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    • John Devanny
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    • Jonathan Harris
    • Randall Ivey
    • Joseph Jay
    • Gene Kizer, Jr.
    • Michael Martin
    • Ilana Mercer
    • Valerie Protopapas
    • James Rutledge Roesch
    • H.V. Traywick, Jr.
    • Jack Trotter
    • Clyde Wilson
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Walt Garlington

City vs Countryside

12/8/2019

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​How much influence should large metro areas have in Statewide elections?  That is a question nearly all the States face today.  Kentucky’s recent election for governor puts the question starkly before us:  In a State with 120 counties, only 23 have decided the winner.  The results of Louisiana’s choice for governor are similar, though less lopsided.
 
The backcountry is not being well-served by this system.  The more traditional voices of the sparsely populated ‘red counties’ are being drowned out by the overwhelming numbers of the enemies of tradition in the ‘blue counties’.  The strife this creates is obvious for all to see, but it is the necessary outcome of adhering to the doctrine of the numerical majority.
 
There is no reason, however, to bind ourselves forever to the rotting carcass of this pestilential political ideal.  It is time for what Englishmen and Romans (the spirits of both of whom have been very much present in the South) have excelled at so often in their histories:  a little prudent reform.  No building castles in the clouds; rather, only realistic, concrete proposals for human beings living in this part of the world.
 
As we have said above, two main divisions exist in the States at the present moment:  the untraditional large cities and the traditional hinterland of the counties.  A way for the two to protect their interests at the State level is needed.  John C. Calhoun nearly two hundred years ago, provided us with an answer:  the plural executive, each with the power of veto.
 
His examination of Roman and English history showed him the benefits of this type of system.  What he says about Ancient Rome, which had developed a system by which the two main classes in the Roman lands, the patricians and plebeians, could veto one another’s proposed laws as well as stop the execution of them, is worth examining.  In the passage below, Mr Calhoun details the benefits such a system bestowed upon Old Rome, exactly the kinds of benefits the States are missing out on with their current winner-take-all, single executive system:
No measure or movement could be adopted without the concurring assent of both the patricians and plebeians, and each thus became dependent on the other; and, of consequence, the desire and objects of neither could be effected without the concurrence of the other. To obtain this concurrence, each was compelled to consult the goodwill of the other, and to elevate to office, not those only who might have the confidence of the order to which they belonged, but also that of the other. The result was, that men possessing those qualities which would naturally command confidence—moderation, wisdom, justice, and patriotism—were elevated to office; and these, by the weight of their authority and the prudence of their counsel, combined with that spirit of unanimity necessarily resulting from the concurring assent of the two orders, furnish the real explanation of the power of the Roman State, and of that extraordinary wisdom, moderation, and firmness which in so remarkable a degree characterized her public men.

--John C. Calhoun, ‘Speech on the Force Bill’, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, ed. Ross M. Lence (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992). 11/7/2019. 

​Now, the best system of government the States have lived under seems to have been the one they were born into – not one stitched together from new theories and speculations but one of inherited, time-honored lore and customs.  In it, each colony/State/ethnos was able to live life according to its own folkways without interference from the others.  The harmony of all of them was maintained by occasional regulations from the King of England and his Parliament, which were enforced by the royal governors and other officials appointed by the Crown.  But local political bodies (town councils, county courts, State Houses of Representatives, jury trials, etc.) kept careful watch and objected if any of them overstepped proper bounds.  But if the peoples of the States will not have it (and various strains of ‘American exceptionalism’ make many people recoil from it as though it were a venomous snake), then what Mr Calhoun proposed with his plural executive is a good alternative. 
 
One of the worst political mistakes the States have made has been to jumble all ages, classes, occupations, etc. into one undifferentiated mass of voters and then ask this polyglot creation to speak with a unified, harmonious voice.  What we have gotten instead is unending friction and dissatisfaction.  Instead of trying to enforce a false, chimerical unity, we need to winnow and separate.  Let the two dominant interests in each State, the rural and the urban, elect its own executive (the current governor chosen by a Statewide vote would no longer be necessary).  Population density above or below a certain threshold would qualify a county as either urban or rural.  Only when the two executives are in agreement should a proposed law or executive order be enacted, or an executive action undertaken.  But if either one of them object, the proposal will not be enacted or undertaken.
 
If this makes political action at the State level more difficult (and it probably would), then it is a great opportunity for local institutions to take the reins and govern.  This is where most decisions ought to be made, in counties and towns, neighborhoods and churches.
 
Because of this, everyone would have a little breathing space, a little elbow room, a chance to tend and nurture his own culture and appreciate the good in the culture of his red or blue neighbors in the other counties.  And through this arrangement, perhaps more cooperation and less partisanship could be found at the State level.  But if not, then at least each culture will be able to live peaceably enough under the diligent guardianship of the co-executive it has sent to the capital to protect its way of life.
 
