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.’

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?

By all accounts the government and economy of Ukraine are corrupt. That they were still so ill-prepared for this onslaught after 30 years of independence and being spanked by the Russians in 2014 supports the claim.

But it is the nature of human war that strength seeks weakness and that if the weak is to survive, it must become strong.

It should not be noteworthy that women and children are fleeing the war zone in Ukraine and that men 18-60 are being required to stay and defend their country in this desperate hour. This paradigm is as old as time and may be encapsulated in the image of the wife standing behind her husband in the face of a mugger. Both men and women get it.

Likewise since the beginning of time any given people survive or conquer by the strength of one particular demographic group; strong and martial men in their 20’s and 30’s. This holds true even in this age of so called push-button warfare as we are seeing on the battlefields of Ukraine. War always degenerates into rage, suffering, and chaos (at least for the one losing) and it is this demographic that far and away can best serve up and take the pain. It is the nature of things. Exceptions are just that.

But it is one thing for a people to be ill-prepared for war and be forced to react in desperation. It is altogether a different thing for a people to with forethought plan to be ill-prepared. Which is what we are doing in our country.

The ongoing feminisation of the US military via the woke-driven institutionalisation of women in combat is fundamentally weakening our combat effectiveness but far more ominously our fighting culture.

​We can rest assured that we will not forever possess military supremacy and just like Ukrainians today, it will one day hit the fan and we will find ourselves on our heels, and pushing buttons just wont do the trick.

We humans are creatures of habits and traditions. This is as unavoidable as the repetition that produces them and this repetition is essential to general productivity. After all, we do not forever reinvent how to snap green beans or what we do daily but rather rely on habit to direct our steps, which frees our mind to focus upon that thing that occupies us at any given moment.

Good habits and traditions not only guide us quietly throughout the day, they can also answer many long term questions or provide solutions to life’s most significant issues. For example, in your ponderings you may wonder how you are going to provide for yourself in your old age and may decide that you will commit to the same routine for twenty years in exchange for a pension. Box checked!

These habits of mind and action are a ground spring of comfort and security for we humans.

But we can also be short term thinkers and inclined to keep our head in the sand if it’s comfortable there or maybe we cover our ears, squeeze our eyes closed, and cry aloud ‘nah-nah-nah-nah-nah’ if to hear and see may break the reverie of our comfort.

The great problem with this inclination is that the circumstances in which we are living may be changing or have changed considerably and our commitment to our comfortable routine and expectations might be contributing to great future troubles and maybe even our own downfall. If you choose to drift happily on the river lounging on a raft, no problem. That is, until awakened by a roar and looking up you see that the river disappearing over the horizon.

The Common Man’s inclination towards routine and disinclination to be challenged is a primary source of power for what we can call the Power Seeker, be he a noble statesmen, a captain of industry, or a self-serving demagogue.

Now, here after 2020 it should be apparent to any thoughtful Christian over thirty years of age that we are in a cultural war between what we often refer to as the Left and the Right and that the differences are irreconcilable. If you consider yourself the Common Man you need not understand how this conflict has been raging for generations or even for hundreds of years, but you must see that it is raging now and that you are somewhere in its growing vortex.

This includes Christian public school teachers.

Like all of us, they can view life through the lens of their occupation or that which they are investing a sizeable portion of their adult energies which in their case is the institution of American public education in the 21st Century.

It should be apparent to all Christian public school teachers that they operate within a realm whose roots in this country are wholly secular and that is led top-down by theorists and senior administrators that are now openly hostile to Christianity. Am I right about the later assertion? Could you professing teachers who operate from within, show me, who am without, the proofs of my assertion? I imagine that you could easily.

It should also be apparent to Christian teachers the damage that this secularisation has done to our public schools, as well as the damage that our secularised schools have done to the traditional Christian character of the country, especially since the 1960’s.

Now, and especially in the aftermath of 2020, regular Americans, be they Christians or love-it-or-leave-patriots are effectively challenging the radical American Left. Likewise the states are at last reasserting some of their original sovereignty lost in 1865. It is high time that Christian public school teachers join the fray as well.

