from Southern Heritage & Liberty Articles:
8/28/2010
“The Myth of the Myth of the Lost Cause”
Myth? What Myth?
By Bill Vallante
wildbill4dixie@yahoo.com
If you like “Civil War” history but haven’t been paying attention these last 20 years or so, the “Lost Cause”, has now become a “Myth” – at least according to most contemporary historians and self-proclaimed experts. Ever since Alan Nolan’s 1991 book, “The Myth of the Lost Cause” the historical literary field has witnessed an avalanche of similar books, each desperately trying to be unique in its own way, and each seeking to prove that the cause for which the South claimed to have fought and indeed, the heroic struggle itself that most people, until the last 20 years, believed that the South put up, are nothing more than myths.
Wikipedia, not known to be the best and most reliable of sources, nonetheless defines accurately what I am getting at and what is the target of this paper:
“The Lost Cause is the name commonly given to a literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the Southern United States to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War of 1861–1865.[1] Those who contributed to the movement tended to portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and most of the Confederacy's leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, defeated by the Union armies not through superior military skill, but by overwhelming force. They also tended to condemn Reconstruction.”
So then, the “Lost Cause” has become a myth – so sayeth the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists.” Why do I refer to them as such? Because in destroying one myth or what they claim is a myth they haven’t done much more than replace it with another myth, and a particularly bad myth at that!
A more detailed look at what the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” contend:
- They contend that: Slavery was the real cause of the war. The South fought for the right to keep others in bondage and anything else is a lie or distortion perpetrated in the post war period by former Confederates who were ashamed of their actions and who were trying to make themselves look good, or, by neo-Confederates today seeking to whitewash the Confederate cause and who themselves are most probably racists.
-They contend that: After the war Southern writers wrote the history of the war and brainwashed Americans, north and south into believing that the South really fought for states rights and not slavery, and that it lost its heroic fight only because it was overwhelmed by superior numbers.
-They contend that: After the war, Southern writers convinced America that before the Yankee attack everything was moonlight and magnolias in the South and that all the slaves were happy.
-They contend that: Southern generals weren’t really as good or as noble as everyone says they were. This myth was invented by Southern writers to steal the glory from Yankee generals, who, led by Massa Linkhorn and company, gave us “a new nation,” for which we should all be eternally thankful. (even though the cost of creating that “new nation” was nearly 700000 dead and nearly half a million maimed),
- Most mythologists contend that the Southern soldier was one or more of the following: overrated, ignorant, misled, apathetic, a frequent deserter, a poor soldier, and that his heart was not really in the fight. If he did, at times, show enthusiasm for his cause, it was only because he hoped one day to hit the lottery and be able to afford to buy a gaggle of slaves – thus, even if he did not own slaves, he was fighting for the hope that one day he would.
-They contend that: 50000 Southerners fought bravely for the North…err, well, they used to say 50000 but a few years ago they upped the figure to 100,000, and more recently, that figure has climbed to 300,000. (soon the numbers will reach a point where it will appear that there were more Southerners in the Union army than there were males in the entire South.)
-They contend that: Southern writers wrote out the black man’s participation in the war on the Union side in order to promote “white supremacy.” To correct this injustice, “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” now inform us that the black man was actually instrumental in winning the war for the Union, that slaves ran away in vast hordes to the Union lines, that “the slaves freed themselves”, and that those who could not make it to the Union lines worked feverishly to subvert the Southern war effort. (There is no mention of any black participation on the Southern side as “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” do not believe in such things any more than they believe in little green men. Well, actually, a lot of them do believe in little green men but not in black men supporting the South.)
-They contend that: The Planters, who were slave owners and werry werry bad men, dragged the rest of the South into seceding and into a war that it really did not want. This resulted in a lack of enthusiasm for the war that was reflected in the attitude of the Southern civilian population, whose women begged their men to desert and who frequently rioted because they were sick of the war and sick of not having any food.
-They contend that: Reconstruction was a wonderful time of social progress and of wonderful “interracial democracies,” snuffed out by those evil Southern white supremacists and that Reconstruction was a great idea, but it did not go far enough. (stick the word “interracial in front of anything these days and it is automatically a good thing. I wonder if an “interracial” case of cholera is a good thing?).
But it’s all ok now, because the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists” are going to make it all better and fix America’s collective memory. Like the Union army before them, they will go “trampling through the vintage” to stomp out the “grapes of wrath.” The Republican-led Union army gave America a new nation, whether America wanted it or not, and the “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologist” will give America a new “memory” - whether it wants it or not.
Glory, Glory Halleluiah.
About those Post War Southern Writers
There was no subversive plot on the part of Southern post-war writers to steal America’s historical “memory.” In 1865 the South recognized that its bid for independence had failed. It laid down its arms, and its citizens agreed to return to the Union and be good citizens of that political entity. They and their descendents have been faithful to their word, as evidenced by the fact that ever since 1865, whenever America has needed volunteers to go off and get killed in some far off hellhole, it is always Southerners who are the first to volunteer. Anne Coulter referred to them as “America’s Warrior Class.”
Nowhere in the terms of surrender however, did it specify that Southerners had to grovel and to humbly beg for forgiveness. Nowhere did it say that they had to admit to wrongdoing and then accept slander or insults. Nowhere was it written that they could not defend themselves. Self-defense, whether against physical or verbal attack, was and still is everyone’s right. In the post war period Northern writers took it upon themselves to cast the South as the proverbial villain in some kind of demented passion play. Southern writers responded and that’s all there is to it. And if they wrote better and presented a better argument than their northern counterparts, well, maybe, just maybe, it’s possible that they indeed had the better argument, and that in a day and age that had yet to see mass brainwashing in either the public schools or the national parks or, had yet to encounter the most nauseating of popular terms, “the teachable moment,” maybe, just maybe, an American public that was still able to think independently, logically and critically, actually bought those arguments - because those arguments actually had something to offer!
About Slavery as some kind of sin or high crime
Yes, the South had slavery. So what? It was in America for 240 years before Sumter was fired upon, it had been practiced worldwide since the dawn of recorded history by nearly every people on the planet, it was legal and protected by the Constitution, and the Yankees had no problem with it until they stopped making a profit from it and, until they began a determined campaign to secure a majority in Congress in order to be able to pass legislation favorable to their states – legislation I might add that also happened to be detrimental to the Southern states. Further, I don’t see anyone making demands for apologies or expressions of regret on other countries that have practiced slavery. The only one I see getting hit with demands is America, specifically white America and specifically the American South. And I do not see those today who whine about slavery of the past doing anything about it where it exists in the present (in Africa, and in a manner far more brutal than any 19th century white planter could have conceived of). I can’t say exactly what the reason for this might be except to postulate, as someone else did, that slavery of the past is remunerable for reparations in the present, while slavery of the present is not.
Whatever the reasons, I will not jump on the insanity bandwagon and start apologizing on behalf of past peoples for doing what was common and quite the norm in their time. As I’ve said before, more and more I grow convinced that for the past 20 or 30 years, someone has been putting “stupid pills” in America’s water supply. When I majored in history as an undergraduate 40 years ago, such moralizing, sermonizing, and apologizing were not to be found, and judging past peoples by using contemporary standards was considered to be the province of the fool. A student majoring in history who displayed such behavior would have been told by his professors to find another major. Today, the professors do it!
Newsflash – those who demand such apologies and expressions of regret are the demagogues, the race baiters and those who have something to gain by issuing such demands. Those who comply with such demands are the cowards, the fools, the idiots, those who are afflicted with self-loathing and those who have something to gain by demonstrating abasement. I refuse to play in this game. Charley Reese, former journalist for the Orlando Sentinel, once said that “the people of the past don’t owe anyone an apology. They, like us, fell out of the womb into a society that, like all societies, had pre-existing customs and mores. They played the cards that God dealt them the best way they knew how and that’s all that you can expect of them. It’s our play now, and the pot is the future.” I stand with Mr. Reese on this one. And I will not budge for anyone. I don’t do apologies, I don’t do sorry, I don’t do “reconciliation” (another word that has been battered to death in recent times), and I don’t do “stupid pills” either.
About Slavery as the “Cause” of the War
The war itself was not caused by slavery. The war was caused by the invasion of 11 states who sought the same right as their forefathers sought – the right to be governed by something which had the consent of those that it governed. Those states, not counting 2 others, Maryland and Missouri, who were prevented by military force from even discussing secession, had determined that they were not safe in the Union and therefore had decided to pursue their own course independent of their northern neighbors. Those northern neighbors, governed as they were by a relatively new political party bent on consolidation of the American system, could not find it in their hearts to part with those states, and so, launched an invasion of them. That’s your cause of the war in a nutshell.
I would say that the South had plenty of reason not to feel safe. Some Northern idealists had cheered 30 years earlier when Nat Turner mutilated and murdered 61 white men, women and children. Even greater numbers of sanctimonious reformers proclaimed John Brown, whose plans, if successful, would have made Turner’s exploits look like a church picnic, to be a saint. Brown’s expedition was financed by 6 well-heeled and wealthy northerners, all belonging to a party that, in the words of one prominent Republican, Wendell Phillips, was a “party of the North pledged against the South.” [1]
If anyone wanted war, it wasn’t the South. “All we ask is to be left alone.” It was a cry echoed by numerous Southerners throughout Dixie between 1861 and 1865, from the highest official and general, to the lowest private and civilian. It was heard coming from the mouths of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Patrick Cleburne, Mary Chestnut, Judah Benjamin and countless others. Had the North left the south alone to go its own way, there would have been no war, no nearly 700000 dead and no nearly half a million maimed.
To you “Myth of the Lost Cause Mythologists”, I say flat out – if you want to know what the cause of the war was, look into the mirror and you’ll see it staring back at you. It was caused by the invasion of sovereign states by a bunch of boobs like you who just couldn’t leave well enough alone. The desperate fight that the South put up was a noble one and a courageous one, and until recently that fact was acknowledged by anyone with a modicum of common sense and a passing amount of literacy. And though it failed, I have no doubt that those who conducted the defense against that invasion would say that despite its failure, it was well worth the effort to try and rid themselves of meddling, petty tyrants like yourselves.
(to be continued)
----------------
[1] “The “Secession, State and Liberty,” David Gordon, Editor, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, (U.S.A. and London (U.K.), Copyright, 1999, 4th Paperback Printing, 2009, page 27
posted by rebshadow @ 6:54 PM
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Public Official Under Fire For Affiliation With League Of The South (LOS)
From Rebellion:
Another public official under firefrom feed/http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default by Old RebelYesterday, we noted how a city councilman in Selma, Alabama, was being pressured to resign because of his connection to that dangerous and scary pro-Southern organization called the League of the South.
Imagine that -- a public official supporting an organization dedicated to "the cultural, social, economic, and political well-being and independence of the Southern people." Can't have that!
In California, Rep. Brian Bilbray is under fire for working for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), whose purpose is to "improve border security, to stop illegal immigration, and to promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest—more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year."
There's an organization that supports the views of 55% of Americans? Horrors!
But the SPLC, the regime's outsourced Inquisition, has pronounced FAIR a "hate group," which means FAIR represents the views of the people, rather than the enlightened elite (see previous post).
Yes, this is how bad things have gotten in the last days of the DC Empire.
Another public official under firefrom feed/http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default by Old RebelYesterday, we noted how a city councilman in Selma, Alabama, was being pressured to resign because of his connection to that dangerous and scary pro-Southern organization called the League of the South.