But none of this will happen so long as the erroneous doctrine of the Supreme Court in Washington City of ‘one man, one vote’ is in force.  Mr Justice Frankfurter well described the futility of trying to enforce a rigid numerical equality of representation within the States in his dissent in Baker v Carr, one of the lynchpins undergirding ‘one man, one vote’:
A hypothetical claim resting on abstract assumptions is now for the first time made the basis for affording illusory relief for a particular evil even though it foreshadows deeper and more pervasive difficulties in consequence. The claim is hypothetical, and the assumptions are abstract, because the Court does not vouchsafe the lower courts -- state and federal -- guidelines for formulating specific, definite, wholly unprecedented remedies for the inevitable litigations that today's umbrageous disposition is bound to stimulate in connection with politically motivated reapportionments in so many States. In[p268] such a setting, to promulgate jurisdiction in the abstract is meaningless. It is as devoid of reality as "a brooding omnipresence in the sky," for it conveys no intimation what relief, if any, a District Court is capable of affording that would not invite legislatures to play ducks and drakes with the judiciary. For this Court to direct the District Court to enforce a claim to which the Court has over the years consistently found itself required to deny legal enforcement and, at the same time, to find it necessary to withhold any guidance to the lower court how to enforce this turnabout, new legal claim, manifests an odd -- indeed an esoteric -- conception of judicial propriety. One of the Court's supporting opinions, as elucidated by commentary, unwittingly affords a disheartening preview of the mathematical quagmire (apart from divers judicially inappropriate and elusive determinants) into which this Court today catapults the lower courts of the country without so much as adumbrating the basis for a legal calculus as a means of extrication. Even assuming the indispensable intellectual disinterestedness on the part of judges in such matters, they do not have accepted legal standards or criteria or even reliable analogies to draw upon for making judicial judgments. To charge courts with the task of accommodating the incommensurable factors of policy that underlie these mathematical puzzles is to attribute, however flatteringly, omnicompetence to judges. The Framers of the Constitution persistently rejected a proposal that embodied this assumption, and Thomas Jefferson never entertained it.​

Recent legislation, creating a district appropriately described as "an atrocity of ingenuity," is not unique. Considering the gross inequality among legislative electoral units within almost every State, the Court naturally shrinks from asserting that, in districting, at least substantial equality is a constitutional requirement enforceable[p269] by courts.

​As the Justice shows elsewhere in his dissent, this kind of egalitarianism has never been part of the English or American (of whatever section of the unnecessary union) political traditions; or, we might add, since we have mentioned her above, the Roman political tradition.  There has always been a disproportionate distribution of political power given to the various classes, orders, etc. of those societies in order to keep a healthy balance of power amongst them.  This disproportion has shifted over the years, but the principle has never been repudiated.  Even today under the current federal constitutional plan, the Electoral College and the Senate give a greatly disproportionate weight to the small States like Delaware and Rhode Island that is quite at odds with the doctrine of ‘one man, one vote’.
 
Good neighbors build tall fences, Prof M. E. Bradford once said.  But in order to build those fences within the States between the urban and rural counties, Baker v Carr and its wretched offspring must be challenged anew (or, dare we say it, simply ignored, since they are very far from the norm found in the common law). 
 
Our old traditions must be reclaimed and vindicated.  And at this present hour, one way of doing that is to establish the plural executive.  

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Family Visit

11/12/2019

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​Into the violent wagon
We all are loaded
And go a-trundling
With radio blaring
At speed immoderate;

Passed the cell phone towers
With their spikes a-bristling,
Torture device
For an age humane;

To cross a river,
Up an absurdly arcing bridge,
Metal coach rumbling
Above the squirrels’ nests;

Asked the computer
Oracle, ‘Are we lost?’

The motor killed,
The doors fly open,
Arms are flung around necks -
What a pretty way
To visit distant kin.
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The Enemy Within

10/6/2019

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The Holy Apostle Paul warned the elders over the Christians in Ephesus that ‘grievous wolves’ and other dishonorable men would arise in their congregation shortly after his leave-taking from them (Acts 20:29, 30).  We believe that such men have come amongst us here in the South, where many of the churches have become yet another means by which to destroy Southern culture and identity, whether knowingly or unknowingly.

Displaying the American Flag
​

​Many congregations in the South display the flag of the [u]nited States either inside or outside their church buildings.  Doing so is a silent acknowledgement that they agree with the principles represented by this flag.  This in effect forces Southrons to spit upon the legacy of their forefathers, who tried valiantly to defend the truth that the union is voluntary, made up of unique, independent countries (States).  Displaying the uS flag declares the opposite:  that there is ‘one nation . . . indivisible’, and that if any State dares try to leave it, THE NATION has every right to force her to stay in.
 
There are a whole host of other ideas bound up with this flag, but the other main one we wish to focus on under this heading is the idea that ‘America is the last best hope of mankind’.  Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way:  ‘America ... appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.’  Such ideas are a blasphemous slur against Christ and His Body the Church.  They are a declaration that the gates of Hell have overcome the Church brought into the world on Pentecost, and that now God has raised up another, a better, ‘church’ - the Nation of America - to do what the other failed to do, to finish bringing salvation to the world. 
 
A country may have within it many, many Christians, but it will never be completely identical with the Church.  But one of the Yankee legacies (or heresies) is just that:  That ‘America’ is the Church and vice versa.  Nevertheless, it remains precisely the Church, and not Puritan, Emersonian, Lincolnian America, that is the ‘last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race’.
 
But there are other errors of Modernity that have taken hold of Southern churches.

