The following speech critical of the conservative establishment is one that I did not give at The Charleston Meeting, in Charleston, S.C., whither I was invited by its organizer Gene d’Agostino, as a speaker for the evening of April 14. After espying copies of my book on antifascism for sale on a table in the...
In 1920 a group of writers gathered at the home of playwright Sidney Hirsch in Nashville for bi-weekly sessions of reading and dissecting each other’s prose and poetry. It was the beginning of an outpouring of creativity from a group that would try to defend and restore the traditional Southern way of life against the...
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has over 15 million members. With over 46,000 churches, they are present in all 50 states (as well as several foreign countries). It is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Nonetheless, for nine straight years, the SBC has reported a net loss of membership. Last summer, the SBC...
In the Introduction to the first of these two volumes, Clyde Wilson allows, after a few paragraphs of justified complaint against the wholesale academic and political assault on Southern identity as well as Southern culture, that it was not always thus. “Southerners were seen as different and perhaps a little quaint, but tolerated as Americans.”...
Longtime readers of Chronicles are familiar with John Shelton Reed, who used to write a column for this magazine. Those less familiar may recall the occasional news story based on the latest intelligence-gathering done by the University of North Carolina’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, which Professor Reed founded. Well-known among his fellow...
Every form of original American music in the 20th century began in the South: bluegrass, country, western, jazz, blues, rockabilly, and rock ’n’ roll. Even rap, pop, and heavy metal have been successful because they, in some way, use or imitate a Southern musical element. These styles, if they can be called that, started out...
I am, to say the least, honored to receive your Richard Weaver Award and to be invited to share some thoughts with you tonight. Richard Weaver observed, in Ideas Have Consequences: “There is ground for declaring that modern man has become a moral idiot. . . . For four centuries every man has been not...
Several recent letters from readers outside the South have contained clippings and firsthand reports about the progress of Our Nation’s cause. I hope my correspondents don’t mind, but I’ve come to think of them as a sort of intelligence service, even sometimes as a Fifth Column. One expatriate, for instance, sent along a brochure for...
Southerners are not like other Americans. Significant cultural differences have always separated them from the North. Even today cultural variations between Southern black and white people are fewer than those between white Southerners and white Northerners. In other words, the population of the United States is more divided culturally along regional lines than along racial...
Posthumously, William Faulkner has achieved a celebrity that, if we take him at his word, he despised and eschewed, but which seems inseparable from modem commercial culture. Every second man in the street, who can’t remember who is currently Vice-President, recognizes Faulkner’s name as that of a famous writer. Every lumpen intellectual who once read...
The Southern Tradition andrnthe Black Experiencernby Eugene D. GenovesernIam, to say the least, honored to receive your Richard WeaverrnAward and to be invited to share some thoughts with yourntonight. Richard Weaver observed, in Ideas Have Consequences:rn”There is ground for declaring that modern man hasrnbecome a moral idiot. . . . For four centuries every man...
1^ will’nVIEWSn'”;i , ((IIu.n( li, f (“” HitnI, / ‘It””” ‘u,nli’aiu,. y,. Hi”nThe Celtic Heritage of the Old SouthnSoutherners are not like other Americans. Significantncultural differences have always separated them fromnthe North. Even today cultural variations between Southernnblack and white people are fewer than those between whitenSoutherners and white Northerners. In other words, thenpopulation of...
In examining the Celtic heritage of the Old South, it isnimportant to recognize that only those cultural traits associatednwith British Celts up to the 18th century are relevant.nThere are two reasons for this: first, all significant migrationnfrom Scotland, Ireland, and Wales to the American Southnended before 1800; and second, long-standing Englishnefforts in Britain to acculturate...
more liquor and tobacco, and were less concerned with thenuseful and the material.nCritics damned the British Celts, calling them “drinkersnand gamblers,” “remarkably lazy,” “adverse to industry,nnever working but from necessity,” and “holding that bodilynlabour of all sorts was mean and disgraceful.” One observerncharged that the Irish would “sit upon their hams, likengreyhounds in the sun,...
looked almost too small to shoulder a gun.” Another visitornin the Old South counted 13 “guns hung up along thenrafters” of a two-room log cabin.nSoutherners were not “bookish.” Formal educationnmeant less to them and their Celtic ancestors than learningnto master their natural environment. The Southern womanndescribed by a traveler as “sitting with a pipe in...
