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  • Features
    • Book Bench
    • Charlottesville
    • COVID Commentary
    • Dixie These Days
    • Links
    • Magnolia Muse
    • Matters of Faith
    • Movie Room
    • Southern History
    • Writing Contest 2022
  • Contributors
    • Full List
    • Mark Atkins
    • Al Benson
    • Carolina Contrarian
    • Enoch Cade
    • Boyd Cathey
    • Dissident Mama
    • Ted Ehmann
    • Walt Garlington
    • Gail Jarvis
    • Gene Kizer, Jr.
    • Neil Kumar
    • Perrin Lovett
    • Ilana Mercer
    • Tom Riley
    • H.V. Traywick, Jr.
    • Clyde Wilson
  • Contact

Mark Atkins

What the Old Yet Owe the Young

3/26/2023

1 Comment

 
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Ok, do we have too many people or not enough? Some say too many and that we need to shrink the population. This was the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party when back in 1980 it implemented its one-child policy. Others say not enough and will point to China’s one-child policy as a case in point. As it turned out, China’s super-smart central planners failed to anticipate the impact that a falling birth rate would have forty years later or that post-industrial Chinese women would, once the restriction was lifted, choose to only have 1.3 children, much like their counterparts in Spain, Italy, Japan, and Korea. As a consequence China is now facing an irreversible population implosion and is suffering all the problems naturally associated with not having a second, third, or fourth child.

One problem that it has compounded is one that is born of our human nature, namely, the question of who is to take care of the old and the young. In all human societies this task has always fallen on the shoulders of those in between, that is, those who are roughly 20 to let’s say 60 years old depending on the times in which you live.

The problem with a shrinking population is that as the years roll by there are fewer adult children to care for aging parents or even grandparents, who at the same time have to take care of their own young. But c’est la vie. We’re talking about family so you do what you must.

But there is a twist today in the form of the new social welfare state. In the developed world the state has promised, and to some extent has delivered cradle-to-grave care, and people, being hopelessly shortsighted as they are, have come to expect it as they do the sun to rise.

All this is fine and dandy unless the state is doing so with taxes paid by a working age population that is shrinking. Spain is a prime example of this today. So the working age, tax paying population shrinks, and thus tax revenue, while the tax consuming population entering retirement expands. This is the rub.

So what’s the state to do?

Well, it sort of depends upon the old people because in this democratic age they vote, but also because the modern economy allows man to easily accumulate capital over the course of his lifetime– capital that is easy to preserve, liquidate, transfer, and invest– and thus the elderly also have a great deal more economic clout than they did in the past when they had to rely upon their adult children to hunt the buffalo and tend the fire.

Now, what the post-WWII mass of people that are now over sixty could say is ‘Whoa-dare Margaret! This is madness. When our parents and grandparents set this neat little system up they didn’t anticipate these new and strange demographic and economic realities. Its madness that our children and grandchildren should be paying so much in taxes to support us. I mean, I don't want to be set adrift on an iceberg or turned into soylent green, but neither do I want to be an excessive burden on young folks who need to be providing for my great-grandchildren. Nope! Margaret! I think we need to lower our expectations of what the state will provide for us in our golden years!’

But how likely is this?

Well, considering that old people remain human til they die and thus tend to be a wee bit self-centered and shortsighted, not likely at all. Add to this that some old folks tend to become scared of their own shadow. And so you do not have a demographic that is likely to take one for the team.

Another less altruistic solution is immigration. That is, you import working age people from whatever part of the world has a surplus in order to tax them in order to keep the gravy train rolling.

This will suit the bureaucrats just fine. After all, they need a paycheque like everyone else, they enjoy their status, and they just love watching the machine work. But while bureaucrats may be able to reduce all things to statistics, some statistics represent a decreasing quality of life or even human misery for the Common Man.

The problem is that people bring their history, notions, instincts, inclinations, customs, expectations and kitchen smells with them. Much like the English did when they settled Jamestown which turned into Virginia which turned into the South aka America. I’m fine with that but the Indians maybe were not so much.
Not all peoples (cultures) are compatible with all others and some just flat out clash.