Anti-sacramentalis

​In his book The American Religion, Prof Harold Bloom explains that what passes for Christianity in modern America hinges on two un-Southern attitudes:  God must be experienced by the individual in complete isolation from 1) other people and 2) the creation (Simon & Schuster, 1992, p. 32).  We will take the second of these first.
 
The creation has always been for Southerners, as for their forebears, a means of encountering God, of experiencing the grace of His presence, ‘a “second book” of revelation’ (James Farmer, Jr, The Metaphysical Confederacy, 2nd edn., Mercer UP, 1999, p. 88).  Such ideas are present in numerous poets, novelists, and theologians of the South.  Some of their sentiments are expressed in the following:
Far from seeing conflict between revealed religion and nature, they [subscribers to natural theology] insisted upon the mutual dependence of the two.  The order and beauty so manifest in nature pointed, for them, to a supernatural wisdom and directed the observer to a divine cause, thereby confirming and reinforcing the teachings of Scripture.  . . .  For the educated clergy, and especially the Presbyterians, the idea of being apathetic or fearful about the study of nature was simply unacceptable.  To reject the study of God’s handiwork was to close one avenue through which man might approach the Almighty.  To fear the consequences of rational inquiry into nature was to separate the Creator from his creation (Farmer, pgs. 88-9).

​The Rev James Henley Thornwell once wrote, 
“External nature, to reason, . . . becomes an august temple of the Most High.”  Since mortal man was not capable of rising to the full contemplation of God through His Word, he “must study God in his works, as children who cannot look the sun in the face behold its image in the limpid stream” (Farmer, p. 89).

​A recently departed Romanian priest, a renowned theologian, amplifies these thoughts:
The economy of God, that is, his plan with regard to the world, consists in the deification of the created world, something which, as a consequence of sin, implies also its salvation.  . . .  Salvation and deification undoubtedly have humanity directly as their aim but not a humanity separated from nature, rather one that is ontologically united with it.  For nature depends on man or makes him whole, and man cannot reach perfection if he does not reflect nature and is not at work upon it.  . . .
 
 . . . The glory of Christ on Tabor was spread out over nature too.  Yet, for the eyes and senses of the many it can remain hidden, while nature can be degraded and affected by the wickedness of the few.  In its turn, nature can be the medium through which the believer receives divine grace or the beneficent uncreated energies, just as it can be the medium through which influences driving him toward evil flow out upon him (Fr Dumitru Staniloae, The Experience of God, Vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000, pgs. 1, 3).

​The summit of this sacramentalism is of course in the elements of the Holy Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper:  the bread and the wine, the fruits of the earth happily united with the brotherly labor of mankind and consecrated by the Holy Ghost, so that the divine presence of the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, in creation is intensified to the greatest degree possible.
 
Having noted this cooperation of labor that is necessary in observing the rites surrounding the Eucharistic meal, we will now turn to the other spiritual illness ravaging Southern churches that we noted above:  individualism.

The Disconnected Individual

The aforementioned Orthodox priest, Fr Dumitru, will help us transition.  He writes,
Thus, when nature is maintained and made use of in conformity with itself, it proves itself a means through which man grows spiritually and brings his good intentions toward himself and his fellow men to bear fruit; but when man sterilizes, poisons, and abuses nature on a monstrous scale, he hampers his own spiritual growth and that of others.  This confirms the fact that nature is given as a necessary means for the development of humanity in solidarity . . . .
 
 . . . Through work, moreover, every person obtains the means necessary not only for himself, but also for his neighbors.  Humans must work and think in solidarity with regard to the transformation of the gifts of nature.  Thus, it is through the mediation of nature that solidarity is created among humans, and work, guided by thought, is a principal virtue creative of communion among humans (Ibid., pgs. 3, 4).  


Wendell Berry continues these themes in his poem ‘The Farm’:
Be thankful and repay
Growth with good work and care.
Work done in gratitude,
Kindly, and well, is prayer.
 . . .
No gratitude atones
For bad use or too much.
 
This is not work for hire.
By this expenditure
You make yourself a place;
You make yourself a way
For love to reach the ground.
In its ambition and
Its greed, its violence,
The world is turned against
This possibility,
And yet the world survives
By the survival of
This kindly working love.
 
 . . .
 
Soon you have salad greens
Out of the garden rows,
Then peas, early potatoes,
Onions, beets, beans, sweet corn.
The bounty of the year
Now comes in like a tide:
 . . .
Eat, and give to the neighbors;
 . . .
Later will come the fall crops:
Turnips, parsnips, more greens,
The winter squashes, cushaws,
And pumpkins big as tubs.
“Too much for us,” you’ll say,
And give some more away.
 
(A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, Counterpoint, 1998, pgs. 141, 143, 144)

​Churches, more so than farming villages and any other community, are not playgrounds for mere individuals.  A man reflects the image of his Maker, the Holy Trinity, the most when he lives in the same manner as the Trinity, as a being in loving communion with others.  To live alone, or even to live solely for oneself while in the midst of others, is a mark of rebellion against God and against other men and the angels; it is the rejection of community, the way of the devil.  It is unsurprising, then, to find Rev Thornwell describing the Church as an ‘organic body’ and having ‘an organic unity as the supernatural product of the Holy Spirit’ (The Collected Writings of James Henley Thornwell, Vol. I: Theological, Banner of Truth Trust, 1986, pgs. 44, 45).
 
