More on James Webb of Virginia

We've mentioned James Webb in this space before, the scrappy ex-Marine who's running as a Democrat against Republican Senator George Allen up in Virginia. He has a real chance to bump off ole George.

But he's being hammered by the liberals because there's another Democrat running, someone "purer" in the eyes of the progressives, which means someone guaranteed to lose.

So the several million words Webb has written in a long career, from an early novel on the Vietnam War in 1978 to all sorts of opinionated magazine essays since, are being combed through for embarrassing or incriminating prose. "It's very dangerous to run for political office if you have an intellect," Webb said in response to the attacks.

This morning the Baltimore Sun has an article on some of those positions Webb has been attacked on. One is race. Webb's response is of some significance to us hillbillies in these Appalachian mountains:

"In the interview, Webb said he supported affirmative action for 'native-born African-Americans' because of slavery's legacy. But he said government needed to move beyond race and to confront the poverty that affects all Americans, including Appalachian whites, a group he celebrated in a 2004 book Born Fighting: How The Scots-Irish Shaped America. 'You cannot ask me to abandon my loyalties to my own culture, which, I think, needs help, and that's really what I try to say. You go to southwest Virginia, go out in the Appalachian Mountains and tell them that they've had an advantage,' he said. 'There are people who are Caucasian who are out of cultural groups that have never had an advantage, and if we're going to have diversity programs they need to be looked at.' "