But will they? The fact is the idea that God (much less Jesus Christ) has no place within the borders of public education has been firmly established for decades, and any Christian public school teacher that would challenge that by taking his light from beneath his bushel would be David facing off with Goliath, but without a sling.

It is easy for me to say, So what! After all, are you a Christian or not? If your King Jesus is actually king, you have to say so, lest you deny him, at which point you are striking at the very core of what you profess to believe.

I imagine that there are many public school teachers who if tied to a stake before a howling mob, doused with gasoline, and ordered to publicly deny Christ or burn, would say ‘Light it!’

But it may be easier to be burned to death then to be fifteen years in, take a stand, and then die alone on that hill and lose your pension.

But need they martyr themselves alone? I think not. Times are changing fast as are attitudes. Reason has failed to disprove God, and for 300 years Progressivism has failed to deliver its utopia. But it has produced misery, both of the flesh and more importantly the soul.

It is time for Christian public school teachers in the cultural South to take a stand. Together. At the same time. Here in God’s Country I am confident the people will support them, as well as school boards generally and elected state officials.

The public school establishment at the state and federal levels is not a house of cards. They are dug in like a big fat tick and ain't gonna let go without a fight. But they are breakable. And if we wish to save public education, then it is Christian public school teachers that need to lead the fight.

Here in Dixie they’ll be supported, just like the Canadians are supporting their truckers.

Let’s pick one of your forefathers who lived sometime between 50,000BC and 1,700AD. At random we’ll pick Throck, who lived between that river over there and this mountain over here sometime around 13,650BC. Great[x625]-Granddaddy Throck had a daughter, your Great[x624]-Grandmother Maralay, whom he knew was his daughter because she was born to his woman Mara whom he had guarded jealously ever since he had carried her to his hut more winters ago than he can remember.

Throck loved his daughter dearly as fathers usually do, and he was loved by her in return as good fathers usually are. In time Maralay began to fill out as girls will, and being that she was the spitting image of Mara, she began to attract the attention of men generally. Before long those men, both suitable and not-so-suitable, began sniffing around Throck’s hut.

Is it true that men will want to lay with Maralay? Generally speaking, yes. Is it true that Maralay likes the attention of men and might be seduced into laying with one of them? Again, yes. Wisdom and youth are not often companions. Will wicked men take Maralay by force if they can? Sadly, yes. If Maralay should unite with a man, might she become pregnant? The possibility certainly exist.

Should Maralay have a child, will Throck love the child? In all probability, yes. Granddaddies usually love their grandbabies.

If Maralay cannot provide for the child, will Throck and Mara? Again, grandparents usually will, as many a grandparent today can testify.  

All of this is human nature 101.

Could Maralay becoming pregnant be a problem for Throck? Yes, because then he would have another mouth to feed and another helpless being to protect. The fact is that however many generations it’s been since Adam and Eve sat around their first dung fire outside the garden of Eden, or since man-thing first climbed out of the trees, our ancestors have made a precarious living on this planet. Want and insecurity has been the rule, not the exception. 

This is the reality for Throck, as it was for his ancestors and would be for his descendants right on up to the modern era, our unprecedented prosperity today notwithstanding.

So what is he to do to avoid this problem? Well, first of all, Maralay’s desire for a man and men’s desire for her, as well as Throck’s desire for a posterity, are all perfectly natural imperatives. But Throck’s self-interest is also perfectly natural, and if he doesn’t see to it, he will be left holding the bag. So what does Throck do?  He does what fathers have always done.

With threats, and a club if necessary, he keeps the wolves at bay. With exhortations, threats, and a switch if necessary, he keeps Maralay’s primordial instincts in check. He then waits for the key reality to play to his advantage, namely, that men still want Maralay and will pull a freight train to have her. Or fight a woolly mammoth rather. And if blocked by Throck’s club and Maralay’s sense of propriety (we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt), they will seek terms. 
So here comes your future Great[x624]-Granddaddy Crot to pay a visit to Throck, who sits outside his hut with his club laid across his lap. Crot and Maralay have been exchanging looks and crossing paths an awful lot lately. Mara is onto them though and has alerted Throck.  