The Church Fathers, whom Southerners have been inclined to read, emphasize the need for others in our lives, especially in the context of Church life.  The fourth-century Father, St Basil the Great, writes,
And if indeed we all, who share in the one hope of our calling [Eph. 4:4], are one body, having Christ as head, and are each members of one another [1 Cor. 12:12], if we are not fitted together in the Holy Spirit to join in concord into one body, but each of us chooses the solitary life, we will not serve the common good with coordinated planning according to God’s good pleasure, but fulfill our own passion for self-indulgence.  When we are split off and divided, how can we preserve the relationship and service of the members to each other, or our submission toward our head, that is Christ?  . . .  the one receives each of these [gifts of the Spirit, 1 Cor. 12:8-10] has it no more for his own sake than for the sake of others.  Consequently, in community life the activity of the Holy Spirit in one person must pass to everyone together.  So the one living by himself perhaps has one gift, and he makes it useless because it is uncultivated, buried in the earth within himself.  This indeed involves great danger, as all see who have read the Gospels.  But when many live together, each indeed both enjoys his own gift, multiplying it through sharing, and profits from the gifts of others as his own (On the Human Condition, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2005, pgs. 120-1).

And selfish individuals in the present, sundered from community, will likewise have no love for their departed ancestors.  Though their labors have made our lives possible, we will neither remember them, nor honor them, nor pray for them.

Tinkering with Tradition
​

​And here we come to another profound point, the handing down of the patrimony of our ancestors to present and future generations.  Prof James K. A. Smith writes throughout his book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, that ways of thinking and acting are inculcated in people far more by the physical rituals or liturgies we perform day by day than by intellectual or rational study.  Therefore, if our Southern churches are constantly changing their modes of worship, exchanging ancient rites for the fads of the day created with secular marketing techniques, it is not ‘the faith which was once delivered unto the saints’ (St Jude’s Letter, v. 3) that we will be receiving.  And if this is how flippantly modernist churches handle the Apostolic deposit, with how much less care will they handle the traditions of our Southern forebears?

Church and Culture

​Though politics grabs most of the attention, it is the churches we must be most concerned with.  For, as many are fond of repeating nowadays, politics is downstream from culture.  And culture, as T. S. Eliot reminds us, is the incarnation of a people’s religious beliefs.  Thus, if Southern churches teach us by word or act that Americanism is our creed; the severed, autonomous individual is paramount; that the creation/sacraments, community, and history, are of no importance; that the old liturgies may be replaced with cushy theater seating, rock bands, virtual campuses, and ‘obscene’ (to use Miss Flannery O’Connor’s word) video screens that strive to give us a hit of carnal euphoria before buying a cup of coffee at the Starbuck’s attached to the hideous architecture of the ‘worship center’ - if this is what is being passed off to Southrons as Christianity, then there is little hope that Dixie’s centuries-old culture will survive.  For its survival hinges on retaining the ‘older religiousness’ Prof Richard Weaver dwelt much upon.  If political separation from Washington City and Greater Yankeedom is a good goal for the South (and many think it is), it will have to be preceded first by a religious separation, by an escape from Yankee Fundamentalism and other innovations, and a return to much older modes of Christian thinking and worship - the very soil which gave birth to and has nurtured the South all these many years.
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From Women’s Suffrage to Transgenderism

8/23/2019

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​The 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the [u]nited States Constitution is upon us, and there has been plenty of chatter about this supposed positive achievement for women’s rights.  Even those who call themselves conservatives have been celebrating women’s suffrage.
 
But the Southern view of this matter is just the opposite of that from the northern and the western States, where women’s suffrage found its greatest support.  Not only is women’s suffrage a loss for the dignity of women, it has also opened the door for further civil rights innovations (for the LGBTQ ‘community’ and for abortion) that have degraded life within the union.
 
We take as our Southern spokeswoman on this issue the formidable South Carolina writer, Louisa McCord (1810-79), at once a poet, playwright, translator, and essayist.  She is not against the improvement of the condition of women; she only asks that women, in so doing, not seek to become something they are not - i.e., men - that they seek to perfect themselves in the role given them by God to fulfill:
In womanhood is her strength and her triumph.  Class both as woman, and the man again becomes inferior, inasmuch as he is incapable of fulfilling her functions.  A male woman could as ill assume the place and duties of womanhood, as a female-man could those of manhood.  Each is strong in his own nature.  They are neither inferior, nor superior, nor equal.  They are different.  The air has its uses, and the fire has its uses, but these are neither equal nor unequal—they are different.
 
 . . .
 
In every error there is its shadow of truth.  Error is but truth turned awry, or looked at through a wrong medium.  As the straightest rod will, in appearance, curve when one half of it is placed under water, so God’s truths, leaning down to earth, are often distorted to our view.  Woman’s condition certainly admits of improvement (but when have the strong forgotten to oppress the weak?), but never can any amelioration result from the guidance of her prophets in this present move.  Here, as in all other improvements, the good must be brought about by working with, not against—by seconding, not opposing—Nature’s laws.  Woman, seeking as a woman, may raise her position; seeking as a man, we repeat, she but degrades it.  Everything contrary to Nature is abhorrent to Nature, and the mental aberrations of woman, which we are now discussing, excite at once pity and disgust, like those revolting physical deformities which the eye turns from with involuntary loathing, even while the hand of charity is extended to relieve them.

