Talk:Sam Ervin

I think the previous version ("As a Southerner, Ervin opposed Civil Rights legislation and the ERA") might have been a bit too universal a generalization about "Southerner[s]". Many Southerners -- Martin Luther King, for example -- and even a significant number of white Southerners favored Civil Rights laws. And while it is true that many of the states that failed to ratify the ERA were in the Southeast, quite a few of those states did at least come close to ratifying it, with many white male state legislators voting in favor of the amendment. The question that the previous formulation begs, though, is whether Ervin opposed these laws because he was a Southerner, or because he was a strict constructionist, or a civil libertarian, or a conservative, or a racist and sexist. Each of those suggestions has been advanced and debated, but none of them can be presented as a matter of fact. So I think we should hedge the attribution of the [i]cause[/i] of his opposition to those measures, whether it's with my wording or something better. Bruce M.Tindall 16:56, 28 August 2007 (CDT)

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