Tom’s Big Picture

A conclusion I’ve come to is that the entirety of true American conservatism, i.e. fighting against the tyranny of centralized government, is the political extension of the fight led by the Confederacy. In fact, arguments about tactics to advance conservative causes diverge into those that advocate violence to overthrow the centralized government (i.e. the Confederate approach) and those that urge a more gradual on-the-margin resistance.

My problem with the former is not moral (as the federal government, post-Lincoln, has no more legitimate constitutional authority than the schoolyard bully) but practical. In the new reality of mass-mechanized warfare, expensive munitions, and ultimately nuclear annihilation, we cannot afford to nurse fantasies of violent resistance. The Confederacy was the last, best chance of individuals using largely private means to meet centralized tyranny head-on- and despite a most heroic effort, was ultimately bulldozed by the industrial machine of the Federals. This machine is one hundred times more powerful now than it was then, and so the merely high-risk strategy of the Confederates is now blatantly foolish. I’m not interested in going down in a blaze of glory- remember the lesson of Hood, as this sort of thinking is a flaw of Southerners.

I also have a problem with the gradualist camp. How many years have people labored for small gains on the margin, with little to show? How many billions of dollars, hours of sweat and blood, and precious family times sacrificed as conservative activists carry water for the Republican politicians on the thinnest of gruel?

We all know the song and dance: “Well, we can’t actually STOP abortion, so we’ll just regulate it a little bit. We’ll ban homosexual marriage, but we won’t use Congress’s constitutional mandate and actually PREVENT federal judges from even having jurisdiction over the issue. That would be extremist, to actually DO something about the issues that will stick. But y’all keep voting Republican, and REAL SOON NOW we’ll get around to dealing with the issues you care about…”

No, we need to stop confusing the methodology with the goal. The goal is an end to federal tyranny, not the next election.  Instead of getting ourselves whipped up by the latest “issue of the month”, we need to think long-term about what actually might be successful in achieving our final goal.  My idea is as follows:

One of the great gifts of our Founding Fathers is that apparent legitimacy of government in this country is dependent upon public consent.  Thus, even though we know the Constitution is essentially dead, our government has a political need to use it as a fig leaf for its actions.  Even the “right” to abortion is clothed in constitutional terms, part of the implied “right to privacy”.  We can be thankful that the Founders’ legacy still affects the actions of the government today, even if in grossly distorted form.

Thus, a non-violent, sane means of resistance is to simply take actions that reduce the perceived legitimacy of the federal government.  We conservatives, natural respecters of authority and law, have trouble with this.  We simply cannot square in our mind that authority and law in service of evil is, at some point, illegitimate- and thus the right thing to do is to disrespect it in order to deconstruct its legitimacy.

We could learn a lot from the Left on this issue.  From abolitionism to the civil rights movement, the Left does exceedingly well at attacking perfectly legitimate authority with pseudo-moral crusades combined with acts of civil disobedience calculated to provoke an overreaction on the part of the powers they wish to challenge- this overreaction then creates the public sympathy necessary to advance their political causes.

Whereas the Left uses pseudo-morality and civil disobedience to attack legitimate authority, we cannot deny the obvious effectiveness of the tactic.  We need to use true morality and civil disobedience to attack illegitimate authority.

How can we do this?  What specific issues and tactics should we fight for using civil disobedience?

I’ll cover that in Part Four.

In part one, I discussed the meaning of the Confederacy, most notably its core ideology of resistance to centralized federal power. I also discussed the fatalistic religiosity of Southern faith, a strong brew of Calvinism and an ancient Celtic code of honor, that resulted in an offensive orientation to conflict- glorious against all odds, but ultimately fatal.

Thus, with the victory of the federal government over the states, the tyranny of the Equalitarians came to fruition. The horrors of Reconstruction ensued, and before long most of the country sympathized with the South’s fate as the Radical Republicans took off the mask and showed their full intent in reshaping the nation to fit the false doctrines of the Cult of Equality.

In 1876, something amazing happened. After two terms of incomparable corruption under the Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, Republican corruption went one step too far. They out-and-out stole the Presidential election of 1876 for Rutherford B. Hayes. The outrage that followed shook the foundations of the Republic- George McClellan, the most honorable and capable of Union commanders (the only one who faced Lee and never lost a major battle to him), even suggested that Union and Confederate veterans unite under his command to occupy Washington, DC and restore the rightful President, the Democratic nominee Tilden.

In a historic deal, Hayes agreed to demilitarize the South in exchange for Democratic support of his stolen Presidency. The deal was struck, and “Redeemer” governments supported by the people rose in the South that rooted out Republican corruption and largely shrank state government. It was one of the few eras in our history where government itself actually became less powerful, a victory for true conservatives.

And so it went, on the surface, until the Warren Supreme Court and its interference with states’ rights in the 1950’s and onward, explicitly admitting their intention to legislate policies from the bench that could never achieve popular approval. Meanwhile, as the central government grew through both world wars, imposition of an income tax, and the massive expansion of the New Deal, the convergence of central government supremacy and constitutional negotiability produced its fruit in the policies of the 1960’s and beyond. Tyranny came home to most Americans, as the federal government regulated who you can hire and fire, who you can sell your house to, opened the door to third world immigration, banned prayer in schools and finally gave the green light to the Abortion Holocaust as the coup de grace of the revolutionary era of 1954-1973.