 
--‘Enfranchisement of Woman’, Louisa S. McCord: Political and Social Essays, Richard Lounsbury ed., Charlottesville, Vir., University Press of Virginia, 1995, pgs. 114, 108-9
Many women (we have already said we will even grant an unfortunately large proportion of women) are degraded, not because they have submitted themselves to the position which nature assigns them, but because, like Mrs. Smith, they cannot be content with the exercise of the duties and virtues called forth by that, and in that, position.  They forget the woman’s duty-fulfilling ambition, to covet man’s fame-grasping ambition.  Woman was made for duty, not for fame; and so soon as she forgets this great law of her being, which consigns her to a life of heroism if she will—but quiet, unobtrusive heroism—she throws herself from her position, and thus, of necessity, degrades herself.  This mistaken hungering for the forbidden fruit, this grasping at the notoriety belonging (if indeed it properly belongs to any) by nature to man, is at the root of all her debasement.
 
 . . .
 
It is this same misguided love for notoriety which now misleads women to insist upon political rights, as they word their demand—that is to say, admission to the struggle for political distinction.  And what is this that they ask?  What, but that like the half-barbarous, half-heroic Spartan maid they may be permitted to strip themselves to the strife, and wrestle in the public arena?  Can civilized, Christianized woman covet such a right?  They pretend, or they mislead themselves to the belief, that they are actuated by a pure desire to ennoble the sex.  Let them look honestly and calmly to the bottom of the question, and they will see that it is but notoriety, not elevation, which they seek.  In all derelictions from the right, the just, the holy, and the true, woman is responsible for her own degradation, inasmuch as it entirely proceeds from her own act, in casting herself out from her true position.
 

--'Woman and Her Needs’, ibid., pgs. 131-2, 133-4

​And that ‘true position’ wherein women are elevated Mrs McCord describes beautifully in other passages:
Her mission is, to our seeming, even nobler than man’s, and she is, in the true fulfilment of that mission, certainly the higher being.  Passion governed, suffering conquered, self forgotten, how often is she called upon, as daughter, wife, sister, and mother, to breath, in her half-broken but loving heart, the whispered prayer, that greatest, most beautiful, most self-forgetting of all prayers ever uttered, “Father, forgive them, [for] they know not what they do.”  Woman’s duty, woman’s nature, is to love, to sway by love; to govern by love, to teach by love, to civilize by love!  Our reviewer may sneer—already does sneer—about “animal functions” and the “maternity argument.”  . . .  true woman’s love is too beautiful a thing to be blurred by such sneers.  It is a love such as man knoweth not, and Worcester Conventionists cannot imagine.  Pure and holy, self-devoted and suffering, woman’s love is the breath of that God of love, who, loving and pitying, has bid her learn to love and to suffer, implanting in her bosom the one single comfort that she is the watching spirit, the guardian angel of those she loves.  . . .  such is the type of woman, such her moral formation, such her perfection, and in so far as she comes not up to this perfection, she falls short of the model type of her nature.  Only in aiming at this type, is there any use for her in this world, and only in proportion as she nears it, each according to the talent which God has given her, can she contribute to bring forward the world in that glorious career of progress which Omniscience has marked out for it.  . . .  she has no need to make her influence felt by a stump speech, or a vote at the polls; she has no need for the exercise of her intellect . . . to be gratified with a seat in Congress, or a scuffle for the ambiguous honour of the Presidency.  Even at her own fireside may she find duties enough, cares enough, troubles enough, thought enough, wisdom enough, to fit a martyr for the stake, a philosopher for life, or a saint for heaven.  There are, there have been, and there will be, in every age, great hero-souls in woman’s form, as well as man’s.  It imports little whether history notes them.  The hero-soul aims at its certain duty, heroically meeting it, whether glory or shame, worship or contumely, follow its accomplishment.  Laud and merit is due to such performance.  Fulfil thy destiny; oppose it not.  Herein lies thy track.  Keep it.  Nature’s sign-posts are within thee, and it were well for thee to learn to read them.  Poor fool!  canst though not spell out thy lesson, that ever thus thou fightest against Nature?  Not there!  not there!  Nothing is done by that track.  Never; from the creation of the world, never.  Hero-souls will not try it.  It is the mock-hero, the dissatisfied, the grasping, the selfish, the low-aspiring, who tries that track.  Turn aside from it, dear friends—there is no heaven-fruit there; only hell-fruit and sorrow.
 
 . . . Woman!  woman!  respect thyself and man will respect thee.  Oh!  cast not off thy spear and thy shield, thine Aegis, thine anchor, thy stay!  Wrapped thou art, in a magic cloud.  Cast it not off to destroy thine own divinity.  Man worships thee and himself; he knows not why.  Ignorantly, in thee he bows to his “Unknown God.”  The benevolent, the true, the holy, the just; in a word, the God of Love speaks to him through thee.  Woman, cherish thy mission.  Cast not from thee thy moral strength—for, lo!  what then art thou!  Wretchedly crawling to thy shame, thy physical meekness trampled underfoot by a brutal master, behold thee, thou proud mother of earth, to what art thou sunk!
 
