Dr. Clyde Wilson cites this anecdote of Gore Vidal:

I explained to him that . . . the Civil War was—and is—to the United States what the Trojan War was to the Greeks; the great single tragic event that continues to give resonance to our republic. “Well, to me,” said Poddy [neocon Norman Podheretz], “the Civil War is as remote and as irrelevant as the War of the Roses.”

From Mr. Peters, in response

That point of history which in labeled “Civil War” marks so many things: the triumph of the schemes, political and financial, of Hamilton, Marshall, Webster, Clay and Lincoln over the principles associated with Jefferson and Calhoun, among others; the triumph of the nascent empire as made manifest in Lincoln’s creedal or propositional nation over the union of constitutionally federated republics; the victory of the New England mindset over the rest of the country; the advent of a Jacobin revisionism of the American War of Independence, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution; the victory of the abstraction of nationalism over patriotism, the latter being a natural expression of the sets of personal loyalties to home and hearth and to the other intimate commonwealths in which real people relate; the destruction of a region, its people and its culture; and the end of republican institutions replaced by “democratic” movements which are the handmaidens of empire.

Save for the issue of slavery, the antebellum cultural faultline which ran roughly east to west, separating the North and the South, is yet with us today: empire versus republic; nationalism versus patriotism; internal improvements versus true private investment; fiat (counterfeit currency) versus specie currency; a consolidated central government versus sovereign states; corporatism versus free enterprise; etc. The latter in each of these examples have, however, become weaker and weaker and are today but faint echoes of what they once were because those of us who hold them are today weaker, having less means and resolve to resist the former. I smile in dismay (not an oxymoron) when conservative friends trumpet that a given President has “allowed” a state to do something otherwise done by the general government. They see such magnitude on the part of the given President as a tip of the hat to “states’ rights.”

Many of my fellow Southerners, when I attempt to engage them in conversation on this issue, wish to avoid the conversation. They have sought the “respectability” of the anti-culture; and having acquired it, do not wish to jeopardize it. Others simply do not want to take the time and the effort to reclaim their heritage.

In addition, we have all of the post-bellum newcomers, particularly those who have streamed into these United States since the 1965 Immigration Reform. For them, there is no descernable objective correlative with the events of 1860-1865. I use the word “descernable” because there is in fact an objective correlative between the mindset which opened the door, beginning in 1965, and the events of the “Civil War.” These newcomers have joined “mainstream” America and their numerous Southern sputniks in making the South and that which it “represents” the scapegoat for all that is allegedly wrong with America. The rest of America and too much of the South itself does not see itself as fallen and alienated from God, a condition in which one quickly recognizes the holiness of God; and that once recognized leads one to appreciate His love and redemptive work in the person of the Christ.