UK Guardian: Texan values 'are new global menace'

The Bush administration is a threat to international security because the president comes from Texas. Put simply, the Stetson is the problem.

Mr Bush's Texan brand of conservatism had been labouring to take over the US administration for the past 30 years.

Texas is a society built on cotton plantations, a "toxic byproduct" of the rigid segregation of low-waged, low-skilled workers dominated by a deeply religious oligarchy of rich white families.

Michael Lind is an American polemicist and the author of a controversial new book, Made in Texas: George W Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics.

Lind claimed Mr Bush's values were those of southern conservatism - "extremely pro-military, suspicious of diplomatic and international organisations and deeply religious in the fundamental sense".

He argued that southern conservatism was "a menace to the prosperity and security of the world as much as to that of the US". He said: "Domestically the south has the most backward economy and regressive social system of any region in the US."

More worryingly, it had a disdain for international alliances and organisations.

Lind said: "The world supported the US immediately after September 11 and Bush squandered that repeatedly and unnecessarily by his belligerent approach."