TRAVELING – AT 11:43 A.M. ET:  We are traveling, currently in wonderful Charlottesville, Virginia, home of the University of Virginia.

It's graduation time, and an atmosphere of festivity and relief pervades Charlottesville.  The restaurant owners are all smiles, as they know the parents are coming.  The kids are all smiles, as they know they finally made it. 

I marvel at the changes in the south since I first worked in the region, at the CIA in Langley, decades ago.  (Okay, Langley isn't exactly the South, but it is surrounded by Manassas (Bull Run) and other places that caused discomfort to a northern boy who'd thought a southern trip ended in Delaware. 

The South was always gracious, and always produced some of our finest writers, musicians, scholars, and statesmen.  It was cursed by the racial issue, which was regularly looked at by northerners through hypocritical eyes, as the treatment of minorities in the North wasn't much better. 

But the South has changed.  The graciousness remains, and the racial issue has changed dramatically.  If this country is saved, it will be by the South and the rest of America's heartland.  Values like patriotism and common sense remain strong here, and political correctness is suppressed.  That doesn't mean all northeasterners are nuts.  Even New York City, with a 4-1 Democratic registration, hasn't elected a Democratic mayor in almost 20 years, finally disgusted with the failure and phoniness.  But much of the northeast is still affected by the values of the sixties, and the heartland has largely expunged them.

It is very comfortable being here.  Even the Confederate statues don't bother me anymore.  It is a time that is long past.

May 14, 2011