Imagine that -- a public official supporting an organization dedicated to "the cultural, social, economic, and political well-being and independence of the Southern people." Can't have that!
In California, Rep. Brian Bilbray is under fire for working for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), whose purpose is to "improve border security, to stop illegal immigration, and to promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest—more traditional rates of about 300,000 a year."
There's an organization that supports the views of 55% of Americans? Horrors!
But the SPLC, the regime's outsourced Inquisition, has pronounced FAIR a "hate group," which means FAIR represents the views of the people, rather than the enlightened elite (see previous post).
Yes, this is how bad things have gotten in the last days of the DC Empire.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
What Is It To Accept Tradition?
from Alternative Right and SLMN News Blog:
Friday, 20 August 2010
What is it to Accept Tradition?
By James Kalb text size Decrease text size Increase text size Comments (17)Print ArticleComments
In an age of checklists, decision trees, and zero tolerance, it's a puzzling notion.
People think it means giving up on reason. Or doing what's been done no matter what. Or accepting an external authority that has nothing to do with the situation we're actually dealing with.
What else could it mean, when each of us has his own thoughts and goals, reason is a matter of studies and statistics, and social authority is either following rules we've agreed to for our own purposes, or getting someone else's demands shoved down our throat?
That's the liberal concept of man as autonomous, knowledge as neutral and expert, and society as contract. Judge Walker (of Proposition 8 fame) evidently had something of the sort in mind when he said that "tradition alone ... cannot form a rational basis for a law."
In fact, accepting tradition is simply acting as a human being. Our actions aren't isolated events. They reflect a system of habits and understandings. To the extent the system is helpful and coherent--and we won't stick by it if it isn't--it's because a lot of people have lived by it for a long time, found it satisfactory, and worked the bugs out. In other words, it's because it's the tradition of some community. Our habits and understandings are our own, but they are not simply our own. We pick them up from other people.
We follow the tradition of our community because tradition and community are basic to being human. They help make us what we are, and we can't function without them. Man is social, and to belong to a community is to understand the world as the community understands it and act in a way that makes sense on that understanding.
All of which sounds OK, but it raises some questions. For starters, why talk about accepting tradition if the acts of every sane human being are going to be mostly traditional anyway? After all, we all have some idea of what things are, what they amount to, and how to deal with them, and it's not as if we just make those ideas up ourselves. On the whole, we have them because that's the way people like us look at things, and because the whole system of understandings we've picked up works and we're attached to it.
The answer, of course, is that anything can become problematic. It's natural for people to eat, but eating can be an issue at times. The problems can be minor, like cutting down on sweets, or major, like anorexia nervosa.
The same applies to tradition. Problems arise because circumstances change and old habits and understandings lose their function. Or they can arise simply because tradition is imperfect. Like individual character, it includes some habits and understandings that are good and some that are not so good. The former are more important, since we couldn't live a human life unless we stood in some sort of social tradition, but the latter usually attract more attention because they cause more problems.
People who live by a tradition normally respond to imperfections and changes that become troublesome by trying to maintain the tradition's substance. They focus on the understandings and practices that seem most important, and change less important ones that seem at odds with the basic goods the tradition points toward. A tradition is not at bottom a collection of rules, all equal to each other, but an understanding of the world and how to live in it. Some parts are more important than others, the tradition is always directed to goods that trump particular practices, and there's always some flexibility in how to reconcile practice and goal.
Religious reformers provide an example. They may complain about popular traditions but do so in the name of older and more authoritative traditions. They appeal from the practices of the Pharisees to the law of Moses and the prophets. Even evangelists appeal to the traditions of those they are addressing. Justin Martyr saw the seeds of the Logos in Greek tradition. Paul didn't tell the Athenians to give up Athenian culture, he quoted their poets and said he was there to tell them about the God their altars pointed toward. And in our own time Benedict annoyed some people by saying that "Christ was the savior for whom [the American Indians] were silently longing."
Such attitudes are justified. People attach themselves to the traditions they like, but in the long run the good is what they find most worthy of devotion. If there really is an objective good that's accessible to us then that's what all tradition points toward. To choose tradition is not to choose habit simply as such but to choose the way we actually arrive at the good, beautiful, and true. We don't know those things by doing a survey or putting something through a spectroscope. We know them when they emerge from the confusion of life in the experience of many people as worthy of enduring attachment.
Sometimes adjustments that work are hard to find. The development of a tradition may bring out basic flaws that eventually become crippling. The thought of classical antiquity had no way to resolve the questions it raised, so it ended in superstition, skepticism, and arbitrary mysticism. Or circumstances may change so radically that a tradition sees no good way to deal with the new realities--you're a Chinese mandarin and you discover that traditional China can't compete with the industrialized world and its gunboats.
If the problems get big enough, the tradition breaks down and things go haywire for a while. Eventually tradition and equilibrium re-establish themselves, but there's no telling how long that will take or how good the results will be. The Greeks and Romans eventually adopted a new system--Christianity--that overcame the problems of classical thought and led to another great civilization. On the other hand, the Chinese went berserk for a while, and may or may not have found their footing again.
The problems among us today are unusually radical. People aren't dissatisfied with this tradition or that, or at a loss how to achieve old goals in new settings. Instead, they want to reject the authority of tradition as such, along with the goods it proposes. They adopt views like liberalism that claim to possess a universal rationality that trumps all tradition, and insist that the only acceptable standard for social life is giving people what they want, as much and as equally as possible. Hence the California Proposition 8 decision that declared legal recognition of marriage unconstitutional.
The current situation results from an ever-greater insistence on a clear but extremely limited understanding of rationality that tells us that knowledge and conduct must be modeled on modern natural science and technology. That understanding works well if you're putting a man on the moon, not so well if you're figuring out how to live and relate to other people. It can't deal with identities, essences, or ultimate ends, so it has no way to make sense of our lives or those of others. The result is that belief and conduct lose their ability to order human life in a satisfying and non-arbitrary way.
That means the current state of affairs isn't going to last, and we'll have to go on to something else. Some would describe the current situation as the collapse of the Western tradition. I think it's better to describe it as the distortion and suppression of that tradition as a whole by part of it that has become too dominant. The scientistic outlook has to be ditched in any event, since it's at odds with the needs of human life. Once that's done the obvious way to proceed is to stick with the remainder--by far the greater part--of the tradition of the West, and try to bring it into a workable form. We can't get by without a tradition, the tradition of the West is the one we have, and there's no superior one to adhere to. So isn't the way forward obvious?
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Add New CommentPost as … Showing 17 comments Sort by Popular now Best rating Newest first Oldest first Subscribe by email Subscribe by RSS John Rutowicz 1 day ago
"Religious reformers provide an example. They may complain about popular traditions but do so in the name of older and more authoritative traditions."
Luther is a great example of this. He appeals to an older, more authentic catholicism. At least that is the Lutheran argument. I just thought I might mention this obvious example.
Anyway, neo-paganism is a dead end for the West. Flag Like ReplyReply Manquaman 10 hours ago in reply to John Rutowicz
Why? Flag Like ReplyReply Will 1 day ago
In my view, the value of tradition is as a repository of wisdom. When Rene Guenon, perhaps the greatest scholar of religion and metaphysics of the 20th century, was looking for a word to encompass the truths of the world's great religions, he chose "Tradition" with a capital T. When scientists named human beings as a species, they settled on "homo sapiens" which means "wise man." Tradition is one of the main things that distinguishes us as a species; we do not only act based on instinct, but on tradition - on accumulated wisdom - as well.
Not all traditions are equal, in that not all are equally wise. But it is wisdom - a belief in wisdom and a striving for wisdom - that allows us to make this distinction and judgment in the first place, for without a belief in wisdom and truth, we have no basis to evaluate different traditions, and are stuck in the mire of cultural relativism.
The assault on tradition is also the assault on history and on the value of the past. The modern, anti-historical liberals and their ilk which the article mentions seem to believe that we can dispense with the past altogether and make up a world and a culture from scratch. But that is like saying that we can cut off a tree's roots and still have it grow tall and strong. Flag 11 people liked this. Like ReplyReply James 1 day ago
Is there really enough of a remainder of the Western tradition to "stick with" after we've gotten rid of modernism? Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply James Kalb 1 day ago in reply to James
Don't see why not. Tradition is big. What there is of it is what enables us to live as human beings even today. Flag 2 people liked this. Like ReplyReply VikingManx 1 day ago in reply to James Kalb
The majority of your average white American still adhere to the basic honor-codes and fundamental traditions of Western Civilization. Only the truuuuly re-educated uber-wimpy academics and so-called "intellectuals" on the left actually vehemently reject our hallowed traditions.
These "elites" have attempted to brain-wash (literally) the natural order of Western mankind from our hearts and minds for fifty years through the media and our education systems, and the high-water mark was the Obongo election.
The backlash is happening, and will only get worse.
Once we get control of our education system back, re-affirm our ancestral values, and tear the ancient media-structure down (already happening), this whole culture will *snap* back into shape within a generation. Flag 4 people liked this. Like ReplyReply James 1 day ago in reply to James Kalb
Well, if the modern West is characterized by its abandonment of Tradition, I think we also have to make a conscious return to Tradition. Of course, that leaves us with the question of how we go about returning to our Tradition. The Catholic church? Maybe, but that seems unlikely now that Teilhard de Chardin has replaced St. Thomas Aquinas. Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply Ricky James Moore II 22 hours ago in reply to James Kalb
Customary law and market organization is what allows us to live to day, not the confused morass of stupid cultural tropes we've inherited. Ancient europeans were just as full of it as the ancient Chinese. Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply Wandrin 23 hours ago
"The scientistic outlook has to be ditched in any event, since it's at odds with the needs of human life."
The western tradition would have been over-run centuries ago without science. Flag Like ReplyReply David F 18 hours ago in reply to Wandrin
There is no inherent inconsistency between science and a rational pre-modern worldview.
A traditional Catholic or other rational pre-modern might say the following:
God created a rational universe and created human beings after His own image. This is why we have both reason and free will, and the ability to understand God's material works (through science), and recognize his moral law (though natural reason and revelation), and ideally, be drawn though them to their Final Cause, which is God Himself.
"Scientism" is an ideology and quasi-religion. Since it is unprovable and unfalsifiable, it isn't scientific. It assumes that nothing exists that cannot be explained or measured by science, and that all causes are material. In other words: if we can't see it, or potentially see it with better equipment--then it cannot exist. On purely rational grounds, I find this assumption far less plausible than the alternative. Flag 4 people liked this. Like ReplyReply Ricky James Moore II 23 hours ago
"What is it to Accept Tradition?"
To be a fool.
Now, to take advantage of one's cultural inheritance is another thing. But anything not to your own advantage is self-slavery; wheels in the head. Flag Like ReplyReply Aaron 7 hours ago in reply to Ricky James Moore II
Boy, you know a lot less than you think you know. Flag 8 people liked this. Like ReplyReply LH 5 hours ago in reply to Ricky James Moore II
Upon reading the philosopher, Ricky James Moore II....As we wade "through the confused morass of stupid cultural tropes"(sic)(and whatever the hell that is) in an effort to escape "self-slavery" (sic) (and whatever the hell that is) we wonder how you will take advantage of your "cultural inheritance"(sic) from "ancient europeans"(sic) that are "full of it"(sic). Perhaps,young man you are a confused morass who needs to refine your obvious intelligence to go beyond your immediate enthusiasms and supplement your opinions with a lot more living and lot more study. Be careful who you call a "fool" until you can write something dignified and coherent at least. Flag 8 people liked this. Like ReplyReply VikingManx 3 hours ago in reply to LH
I wonder what on earth Ricky James is doing on the website dedicated to "radical traditionalism"?
