Flannery O’Connor, a Southern writer who was also a fierce critic of the South, described the region as “Christ-haunted.” She recognized that for all their faults, for all their past sins and current vices, Southerners continue to be pestered by a persistent sense of the holy — the sacred — and it is this that gives them an aliveness that is lacking in almost every other part of the Western world.

I do not presume to submit this as some sort of definitive apologia on behalf of the South. Such a task should be tackled by a truer Southerner than I. Much less do I intend any offense to my Northern friends. My hope is simply that as the world grows more homogenized, as Yale grows more cosmopolitan and regional distinctions melt slowly away, we Southerners will remember where we come from.

Away, away, away down south in Dixie.