I'm reading Dennis Baron's Grammar and Good Taste, and I've encountered two fascinating insults that maintain currency even in present-day arguments about language usage--and other controversies. The two are unrelated--occurring six years apart and reported by an American and a Brit not in dialogue with one another.

First, in 1822, Charles Henry Wilson reveals the resistance he receives when complaining about American usage of English; he's told, "It's a good country, and let those who don't like it, leave it" (qtd at 31).

Second, James Fenimore Cooper criticizes the southern drawl, noting that "In Georgia, you find a positive drawl, among what are called the 'crackers'" (qtd at 26). "Positive," here, isn't praise.

This is noteworthy, in part, because of a recent conversation about ways academics insist that you can't be offended by the epithet "cracker."

But of course I'm also attuned to the ways that the latter of these insults is obviously connected with class(ism), while the former is certainly a reaction by those made to feel that their habits are ones of inferior taste. But what else connects these two insults? Also, is it clear that "love it or leave it" is always—or presently—a class-based reaction?