The furor over contentious symbols is rising again, the latest case occurring in connection with Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates in Ottawa. The frightening hate symbols found among the truckers were described thus by Al Jazeera: The convoy was organised by known far-right figures, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network has reported in detail. Confederate flags and...
An interesting sidelight on our current ruling regime is its changed attitude toward Russia. From the time of the Russian Communist takeover until quite recently, American leftist “intellectuals” sympathized with the Russian regime and gave it every benefit of the doubt. During the Cold War leftists pushed for unilateral Western disarmament, beating down those who...
Although I have spent much of my scholarly life warning against inappropriate comparisons between Nazis or fascists and the pet peeves of academics and journalists, I myself am now using the F-word (as in fascist) or really the N-word (as in Nazi) with growing regularity. The antifascist left, about which I have just finished writing a...
With Independence Day festivities approaching, Chronicles readers may be interested in a public lecture about patriotism which I gave in Louisville this past year. It has always seemed to me that before we can begin to intelligently discuss border control, Southern heritage, kneeling NFL linebackers, or any other given controversy, there is an even more...
The Southern Baptist Convention finally had its Appomattox, surrendering the flag of its ancestors at its annual meeting of messengers (representative delegates) held in mid-June in St. Louis. Reportedly, an overwhelming majority of messengers voted in favor of Resolution 7, in which they determined to “call our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the...
Before the lynching of The Donald proceeds, what exactly was it he said about that Hispanic judge? Stated succinctly, Donald Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a class-action suit against Trump University, is sticking it to him. And the judge’s bias is likely rooted in the fact that he is...
Check out the following chart of Real Median Household Income, which declined 9 percent nationally from 1999 to 2012. Find your state’s decline and meet me below. Notice the place at the top of list, which had no decline in Real Median Household...
Oh, I’m a good old Rebel, That’s just what I am. And for this damned Republic, I do not give a damn! I’m glad I fought agin it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon, For anything I done! —Maj. James Randolph, CSA Not long ago, Texas Gov. Rick Perry...
The late Mark Winchell’s recently published Robert Penn Warren: Genius Loves Company is a collection of essays focusing on Warren’s close associations and literary affinities. Warren was known as a kind and generous man who encouraged other writers in their work, helped those in need, and nurtured fragile friendships over a lifetime, sometimes with people...
Veterans of South Carolina politics have been waiting and wondering what the last minute stunt would be leading up to Saturday’s First-in-the-South bellwether Republican primary. I predicted it would be a Confederate flag stunt and begged the Ron Paul campaign to make his positions on the War Between the States better known, early on. The...
If the war with Iraq was largely the work of the Likudnik faction that has commandeered the Bush administration’s Middle East policies, the liberation of Liberia on which the President suddenly embarked the nation last summer seems to have originated at least in part with yet another lobby of questionable loyalties. On July 7, as...
A blood-red sun is setting on the horizon, distant but familiar, dull but glowing, like the bloodshot eye of a wounded Titan. Layers of pasty-blue, thin, translucent clouds drape the blood-eye image, as if they themselves were the misty, cloudlike shimmerings of heat rising from the sunbaked pavement, cooled by a late-summer rain. I stand...
Citizens Clyde Wilson is simply wrong when he writes that “the Council of Conservative Citizens was not responsible for saving our flag” and that the Council’s “efforts, including rallies by tattooed motorcycle thugs and David Duke followers, have been resoundingly counterproductive—just what the media wanted” (“Letter From South Carolina,” Correspondence, January). In the first place,...
The Rebel Flag and Ole Miss go hand-in-hand—or rather, they did, until recently. The University of Mississippi’s football team is named the Rebels, and students and alumni have had a long tradition of waving the Confederate Battle Flag at home football games. But the tides of time and political correctness have washed up on Ole...
When I hear all the talk about tobacco, I think of my Uncle Rollins, a green-visored straw hat on his salt-and-pepper head and a two-day stubble on his seasoned farmer face. He is standing in a field or by an unpainted barn as he crumbles a yellow-brown leaf and sticks a wad of ‘bacca in...
The Kennedys are an American institution. No, not the Massachusetts rabble, but the Louisiana Kennedys, James Ronald (of Mandeville) and Walter Donald (of Simsboro), self-described “Scotch-Irish crackers” and authors of The South Was Right! and Why Not Freedom! America’s Revolt Against Big Government, both available from Pelican Publishing in Gretna, Louisiana (phone number: 1-800-843-1724). Born...