I am Generation X. My generation and especially the Boomers need to revisit what it means to be old. Our children and grandchildren do in fact owe us something, but this is a debt for services rendered, the principle one being bequeathing to them to the best of our ability a secure future. It is wrong to crush them with debt or taxes, or via mass immigration degrade our culture and thus their quality of life, so that we can enjoy a standard of living in our golden years that kings of old could not have imagined.

​Better to be a greeter at Walmart until you are carried out on a stretcher than to do such a thing.
This piece was previously published on Look Away on February 17, 2023.
1 Comment

The Left in Sheep's Clothing

2/11/2023

2 Comments

 
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Were I to meet Satan face to face my assumption is that he would be dressed to the nines and his manners perfect. Forgive my sexism but I do assume that he would take the form of a man. But if he, she, or it were to assume the form of a woman, I assume that that ze would be a knock-out.

There is that dadburn sexism again!

I also assume that he would be a brilliant conversationalist, full of wit, and speak a great deal of truth.

But I would also assume that the truth he spoke would be a cover for the lie that, once believed, would lead to the spit on which I would be roasted repeatedly for his amusement and supper. So, I would be on my guard.

I was born during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s and have grown up and lived throughout the Culture War that it spawned. My enemy is Progressivism and the Wolves that drive it, though not the Carnivorous Sheep that, via democracy, support the Wolves passively in exchange for Bread and Circuses.

Throughout my adult life and right up to 2020, in my naïveté, I believed that Progressives believed what they said about democracy and freedom of speech, that is, that they were supreme goods. I did not believe that these two ideas are supreme goods, but rather I believed that Progressives thought them to be so. I did believe that they were ideas that could be good and useful within a certain context. But I took some comfort in all this because it meant that we at least had some common ground. We were adversaries for sure, but at least we agreed to some common rules of engagement.

After 2020 I at last understood that American Progressivism has been lying all along about its commitment to freedom of speech and democracy. As a result, I no longer trust the American Left at all and suspect that it is not nearly so interested in homelessness, the environment, or racism as it makes itself out to be.

No, since 2020 the Left has continued to show its true colours. It has removed the sheep’s clothing to reveal itself to be the existential threat to sanity so that even the Common Man can at last see it. But this is good news too. For those who have the high ground, the less fog on the battlefield the better.

​As frightening as facing off with a red Satan with fangs, forked tail, and trident would be, at least there would be no doubt he is Satan.
This piece was previously published at Look Away on Feb. 9, 2023.
2 Comments

It Takes a Tribe

1/22/2023

2 Comments

 
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I heard a sermon recently where the preacher reminded his congregation that we live in a post-industrial world where the extended family has lost much of its practical relevance and necessity. That until recently and stretching back into the mist of time we humans lived in what may be thought of as extended families, tight knit communities, or tribes.

If you’ll enter into your imagination for a spell and imagine your life and the world around you were we to cease to have electricity or the combustion engine, you’ll begin to see what he was getting at. Our lives would quickly begin to resemble those of our ancestors from let’s say roughly 1900 and before. This would include not just the supreme importance of immediate family with its bonds of intense sacrificial love, but also the reemergence of the importance of the extended family with all of its bounds of sentiment, shared values, and practical value.

Having to return to the speed of walking or horse, and thus unable to travel long distances quickly, the geographic space in which we live would shrink dramatically. One result of this would be that our actual dwellings would once again become centres of production, childcare, and education, as well as our hospitals and nursing homes, as they had been since the beginning of time.

If country music is an indicator of longing then there may be a part of us that is drawn to what we imagine as a simpler time. Agrarianism is alive and well after all, but it remains a subculture, and there are few who choose to live it. The truth is that our great-grandmothers bought that electric stove the minute they could, as well as dozens of other gadgets that have radically reduced woman’s work. We gave up gardening when we didn’t have to garden. Likewise our horses and wagons.

Thanks to the ongoing Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century and the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century, we have now become so prosperous that famine has lost its place of honour in our collective nightmares. Not even our best story tellers in cinema can frighten us with it as we munch on a quarter bushel of popcorn.

Attendant with and allowed by this great prosperity, and buoyed by mankind’s innate desire to have as much as possible in exchange for as little as possible, the modern welfare state has emerged. It has not just liberated man from famine, it has liberated woman from man, the old from the young, and driven the last nail in the coffin in our old tribal traditions.