Seems, as smart as he seems, the Jewniversity did its job well on re-educating him on the "stupidity" of "ancient europeans" and how only science and reason and basically nothing else in the world will save us. Flag Like ReplyReply Visionsofglory14 4 hours ago
Mr. Kalb,
I have written a response to your article that takes issue with the notion of Tradition taken in this one. It can be found here:
http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=932 Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply James Kalb 2 hours ago in reply to Visionsofglory14
Thanks for the response. I posted some comments there, basically saying that the piece here isn't intended to present a whole theory of anything but only to get some ideas started. Flag Like ReplyReply Visionsofglory14 2 hours ago in reply to James Kalb
A reply to your comment has been posted on Gornahoor. While it seems we may connect on some points with regards to the need for a transcendental basis for Tradition, there remains a misunderstanding due to what is likely a much graver view of the state of the modern West in our view than yours. No way out, let alone something "obvious" seems to exist in our view. Flag Like ReplyReply
Article Info
Published in: Untimely Observations
Article topics: ConservatismCultureliberalismTradition
James Kalb
James Kalb is a lawyer and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He recently came out with his first book, The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command. His online home is jimkalb.com.
Friday, 20 August 2010
What is it to Accept Tradition?
By James Kalb text size Decrease text size Increase text size Comments (17)Print ArticleComments
In an age of checklists, decision trees, and zero tolerance, it's a puzzling notion.
People think it means giving up on reason. Or doing what's been done no matter what. Or accepting an external authority that has nothing to do with the situation we're actually dealing with.
What else could it mean, when each of us has his own thoughts and goals, reason is a matter of studies and statistics, and social authority is either following rules we've agreed to for our own purposes, or getting someone else's demands shoved down our throat?
That's the liberal concept of man as autonomous, knowledge as neutral and expert, and society as contract. Judge Walker (of Proposition 8 fame) evidently had something of the sort in mind when he said that "tradition alone ... cannot form a rational basis for a law."
In fact, accepting tradition is simply acting as a human being. Our actions aren't isolated events. They reflect a system of habits and understandings. To the extent the system is helpful and coherent--and we won't stick by it if it isn't--it's because a lot of people have lived by it for a long time, found it satisfactory, and worked the bugs out. In other words, it's because it's the tradition of some community. Our habits and understandings are our own, but they are not simply our own. We pick them up from other people.
We follow the tradition of our community because tradition and community are basic to being human. They help make us what we are, and we can't function without them. Man is social, and to belong to a community is to understand the world as the community understands it and act in a way that makes sense on that understanding.
All of which sounds OK, but it raises some questions. For starters, why talk about accepting tradition if the acts of every sane human being are going to be mostly traditional anyway? After all, we all have some idea of what things are, what they amount to, and how to deal with them, and it's not as if we just make those ideas up ourselves. On the whole, we have them because that's the way people like us look at things, and because the whole system of understandings we've picked up works and we're attached to it.
The answer, of course, is that anything can become problematic. It's natural for people to eat, but eating can be an issue at times. The problems can be minor, like cutting down on sweets, or major, like anorexia nervosa.
The same applies to tradition. Problems arise because circumstances change and old habits and understandings lose their function. Or they can arise simply because tradition is imperfect. Like individual character, it includes some habits and understandings that are good and some that are not so good. The former are more important, since we couldn't live a human life unless we stood in some sort of social tradition, but the latter usually attract more attention because they cause more problems.
People who live by a tradition normally respond to imperfections and changes that become troublesome by trying to maintain the tradition's substance. They focus on the understandings and practices that seem most important, and change less important ones that seem at odds with the basic goods the tradition points toward. A tradition is not at bottom a collection of rules, all equal to each other, but an understanding of the world and how to live in it. Some parts are more important than others, the tradition is always directed to goods that trump particular practices, and there's always some flexibility in how to reconcile practice and goal.
Religious reformers provide an example. They may complain about popular traditions but do so in the name of older and more authoritative traditions. They appeal from the practices of the Pharisees to the law of Moses and the prophets. Even evangelists appeal to the traditions of those they are addressing. Justin Martyr saw the seeds of the Logos in Greek tradition. Paul didn't tell the Athenians to give up Athenian culture, he quoted their poets and said he was there to tell them about the God their altars pointed toward. And in our own time Benedict annoyed some people by saying that "Christ was the savior for whom [the American Indians] were silently longing."
Such attitudes are justified. People attach themselves to the traditions they like, but in the long run the good is what they find most worthy of devotion. If there really is an objective good that's accessible to us then that's what all tradition points toward. To choose tradition is not to choose habit simply as such but to choose the way we actually arrive at the good, beautiful, and true. We don't know those things by doing a survey or putting something through a spectroscope. We know them when they emerge from the confusion of life in the experience of many people as worthy of enduring attachment.
Sometimes adjustments that work are hard to find. The development of a tradition may bring out basic flaws that eventually become crippling. The thought of classical antiquity had no way to resolve the questions it raised, so it ended in superstition, skepticism, and arbitrary mysticism. Or circumstances may change so radically that a tradition sees no good way to deal with the new realities--you're a Chinese mandarin and you discover that traditional China can't compete with the industrialized world and its gunboats.
If the problems get big enough, the tradition breaks down and things go haywire for a while. Eventually tradition and equilibrium re-establish themselves, but there's no telling how long that will take or how good the results will be. The Greeks and Romans eventually adopted a new system--Christianity--that overcame the problems of classical thought and led to another great civilization. On the other hand, the Chinese went berserk for a while, and may or may not have found their footing again.
The problems among us today are unusually radical. People aren't dissatisfied with this tradition or that, or at a loss how to achieve old goals in new settings. Instead, they want to reject the authority of tradition as such, along with the goods it proposes. They adopt views like liberalism that claim to possess a universal rationality that trumps all tradition, and insist that the only acceptable standard for social life is giving people what they want, as much and as equally as possible. Hence the California Proposition 8 decision that declared legal recognition of marriage unconstitutional.
The current situation results from an ever-greater insistence on a clear but extremely limited understanding of rationality that tells us that knowledge and conduct must be modeled on modern natural science and technology. That understanding works well if you're putting a man on the moon, not so well if you're figuring out how to live and relate to other people. It can't deal with identities, essences, or ultimate ends, so it has no way to make sense of our lives or those of others. The result is that belief and conduct lose their ability to order human life in a satisfying and non-arbitrary way.
That means the current state of affairs isn't going to last, and we'll have to go on to something else. Some would describe the current situation as the collapse of the Western tradition. I think it's better to describe it as the distortion and suppression of that tradition as a whole by part of it that has become too dominant. The scientistic outlook has to be ditched in any event, since it's at odds with the needs of human life. Once that's done the obvious way to proceed is to stick with the remainder--by far the greater part--of the tradition of the West, and try to bring it into a workable form. We can't get by without a tradition, the tradition of the West is the one we have, and there's no superior one to adhere to. So isn't the way forward obvious?
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Add New CommentPost as … Showing 17 comments Sort by Popular now Best rating Newest first Oldest first Subscribe by email Subscribe by RSS John Rutowicz 1 day ago
"Religious reformers provide an example. They may complain about popular traditions but do so in the name of older and more authoritative traditions."
Luther is a great example of this. He appeals to an older, more authentic catholicism. At least that is the Lutheran argument. I just thought I might mention this obvious example.
Anyway, neo-paganism is a dead end for the West. Flag Like ReplyReply Manquaman 10 hours ago in reply to John Rutowicz
Why? Flag Like ReplyReply Will 1 day ago
In my view, the value of tradition is as a repository of wisdom. When Rene Guenon, perhaps the greatest scholar of religion and metaphysics of the 20th century, was looking for a word to encompass the truths of the world's great religions, he chose "Tradition" with a capital T. When scientists named human beings as a species, they settled on "homo sapiens" which means "wise man." Tradition is one of the main things that distinguishes us as a species; we do not only act based on instinct, but on tradition - on accumulated wisdom - as well.
Not all traditions are equal, in that not all are equally wise. But it is wisdom - a belief in wisdom and a striving for wisdom - that allows us to make this distinction and judgment in the first place, for without a belief in wisdom and truth, we have no basis to evaluate different traditions, and are stuck in the mire of cultural relativism.
The assault on tradition is also the assault on history and on the value of the past. The modern, anti-historical liberals and their ilk which the article mentions seem to believe that we can dispense with the past altogether and make up a world and a culture from scratch. But that is like saying that we can cut off a tree's roots and still have it grow tall and strong. Flag 11 people liked this. Like ReplyReply James 1 day ago
Is there really enough of a remainder of the Western tradition to "stick with" after we've gotten rid of modernism? Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply James Kalb 1 day ago in reply to James
Don't see why not. Tradition is big. What there is of it is what enables us to live as human beings even today. Flag 2 people liked this. Like ReplyReply VikingManx 1 day ago in reply to James Kalb
The majority of your average white American still adhere to the basic honor-codes and fundamental traditions of Western Civilization. Only the truuuuly re-educated uber-wimpy academics and so-called "intellectuals" on the left actually vehemently reject our hallowed traditions.
These "elites" have attempted to brain-wash (literally) the natural order of Western mankind from our hearts and minds for fifty years through the media and our education systems, and the high-water mark was the Obongo election.
The backlash is happening, and will only get worse.
Once we get control of our education system back, re-affirm our ancestral values, and tear the ancient media-structure down (already happening), this whole culture will *snap* back into shape within a generation. Flag 4 people liked this. Like ReplyReply James 1 day ago in reply to James Kalb
Well, if the modern West is characterized by its abandonment of Tradition, I think we also have to make a conscious return to Tradition. Of course, that leaves us with the question of how we go about returning to our Tradition. The Catholic church? Maybe, but that seems unlikely now that Teilhard de Chardin has replaced St. Thomas Aquinas. Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply Ricky James Moore II 22 hours ago in reply to James Kalb
Customary law and market organization is what allows us to live to day, not the confused morass of stupid cultural tropes we've inherited. Ancient europeans were just as full of it as the ancient Chinese. Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply Wandrin 23 hours ago
"The scientistic outlook has to be ditched in any event, since it's at odds with the needs of human life."
The western tradition would have been over-run centuries ago without science. Flag Like ReplyReply David F 18 hours ago in reply to Wandrin
There is no inherent inconsistency between science and a rational pre-modern worldview.
A traditional Catholic or other rational pre-modern might say the following:
God created a rational universe and created human beings after His own image. This is why we have both reason and free will, and the ability to understand God's material works (through science), and recognize his moral law (though natural reason and revelation), and ideally, be drawn though them to their Final Cause, which is God Himself.
"Scientism" is an ideology and quasi-religion. Since it is unprovable and unfalsifiable, it isn't scientific. It assumes that nothing exists that cannot be explained or measured by science, and that all causes are material. In other words: if we can't see it, or potentially see it with better equipment--then it cannot exist. On purely rational grounds, I find this assumption far less plausible than the alternative. Flag 4 people liked this. Like ReplyReply Ricky James Moore II 23 hours ago
"What is it to Accept Tradition?"