After nearly a decade of working for the Washington Times, I was fired last September. Technically, I “resigned,” but Wes Pruden, the Times‘ editor-in-chief, asked me for a letter of resignation, and I had no real choice but to agree. Nor, by that time, had I any real desire to remain on the staff. The...
The murder of Michael Westerman, age 19, of Elkton, Kentucky, allegedly by four young black males, should alarm anyone who publicly displays pride in his Southern heritage. Westerman, the father of infant twins, was gunned down as he drove with his wife between Guthrie, Kentucky, and Springfield, Tennessee, on January 14. According to Robertson County...
In an earlier letter I cheered my buddy Chris’s suggestion that announcements at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics be given in both Southern and Yankee English but pointed out that on preliminary form Atlanta’s civic leaders are unlikely to cotton to the idea. I didn’t mention another of Chris’s proposals, one they’re guaranteed to like even...
The Southern Classics Series is a new venture of J.S. Sanders and Company. John Stoll Sanders and his series editor M.E. Bradford are systematically resurrecting worthy titles that have disappeared from the pages of Books In Print. In so doing, they are making a valuable statement about the Southern tradition in American literature. I purposely...
THE SOUTHERN LEAGUE, whichrnwas founded in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, inrnJune 1994, seeks to advance the social,rncultural, economic, and political wellbeingrnand independence of the Southernrnpeople. According to SouthernrnLeague President Michael Hill, thernSouth, though it has been subsumed byrnthe American Empire, remains a distinctrnhistorical entity: “The South has its ownrnculture based on particular folkways,rnheroes, music, cuisine, dialect, religion,rnethnicity,...
Rock who was the leader of the segregationistrnCitizen’s Couneil during therncity’s 1957 desegregation crisis, Prudenrnwrites a regular column for the paperrnthat often defends the Confederate Flagrnand the Southern heritage and displavs arntaste for ethnic rabbit punches (only arnfew days after he fired me for expressingrnviews he claimed to find “racially insensitive”rnand “offensive,” he published a...
of this massacre. It might have drivenrndown property values and led to dilapidation.rnBut last year it was the locationrnof the most impressive Christmas celebrationrnin many decades.rnThe ladies who organized the seasonalrnevents—including the Victorian Christmasrnporch tour, the luminaries onrnCollinwood Drive, and tours of homesrnand shops—have successfully foughtrnevil with acts of courage and goodness.rnSeveral new shops have...
At Loggerheadsrnby William BaldwinrnCaught in the Netrnhy Anthony V. Margavio andrnCraig /. Forsyth, with Shirley Laskarnand James MasonrnCollege Station:rnTexas A&M University Press;rn156 pp., $32.50rnThe Endangered Species Act is arncontroversial directive. The snailrndarter and spotted owl have gleaned nornend of headlines, having been used tornjustify the preservation of huge areas ofrnhabitat. Less well known is the...
Crown Heights, which resulted in thernsavage murder of a young Rabbinical student?rnHow dare anyone resent the MartinrnLuther King holiday? Bob Grant did,rnand his attitudes and ideas were metrnwith a chorus of protest from the Pharisees.rnAlan Dershowitz, the liar for hire ofrnchoice for murderers and rapists, appearedrnon the television news to describernMr. Grant as an anti-Semite...
Sentencing Project in 1995, 32 percentrnof black men ages 20-29 were eitherrnin jail, or on probation or parole—rnnot counting those convicts who hadrnfinished their sentences. In areas suchrnas Brooklyn’s East New York, Bedford-rnStuyvesant, and Brownsville, andrnQueens’ Far Rockaway, the number topsrn50 percent. However, white QueensrnCollege sociologist Andrew Hacker urgesrnblack men to perpetrate more violentrncrimes against...
tnitcrrestrial intelligence, and the notoriousrnnuelear w inter seare of a few yearsrnback. Sagan also includes religion—especialh”rnChristianity—which he smearsrnrather than attacks by a clever method ofrnguilt-b”-association. Ilis discussion ofrnreligion is immediately linked to thernwitch-hunting craze of the 16th century,rnon which he spends a significant part ofrnhis book. He describes the methods ofrntorture and the interrogation process,rnand...
