RECKONIN'
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Walt Garlington

Why Keep Fighting for Dixie?

10/1/2022

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​The pressures to conform to the woke religion are enormous and widespread.  Institutions small and large, public and private – from school boards to the US Army; from Major League Baseball to US ambassadors – are attempting to force men, women, and children to accept un-Christian, unhistorical, untruthful ideologies about the sexes, about equality, about the climate, etc.
 
The South continues to be a target of the revolutionary reformers, a people whose culture must be demonized and destroyed in order for ‘progress’ to come nigh unto them and touch them with its precious hands.
 
It would surely be easier for faithful Southerners to simply give in to the pressures bearing down upon them, more sensible to accept our place in the technocratic order as sources of experimentation, exploitation, data, and revenue for the Pfizers, Amazons, and BlackRocks of the world.
 
Many unfortunately have faltered under the psychological, economic, etc., weight placed upon them.  But for those who have not, it is imperative that they remain unreconstructed, that they resist no matter the cost, that their fidelity to Dixie never waver.  The story of Queen Ketevan of Georgia (+1624) illustrates why this is crucial.
 
The country of Georgia has suffered many devastating invasions over her long history as a Christian people (her baptism came in the 4th century).  One particularly destructive incursion came early in the 17th century at the hands of Muslims under Shah Abbas I of Persia.  Desiring to extend his rule over the Georgian people, he launched a brutal assault:
​With fire and the sword the godless ruler plundered all of Georgia. The royal palace was razed, churches and monasteries were destroyed, and entire villages were abandoned. By order of the shah, more than three hundred thousand Georgians were exiled to Persia, and their homes were occupied by Turkic tribes from Central Asia. Hunger and violence reigned over Georgia.
​This is reminiscent of what many parts of Dixie suffered from Lincoln’s Army and from ‘Reconstruction’.  But Queen Ketevan did not despair despite these woeful circumstances, and neither should Dixie’s faithful sons and daughters as new battles rage within her between the woke and those who quite happily remain unwoke:
Queen Ketevan spent ten years in prison, praying for her motherland and loved ones with all her might and adhering to a strict ascetic regime. Constant fasting, prayer and a stone bed exhausted her previously pampered body, but in spirit she was courageous and full of vitality. She looked after those assigned to her care and instructed them in the spiritual life.
​When the Shah pressed her to renounce her traditions, to accept Islam, to marry him, and enjoy bountiful and comfortable living, she flatly refused, and this had a tremendous impact on the Georgian people:
​According to one foreign observer, her steadfastness delayed the Islamization of the Georgians in Persia: “In the course of a conversation at the court of Shah Abbas, where a young and recently converted Georgian was present, the question arose as to why it was that, while all young Georgians were forced to embrace Islam, their mothers were not. The explanation given by one of those present was that since the Queen would not change her faith Georgian mothers likewise refused.” (Z. Avalishvili, “Teimuraz I and His Poem ‘The Martyrdom of Queen Ketevan,’” Georgica [vol I, no. 4/5, 1937] pp. 22.)
​That is why it is vital for faithful Southerners never to give in to the Godless regime that holds sway today:  to encourage other Southerners individually to hold out, to withstand, to resist, no matter how overwhelming the opposing forces appear.  And it could also be that some new Joan of Arc will be inspired by seeing or hearing about a faithful Southron, and go on to lead Dixie collectively out of spiritual and/or physical captivity.
 
The immediate results of resistance may be disheartening at first glance, as Queen Ketevan’s may have looked to her people:
​Queen Ketevan was robed in festive attire and led out to a crowded square. Her persecutors subjected her to indescribable torment: they placed a red-hot copper cauldron on her head, tore at her chest with heated tongs, pierced her body with glowing spears, tore off her fingernails, nailed a board to her spine, and finally split her forehead with a red-hot spade. Saint Ketevan’s soul departed from her body, and the executioners cast her mutilated body to the beasts. 
​Yet the Most Holy Trinity will raise up the downtrodden and despairing through the presence and working of His Grace, whether manifesting internally or externally (or both) – But the Lord God sent a miracle: her holy relics were illumined with a radiant light.

​We do not know with certainty what lies ahead for Dixie, but recent events do not point to a calm, rosy future.  It is incumbent upon true Southerners, then, to preserve as much of their patrimony as they can so they might through it both awaken their misguided kinsmen from their phantasies about Yankee/American/globalist utopias as well as have a real community to offer them to rejoin if/when they do wake up.
 
But if they still refuse the good, old ways of our forefathers and mothers and attack us in cold blood, at least we will have the privilege of dying like the martyrs and can look forward to receiving an imperishable crown from Christ our Savior and perhaps also receiving some affection at our burial here on the earth, as our bodies join our Southern forebears’ in Dixie’s pleasant soil and our souls journey to meet theirs in the heavenly realm:
​Teimuraz wept bitterly for his mother [St Ketevan] and sons and buried the relics with great honor in the Alaverdi Cathedral of Saint George.
 
Your holy martyr Ketevan, O Lord, / through her sufferings has received an incorruptible crown from You, our God. / For having Your strength, she laid low her adversaries, / and shattered the powerless boldness of demons (from a hymn in honor of St Ketevan).

Notes:
All quotations about the life of the Holy Martyr Queen Ketevan are from this web page: https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2022/09/13/102608-greatmartyr-ketevan-queen-of-georgia
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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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