I have no idea. I think it is just to show we are different, and therefore better. :)/s

Mostly because we are stubborn.

LOL, I was thinking maybe you knew the cause. Who do you personally vote for, and why?

I voted democrat for governor(Haslam) but that was due to what I felt was a poor republican candidate. I am not too savvy in politics, though, so I have no idea if I made the right choice. Like the majority in Tennessee, I vote republican for federal positions because their morals and beliefs are more in line with mine. I like to think I am unbiased when it comes to politics, but even I know that is not true. The only way I could come off as unbiased is due to my lack of knowledge on the entire subject.

Haha. Are you what one may call a conservative Christian?

oh yeah the metric system question plzzzzzzzzzz

I'm not from the south, FYI. I am well North of the Mason Dixon line.

For what its worth, its not "terrible" education. Its just not as good as some other states, and even then, its not like American education is worth much in general, anyways.

Here's a map of composite SAT scores by state to give you a relative idea of education levels (darker means better):

And median incomes by state:

As for the evolution issue....I am about 99% certain that teaching evolution in schools is the standard in most schools around the country, and not a major issue. Ciriculum can really be up to the teachers, as well. Some will be very pro-evolution, and others may be neutral, or pro-ID but still be required to teach evolution, but do it half-heartedly. Heck, as a religious homeschooler, I still learned about evolution pretty thouroughly.

No connections to slave owners...Given the distance we have from the civil war, few people really have the desire to look into seeing if they had family that owned slaves and the like. The only people that really care about that type of thing are the instigators like Al Sharpton, et all that make it a public issue on TV. Its kind of like trying to be angry at any average German for Nazism... You really can't hold that against the great grandchildren for something they despise and have nothing to do with.

As for life under slavery, I think there are elements from both Uncle Tom's Cabin and Gone With the Wind that are true. There is still a hint of the whole steriotypical persona of Southern charm, chivilary, and hospitality that exists even today and was the case back then. Generally, you find that the whites that colonized the South had a more aristocratic flair, which made them more cutthroat business men for the slave trade, along with the wealth from what slavery did to both the blacks and the whites. So the excesses and human tragedies depicted in Uncole Toms Cabin are certainly true, along with the chivalry of Gone With The Wind.

Religious intolerance and homophobia...Hmm. I live in a county that is arguably the most white and religious in Ohio. I would say that, personally, it is not that bad. Homophobia is a far less common thing than religious intolerance, though. Thats not to say it doesn't exist....If you are a homosexual in school, you may get crap for it (names), but once you graduate, no one really cares.

As for the Democrat-Republican issue in the South, that is a very interesting one. Democrats were the ones that heavily backed slavery in the South. Republicans were the ones that were vehimently against it. After the Civil War, every freed slave voted Republican, which gave them a super majority in the South for a few decades. After time, though, more white Democrats came into power, and enacted racist laws that prevented blacks from voting, called Jim Crowe laws. Eventually, this turned the South into a Democratic power base for approximately 70 years. After time, both parties changed in general stances, which slowly led to Republicans becoming more favored in the South, due to their conservative nature.

Exactly! No really, I truly am. I actually went to church a few hours ago.

well.... morons are everywhere but the situation here left a unique print obviously XXD

Can you provide links to this data?

Yeah... The rest of the world uses the metric system, we use the imperial system. Maybe it's to try and make us sound elitist...