas when he took up bomb-making.  Timothy McVeigh (Nichols’ co-conspirator from New York) and Eric Rudolph (the Olympic bomber from Florida) were shamelessly omitted from the professor’s demography.  Ted Kaczynski grew up in Chicago, attended Harvard and University of Michigan, and taught at Berkeley.  He moved to Montana later.  So much for empirical data.  (I suppose the professor would say that Kaczynski became a radical only after moving to Montana and falling under the nefarious influence of local Christians.)

But the region also must be defined by its history of intolerance, resentment, antistatism and violence. Appearing in the region in the 1980s and 1990s were some of the most notorious “hate radicals” of our time: militia groups, survivalists, Identity Christians, secessionists, white supremacists and others.

Some of you may have thought the hate mongers were congregated in my lovely state of Texas.  In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed the number of hate groups by state for the year 2007, and Texas took only second place with a score of 67.  California topped the list with 80.  Honorable mentions go to Florida (49), South Carolina (45), and Georgia (42) – all curiously distant from the Pacific Northwest.  The bitter, gun-clinging crowd in Pennsylvania scored a respectable 33, and New York received a middling 26.

Alaska, home of Sarah Palin, scored zero.

The SPLC lists the other states on Professor Stock’s hit list as follows: Wyoming (2), Idaho (8), Montana (6), Oregon (11), and Washington (20).

Here’s how SPLC explains its criteria:

All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

This list was compiled using hate group publications and websites, citizen and law enforcement reports, field sources and news reports.

Hate group activities can include criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing. Websites appearing to be merely the work of a single individual, rather than the publication of a group, are not included in this list. Listing here does not imply a group advocates or engages in violence or other criminal activity.

Gosh, if just leafleting or giving a speech will get you a point on the SPLC scale, Alaska must be the most tolerant place in the world!

Of course, you have to give the professor credit for carving out a niche in academia and making a unique contribution to spreading the orthodoxy of liberalism.  Who better to hold up as the inscrutable “other” than rural folk who live very far from New York and Connecticut?  In the confines of academia, it is reasonable to posit a soccer mom from Wassila as a greater threat than radical Islam.

Professor Stock draws the startling conclusion that an investigation of the views of rural radicals will magically reveal Sarah Palin’s true convictions.

[I]t is hard to know where she stands on issues of race, equality and diversity.  Thus it is high time to review the cultural ideals and models of the radical rurals from the Great White Northwest and find out for sure where Gov. Palin stands.

If you find Professor Stock’s research credible, you might want to think twice before you leave the comparative serenity and safety of Philadelphia to venture into such dangerous territories as Helena or Boise.  As for me, however, I’m going to do my best to avoid Connecticut College and the irrational fear some of its faculty harbor toward Christians, rural people, and Northwesterners.

In fact, according to the SPLC criteria, the publication of Professor Stock’s column maligning an entire region of the country just moved Connecticut’s score from 6 to 7.

Tagged as: northwest, Palin, rural radical