But by having lost tribe on which we were so dependent and to which owed loyalty and service, have we lost anything of meaning? If we are in fact but individuals, then no. The tribe was just a social construct born of necessity.

​Unless it wasn’t. Unless the tribe was and is in fact as much a product of human existence as the family itself. Unless the tribe, like the family, provides some needful function other than just the practical.
This piece was published on Look Away on Dec. 8, 2022.
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A Culture Divided, A Country to Follow

10/30/2022

1 Comment

 
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As a native born Southerner of British origins I am culturally what I call a 500-Year-Protestant. I can say that my people have been Protestant since their-lord Henry VIII decided that he needed to get in front of the Protestant Reformation, crown himself head of the church in England, and divorce and remarry whomever he wished. And confiscate church property while he was at it.

Prior to that of course my people in Britain were Catholic and doubtless accepted the commonly held worldview of that time.

The Reformation would see a new religious division added to the ordinary dynastic and resource struggles of that age. The 16th century would give my people Bloody Mary, Good Queen Bess, and a hatred of the Spanish.

Times were a’changing and my people changed with them, and then eventually they began crossing the Atlantic in wooden sailing ships, bringing the entirety of who they were as Englishmen, or Scotsmen, or Scotch-Irish to a New World, coming, in time, to identify themselves as Virginians or Carolinians, and then eventually as regular Americans, i.e. Southerners.

All along the way they would become Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, or church of Christ, and be deeply animated by these faiths.

By the passage of time, these and other divisions would emerge, as would unifying moments.

But at all times my people were being shaped by the times, as were your people, and this process continues today. Our ancestors carried the baton where they would, which they passed to us who are bobbing and weaving through woods as best we can or know how, and we will pass it on to our offspring who will continue the race more or less kind of in the general direction that we’ve been sort of heading.

It has been a long time since the memory of the times of Queen Elizabeth I animated us collectively, to say nothing of Edward III, or Harold II, or Alfred the Great. Didn’t he conquer Persia or something? And then who were Hengist and Horsa? That we do not remember them does not mean that what they were and did does not live on through us. Yes the water is flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, but only because it snowed in the Rockies.

But we do remember George Washington. He is on the dollar bill and the quarter, and has something to do with the 4th of July, which has something to do with America. A state was named after him and he was a pretty good feller. Something about a cherry tree too. Likewise Abraham Lincoln was honest and freed the slaves. Robert E. Lee was noble and the South’s finest. And Martin Luther King led his people to freedom against the South’s worst.

However, there is a new division today that makes the Reformation look like a misunderstanding. A new history maker that sees things very differently; that is insisting that we forget what we think we know and remember; insisting instead that we know and remember what it knows and remembers. A New American who has almost no tie with the land and no sense of our founding traditions, much less what pre-dated and produced them.

It is commonly known today as Woke-ism, the most recent radical manifestation of Progressivism.

The differences between Catholic and Protestant were grave and have been consequential. Enormously so at the macro level. But that is nothing compared to what Progressivism had already achieved prior to 2020, and heaven forbid, what it appears bent on doing now.

Sadly the division that Progressivism has created, and that its offspring Wokism is creating in our culture is likely to be permanent and enduring. But the great difference between it and Protestantism is that the latter held fast to the Book and never abandoned a common sense understanding of basic human nature, and this has allowed Protestants and Catholics to, more or less, sorta, kinda get along.
​
And almost to unite in the face of an enemy that appears to want to redefine the answer to two plus two.

This piece was published on Look Away on October 6, 2022.
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How To Survive Good Times

10/9/2022

2 Comments

 
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​‘Hard times create strong men,
strong men create good times,
good times create weak men,
and weak men create hard times.’

G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

There are two constant imperatives borne of man’s human nature. He will first seek security, and then contentment or pleasure. These ideas may be summed up in the ancient adage Bread & Circuses, and he who can give either of those to the Common Man will be amongst the rulers or elite of the people.

Security is difficult to attain, and if you look at history from 80,000 feet, evidently exceptionally hard to maintain for long. And even the Common Man today who has lived sixty years and remembers anything of the lives of his grandparents knows enough of the risings and fallings of man’s works to appreciate the truth of this.

