Virginia

The BBC News website has a nice little Ulster-oriented feature on the apparent winner in the Virginia race for US Senate, James Webb. As we noted a couple of years ago, one of Webb's careers (mixed in with an illustrious military record and Reagan appointee) has been chronicling the contribution of the descendants of Scots-Irish immigrants to American wars. Incidentally, it's not clear that David Brooks quite gets this aspect of Webb, judging from his (free this week) column in the NYT --

Webb named his son after Robert E. Lee, and wrote a book, “Born Fighting,” which is a full-throated defense of “Rednecks. Trailer-park trash. Racists. Cannon fodder. My ancestors. My people. Me.”

As Andrew Ferguson noted recently in The Weekly Standard, he took white Protestants — who have always been the villains in movies from "M*A*S*H" to "Remember the Titans" — and he described them as an oppressed minority group. And their oppressors were the highly educated liberal snobs from New York, Washington, San Francisco and L.A.

Note the tell-tale description "Protestant" when "Presbyterian" would be more accurate. Put another way, if you come away from the Brooks column thinking that Webb's book is a defence of the minority group of which the Protestants George Bush and Dick Cheney are a part, then you (and he) have the wrong impression.

One other thing about Webb. Coverage of his victory confirmation is likely to feature strained analogies between any concession by his opponent George Allen and Al Gore's decision to contest the 2000 election count. Which is rubbish. The Allen-Webb outcome will not leave votes uncounted that could change the result. Bush-Gore 2000, which remains the Original Sin of the last 6 years, did.