We see it mentioned with depressing regularity: New Orleans is a mess. Is there a way to revive what was once one of the leading cities of the South? That depends on the solutions offered. A merely materialistic approach – good jobs with good pay, good housing, better policing, etc. – will not get us very far. It is part of the answer, but man is body and soul, not just a body. If we tend to the body but neglect the spiritual side of man, we will get an imbalance in society, which breeds societal illnesses – just like an imbalance in a single body breeds illness there. This is why, for instance, we see euthanasia increasing in wealthy American and European States/countries: Though they are awash in material comforts, they have no will to live because the Christian faith is collapsing. We need to build with both hands, so to speak – the material and the spiritual. There are examples in Christian history we can look to for guidance and inspiration. One is the Holy Prince and Martyr Andrew of Russia (+1174), who not only built cities and defended them against enemies but also blessed them with many churches to strengthen the souls of the people: A brave warrior [Andrew means “brave”], a participant in his military father’s many campaigns, more than once he came close to death in battle. But each time Divine Providence invisibly saved the princely man of prayer. Thus for example, on February 8, 1150, in a battle near Lutsk, Saint Andrew was saved from the spear of an enemy German by a prayer to the Great Martyr Theodore Stratelates, whose memory was celebrated that day. And the layout of a city is also important for transmitting Christian ideals to her citizens. Father Andrew Phillips of England writes about the design of Bristol, to give but one example (this was how most cities in Christian lands were designed prior to the onset of Modernity, something touched upon also in this podcast): Bristol provides a classic example of a later sacred town-plan. Built on untouched land on the north bank of the River Avon from the eighth century on, by the eleventh century it was the most important city in the West of England. To the south of Bristol ran the River Avon, to the north the River Frome. Bristol was built within an elliptical wall between these two natural features, with the north and south sides of the wall touching on the two rivers. It presented then the form of a circle. Within the circle, roads running north, south, east and west, formed the sign of the cross. Thus the whole plan was that of a cross within a circle, symbolising that the Cross triumphantly dominates the Universe. Politicians often give lip-service to Christianity when campaigning for office: ‘I’m a Christian and a conservative.’ ‘I’ll fight for our Christian values.’ And so on. But they usually don’t get around to implementing truly Christian policies. For the sake of a brighter future for New Orleans, she needs someone like a Prince Andrew who will not only defeat the criminal element, not only restore essential infrastructure, not only build up private businesses; but also use the powers and finances of the city to build churches and monasteries (and otherwise adjust the fabric of the city into a Christian orientation), and encourage the folks of New Orleans to attend them – by word and example. A good exemplar of this kind of leader in our own day is found in Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister. In a recent interview, he had the following to say, amongst other key things: . . . Christianity, first of all, created the free man. Therefore, we must – first and foremost – protect human dignity. Then, Christianity created the Christian family. We must protect the concept of the Christian family. Next, Christianity has created nations in this part of the world. If we Hungarians had not followed Christianity for a thousand years, we would have disappeared; so we must also protect the nation. But we also have to protect religious communities and the Church. To summarize, our task is not to protect theological principles, that is the mission of the Church; but our mission is to protect the great Christian achievements of our civilization.… Whether New Orleans thrives or continues in her slow agony of death depends on whether or not leaders with the vision, and the courage to implement it, of a Prince Andrew or a PM Orban step onto the scene. And even if they do, will the people of New Orleans welcome them or chase them away, preferring the sewer of rank materialism to the profound goodness and beauty of the Grace of God found in His Church? New Orleans already has good material to work with: St Louis Cathedral, the Ursuline nuns, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral, and so forth. Hopefully, God willing, they will choose the better part if given the opportunity.
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NOTE: This fictional conversation is not intended as medical advice for anyone. It is merely an attempt to explain why many Southerners have refused to let themselves be coerced into getting a treatment around which there still swirls a host of questions and concerns. The quotes from Dr. Fauci are real (with minor edits for flow) and clicking on his name links to the source of each quote. Plain-folk Southron, Edwin: Gracious, it seems we have upset you mightily, Dr Fauci. Look at yourself – spluttering all kinds of impolite things about the South!