To be a fool.
Now, to take advantage of one's cultural inheritance is another thing. But anything not to your own advantage is self-slavery; wheels in the head. Flag Like ReplyReply Aaron 7 hours ago in reply to Ricky James Moore II
Boy, you know a lot less than you think you know. Flag 8 people liked this. Like ReplyReply LH 5 hours ago in reply to Ricky James Moore II
Upon reading the philosopher, Ricky James Moore II....As we wade "through the confused morass of stupid cultural tropes"(sic)(and whatever the hell that is) in an effort to escape "self-slavery" (sic) (and whatever the hell that is) we wonder how you will take advantage of your "cultural inheritance"(sic) from "ancient europeans"(sic) that are "full of it"(sic). Perhaps,young man you are a confused morass who needs to refine your obvious intelligence to go beyond your immediate enthusiasms and supplement your opinions with a lot more living and lot more study. Be careful who you call a "fool" until you can write something dignified and coherent at least. Flag 8 people liked this. Like ReplyReply VikingManx 3 hours ago in reply to LH
I wonder what on earth Ricky James is doing on the website dedicated to "radical traditionalism"?
Seems, as smart as he seems, the Jewniversity did its job well on re-educating him on the "stupidity" of "ancient europeans" and how only science and reason and basically nothing else in the world will save us. Flag Like ReplyReply Visionsofglory14 4 hours ago
Mr. Kalb,
I have written a response to your article that takes issue with the notion of Tradition taken in this one. It can be found here:
http://www.gornahoor.net/?p=932 Flag 1 person liked this. Like ReplyReply James Kalb 2 hours ago in reply to Visionsofglory14
Thanks for the response. I posted some comments there, basically saying that the piece here isn't intended to present a whole theory of anything but only to get some ideas started. Flag Like ReplyReply Visionsofglory14 2 hours ago in reply to James Kalb
A reply to your comment has been posted on Gornahoor. While it seems we may connect on some points with regards to the need for a transcendental basis for Tradition, there remains a misunderstanding due to what is likely a much graver view of the state of the modern West in our view than yours. No way out, let alone something "obvious" seems to exist in our view. Flag Like ReplyReply
Article Info
Published in: Untimely Observations
Article topics: ConservatismCultureliberalismTradition
James Kalb
James Kalb is a lawyer and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He recently came out with his first book, The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command. His online home is jimkalb.com.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
SCV Not Happy With North Carolina Sesquicentennial Website
From Civil War Memory:
SCV Not Happy With North Carolina Sesquicentennial Website
August 19, 2010 By Kevin Levin
If the SCV really wants to be taken seriously during the upcoming Civil War Sesquicentennial than they are going to have to do better than what Walter L. Adams Jr. offers as a critique of North Carolina’s sesquicentennial website. Adams is the heritage defense officer for Pettigrew’s Partisans, Camp 2110 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. That’s right, he is the heritage defense officer. First, check out the website, which I think is an incredible resource and reflects a strong commitment on the part of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources to commemorate the war in an inclusive and educational manner. What’s he upset about?
■The views of conservative columnist such as Walter Williams, economist Thomas J. DiLorenzo, and Professor Ludwell H. Johnson have been left out.
■“The National Park Service deliberately ignores other factors such as high tariffs, adherence to constitutional principles, or fears of political and economic domination by the North that make for a considerably more complex situation.”
■“No mention is made of the fact that before the war, Abraham Lincoln supported the original 13th Amendment that would have barred the federal government from ever interfering with that institution.” — Not sure what this has to do with North Carolina.
■“No mention was made of so-called Black Codes that Northern and Midwestern states adopted to discriminate against blacks before such codes were adopted in the South.” — Not sure what this has to do with North Carolina.
■“The role of black North Carolinians and other black Southerners who wore the gray was completely ignored.” And, of course they are upset that no mention is made of the “estimated 19,000 African-Americans…who bore arms in the Confederate armed forces.”
How can I become a heritage defense minister?
SCV Not Happy With North Carolina Sesquicentennial Website
August 19, 2010 By Kevin Levin
If the SCV really wants to be taken seriously during the upcoming Civil War Sesquicentennial than they are going to have to do better than what Walter L. Adams Jr. offers as a critique of North Carolina’s sesquicentennial website. Adams is the heritage defense officer for Pettigrew’s Partisans, Camp 2110 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. That’s right, he is the heritage defense officer. First, check out the website, which I think is an incredible resource and reflects a strong commitment on the part of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources to commemorate the war in an inclusive and educational manner. What’s he upset about?
■The views of conservative columnist such as Walter Williams, economist Thomas J. DiLorenzo, and Professor Ludwell H. Johnson have been left out.
■“The National Park Service deliberately ignores other factors such as high tariffs, adherence to constitutional principles, or fears of political and economic domination by the North that make for a considerably more complex situation.”
■“No mention is made of the fact that before the war, Abraham Lincoln supported the original 13th Amendment that would have barred the federal government from ever interfering with that institution.” — Not sure what this has to do with North Carolina.
■“No mention was made of so-called Black Codes that Northern and Midwestern states adopted to discriminate against blacks before such codes were adopted in the South.” — Not sure what this has to do with North Carolina.
■“The role of black North Carolinians and other black Southerners who wore the gray was completely ignored.” And, of course they are upset that no mention is made of the “estimated 19,000 African-Americans…who bore arms in the Confederate armed forces.”
How can I become a heritage defense minister?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
The 1861 Magnolia State Flag Of Mississippi
From SLMN News Blog:
17 August 2010The 1861 Magnolia Flag of Mississippi
At least one State representative in Mississippi is thinking about the possibility of adopting the 1861 Magnolia Flag of secession as the State Flag in an effort to appease the NAACP while still maintaining a Confederate era symbol. This is much the same thing that Georgia did - trading the battle flag symbol for the first national Confederate pattern.
Posted by PalmettoPatriot at 12:01 PM
17 August 2010The 1861 Magnolia Flag of Mississippi
At least one State representative in Mississippi is thinking about the possibility of adopting the 1861 Magnolia Flag of secession as the State Flag in an effort to appease the NAACP while still maintaining a Confederate era symbol. This is much the same thing that Georgia did - trading the battle flag symbol for the first national Confederate pattern.
Posted by PalmettoPatriot at 12:01 PM
Sullivan South High School To Be Allowed To Keep Flying Confederate Flags
From SLMN News Blog:
17 August 2010Sullivan South High School to keep Confederate flag
'Students at Sullivan South High School will be allowed to fly the rebel flag during football games and other sporting events this year. After numerous complaints to Sullivan County schools, a committee was formed to look at the concerns.
"We felt like that our school has a perception issue that other people from other areas might perceive that flag in a way different from how our kids perceive it," said Greg Harvey, Sullivan South Principal. The committee determined that banning the rebel flag would create even more issues, so they came up with a compromise. New flags, called spirit flags will be flown along side the rebel flag.
"Our main goal is to try and get the perception changed from how people maybe view that flag and our school," Harvey said. The new flags include the Bonnie Blue, and four others. So far they are a hit with students.'
Posted by PalmettoPatriot at 12:10 PM
17 August 2010Sullivan South High School to keep Confederate flag
'Students at Sullivan South High School will be allowed to fly the rebel flag during football games and other sporting events this year. After numerous complaints to Sullivan County schools, a committee was formed to look at the concerns.
"We felt like that our school has a perception issue that other people from other areas might perceive that flag in a way different from how our kids perceive it," said Greg Harvey, Sullivan South Principal. The committee determined that banning the rebel flag would create even more issues, so they came up with a compromise. New flags, called spirit flags will be flown along side the rebel flag.
"Our main goal is to try and get the perception changed from how people maybe view that flag and our school," Harvey said. The new flags include the Bonnie Blue, and four others. So far they are a hit with students.'
Posted by PalmettoPatriot at 12:10 PM
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
A Response To A Yankee
From Southern Heritage & Liberty Articles:
8/17/2010
A Response to a Yankee
Bellow, a recent response of mine to a Yankee. The other side of the conversation is self evident:
"A rational man when faced with situations that have gone terribly wrong, as we in this country unquestionably have, seeks to find out where the mistake that led to the wrong occurred; firstly to try and understand how to fix it; secondly to learn from that mistake so that it can be avoided again.
History, true history and not some myth made up to justify ignoble actions or support some currently peddled ideology, is the primary source of identifying a nation's mistakes as well as it's laudable actions. The purpose is not to "hate" or to accuse the decedents of those who made the mistake of wrong doing.
The term "Yankee" refers to a historical foe of the Southern United States, the Confederacy, and those decedents of the historical Yankees who still feel the action against the Confederacy was appropriate, justified, and led to a better situation for all the people of the once "United" States. (We call Southerners who feel the North's action in the Civil War was appropriate or justified, "scalawags".) Neither term is one of endearment, and in some people, does rise to the level of "hatred".
I, myself, cannot respect the judgment of anyone who feels denying the right of secession to the Southern States was appropriate or laudable, when the very act that formed the "United States" a mere 90 years earlier was secession from Great Britain and claimed as the right of all and any people in the Declaration of Independence:
"— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."
Nothing of which I am aware could be more hypocritical than the armed invasion of the South to prevent secession. The facts are that the very reason we are where we are today is because of this grievous mistake: the abandonment of the rights of the states to limit the power of their central government and the act of enforcing that denial of rights by force. This resulted in the murder of 350,000 southern soldiers who were only trying to defend the right or their states to secede, and 50,000 Southern civilians who were "collateral damage" at the hands of people like Sherman and Sheridan. The only tools of the states in controlling the central government are 1) secession, 2) threat of secession, and 3) nullification.
You may feel that dwelling on these issues from the past is pointless and you consistently refer to your desire to "live in the present" and deal with the future. But what you fail to realize is that the present as well as the future are the products of the past and its results in the present; and that if the future is to made a better place, we must understand and correct the path that led us to today's unacceptable governmental situation.
As to your contention that Southerners are not belittled or looked down upon by the Northern United States and the West Coast, are you so accustomed to the belittlement and disparaging characterizations of Southerners, and since they are not directed at you, don't even notice them? Do you go to movies, do you listen to the news, do you read novels? Tell me the last time in any of these venues have you seen a Southerner, other than a scalawag like Jimmy Carter, portrayed in a positive light? Why are Southerners always portrayed as stupid, racist, red necks, and white trash?
But don't just accept my observations; listen to what a Harvard scholar, Professor Eugene Genovese had to say in the recent Massey Lectures at Harvard:
"Eugene Genovese, a distinguished historian of the South--a northerner and a man of the left--has been a rare voice in criticizing this purge of the Southern tradition from the academy (Academia). In the Massey Lectures given at Harvard, he had this to say: 'Rarely these days, even on southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of the white people of the South...To speak positively about any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity--an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white southerners, and arguably black southerners as well, of their heritage, and, therefore, their identity. They are being taught to forget their forebears or to remember them with shame.'
"This condition is not going to change overnight. Those who created it are tenured, and will dominate in higher education for at least a generation-- and even longer since they are disposed to hire and tenure only their own. Even so, there are many scholars in America and abroad who take inspiration from the Southern tradition, and many others who are open to what it has to teach. Students too are open. Many feel they are somehow encountering on campus a profound intellectual and spiritual disorder, but they do not know how to think about it." -- Professor Donald Livingston, Abbeyville Institute, Tenured Professor of Philosophy, Emory University
This process is better known around the world as "cultural genocide" and if you are unaware of its presence in the United States, you are either ill informed, uncaring, or not listening."