 . . . Woman will reach the greatest height of which she is capable—the greatest, perhaps, of which humanity is capable—not by becoming man, but by becoming, more than ever, woman.  By perfecting herself, she perfects mankind; and hers, we have said, is the higher mission, because, from her, must the advance towards perfection begin.  The woman must raise the man, by helping, not by rivalling, him.  Without woman, this world of mankind were a wrangling dog-kennel.  Could woman be transformed into man, the same result would follow.  She it is who softens; she it is who civilizes; and, although history acknowledges her not, she it is who—not in the meteoric brilliancy of warrior or monarch, but in the quiet, unwearied and unvarying path of duty, the home of the mother, the wife, and the sister, teaching man his destiny—purifies, exalts, and guides him to his duty.

 
--‘Enfranchisement of Woman’, pgs. 109, 110, 111, 119
Now, we contend that to be a divinity, a genial, household divinity—not in that character, at least, to worship . . . , but to be worshiped at the holiest altar of the Penates, the home hearth; to be the soul of that home, even as our great Father-God is the soul of the creation; to be the breath, the life, the love-law of that home; the mother, the wife, the sister, the daughter—such is woman’s holiest sphere, such her largest endowment.  This is the natural position from which she has stepped; this the individuality which she has forgotten; these the distinctive powers which she has laid aside, to become imbecile and subservient in the exercise of others unsuited to her nature.  This beautiful recognition of her unlikeness to man, is the sole mystery of her existence; the one great truth which must be evolved to make woman no longer the weak plaything of a tyrannic master, no longer the trampled thing, pleading for tolerance at the foot of her conqueror, but the life, the soul, the vital heart of society; while in her and through her thus circulates the every throb of this great living world.  She does not rule, she cannot rule, by stump-speech, convention, or ballot-box; but she can rule, and she does rule, by the quiet soul-power, which, silent as the blood through the arteries of life, throbs on forever, ceasing but with the existence of the body which it vivifies.
 
--‘Woman and Her Needs’, p. 152

​How grotesque do the Joni Ernsts, Liz Cheneys, and the Elizabeth Warrens appear in the comely light of women who uplift mankind by their quiet devotions within the home!  But it is in Mrs McCord’s highlighting of the creation of this ‘third sex’ (‘Enfranchisement of Woman’, p. 109), the manly woman, that we find another validation of the Southern view of the natures and roles of men and women.  What has come to pass since these natures and roles were confused in the granting of women’s political rights, namely homosexuality and transgenderism, was predicted by Mrs McCord:

​Not a little surprised have we been to see, in so long-established and respectable a periodical as the Westminster Quarterly [Review], a grave defence of such mad pranks as are being enacted by these petticoated despisers of their sex—these would-be men—these things that puzzle us to name.  They should be women, but, like Macbeth’s witches, they come to us in such a questionable shape, that we hesitate so to interpret them.  Moral monsters they are; things which Nature disclaims.  In ceasing to be women, they yet have failed to make themselves men.  Unsexed things, they are, we trust—like the poor bat in the fable, who complains, “neither mouse nor bird will play with me”—destined to flit their twilight course, alone and unimitated.
 
--‘Enfranchisement of Woman’, pgs. 110-1

However, as Peggy Noonan has well noted, these ‘unsexed things’ know exactly what they want to be called (zie, hir, vis, tem, etc.), and they are sharpening their guillotines in order to force the rest of society to comply with their Jacobinish demands.
 
And while on the subject of violence, it is appropriate to dwell on the effect of women’s rights on the issue of abortion.  For women in the home, children, even many children, are a gift, a joy, a blessing.  But for the women who seek to compete with men for political power, anything peculiar to their sex that hinders that quest must be shed, one of the most prominent being child-bearing.  Children for such women, even a single child, are a burden, a deadweight, a millstone around the neck.  Thus, the quest for women’s political equality gives birth to a culture of hatred for children, which begets violence towards children, and finally the ‘right to abortion’ so women can be as maternally free as men.  We would not say it is the only cause of the pro-abortion culture, but we would say that political equality (and rivalry) between men and women is withal one of the causes.  Once again, therefore, we see that what passes for conservatism today (praising women’s suffrage) is really a mask and a preparation for the sort of revolutionary evils it claims it is fighting against.
 
If ever there were a time for Southerners to turn their collective back on the disordering and destructive ideology of Americanism, which enshrines unnatural relationships and violence towards children in its fundamental laws (the 19th Amendment, Roe v Wade, Obergefell v Hodges, etc.), and re-embrace the folkways of their forebears, this is it.  As for what comes after the dark, bizarre cultural movements we are living through today, Mrs McCord did not offer any clues in the essays referenced above.  However, she has shown us a way to return to Christian sexual morality if we are wise enough to follow her advice:  Encourage women to stay near the home and out of political office.
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Silverwood, the South, and What’s Normal Anyway?

7/29/2019

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We live in a day and a time when nearly every Christian norm once taken for granted has come under withering attack, whether the family, sexuality, hierarchy, or what have you.  This was amply illustrated earlier in the year by Coach McGraw of Notre Dame and here recently by Megan Rapinoe of u. S. soccer fame.  But we in the South do have a source of strength and guidance to help us navigate through this murky miasmal time, to remind us of what it means to be a normal human being:  our literature.  It has within it the sort of down-to-earth spirit that is necessary to help us live good lives in a world that has lost its moorings. 
 