Dr Fauci: ‘I think there’s no reason not to get vaccinated. Why are we having red states and places in the South that are very highly ideological in one way, not wanting to get vaccinations – vaccinations have nothing to do with politics.’ Edwin: Well, sir, we agree there. But our deciding to forego your COVID shots has less to do with politics than actual science. Dr Fauci: ‘Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science. Because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning have been fundamentally based on science. Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people, and there was pushback against me. So if you are trying to get at me as a public health official and scientist, you’re really attacking not only Dr. Anthony Fauci, you are attacking science. And anybody that looks at what is going on clearly sees that. You have to be asleep not to see that.’ Edwin: Do try and stay calm, Dr Fauci. This isn’t personal. Despite what you may have heard living up there in New England and within the pale of the Washington City bureaucracy, we’ve made some pretty good strides here at the South. Most of us can read now, and what we’ve seen about COVID and its treatments doesn’t incline us to follow your recommendations. We see, for instance, that there are lots of reports of dangerous blood clots resulting from the shots intended to protect people from COVID; that they also pose an unusually high risk for children and young adults; that natural immunity is much more effective and long-lasting than that conferred via inoculation. And then there is the moral objection of folks to taking a medication that was developed using tissue from aborted babies. Together with all that, we believe like the Psalmist: ‘For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.’ God has something to say about our bodies, not just the a-religious scientist. Dr Fauci: ‘There are a lot of things about organized religion that are unfortunate, and I like to stay away from it.’ Edwin: That explains a few things. Be that as it may, you have to remember, Doctor, that people are not machines. Yet that’s the mindset of those who made and are promoting the COVID shots. Dr Charles Hoffe of Canada put it like this: ‘We now know that only 25 percent of the ‘vaccine’ injected into a person’s arm actually stays in your arm. The other 75 percent is collected by your lymphatic system and literally fed into your circulation so these little packages of messenger RNA, and by the way in a single dose of Moderna ‘vaccine’ there are literally 40 trillion mRNA molecules. These packages are designed to be absorbed into your cells. . . . Your body then gets to work reading and then manufacturing trillions and trillions of these spike proteins. Each gene can produce many, many spike proteins.’ A lot has changed since the War, Dr Fauci, but it is still engrained in the nature of Southerners to prefer rural ways to the factory and to industrialism in general. We want, like St John the Apostle, for everyone to ‘be in health’ (III John 2), but we prefer to reach that goal by more humble, earthy, and natural means than by ‘hacking the software of life’ with mRNA gene therapy shots – maybe some ivermectin or Vitamin D, or even an old-fashioned vaccine with a bit of dead germ in it, treatments that work with the body rather than force it to do things it wouldn’t ordinarily do. Because of all that, we are supportive of people who have decided, after examining the evidence, that they would rather not be part of this ongoing mRNA experiment. Dr Fauci: ‘It’s horrifying, cheering about someone saying it’s a good thing for people not to try and save their lives. I just don’t get it. I don’t understand that.’ Edwin: It’s not that difficult to understand. COVID isn’t the first disease we’ve dealt with here at the South – yellow fever, cholera, pellagra, and the like. But when it comes to the advice we take, we’re not too fond of one-sidedness, overly trusting in the secular, rationalistic, scientific ideology. Even one of the former editors of The New England Journal of Medicine recently admitted, ‘It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.’ We’ve had our share of medical pioneers here – Ephraim McDowell, Marion Sims, Crawford Long – but we still like to spend plenty of time contemplating what is eternally true and unchanging, the Gospels or the exalted spiritual poetry of St Ephraim the Syrian or some other Christian work, rather than the latest scientific theories that are here today and gone tomorrow. Ultimately, as we were saying before, this all plays a role in forming our belief that bodily health isn’t just a matter of good physical hygiene or the latest scientific advances, but that it also involves good spiritual health and discernment as well. Dr Fauci: ‘We have some sort of a schism between some states and some areas that have a very low level of vaccination, which is really unfortunate because we want to make sure those people are protected for their own safety and their own life, but that of their family in their community.’ Edwin: A schism – unfortunately so. But have a look at yourself if you want it to heal. Southerners don’t take kindly to meddling from distant centers of authority. Twice we’ve fought wars when outsiders began to innovate where traditional customs and policies should have remained in force. If we were willing to cut ties with King, Parliament, and Sister States over bad leadership, you can be sure that we will have little compunction over ignoring dictates from medical bureaucrats like yourself whose communications have shown a willful effort to deceive the public. Dr Fauci: ‘If you’re not vaccinated, you should be concerned.’ Edwin: (**Sigh**) Our rhetorical sparring is becoming a little tedious. Perhaps we should lay down our weapons for now. Have a pleasant evening, Doctor. Around the still waters of the lake, We hail our kinsmen and shyly stutter Out a greeting to shorten the distance That has grown up between us after a year Has passed. But as the gap closes And we rejoice in the communion Of those standing visibly with us, We become aware of a deeper mystery, The lingering presence of those Who have gone before us – like the fresh smell Of rain after an evening shower – There are Percy and Mittie Mae, James and Percene, Raiford and Jesse; There are Melba Ruth and others left unnamed. Our love for them and one another Hollers after them and brings them To our midst. And the highest form of love, As our Savior taught and showed us, Is self-sacrifice. May we, then, tear up Our comfortable schedules as often As we can, offering them like fatted calves Upon the altar of fidelity To our family, that the past would not be Forgotten, that our dear ones who have Preceded us in death would not fade Away, but rather that they may abide With us, and with our children’s children, Until our Lord’s return, when death will No longer separate us from their Joyful faces nor their tear-filled embraces. The Yankee Pharisee Proclaims it his duty, Divinely given, to build New Jerusalem Upon the earth By fire and sword And any other kind of force. The Southerner, Truer son of English And the Celts, senses Something there amiss. Deep within his soul There lies a primordial Memory, of deathless Avalon, the Isle Of Paradise, England’s Jerusalem Of Glastonbury. The Righteous Joseph Of Arimathea Drove out the druids From her hills; there he Honored the Mother of God With a church and an icon That many wonders worked. There his dry staff blossomed Into a living thorn tree. There, on top of the Tor, Men besought Archangel Michael. There, all about, Were cells of monks and nuns. There, saints were buried. From there, St Dunstan Arose to revive the Faith. The Southron understands That New Jerusalem Was built long ago By his kinsmen across the sea. What remains for him To do is bring the spirit Of that place to Southern shores, And bid it grow, and not The slightest half-breath more. The limits of how much good political parties can do for a people are once again being illustrated here in Louisiana, as the Republican Party leadership is quietly trying to kill legislation that would protect what is left of Christian culture in this State. The early leaders of the American union were unfriendly toward the idea of political parties. But it is a Spaniard, Victor Pradera (1872-1936), an enemy of the egalitarian revolutionaries who were ravaging his homeland, to whom we turn today to illustrate the true nature of political parties. He lets some of the politicians of his day hang themselves with their own words: ‘ . . . “minorities constituting the strength of parties have no other ideals and principles than those of their leaders, who become real dictators.” ’ Given the real failures and the real dangers that lie within political parties, it is very much in our interest of Louisiana and the other Southern States to find an alternative to this system. We can find it in the system of corporatism that existed prior to the rise of political parties. In this system, representation in government was according to the various institutions/organizations that made up a society - churches, the guilds that represented various private occupations (doctors, carpenters, mechanics, and so forth), and actual, historical political entities like cities above a certain population and parishes/counties. Each of these would be represented in the government, not a clump of people from make-believe, gerrymandered districts who have no organic attachment to one another. The corporatist system is closer to human reality, as society is not made up of separate, isolated individuals, but of people who exist within a complex matrix of connections: family, Church, neighborhood, job, region, etc.
Vice President John C. Calhoun, the great Southern statesmen from South Carolina (who is much maligned today by the Cancel Culture crowd, though he shouldn’t be), described the functioning of such a system in his Disquisition on Government. He also thought it the best way to establish representation in government, so that, using his analogy of a living organism, through the deliberation of all the different organs of the social organism, the whole body would act harmoniously, for the good of all. And to protect each part from injustice at the hands of a combination of some of the others, each organ/institution was to be given a veto over any proposal, so that only those measures which have the approval of the whole political body could be adopted. The idea of complete unanimity to advance legislation may be too difficult to attain in the current atmosphere (although perhaps for certain subjects it should be required); but a large supermajority, 3/4 or 4/5, should be required for the sake of achieving the common good. The rest, however, is sound. In Louisiana, for example, perhaps the House and Senate could be re-organized along these lines: The House could remain a dysfunctional body with representation by population from artificially drawn districts and controlled by political party tyrants if it so wished. The Senate, however, would consist of representatives chosen by the aforementioned organic institutions of Louisiana (those representatives would be chosen in whatever way the members of each of those institutions thought best, and each institution would have a single vote in the Senate, no matter how many delegates they sent to the upper chamber). Under such an arrangement, at least half the Legislature – i.e., the Senate – would stand a pretty good chance of operating effectively and honorably for the good of the whole State of Louisiana. And just maybe their good example and reputation would embarrass the members of the House to join them every now and then in enacting some truly good and helpful legislation. And since in Louisiana the Senate has lately been the place where good legislation dies, this kind of reform would be all the more salutary and welcome. Male and female