Crot lays a nice pelt at Throck’s feet as a sign of his respect and request to parlay. ‘Mr. Throck,’ he says, ‘I’ve got to have her. What’s it gonna take?’ Now Throck knows Crot and that he comes from a good family where the women are sweet and the men brave, and he would not object to having him as a son-in-law.  
‘Crot,’ says Throck, ‘you’re a good boy and Maralay fancies you. If you will vow before your family and mine and the whole tribe that you will lie dead before permitting harm to come to her or y’all’s young’uns, and that you will provide what they need, and that you and your kinsmen will come to the aid of me and mine, and make our fight your fight, then I’ll give you Maralay and you can carry her to your hut.’

Crot, who was prepared to give the last twenty years of his life, runs off to give his kinsmen the terms, who accept them readily, all agreeing that Maralay is a good girl and well worth having in the family.

This is natural marriage. Not just a hook-up between a man and a woman, but a solemn union of families to the benefit of all.  And where this paradigm does not prevail, family disintegrates. And when family disintegrates, society disintegrates. As we see here in America today. And dating is at the root of the problem.

Dating is a modern institution without historic precedent that, like its parent feminism, has been a disaster for our culture and should be rejected root and branch. It inevitably leads to promiscuity that debases women, leaving them jaded and scarred, for despite what feminists would have us believe, a woman is indeed an emotional being whose natural inclination is to form a powerful bond with the man with whom she lays. Promiscuity stretches and erodes this ability.

Secondly, the inevitable promiscuity of dating has resulted in extraordinarily high rates of illegitimacy (to say nothing of abortion) with its attendant social dysfunctions and costs.

Thirdly, dating is play-marriage. All the fun but none of the responsibility. The problem is that the habit of going together and breaking up doesn’t end at marriage. ‘Breaking up’ has become, in effect, divorce practice.

​We should return to the timeless and natural paradigm of courtship, parental consent, and arranged marriages and to the Christian precept that marriage is sanctified before God and not to be broken by man.

If the lifespan of man is upwards of eighty years, then my question is, has there been an eighty-year-old man anywhere on the planet during the last 500 years who did not live through momentous changes or a momentous event? Eighty-year-olds today certainly have.

Every morning across the country, 80-year-olds and their young 60-year-old friends sit around drinking their coffee, telling stories, ruminating, and reminiscing. Any of them can easily recall the great changes that they have seen in their lifetimes. They can also remember when they stood four feet off the ground watching their grandfathers do the very same thing.

And their grandfathers, our great-greats, certainly would have heard our great-great-great-great-grandfathers saying the same things that old men today say about young people today. This paradigm of the old and grizzled criticising the young and naive is as old as time, and timeless too because, like getting old, it is just part of our human nature.

There have always been and will always be old fuddy-duddies who talk nonsense and don't understand, and young whippersnappers who know-it-all or who are dumber than boxes of rocks.

But just as today’s fuddy-duddies grew and matured, so will today’s whippersnappers. That too is the nature of things.

It may be tempting to be critical of young people but we need to remember how we were. It is simply impossible to fully grasp the depth and breadth of the human experience at age 20.

I posit that today’s young people are no dumber or smarter than we were, but I will suggest that today’s young people are going to contribute a great deal more than we contributed to our collective struggle against the madness of this age. I believe this because they have two things that we did not, i.e. hindsight and us.

By ‘hindsight’ I mean that those born in 2000 that are now coming of age can begin to see the damage caused to their culture by the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s. For them the danger is not hypothetical – what may happen. No, for today’s young, the history that my generation lived through is the proof in the pudding that Progressivism has in fact been a cultural catastrophe.

By ‘us’ I mean that right-thinking young people today can be and are being made to understand what has happened to their country since 1970, and contrary to what our post-WWII youth culture would suggest, young people do, and always have listened to what their elders have to say.

