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Notes -
Yes - I think the strong martial culture => strong martial culture is a better predictor than hard times => strong martial culture (in this case); however, in the specific context of the United States, I suspect the combination of strong martial culture + hard times cooperated (since military service is a reliable route out of poverty, though of course not just for Southern Americans.)
I've heard anecdotes that the opposite was actually true for some time, as signing up in the services was viewed as going over to the enemy. I haven't seen that addressed statistically one way or the other, though.
Yeah, agree with this for sure.
Not true, at least in the United States, where graduate education is correlated with religiosity (although people with graduate degrees are slightly more likely to be atheists as well).
Perhaps you would even say they are less reasonable than Americans?
You're wandering back around again to the version of the meme you described instead of what I am suggesting has some descriptive power: that a lack of virtue (for a certain value of virtue) creates (let's say) bad times.
It seems to me that you agree with me and Kipling that robbing the collective Peter to pay the collective Paul has put them in danger of being sold and delivered bound to their foe. You're going to object here that the insight is trivial: doing dumb stuff leads to bad results. Well, Kipling called them the Gods of the Copybook Headings for a reason - they seem like pretty basic stuff, and people fumble them anyway.
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