Surviving has been a struggle for us humans during the overwhelming majority of our known history and presumably the entirety of pre-history. And getting and staying ahead is difficult even in fat times. This is just the nature of things.

It is the nature of things because if I do not raise that fork to my mouth, no one else will, and if I do not guard the contents of my plate, someone else will eat from it. I can lay in the grass for a bit, but if I do not seek shelter, eventually I’ll freeze to death, or die of pneumonia, to be eaten by ants, my bones eventually just returning to dust.

So we must struggle and if the struggle doesn’t break us, it makes us stronger and wiser. And becoming stronger and wiser contributes to our security which can lead to greater contentment and pleasure.

Eventually, due to the strength born of our struggle (or our ancestor’s struggles, for we inherit a great deal more than just their looks) we achieve a degree of security sufficient to allow us to devote more time and energy to the pursuit of contentment or pleasure. The problem is that we humans are shortsighted. Living off the fat of our labours, or just good fortune, it’s at this point that we usually neglect the struggle which made us strong. Thus we become weak again, which forces us to struggle once again. And the whole cycle begins anew.

​This cycle can only be short-circuited during the good times via understanding, wisdom, and discipline. By understanding we mean correctly interpreting our circumstances. By wisdom we mean knowing what is best or right. By discipline we mean doing that which is best or right even when we do not have to.
​
This was originally published on Look Away on Sept. 23, 2022.
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Christianity: The opiate of the masses

9/10/2022

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Karl Marx (1818-1883), the founder of communism, said that religion is the opium of the masses. That is, its function was to sedate them. For Marx religion gave an illusory happiness (or comfort) that prohibited those thus sedated from achieving real happiness, that is, happiness here on Earth in this life.

Thus religion impeded his idea of human progress.

Since before the French Revolution (1789-1799) we have gone a long way towards removing the impediment to progress that is Christianity and thus getting the masses off the Christian dope. We have replaced the old hope in the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with a new hope in the trinity of freedom, equality, and individuality.

But I question the value of the trade.

Yes we have been liberated from the yoke of the Church, yet ever more circumscribed by large secular institutions. Yes we have been liberated by the oppression inherent in the demands of Christianity. Liberated to live for ourselves and do what we want.

Yes we have been liberated from marital bondage. And those women and children, thus freed from the oppression of husbands and fathers are free to root, hog, or die. You know, what doesn’t kill you…

Yes, we are more equal. That is, equally bad.

In our attempt to create equality we have created vast social welfare networks that take from the productive and give to the unproductive, sucking the vitality out of our economy and more importantly out of our very culture.

Liberated from the burden of tribe and family, we glory in our individuality. Alone and depressed. But at least we have movies, video games, and social media to distract us.

We also have drugs to ease the pain and give an illusion of happiness.

If the hope of succor in this life and peace in the next makes Christianity an opiate, then I’ll say that this Christian dope, with its call to self-discipline and self-sacrifice, is infinity to be preferred to actual opium.

This piece was previously published on Look Away on September 8, 2022.
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In Defence of a Simple Life: Axe vs. Chainsaw

8/20/2022

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​Twenty-two years ago my wife and I were house shopping and I remember in one house an impressed realtor showing us a closet in which was a tall bank of electronic gizmos that reminded me of a mainframe. This house had been wired to do everything electronics could do back in 2000. A smart-house indeed! $20,000 worth of smart.

But I am now doing a mental inventory of how many electronic gizmos that I own that are now twenty-two years old and still functioning. Hrmmm. So far the list includes a 2001 Dodge 4×4. The thing still runs well enough but so does my eighty-three year old father.

While I am no techy, I am however, like everyone else, perfectly aware that since 2000 electronic gadgetry has improved considerably. I also know that when electronic gadgetry was invented long before 2000 that a new priestly class of techies had to be instituted who understood its mysteries and could explain it to the rest of us or, at least guide us in our observances.

My assumption is that everything I saw in that closet is today in a landfill and that many of the wires that were so painstakingly installed during the construction of the house have been pulled out in subsequent renovations, or more likely hang lifelessly gathering dust in the perpetual darkness between studs.

As I consider the trouble that maintaining and enjoying my smart phones (plural) have given me over the years, I wonder what troubles that $20,000 system gave the owner or owners of that house over the last twenty. What was the cost in time, dollars, and brain damage to keep it going?