One such book from the Southern literary canon is the novel Silverwood: A Book of Memories by Mrs Margaret Junkin Preston (1820-97).  Even in its opening pages, we find a very important means of keeping our wits about us:  holding on to our connections with the past.  The South is not trying to create a utopia based on new principles uncovered in theoretical speculation.  Rather, she has always tried to remain faithful to the old ways of her ancestors, to carry them over and adapt them here in her new homeland in North America as best she can.  Speaking about a painting in the house to her son Lawrence, Mrs Irvine, the matriarch of the story whose husband had died some years before, gives voice to this, saying,
​“ . . . It was always full of interest for me, principally, perhaps, from home associations. One of the earliest memories of my childhood is, being held up before it by my father, while he told me the sad story it delineates, with all the touches of pathos which Chaucer introduces into his version of it. I can recall even yet," continued Mrs. Irvine, musingly, “the very tones in which he used to recite some of the lines:
 
--'Father, why do ye weep?
Is there no morsel bread that ye do keep?
I am so hungry that I cannot sleep!'
 
As I grew older, I was, perhaps, more interested in it from the fact that it used to hang on the wall in the old ancestral home of our family, on the southern border of Scotland. Your great grandfather, ‘the Laird of Newton,' as he was called, looked on that picture many a time as you do now, no doubt; so that the associations it furnishes, make me prize it more than its own intrinsic merit as a work of art.  . . .”

--Silverwood, Derby & Jackson, New York, 1856, pgs. 10-11, available online
​


​Developing an identity fixed in the history of one’s forefathers is a guard against the anxiety and despair caused by a lack of roots in anything other than the shallow, toxic, never-settled culture of Modernity.
 
One of the virtues that grew out of this veneration of the past in Dixie was the centrality of the family in her life, and the great affection of the members for one another - in particular, the love of sons for mothers, part of the code of chivalry held dear by Southrons.  Mrs Preston illustrates:
​A laughing group entering the parlor, interrupted the conversation. Josepha, a child not much over ten, installed herself upon her brother's knee; Eunice, the next older sister, couched herself upon the rug, and took the head of the little grey-hound into her lap; Zilpha sat on a low seat beside her mother: and to the cheerful voices that floated through the twilight room, the music, tender and soft, which Edith's fingers awakened, formed a subdued accompaniment, as she played and listened.
 
 . . .
 
There was something very beautiful in his [Lawrence’s] manner towards his mother. He loved to choose his seat near her; he addressed to her the most of his conversation; he anticipated her minute wants,—the stool for her feet,—the cushion for her head,—the books she liked best near her,—the first flower of Spring,—the first tinged leaf of Autumn: there was no limit to the unobtrusive manifestations of his thoughtful love. He never overlooked her presence in a room; and many a time would he leave the group of interested talkers, if he chanced to observe her sitting apart, and address himself to her entertainment. His attentions were more than the dictates of filial devotion,—more than the simple homage of graceful youth to riper age. Had she been a young beauty, whose fascinations had enthralled him, there could not have been a more delicate mingling of what might be termed the chivalry of the heart with the tenderness of his love. The language of look and action was,—"others may do much for me,—but no suffering in my behalf,—no ministrations,— no devotedness, can be like a mother's!" And as he now sat with his arm over the back of her chair, talking with her of his plans and prospects, and the eyes of each strayed to the circle about the table, animatedly discussing what particular thing they would like best to have brought them from abroad,—the gaze of the mother and son was simultaneously raised to the grim canvas on the wall, with an inward ''thank God," that, as yet, the home-picture was shadowless.
 
--pgs. 14, 16-7

​Yet shadows do come for the family, some very dark ones in fact, but those events serve to bring out one of the main themes in the story, which is also another one of those Southern virtues that can help us much in life:  a deep trust in God’s providence to direct our lives to good ends, no matter how bad the present looks.  A conversation between Edith and Dr Dubois brings this theme into the open for the reader at one point:
​"Still, you are not answering my question. Why does Providence thus deal with those who live so as to please him best? Why stint and treat them so harshly, if he has the world at his command, for their necessities, and lavish luxuries on those who scorn him? Surely, there is no bribe held out to induce people to become Christians."
 
"This is part of the discipline, by means of which they come to be 'put among the children.' Trial may have been—must have been needed, to bring this sick girl to her present submissive state. It is hardly wrong to exalt suffering to the utmost—to call it divine, if it works out the result which He who sends it, intends that it should."
 
"You surely don't think there is anything meritorious in mere suffering?"
 
"By no means. So much do I object to the Popish idea of it, that I would not have that expression—'perfect through suffering'—used as it often is used now-a-days, without a special limit of it to the results of the thing, not the thing itself; and is there not some such law as this, underlying all the order of nature? The ore must be passed through the furnace, before we have the gold; the rough stone must be filed, before we see the sparkle of the gem; the gums must be bruised, or they will not give out their precious odor; the roses must be crushed, that we may have the fragrant oil; the soil must be torn up by the plow-share, before there can be any harvest; and through such a process must the soul receive its strength."
 