The war against the Cultural Revolution of the 1960’s has been heating up the entirety of my lifetime (b.1966), though my generation, and the Boomers before us, have barely managed to hold the line. But we are still in the fight, and being the optimist that I am, I believe that with our help the Conservatives of the Millennials and Gen Z will be able to begin pushing back hard. And maybe it will be the children of the Z’s who will at last raise our flag atop the ruins of Liberal ideology.

​Today’s right-thinking young people are smarter and tougher than we may think, and I for one feel good about them.

We have inherited several assumptions about how to educate our children that are just not true, including that educating requires 6-8 hours per day, nine months a year, for 13 years, and must be done by professionals. None of this is true. These are not requirements.

What is true is that we humans educate our young. Unlike the dog licking his tail, certain things such as the knowledge of the wheel, how to forge metal, or how to type or drive are not written on our DNA.

Via observation and imitation, the child will, in his early years, learn the great bulk of what he will use over the course of his life. However, a significant portion of direct instruction must come into play, and parents must consider exactly what to teach their young. They will teach what they believe their child will need to know in order to survive in the times that they imagine the child will live when an adult. The father may teach the son to string the bow to hunt, as well as to deter and ward off the enemy. The mother may teach the daughter to tan the hide and roast rabbit over a dung fire.

In the modern era we have come to worship education, and why not? The ocean of knowledge that we have accumulated over the last 500 years in particular certainly has extended our lives and made them vastly more comfortable than our pre-modern ancestors could have imagined. Whether it has made us better is another matter.

Spoiler: it hasn’t. It hasn’t because that which can make us better is in fact written on our DNA and thus has always been known, or knowable, and may be summed up as prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope, and charity, the exercise of which will serve all men, in all times, in all circumstances.

The wise parents with conscious intent should strive to cultivate these virtues within their children, first and foremost by their example, but also via direct instruction and when necessary, discipline. But it doesn’t take thirteen years. Neither does it take thirteen years to teach them to read, write, add, and subtract, or to inspire them by lessons of the past wisdom and deeds of man. It does not take thirteen years to prepare them for the vast majority of modern occupations which are learned in the doing. Neither need it consume the bulk of their childhood to prepare them to embark upon strenuous advanced studies at any age, whether fourteen, eighteen, twenty-five, or fifty years old.
​
We as parents (and We the People) need to do a re-think of what our educational objectives for our children are and what is actually required to achieve them. Just as importantly we need to consider the damage that we have done to generations of Americans and thus our culture by grinding all of us through a one-size-fits-all K-12 regime.

​Man has since the beginning of time been led by simple ideas that speak volumes. Ideas that are often associated with symbols and images. Christ on the cross being the most potent symbol of all time and certainly for the West.

Likewise, those who would lead have used simple ideas that become memories to control the thoughts and actions of those they would lead. Imagine the prehistoric mother telling her child about the boogeyman. The blackness beyond the fire was after all full of peril and she didn’t want her little tyke waddling off while she slept.

Modern media has certainly used the event or the moment and its associated imagery to hammer into our collective mind an impression that may cause We the People to think and react in this or that way. Think the sinking of the Maine, Pearl Harbour, the Gulf of Tonkin, and 911.

Here is my point. Whether the good and courageous Kyle Rittenhouse was found innocent or guilty was secondary. The reason that this event was chosen by the Left to put and keep in the spotlight is the same as why they focused on that ballsy couple in St. Louis who dared to brandish arms in the face of Leftist thugs. They seek to impress upon our collective mind a new idea. A new boogeyman.

Don't resist.

Of all the madness, stupidity, and outrageous hypocrisy that we were subjected to in 2020, surely the idea of defunding the police would get at least the silver medal. I’m afraid that I would have to give the notion that we are still a racist nation the gold.

But what is the real reasoning behind the idea of defunding the police? What is the genesis of it? Surely no one that matters believes for a moment that you can have any kind of functioning society without police, or put another way, without the fear of retribution. Surely this is just a slogan concocted by Progressive theorists and then fed to their mob by a Progressive media in order to move the needle in this or that direction.