God did make them; Non-binary And gender-fluid Did man remake them. The body of fixed tradition Writhes in a conflagration. On its blackened bones The self-creators Gorge their mouths and bellies, Distending, distorting Their given forms. Subhumanity Has broken the horizon, Shuffling, stumbling Its way onward To Babylon, Queen of Lawlessness; To separation From the God of Light And Comeliness And the Heavenly Hosts of Brightness; To communion With dark hordes of demons, Whose anger and despair Are the only non-illusions There, in the whirling wrack Of chaos and confusion. A couple of recent news articles should make the blood of any tradition-friendly Southerner run cold: From Bloomberg: Trump carried the Gem State by 2 to 1 against Hillary Clinton in 2016. While he’ll easily win there against Joe Biden, polls show he'll be lucky to do as well this year. Idaho-registered Democrats increased 47% between November 2016 and June 2020, or almost twice the rate of new Republicans during the past four years. The state’s dynamic business diversity likely has a role in its changing politics. And from The Washington Post: In the four years since the last presidential election, at least 2 million people have moved to Texas, many of them Democrats from places like California, Florida, New York and Illinois. An estimated 800,000 young Latino Americans have turned 18, and a wave of immigrants became naturalized citizens. More than 3 million Texans have registered to vote. Dig a little deeper into the changing demographics of most of these ‘red’ States and the narrative connecting them is that people are moving to take advantage of their growing economies. This raises two important questions. First, what is a State? Is it primarily an economic enterprise that exists to provide good-paying jobs with good benefits to anyone who can make it within her borders? However shallow and crass it might strike the ear, that is the view that predominates, and, therefore, the only goal that really matters is having a dynamic, modern, expanding economy. In such a State, people become empty ciphers, replaceable parts, in service to the mechanical dynamo that presses out the blessed manna of GDP. It really doesn’t matter where they come from or what they believe, so long as they are ‘productive workers’. What is missing in that conception of a State is any idea of the preservation and nurturing of a particular, deeply rooted, long-growing culture and the practices that grow out of it. In a society that honors and lives its historical culture, people are not faceless, nameless spare parts: Each person, according to the gifts given him by the Holy Ghost, is instead a unique defender and transmitter of that culture, and a creator within it of new and loftier possibilities. But this state of affairs should not strike anyone as all that unusual given that the foundational political documents of the current union, the constitutions of the 50 States and the Philadelphia charter of 1787, are written with as much touching eloquence as the instruction manual for an electric toaster oven. In the Preamble of the Philadelphia charter, we read about ‘establishing justice’, ‘promoting the general welfare’, and ‘securing the blessings of liberty’. Justice and welfare according to what standards? Liberty to do what? These vague and undefined words are a great aid to radical groups like Antifa and BLM (or LGBT activists and the rest), who give them a meaning consistent with their Marxism and then agitate for their fulfilment. Our constitutions, if we are to continue with written ones, need to read like a poetic historical narrative, defining who we are as Southerners in general and as the folk of Mississippi, Virginia, Tennessee, etc., in particular. Let us speak of the Holy Trinity; of Jesus Christ the God-man, born of a Virgin for our salvation; of Jamestown and the agrarian vision; of Pindar, Homer, and Horace; of Sir William Berkeley and William Gilmore Simms and General Lee; of Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty; of the common law, ancient political institutions, and hierarchy; of literature and songs. Then our children and generations beyond them will have a much better idea of what is meant when words like justice and freedom are used in our constitutions; they will know something of the community of which they are a real and integral part. To help safeguard such an order of things, we must now raise the second question. If States in the South and elsewhere are really alarmed at the prospect of ‘turning blue’, if they have seen the vanity of the view that the people exist for the sake of the economy (rather than the economy existing for the sake of the people), how can they prevent it? The power to regulate immigration must be removed from federal hands and placed back into the hands of each individual State. The free movement of people across State boundaries is destroying what is left of their historical identities rooted in shared love and self-sacrifice and making them barbaric dens of selfish money-making. It hardly matters what amendments are added to written charters if the people writing them will be replaced shortly by outsiders with wholly different histories and beliefs. Each State, whether using official or unofficial processes, must take up once again the exercise of her inherent power to regulate immigration into her own lands. This is, after all, not a game being played for the sake of utility or expediency, but a matter of cultural survival. To the list of certainties in this life – death and taxes – we could probably add a third: Yankees will make a sanctimonious display of their righteousness. This was repeated for the umpteenth time in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on 6 Oct. 2020 at an event called ‘It’s Time to Pray’, organized by the pastor of Times Square Church (NYC) Mr. Carter Conlon, who is quite excited and agitated over the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Pastor Carter expressed the purpose of his meeting thusly: ‘God was faithful in bringing them [the Pilgrims] here and giving them this land, but in 400 years, what have we done with the freedom He gave us? ‘We took our freedom and enslaved an entire race of people. He prospered us as a nation, and we became greedy as a people. Our families are broken. Our children are being indoctrinated in schools starting from daycare. We have changed the definition of marriage. We are aborting babies at the point of birth. Our nation is unraveling. Our only hope for the future is God. ‘That’s why we’re going back, 400 years later, to Lot # 1 where our nation began, and we’re going to pray. We are going to re-discover our roots and reclaim the promise of God that made America. When we open the prayer meeting in Plymouth, we’re going to repent and ask God to forgive us for what we’ve done with the freedom He gave us. God told me we need to confess the sins of the nation one by one and ask for forgiveness.’ Now, true repentance is a wonderful thing, but the history of New England makes us doubt this is what was experienced by most of the attendees at ‘It’s Time to Pray’. We will look at that history momentarily, but first there is one other point that makes us doubtful about the outcome of this prayer meeting: It is based on a lie. In the quote above and on the home page for this gathering it is stated that Plymouth, Massachusetts, is ‘the place where America began.’ But it does not take much of an effort at researching to realize that the Pilgrims were not the first Englishmen to settle permanently on North America; that title belongs to the settlers of Jamestown, Virginia. The South was born first (1607), then New England (1620). So already there is a problem with truthfulness from these folks. But more important than this is the following question: ‘Should anyone want to follow in the spiritual footsteps of the Pilgrims?’, a subject Pastor Carter and his fellows seem very concerned with. To answer this, we will begin the brief historical overview promised above. First it is well to note that the Pilgrims were a disorderly bunch even before they arrived at Plymouth to set up their ‘City on a Hill’. This is made abundantly clear in Richard Hooker’s (1554-1600) On the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. To give but one example from his book, he said, ‘When they and their Bibles were alone together, what strange fantastical opinion soever at any time entered into their heads, their use was to think the Spirit taught it them. Their phrensies concerning our Saviour’s incarnation, the state of souls departed, and such-like, are things needless to be rehearsed. And forasmuch as they were of the same suit with those of whom the apostle speaketh, saying, “They are still learning, but never attain to the knowledge of truth,” it was no marvel to see them every day broach some new thing, not heard of before. Which restless levity they did interpret to be their growing to spiritual perfection, and a proceeding from faith to faith. The differences amongst them grew by this mean in a manner infinite, so that scarcely was there found any one of them, the forge of whose brain was not possessed with some special mystery. . . . Their own ministers they highly magnified as men whose vocation was from God; the rest their manner was to term disdainfully Scribes and Pharisees, to account their calling an human creature, and to detain the people as much as might be from hearing them’ (Preface, ch. viii, 7). Unsurprisingly, it did not take long for the ‘chosen people’ of New England to fall head-long into apostasy. Already by 1662 they had to institute the Halfway Covenant so their unregenerate children could be assured of receiving the blessings that they believed God had promised to their forefathers - to build the New Jerusalem in North America, and all the rest of it (Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad, Madison, Wisc., U of Wisc. Press, 1978, pgs. 62-3). In the 18th century we find further dissensions and fragmentations of the ‘true faith’ of the Pilgrims. Rev Angus Stewart writes: ‘By now many “Strict Congregational” or “Separatist” churches had been formed by pro-revival enthusiasts. Attaching high regard to religious experiences and visions, and lacking an educated ministry, they were soon torn apart by internal divisions. While many churches gradually died out, others joined the growing Baptist movement. ‘New England Congregationalism was now divided into two camps: the New Lights—pro-revivalist and anti-Half-Way Covenant—and the Old Lights. This latter group itself was divided; containing implicit Universalists and Unitarians, as well as more orthodox Calvinists, who held to the Half-Way Covenant.’ And as Rev Angus suggests just above, the next ‘advancement’ in the progress of New England’s religion was Unitarianism in the 19th century: ‘By 1805, they were so advanced in their heresy and were sufficiently strong to have an Unitarian, Henry Ware, appointed as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard College. It was never to be regained for orthodoxy. In 1819, George Bancroft brought Hegelianism to Harvard from Berlin, and the Unitarians were at the forefront of the elitist Transcendentalist movement.