You are right about the military and how they vote and, I suspect, not just southern military vote that way as most think that Republicans support the military better than the Dems (and may be right!). I wasn't referring to those so much as I was referring to the militias. On reflection, however, most of those are northern. What I was basing it on was all the little confederate museums down there and they too might be gone too. I hitchhiked through the south two times. In each case we ended up sleeping in the some the houses of them that picked us up (there was two of us). That was pretty interesting. We slept in both white and black homes and about 70% of those homes were seriously ready for whatever and had guns all over the place. This was true of both white and black homes. The general feeling seemed to be "that if anybody messes with us we will destroy them." This was in the middle 50's. I have always thought that the civil rights that came, down there, was to cool it all down because folks were ready. The small museums I refer to were those run by things like (and this will not be all that accurate) "Confederate" which would be followed by "Wives", "Veterans", etc. we went to a lot of those because they were interesting, both the museums and the folks that ran them, usually older women who were seriously enthusiastic about the confederacy.

What I also remember was that many in the south were not exactly delighted when they referred to "the north" as well and suspect that too remains. In other words the South is not exactly fans of the North. On the other hand folks in the north just really don't care and many retire in the south as well (mostly for the weather).

On reflection I suspect some of my thoughts were probably not right and for that I apologize. Most of my experience was over 60 years ago! I don't apologize talking about statues and how they spoke about the confederacy though. I still think the north did a terrible job at dealing with the remains of the confederacy and we are dealing with the remains right now.

Then there are folks like the current governor of Texas who actually called up the Texas National Guard to stop the American Army for taking over Texas (they were on an annual exercise but the governor was convinced they were being invaded). This was close to after he took office. I had a good friend living in Texas and he was seriously embarrassed by that one. His incredible ignorance, and obvious hatred of the north, also has something to do with my attitude towards the south as well.