SWR's Roy Norris
Deo Vindice
Conquered but Never Defeated
http://www.southernwarroom.info
8/17/2010
A Response to a Yankee
Bellow, a recent response of mine to a Yankee. The other side of the conversation is self evident:
"A rational man when faced with situations that have gone terribly wrong, as we in this country unquestionably have, seeks to find out where the mistake that led to the wrong occurred; firstly to try and understand how to fix it; secondly to learn from that mistake so that it can be avoided again.
History, true history and not some myth made up to justify ignoble actions or support some currently peddled ideology, is the primary source of identifying a nation's mistakes as well as it's laudable actions. The purpose is not to "hate" or to accuse the decedents of those who made the mistake of wrong doing.
The term "Yankee" refers to a historical foe of the Southern United States, the Confederacy, and those decedents of the historical Yankees who still feel the action against the Confederacy was appropriate, justified, and led to a better situation for all the people of the once "United" States. (We call Southerners who feel the North's action in the Civil War was appropriate or justified, "scalawags".) Neither term is one of endearment, and in some people, does rise to the level of "hatred".
I, myself, cannot respect the judgment of anyone who feels denying the right of secession to the Southern States was appropriate or laudable, when the very act that formed the "United States" a mere 90 years earlier was secession from Great Britain and claimed as the right of all and any people in the Declaration of Independence:
"— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government."
Nothing of which I am aware could be more hypocritical than the armed invasion of the South to prevent secession. The facts are that the very reason we are where we are today is because of this grievous mistake: the abandonment of the rights of the states to limit the power of their central government and the act of enforcing that denial of rights by force. This resulted in the murder of 350,000 southern soldiers who were only trying to defend the right or their states to secede, and 50,000 Southern civilians who were "collateral damage" at the hands of people like Sherman and Sheridan. The only tools of the states in controlling the central government are 1) secession, 2) threat of secession, and 3) nullification.
You may feel that dwelling on these issues from the past is pointless and you consistently refer to your desire to "live in the present" and deal with the future. But what you fail to realize is that the present as well as the future are the products of the past and its results in the present; and that if the future is to made a better place, we must understand and correct the path that led us to today's unacceptable governmental situation.
As to your contention that Southerners are not belittled or looked down upon by the Northern United States and the West Coast, are you so accustomed to the belittlement and disparaging characterizations of Southerners, and since they are not directed at you, don't even notice them? Do you go to movies, do you listen to the news, do you read novels? Tell me the last time in any of these venues have you seen a Southerner, other than a scalawag like Jimmy Carter, portrayed in a positive light? Why are Southerners always portrayed as stupid, racist, red necks, and white trash?
But don't just accept my observations; listen to what a Harvard scholar, Professor Eugene Genovese had to say in the recent Massey Lectures at Harvard:
"Eugene Genovese, a distinguished historian of the South--a northerner and a man of the left--has been a rare voice in criticizing this purge of the Southern tradition from the academy (Academia). In the Massey Lectures given at Harvard, he had this to say: 'Rarely these days, even on southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of the white people of the South...To speak positively about any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity--an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white southerners, and arguably black southerners as well, of their heritage, and, therefore, their identity. They are being taught to forget their forebears or to remember them with shame.'
"This condition is not going to change overnight. Those who created it are tenured, and will dominate in higher education for at least a generation-- and even longer since they are disposed to hire and tenure only their own. Even so, there are many scholars in America and abroad who take inspiration from the Southern tradition, and many others who are open to what it has to teach. Students too are open. Many feel they are somehow encountering on campus a profound intellectual and spiritual disorder, but they do not know how to think about it." -- Professor Donald Livingston, Abbeyville Institute, Tenured Professor of Philosophy, Emory University
This process is better known around the world as "cultural genocide" and if you are unaware of its presence in the United States, you are either ill informed, uncaring, or not listening."
SWR's Roy Norris
Deo Vindice
Conquered but Never Defeated
http://www.southernwarroom.info
Monday, August 16, 2010
Heritage And Community
From Southern Heritage And Liberty Articles:
8/17/2010
Community and Heritage
By David Ware
“The South was always proud and independent and believed with the Founding Fathers, that centralized and powerful government invariably slides into tyranny. But the North, less proud, less conscious of national tradition, less independent, less manly in many ways, craves the dictator’s hand, the tyrants force, for many of its people have come from nations whose people were subjected to and dependent on government. It may be, in the future, that it will be the South who will prevent, for many long decades, the collapse of American Freedom into Caesarism.” Taylor Caldwell, from “Captains and the Kings”
It has been said that the Southerner is the last of America’s people to know who they are and where they come from. This is because the people of the South have a deep and devout attachment to their heritage and community. They are able to trace their ancestry back to the War to Prevent Southern Independence, the Revolutionary War and beyond. Their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents and great-great-great grandparents knew one another. They loved their land and home place. Names were given to the homes of Southerners: My family had Windsor, Sunnyside, Hard Bargain, Plumsite, Lombardy, Pinewoods, Bellevue and others. These were the places where our ancestors raised their families with other like minded people to be self responsible, productive members of a cohesive community.
This relationship is a complex connection between people, their land and nature. All neighbors are included in an intense personal bond to ancestors, the self, family, the land and its inhabitants. Arts to the Southern people more to do with hospitality, hunting, fishing, conversation and vegetable gardening than with rock concerts and the signing bonuses of professional athletes . Their definition of “mind your own business” is forged by a mutual respect for the rights and property of the individual.
Tied to the love of the dollar, the Yankees are Nomads wandering to advance “careers” and to always position themselves to make as much and spend as little money as possible. They typically have no heritage that they know of, bluster on about forgetting the past and “planning” for the future. They are self proclaimed soothsayers who predict their future based on government programs, laws and bailouts. To them, a community is complete because they are in it. They believe that the tyrannical forces of planning, zoning, building regulations, taxes and laws perpetuate true community. They prefer to live in a subdivision with a guard at the gate craving the “dictators hand” of homeowners associations , their idea of connection to nature has to do with lawn care and walking the dog. Freedom, to the Yankee mentality, is the elimination of self responsibility and worry and a plethora of fast food choices, Costcos and WalMarts.
Their mindset wants cell phones with no cell towers, electricity with no generating plants, gasoline with no oil refineries, airplanes with no airports and less taxes with more government spending. This makes perfect sense to their culture that teaches that you spend to save, borrow to get out of debt and kill for peace.
We Southern people must cure ourselves of Republican and Democrat Part thinking. We have no friends in either major party. We do our ancestors a disservice to pay homage to these people as they and their policies run counter to everything our ancestors stood for. We need to pay more attention to our complete heritage starting with the hospitality of Pocahontas, the brilliance of Jefferson, the example of Washington, the perseverance of Calhoun, the chivalry of Lee, the determination and valor of Jackson and most of all to the idea that we are descended from the heirs of limited government, individual freedom and personal responsibility.
We should cease supporting wars of foreign aggression. Our ancestors fought to be left alone and we, of all people, should respect that desire when it unfolds against our military and political presence. We are descended from people that knew the pain and dismay of having our homes and families devastated by an unprincipled aggressor. How can we support efforts to bend foreign countries under the heavy foot of the U. S. might while lamenting the same thing when it was done by the same mentality against our people?
posted by rebshadow @ 1:47 AM
8/17/2010
Community and Heritage
By David Ware
“The South was always proud and independent and believed with the Founding Fathers, that centralized and powerful government invariably slides into tyranny. But the North, less proud, less conscious of national tradition, less independent, less manly in many ways, craves the dictator’s hand, the tyrants force, for many of its people have come from nations whose people were subjected to and dependent on government. It may be, in the future, that it will be the South who will prevent, for many long decades, the collapse of American Freedom into Caesarism.” Taylor Caldwell, from “Captains and the Kings”
It has been said that the Southerner is the last of America’s people to know who they are and where they come from. This is because the people of the South have a deep and devout attachment to their heritage and community. They are able to trace their ancestry back to the War to Prevent Southern Independence, the Revolutionary War and beyond. Their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents and great-great-great grandparents knew one another. They loved their land and home place. Names were given to the homes of Southerners: My family had Windsor, Sunnyside, Hard Bargain, Plumsite, Lombardy, Pinewoods, Bellevue and others. These were the places where our ancestors raised their families with other like minded people to be self responsible, productive members of a cohesive community.
This relationship is a complex connection between people, their land and nature. All neighbors are included in an intense personal bond to ancestors, the self, family, the land and its inhabitants. Arts to the Southern people more to do with hospitality, hunting, fishing, conversation and vegetable gardening than with rock concerts and the signing bonuses of professional athletes . Their definition of “mind your own business” is forged by a mutual respect for the rights and property of the individual.
Tied to the love of the dollar, the Yankees are Nomads wandering to advance “careers” and to always position themselves to make as much and spend as little money as possible. They typically have no heritage that they know of, bluster on about forgetting the past and “planning” for the future. They are self proclaimed soothsayers who predict their future based on government programs, laws and bailouts. To them, a community is complete because they are in it. They believe that the tyrannical forces of planning, zoning, building regulations, taxes and laws perpetuate true community. They prefer to live in a subdivision with a guard at the gate craving the “dictators hand” of homeowners associations , their idea of connection to nature has to do with lawn care and walking the dog. Freedom, to the Yankee mentality, is the elimination of self responsibility and worry and a plethora of fast food choices, Costcos and WalMarts.
Their mindset wants cell phones with no cell towers, electricity with no generating plants, gasoline with no oil refineries, airplanes with no airports and less taxes with more government spending. This makes perfect sense to their culture that teaches that you spend to save, borrow to get out of debt and kill for peace.
We Southern people must cure ourselves of Republican and Democrat Part thinking. We have no friends in either major party. We do our ancestors a disservice to pay homage to these people as they and their policies run counter to everything our ancestors stood for. We need to pay more attention to our complete heritage starting with the hospitality of Pocahontas, the brilliance of Jefferson, the example of Washington, the perseverance of Calhoun, the chivalry of Lee, the determination and valor of Jackson and most of all to the idea that we are descended from the heirs of limited government, individual freedom and personal responsibility.
We should cease supporting wars of foreign aggression. Our ancestors fought to be left alone and we, of all people, should respect that desire when it unfolds against our military and political presence. We are descended from people that knew the pain and dismay of having our homes and families devastated by an unprincipled aggressor. How can we support efforts to bend foreign countries under the heavy foot of the U. S. might while lamenting the same thing when it was done by the same mentality against our people?
posted by rebshadow @ 1:47 AM
Confederate Monument And Flag Grace De Leon Plaza, Victoria, Texas
From Confederate Digest:
Confederate Monument and Flag grace De Leon Plaza, Victoria, Texasfrom Confederate Digest by J. Stephen Conn
Victoria County Confederate Monument
The beautiful city of Victoria, Texas, is home to an impressive and distinctive Confederate Monument.
Noted sculptor Pompeo Coppini made an agreement with the local William P. Rogers chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. If they would let him design the statue - it would be a more fitting tribute to the men who fought than any other Confederate statue in the state. They agreed and Coppini made this piece - the only one of its kind.
This unique work of art stands in De Leon Plaza, in the heart of Victoria, across from the Victoria County Court House. It was dedicated on June 3, 1912.