What was the cost to upgrade and replace its components.

Was it all worth it?

To put this in a little perspective, had the owner invested that $20,000 and managed a modest 7% per annum increase it would today be worth $77,000.

Only the owner or owners can answer the question. I for one can answer the question that yes, my smart phones have been worth the trouble and money. Hard to imagine life now without one, double edge sword though they may be.

Likewise I love my riding lawn mower. I do not take the combustion engine or paved roads or rubber tires for granted. Likewise I very much appreciate how when you enter a room and flick up that little switch thingy on the wall that the whole room lights up as though it were high noon. I can in fact imagine the semi-darkness that our ancestors lived in for half of their lives. Likewise I can imagine life before modern medicine and nutrition. Or at least our vastly improve understanding of nutrition.

But all of these have come at a price, and for most of us we pay that price by what we earn in what we have longed called the ‘rat race.’ That frenetic pace of life that keeps us busy in order to enjoy a standard of living unimaginable to kings of old.

We can now cross the Atlantic Ocean in hours, instead of weeks, or not at all.

We use a chainsaw instead of the simple but near indestructible axe.

We ride elevators instead of ascend stairs or ladders.

We turn on the forklift, instead of harnessing the mule.

And the list could on and on and on. I would not want to have to go back to the so-called good ol’ days, but I only tolerate the complexity of these good-new-days and at times question the value of its many luxuries, or time and back saving tools, if in the having I must run forever in a rat race.

There is something to be said for keeping things simple.

This piece was originally published at Look Away on August 17, 2022.
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A Test for 17 and 18-year-old Americans

6/3/2022

1 Comment

 
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Man has educated his young since the beginning of time. It is simply what we humans do. We inherit our nature just like dogs and cats, but unlike dogs and cats, part of our nature is to pass on what we know or remember to our offspring that they might survive and prosper in a world of danger, want, and decay. For example, an infant may instinctively ‘latch on’ just as a dog may lick itself, but eventually the baby will also learn to speak from others, as well as how to make a fire or use the wheel.

The two questions for all men in all times are what to teach the young and how. In our age this means first and foremost that beginning at about five years old we subject our young to a thirteen-year regimen of study directed by professional teachers. The details will vary from state to state but the state will by and large dictate the terms, and to educate along this pattern is more or less compulsory.

It should be pointed out that this pattern of mass and compulsory education over the bulk of childhood and youth is only something like 150 years old here in America, a very short segment on the timeline of human history.

Now, prior to 1500 man had gathered and passed on a remarkable amount of information that we still enjoy today, relatively little having been lost. But since then our knowledge of all that is has been expanding like a mushroom cloud. And part of this information expansion is our ability to access it almost instantly via computers and the internet today.

My question is, after 150 years can we say that the thirteen-year K-12 regimen that we have put our young through for generations has been an effective transmitter of the accumulated knowledge of man?

For some it has been, but is it possible, just maybe, that what we take for granted today as the way to educate our young is not only a soul-crushing waste of time for many, but in regards to transmitting knowledge, has been next to useless for more than a few.

So, to gauge just how effective this extremely expensive, time-consuming, culture-shaping institution is at teaching, I offer the following test to all 17 and 18 year olds, whether or not they have graduated, but who have at least completed 8th grade.

TEST

  • Name one part of speech.
  • Who is far and away considered the greatest English language author of all time?
  • What is far and away the most influential book ever translated into English?
  • In your own words, what do BC and AD mean? More or less. Just get close.
  • Put the following people in chronological order: King David, Hannibal, Jesus, Alfred the Great, Henry VIII, George Washington
  • When was the American Civil War fought? Get within 25 years.
  • When was WWII fought? Get within ten years.
  • Name two of the Allied powers and one of the Axis powers that fought in WWII.
  • What global war was fought about twenty years before WWII?
  • Name three of the world’s oceans.
  • Name three of the world’s continents.
  • Name three countries in Africa. (There are over 50)
  • Which navigator came to America in 1492?
  • With pen and paper only, divide 728 by 52. There is no time limit.
  • With pen and paper only multiply 728 and 52. There is no time limit.
  • Write down in alphabetical order the first name of every member of your family and all of your closest friends. Nicknames are fine.
  • What is the name of the chart that lists all the chemicals?

