Southern fiction has a new  hero—Tom Ironsides makes his  appearance in book form in Perrin Lovett’s work The Substitute (Shotwell Publishing, 2023). Sequels and prequels are in the offing.

Ironsides is a sort of James Bond, but a much better man.  He is a master of his former craft as a CIA operative, although he has progressively developed a realisation that he had not really been defending his country but rather the worst people in it.  Lovett describes his paramilitary adventures vividly and more realistically than Bond fantasies.

Ironsides has seen much of the world and has lived a good deal abroad, including as a college professor in Slovakia. Like Bond, he drinks and likes women (and additionally is a cigar connoisseur ). He is also a Christian, a genuine  classical scholar, and feels deeply a duty toward his declining country and people. Ironsides was born and bred in the snows of New Hampshire, but is a happily adopted South Carolinian.

In his first book appearance Ironsides’s social conscience leads him in retirement to sign up as a substitute teacher for South Carolina schools in the Augusta, Georgia metropolitan area. He wants to know what is happening in education.

From here The Substitute  is based on the  first-hand experiences, blow by blow, of the author as a Substitute.  These experiences are a cold shower (or an alarm bell if you prefer) for anyone who really wants to know what goes on in the public schools.  And we all should want to know.

Ironsides’s encounters in elementary, middle, and high schools with dozens of administrators, teachers, and students–good, bad, and indifferent–are authentic. There are a number of good books about the perilous state of American education, but Lovett provides us with a nuts and bolts, every day portrayal that really strikes home.

There are some good and dedicated teachers–almost all demoralised and wanting to get out even if it means working for Walmart.  The students are mostly good (although there is a violent minority who are never appropriately handled). But the young people are, as they vaguely understand, the victims of fearful, faddish, over-controlling bureaucrats who have never had any idea about what education should be.

The schools barely teach reading, writing and ‘rithmetic to some of the students.  As for passing on Western Civilisation, which has been the successful goal of education for centuries, the intellectual and moral mediocrities who are in charge do not even know what you are talking about.

​Ironsides entered the schools in an open-minded investigative attitude and in hope of contributing some improvement. He ends his year with the certainty that there is no hope of reform in the vast decaying educational empire.  The preservers of civilisation  must leave behind  the mass public “education” and begin innovative work elsewhere.

From South Carolina to Florida, Southerners are familiar with the Palmetto bug, a large crafty creature that is nearly impossible to control. A relative of the more modest roach.

Some are as big as a small mouse although flatter. If encountered they have more moves than a running back. They are swift and dodge in unexpected ways. When you think they are dead they suddenly run again. They apparently thrive on anything and operate freely in the dark. If you annihilate a batch there is another battalion pressing forward in just a few days.

​I have a horrible feeling that the idiot Joe Biden and his evil handlers are going to stumble into a nuclear war that will wipe out most of the living. I imagine that the tough Palmetto Bug will survive and flourish. I suppose that could mean that the South finally has won the war, though not in a satisfactory way.

​Of course, none of this will happen, even if it would make the Republicans wildly popular. Congresspersons collaborate with the federal bureaucracy and party leadership more than they do with their own constituents. And Republican Congressmen tend to be ignorant, egoist empty suits.  

• A 10% cut in the pay of all federal employees making over $100,000 a year and a 20% cut in all making over $200,000 a year. This should include pensioners, the military, and the judiciary (except judges who are constitutionally protected). And stop filling federal jobs that become vacant. 
• Apply the many millions in savings to the federal debt, which has mortgaged the life of our children and grandchildren. First pay off the foreign debt holders at the lowest cost possible. Perhaps repudiation should be considered. Then, as soon as possible, the wealthy domestic debt holders. These are people who have never done anything for their country. They are getting risk-free, tax-free bonuses from the taxpayers - a longstanding scandal. Then seriously study getting rid of the debt - which of course will include an elimination of deficit spending. 
• Abolish the Department of Education, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and other agencies that can be identified as performing functions (often useless or destructive) that are no business of the federal government. 
• The internet moguls - Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, Google, etc. are public utilities and should be regulated as such - like oil, banking, fire departments, insurance, television and radio, telephone, etc. 
• Immediately vacate all federal district attorney positions. (The few good ones can be reappointed.) Fill the positions with men and women who will actually enforce the law. They are there, but finding them will be a major challenge that cannot be left to Republican party hacks. 
• Pardon all the January 6 protestors, some of whom are still being held as political prisoners and prosecute the policeman who murdered an unarmed female citizen in cold blood. 
• Strictly enforce all the immigration laws and remove all personnel who fail to do their full duty in this regard. This includes keeping all illegal immigrants in detention for deportation. 
• Prosecute Antifa and BLM for every instance of violence and corruption. 
• Withdraw from NATO. The Europeans can defend themselves and handle their own affairs.  
• Stop financing a war against Russia and renew Trump’s efforts at peaceful communication. 
• Stop orchestrating coups against foreign governments like Syria, Ukraine, etc. It was CIA meddling that created Osama bin Laden.  
• Deeply reform the CIA and the FBI. This will take wise and forceful action that can only be possible with the authority of genuine law respecting patriots. 
• Withdraw from all the 80 or more military basis in foreign lands that are not directly concerned with defense of the Western hemisphere. 