[129] Through this period, the popular preaching and writing of the extremely capable, William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), brought additional prestige and acceptability to the Unitarians. The Unitarians and Universalists effectively joined hands. “The Universalists,” it was said, “believed that God was too good to damn them, while the Unitarians held that men were too good to be damned.”[130] Their differences, being more social than theological were easily overcome’.[131] (Ibid.) Eventually this would morph into the atheistic Social Gospel formulated and preached by Washington Gladden. In the present day, New England has given the States ‘gay marriage’ and other such innovative rights. Their latest gift? Polyamorous marriage (i.e., a marriage of more than two people). Keep in mind that these are only the highlights of New England’s religious development. Not included are the many other frightful schisms and sects that arose there like the Shakers, Mormons, and Christian Scientists. Therefore, in answer to the question we posed above - ‘Should anyone want to follow in the spiritual footsteps of the Pilgrims?’ - the answer is an emphatic ‘No!’ We are grieved at the apostasy of New England and pray that she will repent and find salvation, but for anyone to place his feet on any part of her religious path and expect a good result - that person has clearly fallen into delusion. Sadly, that also applies to Pastor Carter and the attendees of his prayer gathering at Plymouth. What is the best way forward for the South, then? A complete separation from New England’s beliefs and practices and the firm, warm embrace of the ways of our own forefathers, embodied in the deep tradition of the Holy Scriptures and the Church Fathers. Prof Richard Weaver’s description of the modern social order has earned him a lot of well-deserved praise. In small part he writes, ‘The old idea of rewards was vanishing, and instead of receiving a station dictated by a theory of the whole of society, men were winning their stations through a competition in which human considerations were ruled out. It was the age of Carlyle’s “cash-nexus.” Everything betokened the breaking-up of the old synthesis in a general movement toward abstraction in human relationships. Man was becoming a unit in the formless democratic mass; economics was usurping the right to dictate both political and moral policies; and standards supposed to be unchangeable were being mocked by the new theories of relativism. Topping it all was the growing spirit of skepticism which was destroying the religious sanctions of conduct and leaving only the criterion of utility’ (The Confederate South, 1865-1910; A Study in the Survival of a Mind and a Culture, 1943 Doctoral Dissertation for LSU Dept of English, pgs. 257-8. Later published as The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Postbellum Thought.). Much of what we are seeing today is simply the worsening of the decay Prof Weaver saw at work 77 (and more) years ago. Klaus Schwab, for instance, the founder and chairman of the globalist World Economic Forum, writes in his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, ‘The emergence of a world where the dominant work paradigm is a series of transactions between a worker and a company more than an enduring relationship was described by Daniel Pink 15 years ago in his book Free Agent Nation. This trend has been greatly accelerated by technological innovation. ‘Today, the on-demand economy is fundamentally altering our relationship with work and the social fabric in which it is embedded. More employers are using the “human cloud” to get things done. Professional activities are dissected into precise assignments and discrete projects and then thrown into a virtual cloud of aspiring workers located anywhere in the world. This is the new on-demand economy, where providers of labour are no longer employees in the traditional sense but rather independent workers who perform specific tasks. As Arun Sundararajan, professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University (NYU), put it in a New York Times column by journalist Farhad Manjoo: “We may end up with a future in which a fraction of the workforce will do a portfolio of things to generate an income – you could be an Uber driver, an Instacart shopper, an Airbnb host and a Taskrabbit” ’ (Geneva, Switzerland, World Economic Forum, 2016, pgs. 47-8). Already in the middle of the 19th century Southerners like Rev Robert L. Dabney were declaring with Sir Edward Coke ‘corporations have no souls’. But now we find in Mr. Schwab’s vision of the future an even more dehumanized economic system where men and women will be reduced to some sort of virtual haze, a ‘human cloud’, and who are expected to have a mad-dog fight with those belonging to it in order to collect enough tiny pieces of the fragmented economy to scrape together a living. And now with news that the Federal Reserve is getting ready to replace paper money with a digital currency as part of a universal basic income scheme, the dehumanization is very nearly complete. Whenever the bureaucrats in Washington City or their bankster bosses deem a person to be expendable (because his buying habits don’t meet with their approval), they could simply delete his virtual fed coins and leave him destitute. The Southern soul recoils at such execrable systems and abstract planning. They are all aimed at greater efficiency but at the price of destroying true personhood. Modern Yankee/globalist economics we may say, therefore, is efficient (to a degree; more on that below) but impersonal. Southern economics, on the other hand, is efficient as well, but it is also personalizing, i.e., it strengthens personhood rather than weakening it. Since we have just spoken of money, George Fitzhugh’s thoughts on this subject in his book Cannibals All! are an apt place to begin: ‘From the days of Plato and Lycurgus to the present times, Social Reformers have sought to restrict or banish the use of money. We do not