GREENVILLE IS WEIRD, PART I
My South Carolina visit reminded me of two things about my old hometown: Greenville is very beautiful and very weird.
Greenville is the flip side of San Francisco. The political/cultural spectrum is shifted so far right that normal conservatives seem like liberals and local liberals are an embattled minority convinced of their intrinsic righteousness and cultural superiority.
The current major controversy concerns whether county employees should get Martin Luther King Day as a holiday. Greenville County is one of only three counties in the state that don't honor the holiday.
As best I could tell from reading the papers, fiscal considerations are a relatively minor part of the story. Opponents just don't approve of Martin Luther King. (Jesse Jackson hasn't helped matters by sticking his publicity-seeking nose into the local controversy, though at least he's a Greenville native.) A leading moderate on the issue: Bob Jones III, president of the eponymous university. Here's the beginning of the op-ed he wrote backing an unsuccessful compromise:
Living by principle is the only honorable way to live. For a Christian, living by biblical principle is the honorable way. I would hope the "principialists" outnumber the pragmatists in our community. This much I do know, there are many good folks here who would rather die than do wrong. I would hope to be in that company.
For such people, commitment to doing the right thing is non-negotiable, but knowing what is the right thing becomes the problem. The Bible tells us to do what is right in God's eyes. For those who follow it, when the Bible speaks, doing what is right is easy. When it is a matter the Bible does not directly address, making right decisions can be gut-wrenching.
The current Martin Luther King holiday for county workers controversy is such an issue and is charged with emotion on both sides. I have tried to picture myself being in the hot seat of a County Council member. What would I do? I am not a racist, and neither are they.
To vote against a Martin Luther King holiday would cause some to brand me as a racist. Yet, knowing what I do about Martin Luther King the man--his well-known and undisputed marital infidelities, his leftist political philosophies, his theological irregularities--would, as a matter of principle, preclude my voting to honor him with a holiday. His race would have nothing to do with it. For the same reasons, I would be adamantly against a holiday to honor Bill Clinton.
But were I a councilman, I could have voted for the compromise resolution, because it took the focus away from Martin Luther King exclusively and placed it also upon the civil rights movement, which long ago removed the onus of being black and removed the institutionalized discriminations blacks suffered. With a glad heart, I could vote for a holiday that celebrates that.
That's progress, for sure. Bob Jones was no fan of the civil rights movement back in the day.
As an aside, I might note that Greenville County employees don't get Memorial Day as a holiday. It was, after all, established to honor Union soldiers.