Now, if you scored 100% do not pat yourself on the back because, as you now know, this test is extremely easy.
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But, if you missed a single question above let’s assume you were momentarily distracted so we’ll pass you. No, we’ll let you miss two. Maybe you were thrown off by Hannibal. However if you missed three, you need to have an awakening, get a little angry, and then demand the state refund your childhood because your failure is no reflection of your IQ but rather entirely the fault of a one size fits all, assembly-line approach to mass education. If you failed, you have in fact been victimised. You were, after all just a few feet off the ground when you were put on the conveyor belt. You didn’t get up on it voluntarily and you can't be blamed for knowing so little after riding it for nine to thirteen years.

But if the system failed to transmit basic knowledge to you by the time you were 18, did it at least instill in you the awareness that the knowledge is available? Did it instill in you a curiosity about what is known? Did it equip you with the ability to seek it out in the course of your adult life?

But if it failed to instill intellectual curiosity and the ability to study, did it at least instill in you good values? Were your teachers by and large virtuous ladies and gentlemen who, via their instruction and examples, strove to instill in you virtue? Or in their defence, were they allowed to?

Do you even know what virtue is?

Note that I am not here criticising the idea of state-funded public education but rather the notion that this thirteen-year educational regimen that we established generations ago should be compulsory (at least past the eighth grade) or that it is the best option for educating all of our young. I am also challenging the idea that this system has in fact succeeded in its core mission of transmitting knowledge or has at least been instilling virtue in our young.

It didn’t instill virtue in the class of ’85, that is for dang sure!

Since long before I was born in 1966 public (and private) education was becoming what it is today — first and foremost an industrial babysitter. Something to occupy the children of an industrial age who are no longer needed on the farm and thus allow young women to remain in the work force during their childbearing and child-raising years. Secondly and most ominously, it has long since become a means for Progressive intellectual elites to indoctrinate America’s youth and thus radically transform our culture, or at least large segments of it.

Again, if you were able to pass this test do not pat yourself on the back. But if at 17 or 18 you failed, how will you be able to see yourself in the context of history or understand the broader currents that have shaped you and that are directing you now? You are a leaf floating on some stream. You are a cog in some wheel. You are a thing fit to clock in and clock out, and vote as you are told. You are that reed shaken by wind.

And you should be angry.

This piece was published at LookAway.com on June 2, 2022.
1 Comment

Why ‘Uh-huh’ instead of ‘You’re Welcome?’

5/23/2022

1 Comment

 
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Several years ago I heard a Northerner speak critically of how Southerners often say ‘uh-huh’ instead of ‘you’re welcome.’ To this Northerner it seemed a bit rude. But Southerners (cultural Southerners I mean) are well known for being friendly and polite, so this didn’t add up in my mind. I have heard this complaint since, but more importantly, now alerted to the infraction, I have heard ‘uh-huh’ used in place of ‘you’re welcome’ more times than could be counted.

It is most often said after a Southerner (usually a man) gets the door for someone.
‘Thank you.’

‘Uh-huh.’


Vocally the uh– falls, the -huh rises, and both syllables are short.

I also realised that when I was getting the door for someone and was thanked that I myself always said ‘uh-huh’ instead of your ‘you’re welcome.’ I know that in my mind I am being polite and I am positive that other Southerners are as well.
So why is it that we say ‘uh-huh’ instead of ‘you’re welcome?’

In the South, being both friendly to strangers or showing them respect, as Southerners judge friendliness and respect, is mandated by our culture if you wish to be accepted or not ostracised. Conduct that may be viewed with indifference in other cultures can cause offence, even deep offence in the American South.

That a man should get the door for others, especially women, is on that list of courtesies that may be considered a social requirement. To acknowledge someone that gets the door for you is also a requirement. But this paradigm and expectation of ‘thank you – you’re welcome’ is common in many other cultures, such as the American Midwest.

But why do we say ‘uh-huh’ instead of ‘you’re welcome?’

I think the root cause pertains to a cultural quality that may be considered something uniquely Southern. I am struggling to convert my theory into words here, but I think it has something to do with the Southerner’s inherited notion of humility as well as duty.