doubt that its moderate use is essential to civilization and promotive of human happiness and well-being—and we entertain as little doubt, that its excessive use is the most potent of all causes of human inequality of condition, of excessive wealth and luxury with the few, and of great destitution and suffering with the many, and of general effeminacy and corruption of morals. Money is the great weapon in free, equal, and competitive society, which skill and capital employ in the war of the wits, to exploit and oppress the poor, the improvident, and weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by the credit and banking systems, and by the facilities of intercommunication and locomotion which the world now possesses. Every bargain or exchange is more or less a hostile encounter of wits. Money vastly increases the number of bargains and exchanges, and thus keep society involved, if not in war, at least in unfriendly collision. Within the family, money is not employed between its members. Where the family includes slaves, the aggregate use of money is greatly restricted. This furnishes us with another argument to prove that Christian morality is practicable, to a great extent, in slave society—impracticable in free society’ (Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters, Richmond, Va., A. Morris, 1857, pgs. 303-4). Mr. Fitzhugh touches on the key to the Southern approach to economics: the centrality of the Christian family. This is what preserves and uplifts the personal identity in the Southern economic order. He says, ‘It is pleasing, however, to turn from the world of political economy, in which "might makes right," and strength of mind and of body are employed to oppress and exact from the weak, to that other and better, and far more numerous world, in which weakness rules, clad in the armor of affection and benevolence. It is delightful to retire from the outer world, with its competitions, rivalries, envyings, jealousies, and selfish war of the wits, to the bosom of the family, where the only tyrant is the infant—the greatest slave the master of the household. You feel at once that you have exchanged the keen air of selfishness, for the mild atmosphere of benevolence. Each one prefers the good of others to his own, and finds most happiness in sacrificing selfish pleasures, and ministering to others' enjoyments. The wife, the husband, the parent, the child, the son, the brother and the sister, usually act towards each other on scriptural principles. The infant, in its capricious dominion over mother, father, brothers and sisters, exhibits, in strongest colors, the "strength of weakness," the power of affection. The wife and daughters are more carefully attended by the father, than the sons, because they are weaker and elicit more of his affection. ‘ . . . It is an invariable law of nature, that weakness and dependence are elements of strength, and generally sufficiently limit that universal despotism, observable throughout human and animal nature. The moral and physical world is but a series of subordinations, and the more perfect the subordination, the greater the harmony and the happiness. Inferior and superior act and re-act on each other through agencies and media too delicate and subtle for human apprehensions; yet, looking to usual results, man should be willing to leave to God what God only can regulate. Human law cannot beget benevolence, affection, maternal and paternal love; nor can it supply their places: but it may, by breaking up the ordinary relations of human beings, stop and disturb the current of these finer feelings of our nature. It may abolish slavery; but it can never create between the capitalist and the laborer, between the employer and employed, the kind and affectionate relations that usually exist between master and slave’ (Ibid. pgs. 300-1, 302). Henry Hughes, using more scientific language, says of the old feudal Southern economic system that the members of it were ‘affamiliated’. ‘The capitalist is the economic head of the family. He is the economic father of all the children. He maintains and protects them. His capital is answerable for their livelihood. He represents them; they are his economic constituents’ (Treatise on Sociology, Theoretical and Practical, Philadelphia, Penn., Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854, p. 155). The Southern economic system, then, is one in which employees are more than just contract laborers, here today and gone tomorrow, with whom the employer has no real deep or long-lasting bond. Quite the opposite: The ‘employee’ in the Southern economic system becomes a member of the farmer’s or business-owner’s family, which in turn strengthens the worker’s status, identity, and stability. Perhaps a defender of the current Yankee economic system will grant that this does build up personhood. But how can it also be more efficient? Doesn’t this complex web of close personal relationships inhibit the swift working of anonymous business transactions the Yankee is so fond of? Mr. Fitzhugh has already given us part of the answer above when he says, ‘Every bargain or exchange is more or less a hostile encounter of wits. Money vastly increases the number of bargains and exchanges, and thus keep society involved, if not in war, at least in unfriendly collision. Within the family, money is not employed between its members’ (Cannibals All!, p. 303). All these ‘unfriendly collisions’ between what Rev Dabney calls ‘useless middle-men’ in A Defence of Virginia make Yankee economics less efficient than the affamiliated Southern system. Here is Rev Dabney’s full explanation: ‘The simple system of slaveholding distributed that part of the products of farms, which properly went to the labourers' subsistence, direct to the consumers, without taxing it unnecessarily with the profits of the local merchant. The