--pgs. 213-4

​There are strong echoes here of one of the Church’s greatest theologians, St Maximus the Confessor (+662), who teaches,
The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment. This treatment consists of the pain and distress brought on by various misfortunes. He who refuses them does not realize what they accomplish in this world or what he will gain from them when he departs this life.--Four Hundred Texts on Love 3.82 ​

​That’s good company for a people told over and over again for hundreds of years by Yankee-minded folks that they are nothing but a wagonload of ignoramuses.
 
In contrast with this trust in Divine providence, Mrs Preston warns us not to trust the self-interested businessman, ever the hero of those same Yankees (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gates, etc.).  Edith eventually goes to plead the cause of her family’s finances to a well-to-do merchant, Mr Bryson.  Part of their exchange goes as follows:
​"You are hurried, no doubt," continued Edith, "and greatly annoyed, and I don't wish, to intrude farther upon you. Here is pen and paper: sign me a written pledge that you will get Mrs. Bryson's consent to the adjustment I desire; for, if it is your wish to settle the matter thus, she will surely comply."
​
"Suppose every other creditor should make a similar demand, how long would my wife and children be out of the alms-house? But, I really am earnestly desirous to do what I can for you. Let me see," he mused, counting the fingers of his left hand, ''in five; no, in seven days hence, I may be able to make a disposition of matters that shall satisfy you. . . ."
 
--pgs. 226-7

​​And then we see how the matter is resolved by Mr Bryson:
​"News for you!" exclaimed Jacqueline the next morning, as for a moment she picked up the fresh paper that had just been laid on the breakfast table, and she read the paragraph:
 
"Mr. Thomas Bryson, one of the largest shipping merchants of our city, who has been so unfortunate as to be compelled to wind up business, in consequence, we believe, of the failure of a foreign house, sailed on Saturday, with his family, in the ---, for Liverpool. He expects to reside abroad for some years; as in Germany he can educate his sons at less expense than here. Our old friend bears our sympathies with him in his misfortunes, and constrained expatriation."
 
Edith dropped her fork with a pang.
 
"The hypocrite!" ejaculated Mr. Dubois, energetically.
 
"No such thing as the failure of a foreign house. That's a story of his own getting up, to cover his villainous speculations. I don't believe a word of it—"
 
"Or rather his wife's heartless extravagance," interrupted the doctor.
 
"Both—both, Edith; I feared some ruse, my dear. It is too bad—too bad!"
 
--pgs. 259-60

​With the businessman, profit comes before honor.  It is the duty of society not to uphold such men as praiseworthy examples to imitate.  Mrs Preston, however, shows us elsewhere what is honorable for men and women:  to understand and appreciate the bounds God has placed upon the two sexes, their differences and their natural affections toward one another.  This is a very important witness for today’s world, which has lost a great deal of its sanity about sexual matters.  Mrs Preston writes at different places,
​" . . . I'm perfectly content to have the barriers just where they are, since I believe Providence designed this circumscription. I firmly believe our sex was commanded to be 'under obedience,' as part of the primal curse. Our regeneration is being worked out as Christianity makes progress; and who knows but that the balances may be even, by the time we have reached the edge of the millenium," added Edith, with a smile.
 
--p. 175

​Edith sat up, and looked into her sister's eyes.
 
"Zilpha, I must surrender into the hands of him whom I would love, my very self—my heart of hearts—my whole being. I must obey him—not because it is the requirement, but because I feel such obedience to be the sweetest thing in the world. I hardly quarrel with Milton's assertion--
 
" 'He for God only, she for God in him'--
 
as derogatory to woman, for there would be no humiliation—at least, I should be conscious of none—in the willing deference rendered to a man I owned to be intellectually, intelligently, physically, morally, my superior. What humiliation does the loving, all-confiding child feel in leaning for everything, venturing everything, upon the father she doats on? I am disgusted with this rant about the servility of a wife's obedience, on which some of the sensible women even of this generation have gone mad. As if 'perfect love' did not 'cast out fear!' They who talk and feel this way, have not yet learned the alphabet of love, human or divine. They forget that God's absolute sovereignty is the true Christian's ground of serenest confidence, because he unites with it the thought of His absolute love, and 'there is no fear in love.' "
 
"But you would not have the wife the mere passive recipient—the wax to the seal—without tastes, and opinions, and emotions of her own?"
 
"By no means! no more than I would have every branch, and tendril, and curl of the vine wound rigidly round the supporting oak, thereby spoiling all the grace fulness of its appropriate proportions, and the oneness of its identity. But the faith of love, in its object, must be kindred to the Christian's faith in God—unquestioning, immovable. When it is so, willing obedience must be a heart-delight—a very blessedness."
 
--pgs. 347-9

​More could be said, but we do not want to detain the reader any longer than necessary.  It would be better for him to go and read Silverwood for himself and explore all the good things it has to offer the modern world.  Being a romance novel at its core, it will appeal more to women than men, but there is more than enough masculinity through Lawrence, Cousin Barry, Uncle Felix, and other man-characters to hold the attention of the male reader as well.  Git ye gone, then, men and maidens!
Silverwood : A Book of Memories by Margaret Junkin Preston, 1820-1897 is available for download here.
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    Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer (and, when able, a planter). He makes his home in Louisiana and is editor of the 'Confiteri: A Southern Perspective' web site.

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