Six Flags Memorial in De Leon Plaza, Victoria, Texas
Also in DeLeon Plaza, the Six Flags Monument displays the flags of the six different sovereign nations which have flown over the land that is today known as Texas. Victoria County is the only county in Texas where all six flags flew. They are (left to right) United States, Confederate States of America, Texas, Mexico, Spain and France. The three large granite plaques below the flags state that the monument is dedicated to the "Explorers, Founders and Colonists of Victoria."
The inscription on the monument bears the sentiments of the people of Victoria for the brave Confederate soldiers who defended their homeland from Union aggressors during the War for Southern Independence. It reads:
ON CIVILIZATION'S HEIGHT
IMMUTABLE THEY STAND
During the War Between the States, Victoria was on one branch of the "Cotton Road" which went from Alleyton (Colorado County) to Brownsville. The road was a major lifeline for the South - trading cotton for arms and medicine through neutral Mexico. The town was threatened with a Union invasion in 1863 and so the railroad from Port Lavaca was destroyed. Camp Henry E. McCulloch trained Infantry and Cavalry companies for Confederate service.
Confederate Monument and Flag grace De Leon Plaza, Victoria, Texasfrom Confederate Digest by J. Stephen Conn
Victoria County Confederate Monument
The beautiful city of Victoria, Texas, is home to an impressive and distinctive Confederate Monument.
Noted sculptor Pompeo Coppini made an agreement with the local William P. Rogers chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. If they would let him design the statue - it would be a more fitting tribute to the men who fought than any other Confederate statue in the state. They agreed and Coppini made this piece - the only one of its kind.
This unique work of art stands in De Leon Plaza, in the heart of Victoria, across from the Victoria County Court House. It was dedicated on June 3, 1912.
Six Flags Memorial in De Leon Plaza, Victoria, Texas
Also in DeLeon Plaza, the Six Flags Monument displays the flags of the six different sovereign nations which have flown over the land that is today known as Texas. Victoria County is the only county in Texas where all six flags flew. They are (left to right) United States, Confederate States of America, Texas, Mexico, Spain and France. The three large granite plaques below the flags state that the monument is dedicated to the "Explorers, Founders and Colonists of Victoria."
The inscription on the monument bears the sentiments of the people of Victoria for the brave Confederate soldiers who defended their homeland from Union aggressors during the War for Southern Independence. It reads:
ON CIVILIZATION'S HEIGHT
IMMUTABLE THEY STAND
During the War Between the States, Victoria was on one branch of the "Cotton Road" which went from Alleyton (Colorado County) to Brownsville. The road was a major lifeline for the South - trading cotton for arms and medicine through neutral Mexico. The town was threatened with a Union invasion in 1863 and so the railroad from Port Lavaca was destroyed. Camp Henry E. McCulloch trained Infantry and Cavalry companies for Confederate service.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Wealthy Americans Moving To The South Due To Taxation
I'm not thrilled at the prospect of Yankees moving South. I would be more willing to entertain the idea, if they are willing to assimilate into the dominant culture.
From Newsmax:
3. Wealthy Moving South to Avoid Taxes
Wealthy Americans are increasingly moving South, not for the sun but for lower taxes.
“For years, wealthy retirees from high-tax states in the Northeast and Midwest have been streaming to sunny, low-tax Florida,” Hilary Johnson writes for Investment News. “That stream is now turning into a flood.”
In addition to Florida, states with no state income tax are Texas, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, Wyoming, and Alaska, while Tennessee and New Hampshire tax only dividend and interest income.
“The move to no-tax states is absolutely big business,” said Thomas Handler, a partner at the law firm Handler Thayer LLP. “People are doing is all day long, and it’s ramping up.”
In New York, the marginal state individual income tax rate on residents earning more than $500,000 a year has gone from about 7 percent in 2009 to nearly 9 percent this year.
One wealthy New Yorker fleeing high taxes is Tom Golisano, co-owner of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team and three-time gubernatorial candidate in New York, who announced last year that he was leaving the Empire State for Florida.
Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, angered by the tax hike in New York, vowed in March that he would sell his Manhattan penthouse and move his operations elsewhere. He already has a home in Florida.
“I'm going to look for an alternative studio somewhere outside New York, perhaps Texas — another no-income-tax state,” he said. His penthouse went under contract in July.
Florida’s population soared 16 percent from 2000 to 2009, after rising 23 percent in the 1990s. New York, on the other hand, saw a net migration of minus-698,000 from 2000 to 2008. That population shift has accelerated recently, however, with the Bush tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year and well-off individuals facing higher federal taxes.
But tax experts warn that wealthy individuals should plan carefully if they intend to buy a home in Florida while still maintaining a residence in the Northeast or Midwest.
“If you’re claiming Florida residency, you don’t want to have one fact that shows you are still tied to New York, such as not having changed your driver’s license, voter’s registration or mailing address for important documents,” attorney Gary Phillips, an attorney at Cole, Schotz, Meisel, Forman & Leonard PA and co-author of “On the Road to Florida: Coles’ Practical Guide to Changing Your Residence from New Jersey or New York,” told Investment News. “That would be the one thing auditors can focus on, and it hurts your case.”
From Newsmax:
3. Wealthy Moving South to Avoid Taxes
Wealthy Americans are increasingly moving South, not for the sun but for lower taxes.
“For years, wealthy retirees from high-tax states in the Northeast and Midwest have been streaming to sunny, low-tax Florida,” Hilary Johnson writes for Investment News. “That stream is now turning into a flood.”
In addition to Florida, states with no state income tax are Texas, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, Wyoming, and Alaska, while Tennessee and New Hampshire tax only dividend and interest income.
“The move to no-tax states is absolutely big business,” said Thomas Handler, a partner at the law firm Handler Thayer LLP. “People are doing is all day long, and it’s ramping up.”
In New York, the marginal state individual income tax rate on residents earning more than $500,000 a year has gone from about 7 percent in 2009 to nearly 9 percent this year.
One wealthy New Yorker fleeing high taxes is Tom Golisano, co-owner of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team and three-time gubernatorial candidate in New York, who announced last year that he was leaving the Empire State for Florida.
Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, angered by the tax hike in New York, vowed in March that he would sell his Manhattan penthouse and move his operations elsewhere. He already has a home in Florida.
“I'm going to look for an alternative studio somewhere outside New York, perhaps Texas — another no-income-tax state,” he said. His penthouse went under contract in July.
Florida’s population soared 16 percent from 2000 to 2009, after rising 23 percent in the 1990s. New York, on the other hand, saw a net migration of minus-698,000 from 2000 to 2008. That population shift has accelerated recently, however, with the Bush tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year and well-off individuals facing higher federal taxes.
But tax experts warn that wealthy individuals should plan carefully if they intend to buy a home in Florida while still maintaining a residence in the Northeast or Midwest.
“If you’re claiming Florida residency, you don’t want to have one fact that shows you are still tied to New York, such as not having changed your driver’s license, voter’s registration or mailing address for important documents,” attorney Gary Phillips, an attorney at Cole, Schotz, Meisel, Forman & Leonard PA and co-author of “On the Road to Florida: Coles’ Practical Guide to Changing Your Residence from New Jersey or New York,” told Investment News. “That would be the one thing auditors can focus on, and it hurts your case.”
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Secession Is An Acceptable Right Of States
From postcrescent.com and Rebellion:
Letters: Secession considered as acceptable right
August 14, 2010
Comments (4) Recommend (1) Print this page E-mail this article Share
Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine Twitter FarkIt Type Size A A A I note that, in Miles Vander Molen's Aug. 5 letter, he appears to be a victim of what I described in my earlier letter — studying and then espousing history as written by the "victor."
The Confederacy formed in February 1861 with seven states, added four more by June and was soon joined by Missouri and Kentucky. These last two states were reabsorbed into the Union before the war's end. Since these states had joined the CSA, there were 13 states, not just 11.
About Mr. Vander Molen's assertion that there's no right to leave the Union, I could not disagree more. While he's correct in saying nothing about secession is mentioned in the Constitution, that doesn't mean it's illegal.
The right of any state to secede was accepted by both northerners and southerners since the beginning of the Union. For example, the New England states threatened to secede five times: in 1803, over Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase; in 1807, over the Embargo Act; in 1812, over Louisiana's admission to the Union; in 1814, over the War of 1812; and in 1845, over Texas' annexation.
Regarding the first secession threat, Thomas Jefferson said, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in union … I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.'"
Both Abraham Lincoln and Congress stated that the war was fought to preserve the Union and not over slavery. Even from England, Charles Dickens could see through that tired idea: "The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states."
As being offended goes, I'm offended at having those who simply tried to peaceably leave a voluntary association referred to as "traitors."
Randy Hamby,
Appleton
Letters: Secession considered as acceptable right
August 14, 2010
Comments (4) Recommend (1) Print this page E-mail this article Share
Del.icio.us Facebook Digg Reddit Newsvine Twitter FarkIt Type Size A A A I note that, in Miles Vander Molen's Aug. 5 letter, he appears to be a victim of what I described in my earlier letter — studying and then espousing history as written by the "victor."
The Confederacy formed in February 1861 with seven states, added four more by June and was soon joined by Missouri and Kentucky. These last two states were reabsorbed into the Union before the war's end. Since these states had joined the CSA, there were 13 states, not just 11.
About Mr. Vander Molen's assertion that there's no right to leave the Union, I could not disagree more. While he's correct in saying nothing about secession is mentioned in the Constitution, that doesn't mean it's illegal.
The right of any state to secede was accepted by both northerners and southerners since the beginning of the Union. For example, the New England states threatened to secede five times: in 1803, over Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase; in 1807, over the Embargo Act; in 1812, over Louisiana's admission to the Union; in 1814, over the War of 1812; and in 1845, over Texas' annexation.
Regarding the first secession threat, Thomas Jefferson said, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in union … I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.'"
Both Abraham Lincoln and Congress stated that the war was fought to preserve the Union and not over slavery. Even from England, Charles Dickens could see through that tired idea: "The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states."
As being offended goes, I'm offended at having those who simply tried to peaceably leave a voluntary association referred to as "traitors."
Randy Hamby,
Appleton
Friday, August 13, 2010
Why Study The History And Culture Of The South?
From The Southern Partisan Reader:
Why Study the History and Culture of the South?
Posted on June 20, 2010 by tim
Welcome to The Southerner Partisan Reader on-line. Come, thoughtfully read, then ponder, argue, agree and disagree and then help TheSouthernPartisan.com writers and supporters celebrate and restore our countries (States) sovereignty, our cultures and our heritage of political freedom and liberty. Our hope is that you will find the published essays and books available on this site refreshing and informative while learning about the past and present Southern Culture which will guide us as we plan for the future.
There are important reasons for studying, rehearsing, celebrating and sometimes mourning the history, heritage, and culture of the “Southern States” of North America. No other American States have played a more important role in our national drama or have been on the political stage as long as have the Southern States.
The area we call St. Augustine, Florida was first explored in 1513 by Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon while he was the governor of nearby Puerto Rico. Ponce de Leon claimed the region for the Spanish crown. Before this various other Viking, Celtic and European explorers set foot on North American soil often trading with the already established Native American peoples.