master was himself the retail merchant; and he distributed his commodities to the proper consumers, at wholesale prices, without profit. The consumers were his own servants. He remarked, in the language of the country, that, for this part of his products, he "had his market at home." Now, is it not obvious that the consumer, the slave, got more for his labour, and that the system of hireling labour, by invoking this local storekeeper, instead of the master, to do this work of distribution to consumers, which the master did better without him, and without charge, has brought in a useless middle-man? And his industry being useless and unproductive, its wages are a dead loss to the publick wealth. This coarse fellow behind the counter, retailing the meal and bacon and soap, at extortionate retail prices, to labourers, should be compelled to labour himself, at some really productive task; and the labourers should have gotten these supplies, untaxed with his extortion, on the farms where their own labour produced them, and at the farmer's prices. Is not this true science, and true common sense? But this is just the old Virginian system’ (A Defence of Virginia [and through Her, of the South], New York, E. J. Hale & Son, 1867, pgs. 329-30). It is very reasonable, then, for Southerners to prefer their own economic system to the Yankee/globalist system that has been imposed on them for more than 150 long, abusive years. For it is better at producing and distributing goods and at forming hale, balanced people, rather than meaningless wisps in the ‘human cloud’, than the latter one. It is true that the Southern system was distorted because of the presence of African slavery and because of the lengthy struggle with lunatic abolitionists, but the principle at the heart of the system – that the laborer becomes a part of the farmer’s, lawyer’s, craftsman’s, etc., family – was not overthrown prior to the War. It is that patrimony that the South must re-claim and re-implement if she wants to avoid the revolutionary violence overtaking the completely Yankeefied parts of the union. Yet our words are poor, so we will let Prof Weaver’s much more elegant oratory help us close this essay in the hopes that they will stimulate the love of truly Southern ways: ‘The relative self-sufficiency of the plantation; the noblesse oblige of its proprietor; the social distinctions among those who dwelled upon it, which had the anomalous result of creating affection and loyalty instead of envy and hatred; the sense of kinship with the soil, present too in its humbler inhabitants, who felt pangs on leaving “the old place,” – these were the supports of the Southern feudalism, which outlived every feudal system of Europe except the Russian, until it was destroyed by war and revolution’ (The Confederate South, pgs. 19-20). Prof Weaver would no doubt be heartened by the resurrection of traditional Orthodox culture in Russia and other countries that suffered under the communist yoke for so many years. Resurrection, through the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, is possible for Southern culture as well. But rebirth is not automatic. It requires struggle, sacrifice, repentance. And thus far the South has been far too enamored with Yankee mammon to make an attempt at them. There is a very ancient concept in the English common law known as a writ of habeas corpus. Governor Edwards’s latest proclamation requiring everyone but those his administration defines as "essential personnel" to stay at home and practice the ridiculously named "social distancing" until April 12th completely upends that tradition of freedom from arbitrary confinement.
For this reason, and for others we will get to below, we encourage everyone to peacefully disobey this order. We are not supporters of the idea that every man may willy-nilly decide which laws to obey and which not. However, when the government acts in ways that are clearly irrational and destructive of human well-being, it becomes our duty to withstand those acts as best we can. In the case of this illness, we now know better what we are dealing with:
But what is Gov Edwards (and many other State, federal, and local government officials) doing? They are using the proverbial axe in place of a scalpel. We can and should protect those who are most vulnerable to this disease (which has not reached the proportions of a global pandemic, contrary to the claims) - the elderly, for instance - but we can do that without destroying the livelihoods of millions of people and without wrecking the communal structures men and women need to live normal, healthy lives. Chief among those communities is the Church. It says volumes that Governor Edwards does not list bishops, priests, deacons, etc., as ‘essential workers’. But it is clear throughout history that without spiritual health, there will be no physical health either. Some priests are pushing back against these bans on church services by the authorities. But we need many more like them to speak up and act for the good of their parishioners. Considering all this, and considering the cowardice of all other elected officials in Louisiana and across the South, and in other States outside the South, who refuse to protect us from the destructive acts of our various governments, we say plainly: Ignore the stay at home orders. Ignore the orders to act like helpless, ignorant children. Ignore the orders that are destroying our souls and bodies. Pastors, open your churches. Restaurant owners, ready your tables. Schoolmasters, call back your students. Live bravely, like men and women who trust in the Providence of God. That will be our honor in this time, not craven cowering before a new idol: the virus. |
AuthorWalt 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. Archives
April 2024
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