triticale - the wheat / rye guy

Them Old-Time Feudin' Folk

Alaa, the Mesopotamian, has posted the beginning of an analysis of the millenia-long conflict between urban and rural cultures in the Middle East, which I found thru the Carnival of the Liberated. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. I've been interested in the impact of this long conflict on everything from American popular music to the whole Red State - Blue State thing.

I have a book around here somewhere which asserts that the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys was part of the same conflict. Rural Hatfield believed in barter and honor; urban McCoy believed in cash money and contracts. Hatfield took the law into his own hands and McCoy used the law as a weapon, but neither of them acted lawlessly. It is worth noting which of these backgrounds Sid Hatfield the sheriff of Matewan who shot it out with the strikebreakers from the Baldwin-Phelps detective agency came from.