A southern tradition ended on August 19, when Beth Anne Hogan, a 17-year-old ponytailed blonde from Junction City, Oregon, signed the Virginia Military Institute’s matriculation book. With help from Janet Reno’s Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court, Miss Hogan and some 30 other young women have done to VMI what the corpulent Shannon Faulkner and her sistren did to the Citadel. Alumni from both schools are no doubt less than thrilled about the prospect of perfume and petticoats transforming the Rat Line and Hell Week into exercises in mere powder-puffery. Old Stonewall must be turning in his grave.

But there is hope for us traditionalists. Two VMI grads. Dr. Michael J. Guthrie and Stanley E. Poston, have come to the rescue with their plans to found the Southern Military Institute (SMI). SMI, according to Guthrie, will be an “overtly politically incorrect institution,” emphasizing the military traditions of the Confederacy. “We intend to create an institution,” Guthrie claims, “that will preserve the traditions of both Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel.” According to a detailed written proposal that was made public at the annual meeting of the League of the South (formerly the Southern League) in Biloxi in June, SMI will need $100 million in order to open its doors to 1,000 cadets as an all-male. Christian institution in the year 2002. The present plan is to build SMI in the hills of northeast Alabama and to give preference in admission to young men from the South.

Not surprisingly, the naysayers are out in full chorus against Guthrie, Poston, and Thomas Moncure, Jr., an ally who quit the VMI Board of Visitors to protest the admission of women. The National Organization of Women reportedly has threatened to sue; Guthrie’s hometown newspaper in Alabama, the Huntsville Times, ran a column highly critical of the proposal; and Dan Huntley of the Charlotte Observer wrote: “With more than two years to go, the prize for the worst idea of the new millennium has to be the plans for a private all-male academy that emphasizes the military traditions of the Confederacy.”

Liberals and their friends are undoubtedly rankled by SMI’s plan to be male. Christian, and Southern. This most politically incorrect trinity is, of course, out of step with their notions of progressive egalitarianism, which explains why, when VMI and the Citadel decided to take on the Justice Department and the Supreme Court while still accepting public funds, their fates were sealed. VMI Superintendent Josiah Bunting III tried to put the best spin he could on the emasculation of his school when he told the incoming “Rats” (no longer “Brother Rats” for obvious reasons): “VMI does not care if you are poor or rich . . . white or black, female or male, Taiwanese or Finn, or Virginian. We only care about your heart, your integrity, and your determination.” But the acting Dean of Faculty, Colonel Alan Farrell, was a bit more honest in his assessment of the day: “Something precious,” he lamented, “has just been ripped from us.” Indeed it had, but that was the goal of the Clinton Justice Department (and the Bush Justice Department, which initiated the lawsuit) all along.

Now that VMI and the Citadel are no longer VMI and the Citadel, the time is right for the Southern Military Institute. Threats will surely be forthcoming from Miss Reno’s misnamed Justice Department, as well as from NOW and the chorus of whiners that pollute the Republic’s airwaves. But, God willing, SMI will become a reality. When it does, it may help to save the South from the clutches of a ruling elite bent on destroying the virility exemplified by Jackson, Lee, and Forrest.

(For further information on SMI, please call Dr. Michael Guthrie at (205) 464-0830, or write him at 267 Fine Ridge Drive, Madison, AL 35758.)