Prior to the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, several earlier failed attempts at European colonization in what is now Florida were made by both Spain and France. In 1565 Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles settled the area known as St. Augustine, Florida which is the oldest continuously occupied European-established City in the United States. Among the Spanish earlier attempts to establish a permanent settlement was one made by Tristan de Luna y Arellane in 1559 in the Pensacola area.
The French attempt at settlement of the area began in 1562 under the Protestant Norman navigator Jean Ribault and under the colonial organizer Protestant French Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The expedition departed from France in February of 1562 with 150 colonists. After exploring the river San Juan (St. Johns River) in May of 1562, de Coligny named it May River which this was the month when he first landed in the area and claimed it for France. The expedition sailed north along the coast and established other settlements in what is now South Carolina. They built their primary fortresses at Port Royal Sound and Parris Island (South Carolina), where they started to build a large citadel. By July 1562 Jean Ribault returned to France. Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, who had been Ribault’s second-in-command on the 1562 expedition, organized a new colonial contingent for Florida consisting of 300 new settlers, including women, children and soldiers.
In 1607 Virginia became the birthplace of what eventually would become the republic of the united (the lower case “u” is not a print error) States of America. Virginia was the largest and most influential of the thirteen British colonies. Her sons would led the struggle for independence and for several decades remained chief among the States. Thirty-eight of the North American United States would be carved, in whole or in part, out of the land Virginia claimed in 1609. Seven of these States (besides Virginia) would be developed within her 1776 boundaries, and six of those seven include more than 180 million acres of land that Virginia voluntarily gave to the united States to promote unity and peace.
Through four centuries, Virginians and other Southerners helped define and formulate our political ideals and practices, and shaped our country’s institutions that for a period guaranteed what came to be called “The American View” of freedom and liberty. Two of its most crucial military conflicts ended on Virginia soil, first the American Revolutionary War and then Lincoln’s War to Prevent Southern Independence. One in every seven men who have served as President of the United States was born in the Commonwealth of the Old Dominion State.
Today Southerners inherit respected and honourable historic traditions with a melding (not melting as in “melting pot”) of distinctive cultures drawn largely from the Spanish, French, German, Native American, Scottish, Irish and English peoples. In the Southern States it was not necessary for people to live together in a manner that denied their rich heritages as inevitably was to occur in the States of the Deep North (New England) whose people saw their culture as a “melting pot.” Their Puritan ancestors readily gave up the Christianity for rationalism and its illegitimate fadish political children, and would demand that the rest of the American united republics do likewise.
To be worthy of our heritage’s which jointly established a common understanding of freedom, independence and liberty, we must understand, appreciate, and share the high regard Southerners have always had for the inestimable value of 1) independence, 2) liberty, 3) freedom, 4) government by the consent of the governed, 5) the role of a limited republican government as a delegated servant of society, 6) lawful, honourable dealings in every kind of human affair, and 7) for the virtue of moderate political reforms as opposed to change through violent revolution.
The writers, sponsors and staff of TheSouthernPartisan.com recognise that the distinctive American values of honour, chivalry, and noblesse oblige (obligation of honourable, generous, and responsible social behaviour) had for decades come under attack by the radical anti-Christian rationalists of the Deep North, and finally obscured in 1865 by the loss of independence and State sovereignty in every American State.
It can be rightly stated that the United States of America lost what the centralising new government called the “Civil War.” As a result the distinctive American constitutional principles of freedom and liberty have been finally destroyed through the continuing and constant assaults by materialistic opportunists, self-seeking propositional democracy, and the all-consuming control-manics, maniac’s and freaks of democratic egalitarianism (socialism).
Our children need to be taught to love, understand and appreciate their beloved States (the American term for “country”) to understand the greatness and sacrifice of their ancestors, to uphold their original principles and morals, and to be proud of their State’s heritage’s. They need genuine images of grandeur and heroism. At the heart of the great tasks of true education is moral and character development. Our people need to know the Washington’s, the Lee’s, the Tucker’s, the Randolph’s, the Pendleton’s, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Stonewall Jackson, John C. Calhoun, J.E.B. Stuart, John Singleton Mosby and all the other great worthies noted on the Roll of Honour of those States.
Since 1865 the majority of voters in the North American member States have turned their backs on the great constitutional principles upon which the united States of America were founded, and have changed the laws of our national and State governments to match their political apostasy and immoral revolutions. We must not turn our backs on such a great heritage in order to embrace the poverty of the bland and dangerous morass of momentary American cultural pottage and its Marxist egalitarianism.
Culture matters! But, the culture of freedom and liberty defined and implemented by a God-fearing and God-honouring people did not survive in American leadership under the constant overbearing force of social engineering and moral deconstructionism that is the sacramental pablum crammed down people’s throats by federal central planning committee’s. Yes! Ideas do have consequences!
American views of polity have been readily and easily surrendered by the puppet politicians of the American Stupid Political Party (Republicans), destroyed and completely redefined by the American Evil Political Party (Democrats). Southern and USA history and their consequences, and their accurate teaching are critical to whether we have a future civil society worthy to bestow upon our descendants. Right now we offer them an inheritance of extreme debt and a morally depraved, corrupt and violent society.
You can help us establish TheSouthernPatriot.com as a powerful think-tank and educational force working to re-establish civil order and sovereignty in our de-evolved, “reconstructed”, society and Southern States by clicking on the above “Donations” button at the top of this page.
Thank you for reading and thinking with us. May God bless you as your read.
Deo Vindice,
Timothy D. Manning, M. Div.
Why Study the History and Culture of the South?
Posted on June 20, 2010 by tim
Welcome to The Southerner Partisan Reader on-line. Come, thoughtfully read, then ponder, argue, agree and disagree and then help TheSouthernPartisan.com writers and supporters celebrate and restore our countries (States) sovereignty, our cultures and our heritage of political freedom and liberty. Our hope is that you will find the published essays and books available on this site refreshing and informative while learning about the past and present Southern Culture which will guide us as we plan for the future.
There are important reasons for studying, rehearsing, celebrating and sometimes mourning the history, heritage, and culture of the “Southern States” of North America. No other American States have played a more important role in our national drama or have been on the political stage as long as have the Southern States.
The area we call St. Augustine, Florida was first explored in 1513 by Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon while he was the governor of nearby Puerto Rico. Ponce de Leon claimed the region for the Spanish crown. Before this various other Viking, Celtic and European explorers set foot on North American soil often trading with the already established Native American peoples.
Prior to the founding of St. Augustine in 1565, several earlier failed attempts at European colonization in what is now Florida were made by both Spain and France. In 1565 Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles settled the area known as St. Augustine, Florida which is the oldest continuously occupied European-established City in the United States. Among the Spanish earlier attempts to establish a permanent settlement was one made by Tristan de Luna y Arellane in 1559 in the Pensacola area.
The French attempt at settlement of the area began in 1562 under the Protestant Norman navigator Jean Ribault and under the colonial organizer Protestant French Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The expedition departed from France in February of 1562 with 150 colonists. After exploring the river San Juan (St. Johns River) in May of 1562, de Coligny named it May River which this was the month when he first landed in the area and claimed it for France. The expedition sailed north along the coast and established other settlements in what is now South Carolina. They built their primary fortresses at Port Royal Sound and Parris Island (South Carolina), where they started to build a large citadel. By July 1562 Jean Ribault returned to France. Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, who had been Ribault’s second-in-command on the 1562 expedition, organized a new colonial contingent for Florida consisting of 300 new settlers, including women, children and soldiers.
In 1607 Virginia became the birthplace of what eventually would become the republic of the united (the lower case “u” is not a print error) States of America. Virginia was the largest and most influential of the thirteen British colonies. Her sons would led the struggle for independence and for several decades remained chief among the States. Thirty-eight of the North American United States would be carved, in whole or in part, out of the land Virginia claimed in 1609. Seven of these States (besides Virginia) would be developed within her 1776 boundaries, and six of those seven include more than 180 million acres of land that Virginia voluntarily gave to the united States to promote unity and peace.
Through four centuries, Virginians and other Southerners helped define and formulate our political ideals and practices, and shaped our country’s institutions that for a period guaranteed what came to be called “The American View” of freedom and liberty. Two of its most crucial military conflicts ended on Virginia soil, first the American Revolutionary War and then Lincoln’s War to Prevent Southern Independence. One in every seven men who have served as President of the United States was born in the Commonwealth of the Old Dominion State.
Today Southerners inherit respected and honourable historic traditions with a melding (not melting as in “melting pot”) of distinctive cultures drawn largely from the Spanish, French, German, Native American, Scottish, Irish and English peoples. In the Southern States it was not necessary for people to live together in a manner that denied their rich heritages as inevitably was to occur in the States of the Deep North (New England) whose people saw their culture as a “melting pot.” Their Puritan ancestors readily gave up the Christianity for rationalism and its illegitimate fadish political children, and would demand that the rest of the American united republics do likewise.
To be worthy of our heritage’s which jointly established a common understanding of freedom, independence and liberty, we must understand, appreciate, and share the high regard Southerners have always had for the inestimable value of 1) independence, 2) liberty, 3) freedom, 4) government by the consent of the governed, 5) the role of a limited republican government as a delegated servant of society, 6) lawful, honourable dealings in every kind of human affair, and 7) for the virtue of moderate political reforms as opposed to change through violent revolution.
The writers, sponsors and staff of TheSouthernPartisan.com recognise that the distinctive American values of honour, chivalry, and noblesse oblige (obligation of honourable, generous, and responsible social behaviour) had for decades come under attack by the radical anti-Christian rationalists of the Deep North, and finally obscured in 1865 by the loss of independence and State sovereignty in every American State.
It can be rightly stated that the United States of America lost what the centralising new government called the “Civil War.” As a result the distinctive American constitutional principles of freedom and liberty have been finally destroyed through the continuing and constant assaults by materialistic opportunists, self-seeking propositional democracy, and the all-consuming control-manics, maniac’s and freaks of democratic egalitarianism (socialism).
Our children need to be taught to love, understand and appreciate their beloved States (the American term for “country”) to understand the greatness and sacrifice of their ancestors, to uphold their original principles and morals, and to be proud of their State’s heritage’s. They need genuine images of grandeur and heroism. At the heart of the great tasks of true education is moral and character development. Our people need to know the Washington’s, the Lee’s, the Tucker’s, the Randolph’s, the Pendleton’s, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Stonewall Jackson, John C. Calhoun, J.E.B. Stuart, John Singleton Mosby and all the other great worthies noted on the Roll of Honour of those States.
Since 1865 the majority of voters in the North American member States have turned their backs on the great constitutional principles upon which the united States of America were founded, and have changed the laws of our national and State governments to match their political apostasy and immoral revolutions. We must not turn our backs on such a great heritage in order to embrace the poverty of the bland and dangerous morass of momentary American cultural pottage and its Marxist egalitarianism.
Culture matters! But, the culture of freedom and liberty defined and implemented by a God-fearing and God-honouring people did not survive in American leadership under the constant overbearing force of social engineering and moral deconstructionism that is the sacramental pablum crammed down people’s throats by federal central planning committee’s. Yes! Ideas do have consequences!
American views of polity have been readily and easily surrendered by the puppet politicians of the American Stupid Political Party (Republicans), destroyed and completely redefined by the American Evil Political Party (Democrats). Southern and USA history and their consequences, and their accurate teaching are critical to whether we have a future civil society worthy to bestow upon our descendants. Right now we offer them an inheritance of extreme debt and a morally depraved, corrupt and violent society.
