There are millions of white Americans today who still can barely bring themselves to acknowledge that the Civil … - Steve Erickson

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The more chemicals that are in our food, the more we are messing with things that we probably don't know the full effect of.

Steve Erickson

There are millions of white Americans today who still can barely bring themselves to acknowledge that the Civil War, with its twin Americas locked in a death match, was about slavery. They'll argue it was about economics, and they're right only because one of those economies was a slave economy. They'll argue it was about culture, and they're right only because one of those cultures was a slave culture.

Culture, Economics, Match, Slavery, War, White

Same Author Quotes

In terms of America, I think any profound consideration is bound to return us to the notion of twins because, though you certainly can contend there are many Americas, our history has been binary from the beginning, with its hairline fracture down the country's center between what American has wanted to be and what America has been. That fracture is slavery, of course. To some extent it's still slavery, in that collectively we refuse to come to grips with the American fact of slavery.

America, Beginning, Country, Refuse, Thinking

One of the reasons I'm not so keen on people calling me an "experimental" writer is that it suggests the work is about the experiment, when it's always the opposite - any "experimentation" is dictated by the material.

Calling, Opposites, People, Work, Writer

By the late 70s conservatism was becoming more corporate on the one hand, more theocratic on the other. In reaction to the 60s, conservatism was more about order than freedom, more about conformity than singularity.

Becoming, Corporate, Hands, Order, Singularity, Theocratic

In my early twenties the nature of conservatism itself changed. When I identified as a fourteen-year-old conservative, it was closer to what we today think of as libertarianism - conservatism, at least for me, had been defined by Jeffersonian credos like "the best governed are the least governed" and "I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" that were very idealistic and romantic to a kid.

Changed, Kids, Men, Nature, Thinking, Today

In essence I'm really a very traditional writer. I subscribe to the notion that, ultimately, characters do drive everything else.

Character, Essence, Notion, Traditional, Ultimately