perfectly aware that Tudjman had regularrnCroatian troops in Bosnia, and quietlyrncondoned his intention to violate allrnagreements in order to destroy the KrajinarnSerbs. Accordingly, “There was thereforernno feeling between us of resentmentrnat being let down Vv’hen he did attackrnacross agreed ceasefire lines.”rnAlija Izetbegovic is treated with similarrncharity. We are not told what Owenrnknows: that he had...
tim so luridly described in the closingrnscene is in fact too commonplace to bernvery shocking.rnTo Hollywood the South is no longerrnthe irredeemable backwater of MississippirnBurning, but a place like South Africa,rnwhich is successfully overturning its oldrnorder and shedding its evil heritage. Butrnthe New South is admirable only insofarrnas it has ceased to be Southern. JakernBrigantz...
water, country heritage. At least I havernknown such a life.rnI am grateful that I was not raised likernsome hothouse flower, living in air-conditionedrnisolation from the naturalrnworld. I was never belted into a minivanrnand catapulted down a highway at 75rnm.p.h. to be delivered by a stressed-outrnand preoccupied driver to the childcarerncenter so both parents could go...
its constitutional dub,’ to regulate foreignrncommerce and be prohibited fromrnamending presidential requests tornchange American law to conform withrnexecutive agreements. Just as executivernagreements were conceived to circumventrnthe Senate’s role in treaty-making,rnfast track is designed to cripple Congress’srnability to guide trade policy.rnhi place of elected representatives, arnhost of private-sector advisory committeesrnhave been created. Former Clintonrntrade official Jeffrey...
EDITORrnThomas FlemingrnEXECUTIVE EDITORrnScott P. RichertrnSENIOR EDITOR, BOOKSrnChilton Williamson, Jr.rnART DIRECTORrnH. Ward SterettrnDESIGNERrnMelanie AndersonrnCONTRIBUTING EDITORSrnKatherine Dalton, Samuel Francis,rnGeorge Garrett, Paul Gottfried,rn].0. Tate, Michael Washburn,rnClyde WilsonrnCORRESPONDING EDITORSrnBill Kauffman, Donald Livingston,rnWilliam Mills, William Murchison,rnAndrei Navrozov, Jacob NeusnerrnFOREIGN AFFAIRS EDITORrnSrdja TrifkovicrnLEGAL AFFAIRS EDITORrnStephen B. PresserrnRELIGION EDITORrnHarold O.J. BrownrnEDITORIAL SECRETARYrnLeann DobbsrnCIRCULWION MANAGERrnCindy LinkrnPUBLISHERrnThe Rockford InstituternA publication of The Rockford Institute.rnEditorial...
EDITORrnThomas FlemingrnMANAGING EDITORrnTheodore PappasrnSENIOR EDITOR, BOOKSrnChilton Williamson, jr.rnEDITORIAL ASSISTANTrnMichael WashburnrnART DIRECTORrnAnna Mycek-WodeckirnCONTRIBUTING EDITORSrnHarold O.]. Brown, Katherine Dalton,rnSamuel Francis, George Garrett,rnE. Christian Kopff, Clyde WilsonrnCORRESPONDING EDITORSrnBill Kauffman, Jacob Neusner,rn]ohn Shelton Reed, Momcilo SelicrnEDITORIAL SECRETARYrnLeann DobbsrnPUBLISHERrnAllan C. CarlsonrnPUBLICATION DIRECTORrnGuy C. ReffettrnPRODUCTION SECRETARYrnAnita CandyrnCIRCULATION MANAGERrnRochelle FrankrnA publication of The Rockford Institute.rnEditorial and Advertising Offices:rn934 North Main Street, Rockford,...
eed) students to more effective districts.rnConscc[uentl, the educrats have beenrnscrambHng to their last Hnc of defense:rndepreciate tlie results and significancernof specific testing instruments, such asrnthe SAI’ and PE, and objective, quantitatirnc grading s’stems in general. Therngeneral name for this is OBE, “Outcome-rnBased Education,” which seeks torndispense with Carnegie curriculum unitsrnaltogether and institute in their placern’ague...
the voung man’s attempted robbery to arnlegislator who serves on the commission,rnI was told, “If he [Manzanares] was anrnAnglo, the poliee wouldn’t have pulledrntheir guns so quickly.” The HumanrnRights Commission is obviously too busyrnauditing racial attitudes to take noticernof the human rights abuses wrought byrnthieves and murderers.rnWilliam Grigg is a columnist for thernDaily I lerald...