You can help us establish TheSouthernPatriot.com as a powerful think-tank and educational force working to re-establish civil order and sovereignty in our de-evolved, “reconstructed”, society and Southern States by clicking on the above “Donations” button at the top of this page.
Thank you for reading and thinking with us. May God bless you as your read.
Deo Vindice,
Timothy D. Manning, M. Div.
Spanish Confederates: The Carlistas
From SLMN News Blog:
13 August 2010Spanish Confederates - Carlistas
In the 1800s, Spanish patriots (who were traditionalists, decentralists and Christians) fought the Leftists in three civil wars for control of the country. Unfortunately, despite heroic efforts on their part, the outnumbered and outgunned Carlistas lost all three wars to the ruling Leftists.
In the 1860s, when Dixie was under invasion from the US, the Carlistas saw in the Confederates a natural ally. Many of them (the exact number is unknown but many hundred at least and possibly several thousand) crossed the Atlantic Ocean and fought with the South against the Yankee invaders.
The Carlistas were famous for their red berets and their St Andrew's cross. They remain a patriotic force in Spain. Though their numbers are fewer today, they are focusing on raising larger and more grounded generations of patriots to carry on the struggle in the future.
Click here http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/caldronspain/CC.htm for lots more information on the connection between the Carlistas and the Confederates.
Posted by PalmettoPatriot at 2:29 PM
13 August 2010Spanish Confederates - Carlistas
In the 1800s, Spanish patriots (who were traditionalists, decentralists and Christians) fought the Leftists in three civil wars for control of the country. Unfortunately, despite heroic efforts on their part, the outnumbered and outgunned Carlistas lost all three wars to the ruling Leftists.
In the 1860s, when Dixie was under invasion from the US, the Carlistas saw in the Confederates a natural ally. Many of them (the exact number is unknown but many hundred at least and possibly several thousand) crossed the Atlantic Ocean and fought with the South against the Yankee invaders.
The Carlistas were famous for their red berets and their St Andrew's cross. They remain a patriotic force in Spain. Though their numbers are fewer today, they are focusing on raising larger and more grounded generations of patriots to carry on the struggle in the future.
Click here http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/caldronspain/CC.htm for lots more information on the connection between the Carlistas and the Confederates.
Posted by PalmettoPatriot at 2:29 PM
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Declaration Of Southern Cultural Independence
from The League Of The South:
LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH STATEMENT
23 July 2010
Ten years ago, The League of the South issued the following Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence. Standing on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, the leadership of the League understood that the day must come in which the South would be politically free so she could preserve her sublime cultural inheritance and all that stems from it. That day has arrived. The South can no longer abide in an empire hostile to her very existence as a distinct and living entity. On this day, 23 July 2010, we, The League of the South, call upon our Southern brothers and sisters to rise and shake off the chains—both figurative and literal—that have for too long bound us in thrall to an empire of deceit and tyranny. The empire cannot survive amongst us if we ourselves do not provide it with hands and feet, eyes and ears. Moreover, it cannot continue to exist if we decline to acknowledge its legitimacy and therefore withdraw our consent from it. Lastly, it cannot keep us in bondage if we refuse to fear it.
As you read and ponder the words below, consider whether our Southern homeland is worth your sacrifice of “blood, treasure, and sacred honor.” If it is, we invite you to join our ranks and fight for her survival and prosperity against the forces of darkness that threaten to envelope her.
Michael Hill
Killen, Alabama
THE DECLARATION OF
SOUTHERN CULTURAL INDEPENDENCE
(Issued at Montgomery, Alabama, on 4 March 2000)
“We, as citizens of the sovereign States of the South, proclaim before Almighty God and before all nations of the earth, that we are a separate and distinct people, with an honourable heritage and culture worthy of protection and preservation. Standing in the very place where our President Jefferson Davis stood in 1861, we declare that Southerners are entitled, like all peoples, to self-determination. Looking ahead to the time when political self-determination is a reality, we hereby pledge ourselves to the preservation of our culture in preparation for, and in the fervent hope of, the coming of that day.
To this end, we exhort all Southerners to abjure the realm of the American Empire that now threatens the liberties of our families and communities, and of the corrupt and sterile national culture that pervades this land. The national culture of the United States is violent and profane, coarse and rude, cynical and deviant, and repugnant to the Southern people and to every people with authentic Christian sensibilities. Purveyors of the national culture have everywhere lowered standards of morality and debased human dignity. They have appealed to mankind's worst impulses through profanity and obscenity in the arts and literature; they have depicted decadence and debauchery as normal and desirable; they have distorted Southern symbols and denied our right to interpret or display those symbols; they have assumed the authority of parents in the areas of religion and education; they thus have driven a wedge between the generations; they have prostituted all areas of thought and learning for market share; they have demonised Southern heroes and canonised tyrants and war criminals; they have distorted Southern history to advance their ideas of social justice; they thus have driven a wedge between the races and regions; they have destroyed hope; they have spread despair; they have called good evil and evil good; they have everywhere substituted the opinions of men for the decrees of God.
We, as Southerners, will, as far as possible, decline to participate in this alien, national culture. Rather, we shall seek to defend and perpetuate our noble heritage and be of service to our people. In doing so, we will emulate our great heroes--Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Calhoun, Davis, Lee, and Jackson, among others. In an attempt to preserve Southern language, speech, manners, music, literature, tradition, thought, custom, and faith, we pledge to cooperate economically to build and sustain our separate educational and cultural institutions. We intend regional and local action; pledging blood, treasure, and sacred honour, we shall starve the national malignance and nourish the goodness close at hand.
Our cultural inheritance is not based upon the abstract slogans, armed doctrines, and sanctified greed that characterizes the present American regime. Instead, it is based on the permanent things that order and sustain life: faith, family, tradition, community, and private property; loyalty, courage, and honour. Cut off from these permanent things, the South will become only a point on the compass, and our descendants will justifiably curse us for the destruction of their noble heritage.
To our Southern forebears the triune God gave the inspiration and wisdom to create a confederated, constitutional republic based on the principle of local self-government and sustained by a vibrant and vital cultural heritage. We consider our heritage a sublime and unmerited blessing and we cherish it. Today it is threatened as never before by the godless national culture of death, supported by an overbearing government that acknowledges no limits to its power.
We reaffirm the cultural inheritance of our honourable forefathers and declare to the world our intention to defend and preserve it. The preservation of historic cultures--especially those that establish liberty--has never been cheap or easy. We hereby proclaim to the world that the struggle to protect and advance our Southern cultural heritage begins in earnest today. Henceforth, we shall stand steadfast in defense of our inheritance as free men and women of the South, and we welcome all who share our principles to stand with us. As witness to our intent, we affix our signatures to this Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence, invoking the blessings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, on a just cause.”
(Please note British orthography used in Declaration)
______________
Statement issued by Dr. Michael Hill of Killen, Alabama. He can be reached for further comment at (256) 757-6789 or by email
LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH STATEMENT
23 July 2010
Ten years ago, The League of the South issued the following Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence. Standing on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, the leadership of the League understood that the day must come in which the South would be politically free so she could preserve her sublime cultural inheritance and all that stems from it. That day has arrived. The South can no longer abide in an empire hostile to her very existence as a distinct and living entity. On this day, 23 July 2010, we, The League of the South, call upon our Southern brothers and sisters to rise and shake off the chains—both figurative and literal—that have for too long bound us in thrall to an empire of deceit and tyranny. The empire cannot survive amongst us if we ourselves do not provide it with hands and feet, eyes and ears. Moreover, it cannot continue to exist if we decline to acknowledge its legitimacy and therefore withdraw our consent from it. Lastly, it cannot keep us in bondage if we refuse to fear it.
As you read and ponder the words below, consider whether our Southern homeland is worth your sacrifice of “blood, treasure, and sacred honor.” If it is, we invite you to join our ranks and fight for her survival and prosperity against the forces of darkness that threaten to envelope her.
Michael Hill
Killen, Alabama
THE DECLARATION OF
SOUTHERN CULTURAL INDEPENDENCE
(Issued at Montgomery, Alabama, on 4 March 2000)
“We, as citizens of the sovereign States of the South, proclaim before Almighty God and before all nations of the earth, that we are a separate and distinct people, with an honourable heritage and culture worthy of protection and preservation. Standing in the very place where our President Jefferson Davis stood in 1861, we declare that Southerners are entitled, like all peoples, to self-determination. Looking ahead to the time when political self-determination is a reality, we hereby pledge ourselves to the preservation of our culture in preparation for, and in the fervent hope of, the coming of that day.
To this end, we exhort all Southerners to abjure the realm of the American Empire that now threatens the liberties of our families and communities, and of the corrupt and sterile national culture that pervades this land. The national culture of the United States is violent and profane, coarse and rude, cynical and deviant, and repugnant to the Southern people and to every people with authentic Christian sensibilities. Purveyors of the national culture have everywhere lowered standards of morality and debased human dignity. They have appealed to mankind's worst impulses through profanity and obscenity in the arts and literature; they have depicted decadence and debauchery as normal and desirable; they have distorted Southern symbols and denied our right to interpret or display those symbols; they have assumed the authority of parents in the areas of religion and education; they thus have driven a wedge between the generations; they have prostituted all areas of thought and learning for market share; they have demonised Southern heroes and canonised tyrants and war criminals; they have distorted Southern history to advance their ideas of social justice; they thus have driven a wedge between the races and regions; they have destroyed hope; they have spread despair; they have called good evil and evil good; they have everywhere substituted the opinions of men for the decrees of God.
We, as Southerners, will, as far as possible, decline to participate in this alien, national culture. Rather, we shall seek to defend and perpetuate our noble heritage and be of service to our people. In doing so, we will emulate our great heroes--Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Calhoun, Davis, Lee, and Jackson, among others. In an attempt to preserve Southern language, speech, manners, music, literature, tradition, thought, custom, and faith, we pledge to cooperate economically to build and sustain our separate educational and cultural institutions. We intend regional and local action; pledging blood, treasure, and sacred honour, we shall starve the national malignance and nourish the goodness close at hand.
Our cultural inheritance is not based upon the abstract slogans, armed doctrines, and sanctified greed that characterizes the present American regime. Instead, it is based on the permanent things that order and sustain life: faith, family, tradition, community, and private property; loyalty, courage, and honour. Cut off from these permanent things, the South will become only a point on the compass, and our descendants will justifiably curse us for the destruction of their noble heritage.
To our Southern forebears the triune God gave the inspiration and wisdom to create a confederated, constitutional republic based on the principle of local self-government and sustained by a vibrant and vital cultural heritage. We consider our heritage a sublime and unmerited blessing and we cherish it. Today it is threatened as never before by the godless national culture of death, supported by an overbearing government that acknowledges no limits to its power.
We reaffirm the cultural inheritance of our honourable forefathers and declare to the world our intention to defend and preserve it. The preservation of historic cultures--especially those that establish liberty--has never been cheap or easy. We hereby proclaim to the world that the struggle to protect and advance our Southern cultural heritage begins in earnest today. Henceforth, we shall stand steadfast in defense of our inheritance as free men and women of the South, and we welcome all who share our principles to stand with us. As witness to our intent, we affix our signatures to this Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence, invoking the blessings of our Lord, Jesus Christ, on a just cause.”
(Please note British orthography used in Declaration)
______________
Statement issued by Dr. Michael Hill of Killen, Alabama. He can be reached for further comment at (256) 757-6789 or by email
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