If I pull you out of a burning building, or your car out of a ditch, or just help you gather up the things that you have accidentally dropped, I have in fact done you a favour at some cost to myself. You’ll likely say ‘Thanks, Mark!’ And I will say ‘you’re welcome’ or maybe ‘my pleasure.’

But to merely get the door for you was at almost no cost to me. While good manners requires that I must accept and acknowledge your gratitude, I must not be puffed up or act as though I have done you a favour.

I might say ‘my pleasure’ but such a proper expression seems more appropriate for a doorman, waiter, deliveryman, or any serviceman to say in the execution of his vocation. And for them ‘uh-huh’ may not rise high enough, and in fact may be considered rude.

‘Here’s your food.’


‘Thank you.’


‘Uh-huh.’ 
Or put another way ‘Whatever.’

But ‘uh-huh’ doesn’t sound rude to the Southern ear in the context of getting the door. So what I think the Southern man is saying when he gets the door for you is ‘It is my pleasure to do this little thing for you that is but my duty.’ Which he contracts to the humble, self-effacing…

​‘Uh-huh.’
This piece was previously published on MCAtkins.com on May 2, 2022.
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Homegrown Southern Progressives: Two Tales

4/9/2022

2 Comments

 
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Decide for yourself whether or not the follow two stories are true or at least ring true.

There was a young woman in a typical small-town, rural Southern county. She suffered from melancholy and eventually sought some professional help at a local clinic that could provide both counselling as well as prescribe medications if that would be thought helpful.

So she goes to the clinic and there sits down with a lady-therapist who over the course of the interview asked about her goals in life. What does she want to do? The young woman tells the lady-therapist that all she has ever really wanted to do was marry a nice man, stay at home, and raise a bunch of kids.

The lady-therapist suggested that she may also need to pursue some kind of income producing occupation (i.e. career) because ‘Wouldn’t it be kind of degrading to have to depend upon a man?’

The second story goes like this. Once upon a time there was an elderly lady in a typical rural Southern county who wished to occupy herself with some meaningful work as well as earn some additional income. So, being qualified and accepted, she began substitute teaching at a local public school.

One day she found herself directing a bunch of 1st graders in a game where they were to dress up and play pretend. One little boy decided that he wanted to dress up like a girl. The old woman being a Christian, having her head screwed on correctly, and thus being an old fuddy-duddy, calmly informed the boy that that wasn’t a good idea and directed him towards a costume more appropriate for his sex.

This was witnessed by a young female teacher, herself only recently graduated from seminary (i.e. teaching college), who curtly told the old fuddy-duddy that she couldn’t do that and promptly reported her infraction to the principal.

Now for me the issue is not that irrational ideas exist and are embraced as true with evangelical zeal. They always have. The issue is that we are producing homegrown Progressive evangelists that believe and then teach young girls that becoming a homemaker, or boys that dressing like a man is problematic.

For generations now a growing number of Southern kiddies have been growing up wholly un-churched, or rather they are getting their churching from poplar culture and the liberal educational establishment. Thus they are not rooted in the great tenets of Christianity that require self-discipline and self-sacrifice, but more to my point, neither are they rooted in the Christian faith’s support of a common sense understanding of basic human nature.

As a result some of these Southern kiddies grow up to be homegrown Progressive evangelists pushing doctrines that are at first and second glance, and then careful study, irrational and inhumane.

My question is where are these people going off to college? Who becomes their Gamaliel? My next question is who is paying for their indoctrination? Then who is paying for them to indoctrinate other un-churched Southern kiddies in their turn?

Lastly, who sits on the committees and school boards that are allowing this to happen?
This piece was originally published on Look Away on April 1, 2022.
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    Author

    Mark Atkins has six wee bairns who are all seventh-generation Henry County, Tennessee, and all from the same doe. It is the people of Henry County that he most wants to reach but writes to Southerners generally. He is without credentials but rather dares to speak by the same authority as the little boy who cried 'The king has no clothes!' His core belief and starting point is that like everything, we humans have a nature, it is not so hard to understand, and to pretend that it is other than it is, is to jump off a cliff. Which is what we Americans have in fact done.

    He is the author of Women in Combat; Feminism Goes to War which has made a splash equivalent to that of a lone seagull's feather landing upon the Pacific Ocean.  ​

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