The most difficult tasks for a new conservative administration will be correcting errors of the past. 

• A blue-ribbon commission of honest Americans should thoroughly investigate the Covid-19 event with special attention to government wrongdoing. Whether he is President or not, Trump should openly apologise to the American people for the Covid episode. He was misled by the supposed official experts. Those “experts” who have damaged the health of citizens should be prosecuted, including the impostor Fauci. 
• Federal agents who murdered unarmed women and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge should be identified and prosecuted if they are still living. 
• We should admit that the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were badly mistaken, partly as the fault of persons in high office who lied to the people and who wasted American lives and resources on those lies. 
• Apply a family-centered moral code to the licensed mass broadcast media.

If there is any interest in a true reform platform, we have a lot more suggestions. Alas, the first instinct of Republicans is to avoid all ideas and issues that might label them as not being respectable and moderate. They avoid anything controversial that might deprive them of their power, profit, and perks. 

The Republicans are now using Trump’s troubles as a money-raising gimmick. They will do as they always do. Use Trump’s troubles to raise money, and then do nothing for him but give it to his enemies in the party. And there are still enough affluent stupid Midwesterners (and I fear some Southerners) who will fall for the con game.

Donald Trump is making some good noises about immigration and war. But does he really understand the Deep State and how to find and marshal the people to beat it? And it is a moral failing that he has not done more for his supporters who are still political prisoners after Jan. 6.

There are millions of us hoping for DeSantis but fearing he is just another Republican posing as a conservative.

There used to be a saying, “There will always be an England.” Tell that to the Muslim “grooming” gangs and the Asian Mayor of the now Third-World city London.

You think America is not in trouble? The free movie streaming services are now advertising HIV medicine and showing happy, loving sodomite couples. And, don’t forget, we now have a trans-sexual 4-star Admiral. How can someone concerned with changing their sex possibly have shown such superior merit as to be promoted to such a position?

George Floyd’s death occurred in Minnesota. What does that have to do with Confederate memorials? Most Americans can’t remember beyond yesterday, but I remember when lily white Minnesota led the campaign to impose “Civil Rights” on the South. Things have changed greatly but they still blame us.

It was once said, and sometimes still is, that American higher education is the best in the world. It was never true, just Yankee boasting, except where European scholars had been captured. When it is claimed now, one does not know whether to roll in the floor with a laughing fit and bang your head against a wall.

​The U.S. Navy has censored the name of its ship Chancellorsville because it was a Confederate battle victory. The battle has been studied by military experts in the U.S. and around the world for well over a century. It was a battle won by Americans.

I have always been in favour of capital punishment. There are just some people who need to be eliminated for the benefit of us all. And not all of them are politicians.

I just ran across the bit of reconciliation verse from the late 1800s by a Yankee poet,

Will Thompson:

FOLD THE BANNERS
Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns!
Love rules. Her gentle purpose runs.
A mighty mother turns in tears
The pages of her battle years,
Lamenting all her fallen sons.

Russell Kirk wrote that acquisitiveness, the desire to get and keep wealth, is often mistaken for conservatism. Vividly exhibited every day by the Republican Party.

The “conservatives” at National Review are advocating a Presidential ticket of Tim Scott and Nicki Haley. They are too ignorant of history and the Constitution to know that Electors can’t vote for two people from the same State.

At the Fredericksburg battlefield there is a moving monument by a famous sculptor to the “Angel of Marye’s Heights.” The Angel is the South Carolina Confederate soldier Richard Kirkland, who risked his life to give aid to the wounded Yankees left on the battlefield. I wonder if the federal government terrorists have destroyed this already or have targeted it for elimination.

Some time back I stumbled onto a movie in which Confederate soldiers rode into a town, shot women and children in the back, and burned people in a church. I have heard a hint that there is a new TV drama about federal agents tracking down Confederate criminals after the war. It seems established that our people were evil sinners against the righteous.

