Thurmond, Fulbright never recanted.rnHis obduracy consisted of equal parts expedience and principle.rnThere was an element of cowardice in Fulbright’s position;rnto have come out for the various civil rights measuresrnwould have been “political suicide,” he said. And “I did notrnfeel like giving up my career in politics because of it.” This isrna frank admission—of gutlessness. On the other hand, onernfinds in the Fulbright record residual Confederate resentmentrnof Yankee meddlers. Looking back, he says of the Manifestornsignatories, “There was a sense that we were the poor part ofrnthe country, that we had historic reasons to band togetherrnagainst northerners who were imposing on us.”rnFor all his aristocratic suavity, Senator Fulbright was capablernof regional defenses that have the populist flavor of a PitchforkrnBen Tillman. As he said in 1948:rnThe people of the North are extremely solicitous of ourrnwelfare and progress. They assure us that if we will furnishrnbetter schools and abolish poll taxes and segregationrnthat strife will cease and happiness reign. They arerncritical of our relative poverty, our industrial and socialrnbackwardness, and they are generous in their advicernabout our conduct. Their condescension in these mattersrnis not appreciated . . . because these people .. . havernfor more than half a century done everything they couldrnto retard the economic development of the South. It isrnno secret that the South was considered like a conqueredrnterritory after 1865. Since that time, the tariffrnpolicy and the freight rate structure were designed byrnthe North to . . . keep [the South] in the status of a rawrnmaterial producing colony. Above and beyond these directrnrestrictions, the most insidious of all, the most difficultrnto put your finger on, is the all-pervading influencernof the great financial institutions and industrial monopolies.rnThis self-aware Southernness (which, despite JamesrnCarville’s cosmetic magic, one never descries in Bill Clinton)rnwas Fulbright’s saving grace. His northern friends thought itrnhis handicap, but in fact his anti-imperialism got its fillip fromrnthe South. “Small countries wish to find their own way, makerntheir own mistakes,” he said by way of explaining why ourrnpresence in Vietnam was unwise. So, too, for the South, whosernautonomy and independence—even in the years 1861-1865—rnhe always defended.rnRevolted by the swollen, belligerent leviathan that was crushingrnthe states’ rights democracy in which he believed, J.rnWilliam Fulbright emerged as a full-fledged Confederaternanti-imperialist by 1966. He was never labeled as such, ofrncourse—it would have raised too many unsettling questions—rnbut in his unread valedictory, 1989’s The Price of Empire, thernSenator explained himself; “Maybe I am the heir of the Southrnwith regard to the Civil War period. 1 may have absorbed an attituderntowards big powers and big countries that has its roots inrnmy Arkansas cultural background. You were not inclined, if yourncame from Arkansas in the years when 1 was growing up there,rnto be very arrogant. We were poorer than almost anyone elsernand there was a tendency to look down on Arkansas as backwardrnand uneducated. It seems logical to me that this shouldrnhave had an effect on my attitudes when 1 considered relationshipsrnbetween the United States and smaller, underdevelopedrncountries.”rnGiven the cosmopolitan surroundings Fulbright chose fromrnearly adulthood—Oxford and Georgetown parties and all thatrnrot—only his Arkansas roots immunized him against the disastrousrn”pay any price, bear any burden” globalist virus that wasrngoing around in enlightened Democratic circles.rnThe scariest thing about Bill Clinton is that despite all thern”Man from Hope” balderdash his veins were long agorndrained of Arkansas blood. There is nothing of the Confederaternor rebel in this bootlicker. When the Wall Street Journalrnasked him, “What event before 1900 shaped your vision ofrnAmerican society? Your view of America’s place in the wodd?”rnahistorical Bill blithely answered, “None, because most of thernthings the U.S. did before 1900 were totally inconsistent withrnthe global role I’d like us to play, or were narrow disputes overrnterritory.”rnWhere Bill Fulbright bemoaned “the loss of individuality”rnin an America that was becoming “shiny, sterile, anonymousrnand grimly, aggressively standardized,” Bill Clinton is a Wal-rnMart Democrat whose imperialism is of the Happy Face brand.rnCome, browse the aisles of his global marketplace, where thernLitrie Rock shelf is identical to the Chicago shelf, which in turnrnis indistinguishable from the shelves of Brussels and Manila andrnMoscow.rnWhy Champ Clinton—whose trajectory from Hot Springsrnthrough Georgetown and Oxford and Yale to Washington is arnlot like Fulbright’s—seems bereft of even vestigial sympathy forrnsmallness is an interesting question, one perhaps answered byrnthe glimmer from Virginia Kelley’s zircon-studded fist.rnIn contrast, Fulbright’s Confederate anti-imperialism wasrnfortified by the surety that comes from being the fair-haired sonrnof the biggest family in a small city. One pictures young Billyrnas the Ceorgie Amberson Minafer of Fayetteville. “You’llrnnever understand Bill until you realize what a secure basis hernhad,” a friend told biographer Tristram Coffin. “The mostrnimportant family in town. Never had to worry about money.rnTremendous support from the family.”rnFulbright fits into Kenneth Rexroth’s pattern of patricianrnAmerican dissent: “Most American families that go back to thernearly 19th century … have a sense of social and cultural ratherrnthan nationalist responsibility. The sense that the country isrnreally theirs, really belongs to them, produces radical critics,rnrebels, reformers, eccentrics.”rnLooked at this way, it all falls into place. Fulbright’s sense ofrnresponsibility was ultimately so strong that he broke loose of thernshackling postwar conventions and drifted back, back, back intornthe glorious tradition of localist Southern dissent. If he neverrnquite got around to prescribing “a wise and masterly inactivity”rnfor Washington, as did Virginia’s John Randolph, he didrnoffer what he termed a conservative “defense of traditional valuesrnand protest against the radical departure from those valuesrnembodied in the idea of an imperial destiny for America.”rnThat his fellow conservatives vilified him for this only goes tornshow that empire blinds as well as bankrupts.rnFulbright’s transformation ran counterclockwise. How manyrndreary tributes have been written to Arthur Vandenberg, thernRepublican senator from Michigan who shed his moderaternisolationism and helped Harry Truman “scare hell out of thernAmerican people” as the premier Republican Cold Warrior?rn(Compare Vandenberg’s press clippings from before and afterrnhis “conversion”; the wages of conformity are great indeed.)rnBy the late 60’s, court journalists such as William S. Whitern28/CHRONICLESrnrnrn