We all have an inkling of who the great thinkers and movers of Progressivism were. The great theorists who established the foundations of this new religion and those who have built upon it since. Voltaire and Marx may come to mind and rulers like Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Castro will ring big bells of recollection. Today there are any number of rising stars on the Left all vying for the bullhorn and hopefully their footnote in history.

But every army must have foot soldiers, sergeants, and junior officers. Where and who are they? I don't mean the Carnivorous Sheep that will follow anyone that feeds them and lets them do what they want. I mean those worker bees that know that they are Progressives, know why, and know what Progressivism is progressing towards.

My question is, who are they and where are they made? Where do they come from? From whom did they get their ideas? What pew did they warm in their youth? At whose feet did they study?

They came of course from Progressivism’s system of seminaries, where you learn the in’s and out’s of your religion and the why’s and how to’s. From there, you go forth to spread the gospel to the unwashed and to expand the borders of the kingdom.

The high priests of modern Progressivism do not call these centers of indoctrination ‘seminaries.’ That would be too honest. Rather, they are known as the humanities departments of America’s secular university system.

And it is these humanities departments across the nation that annually pour forth a small army of freshly ordained preachers and priests who will then go on to make themselves useful enough to earn a paycheque and then climb whatever ladder they can. And there, at that desk, or behind that counter, or in whatever committee they land, besides doing what they are paid to do, they will likewise let their light shine by preaching the gospel of American Leftism or otherwise advancing its cause.

​I do not understand the deep theory behind the American Left’s call to defund the police, though I know it must be sinister and naturally meant to hurt its erstwhile enemy, American Conservatism. But two can play that game. If we really wanted to hurt American Progressivism, to bomb its deep supply chain, then I propose that we defund the humanities departments in America’s secular universities.

All peoples produce a Common Man. He is the archetype of his people and it is his nature to have a limited view of things. For the Common Man things have always been and will always be as he has ever known them.

This is neither bad nor good, nor a life sentence. The Common Man may make himself the Uncommon Man, or perhaps at least a little less common, if he wishes.

If his view by nature is limited, then what views he does hold are of supreme importance because his power, or the collective power of all Common Men, like the ox, is immense. When the Common Man walks, he pulls the plow. When he is agitated, the earth trembles. When he is furious, he flattens mountains and will even bring them down on himself.

Because of his limited outlook and immense power, the Common Man can become an immensely useful tool for those whom he chooses to trust. If he follows nobility, then he makes of himself a tool for the good. If he follows the self-serving or wrongheaded then he becomes a tool for all manner of evil, even though the Common Man’s intentions may good.

If this is true, then how can the Common Man be innoculated against being persuaded to follow the demogogue, and thus do that which in hindsight will be seen to have injured his own interests or the interests of his people, or even of civilisation itself?

That inoculation will come from his worldview, that is, his core beliefs, the foundational myths his people embrace, and his limited understanding of his own history. It will also come from the culture in which he exists and which produced within him particular notions and inclinations.

If his core beliefs are based more or less on truth, wisdom, and the good, then the demagogue will have a harder time deceiving him. If the Common Man is inclined to the martial and disinclined to suffer fools, the demagogue will think twice before trying.

I posit that what the Common Man must be made to understand here in 2021, 245 years after the founding of this nation he so loves, is that he was born into a world of Leftist propaganda as were his grandparents, and that he is bringing up his children in the same.

Generation by generation we have been accepting ideas or a view of things that would have been antithetical to our grandparents, just as they had come to accept things that would have been antithetical to our great-great grandparents. The common man must be mindful of the influences in his life. Too many of the information feeds he ingests are producing within him a view of things that are simply self-destructive. He must come to recognise that what sounds like a sweet voice is actually that of Wormtongue, or a Siren Song that for generations now has lulled the Common Man into complacency, persuaded him that up is down, and made of him a tool to ruin his own posterity.