This stuff is a gigantic preposterous lie. Given the intensity of the war, Southern behaviour was in a large measure honourable and Christian. Lincoln’s massive invasions of the South were most certainly a War Crime by any known definition. Its intent was to conquer a people and deprive them of their self-government.

And tens of thousands, maybe more, Union soldiers were war criminals, deliberately stealing the property, burning the houses, and destroying the food of women and children, not to mention destroying churches and schools. And they were just as hard, maybe harder on the black population of the South as the white. The record of federal crimes against civilians can fill a dozen books. And the criminals were often promoted and enjoyed substantial lifetime pensions.

Does the American government need such falsehood to try to prove its righteousness? It is a BAD CAUSE that must be defended by lies.

The United States is showing every sign of being governed by a decadent ruling class. In the Ukraine business they are still living in a mental universe of 50 years ago. They are too self-centered, shallow, and in love with their own power to realise that the situation has changed and needs a new approach. To continue the Cold War under changed conditions is very stupid and dangerous. But our leaders can’t think of anything other than to pose and play with the immense military that was built up by a previous generation and are incapable of understanding a changed world. The U.S. leadership continuing the Cold War after Communism had collapsed will be seen in future as one of the great mistakes of history.

The Lee monument destroyed by the official hooligans in Richmond had only one word: “LEE.” That was all that was needed in a ciivilised country and time.

To Our Valued Reckonin’ Contributors and Readers,

My brilliant daughter Anne created the Reckonin' site as a place for Southern opinions. Reckoning means calling to account the many enemies of our Southern people for their lies and malice.

We have posted a lot of good stuff and gathered a few dozen writers. Other responsibilities have at times kept us from giving as much attention to the website as we would like, but we intend to keep at it at a better pace.

Notice our two great new writers, Perrin Lovett and Robert Peters. And remember our faithful, principled and talented regulars like Gail Jarvis, Mark Atkins, Walt Garlington, Bo Traywick, and Carolina Contrarian. Not to mention Yours Truly, who intends to contribute more in the future. For some inexplicable reason, people seem to like my scribblings.

​Cordially, Clyde Wilson

In another column I confessed my admiration for the Russian leader Putin. This is based partly on reading his speeches. These show him to have a broad vision, to be a spokesman for Western Civilisation, and to have an understanding of the enemies of that civilisation who dominate America and Europe during our time. He speaks as a statesman, in reference to reality and longtime consequences, in sharp contrast to the vague blather about “democracy” practiced by Joseph Biden.

Putin earned his spurs in a hard school, rising to popularity and power in the chaos of the disintegrating Soviet Empire, and gaining the recognition of his people as a true patriot and leader.

Compare Biden, a museum quality specimen of a hack politician, representing a rotten borough for years. Follow his career and you will never see any evidence of an idea or a principle, nor any consistency. He has always taken the position that seemed most popular at the moment. Just as he is doing now, in defiance of his previous reputation for being somewhat moderate.

And all the time he kept his snout in the public trough, getting rich for himself and his kin. (At least Trump earned some of his riches in the private sector.) And all along acting with a churlish groping of women.

In fact, nobody would ever have thought of Biden as Presidential material if Obama had not chosen him as Vice President. One is tempted to suspect that Obama picked the weakest white man he could find.

Putin is an anti-communist. He knows what Communism is. Biden, on the other hand, supports Critical Race Theory, a Communist doctrine, and the leftist street mobs that suppress law and order and rightwing dissent, a Communist tactic.

Putin has fostered the return of Christianity where there was once a militantly atheist regime. Biden, claiming Christian membership, celebrates abortion and perversion in defiance of the doctrine of his own faith.

Putin has made mistakes, but he has shown that he genuinely loves his country and people and strives to do what is best for them. His border war is designed to protect his own people. His conflict with the criminal, fascist state of the Ukraine is not an assault on democracy. Meanwhile, Biden is engaged in replacing his own people with hordes of illegal immigrants, supported by his government, who outnumber the people of several States.

Putin has in fact acted moderately, always ready for negotiations and refraining from dangerous escalation of the present conflict despite Western provocations. While Biden has declared total hostility to Russia. Not to mention that his handlers tell him to rattle the saber at the great powers of China and Iran, which shows a reckless ignorance and arrogance. The only excuse being that it is necessary to defend “democracy,” whatever he thinks it is. And at the same time weakening our armed forces by the destruction of ideologically imagined Diversity.

​Take your pick.