But this we already know- while Radical Republican excesses caused a reaction that prevented tyranny for a time, we must acknowledge that our forefathers were right in their Second War for American Independence- and with the Confederacy died constitutional government in our republic.

And by acknowledging the reality of our extra-constitutional tyranny, we can see the potential limitations for working within the system- our acquiescence is no excuse. For if today a brave governor of Texas were to unilaterally declare the personhood of unborn children subject to protection of life by the state, and acted on this by arresting and charging abortion doctors with murder, we know the federal response; there would be troops on the ground in Austin within hours. Dubya himself, no doubt, would likely enforce the right to murder children based on the arbitrary ruling of the unelected Supreme Court- and the lack of enforcement of other laws, such as protecting our border from invasion, shows the true nature of the federal government. It is a tool of evil, preserved only by our consent and a temporary Providence of God.

But what is to be done? I think we can learn a lot from the zealous template of abolitionism used to promote tyranny over the Confederacy- but use it instead to end tyranny instead of create it. Details in Part Three….

George W. Bush is officially the biggest disappointment in American history, as his cabinet officers and underlings eagerly negotiate with the enemy to sell out the American nation with a massive illegal alien amnesty.  Bush is a traitor to his country and his civilization.

Above is Republican Party Chairman Sen. Mel Martinez from Florida, Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, and Ted Kennedy as they celebrate their betrayal of the American people.

Bush’s cabinet members lavish praise on Kennedy:

“He’s awesome,” gushed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff , as he left a news conference announcing the bipartisan agreement. “I’d say he was one of the critical leaders in putting together this deal.”

Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez called it “a real privilege” to work with Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and liberal stalwart…

Is it a coincidence that on the same day that the Senate annouces a massive betrayal of the American people by both parties and the President, that Zimbabwean inflation hits 3700%?  The future of our multicultural policies is South Africa- and the future of South Africa is Zimbabwe. 

Apparently quite literally- post-modern post-Christian man seeks meaning in a secular apocalypse, and finds himself drawn to traditional religous archetypes, almost magically.  Yet more proof that an irrational need for meaning is at the root of this movement- something religion used to provide in much healthier ways.

Rick Perry takes his ball and bat and goes home on the HPV vaccine controversy.  The Legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill rescinding Perry’s order, but instead of being a man about it and vetoing it based on his principles, he surrounds himself with cancer patients and even a tear-jerking video of a dying woman- he maintains he was right to force the HPV vaccine upon girls and taxpayers at the point of a gun.  Of course, seeing political reality, he’s going to let his executive order die.

When are we Texas Republicans going to stop electing mule-headed idiots as our governor?  2/2 is pretty bad.

Here, as promised in my first post about the War Between the States and its implications, is presented a PDF of Robert L. Dabney’s A Defense of Virginia and the South. Both as a debater and a Christian, I hesitate to even attempt any sort of defense of the Confederacy, when Dabney has done such a wonderful job. He rejects superfluous arguments of both sides, and reduces claims to their moral and Scriptural essentials. Most startling is his claim that a verse in one of the epistles to Timothy makes no sense unless we see it as a Providential warning against the coming of the Abolitionists and other Equalitarian zealots. You’ll have to read to find out more.

When we see the reign of death that the false god of Equality has brought to our world, whether through Communism or feminism (i.e. abortion), Dabney’s prophecy is even more startling, given that he saw it in only its embryonic form.

Click Here to Download Dabney’s A Defense of Virginia and the South

For those of you who homeschool, this would make a great supplement for high school history.  Biographical information about Dabney, a theologian and soldier born in Virginia who died a Texan, can be found here.

Now, many of you may be wondering why this is important.

There seem to be two responses when dealing with the War Between the States and the ethical implications of the eventual casus belli for Northern repudiation of constitutional limits of federal power and aggression towards the self-determining efforts of the Southern states.

Response one, most common, is wholesale condemnation of the South as a sort of proto-Nazi society, with some exceptional individuals and interesting history surrounding the war, but ultimately no moral justification for its existence due to the horrible injustices perpetrated by its societal structure. Conservative historians have branded this the “Nazification of the Confederacy”.

This seems to be the default explanation both secular and Christian. Of course, from the Christian side, it is explained that the South, though more Christian than the North, suffered God’s wrath for punishment of the sin of slavery.

Response two, less common but still represented, is to entirely ignore the slavery issue and pretend the war was entirely about state’s rights (which it was, partially). Many “neo-Confederates” do this well, making ridiculous arguments to walk around the slavery issue, and pretending that a surviving or revived Confederacy would somehow miraculously solve all of our country’s racial problems because it would avoid the “divisive” interference of the federal government. This is wishful thinking at best (though based on some truth, as the feds do exacerbate baseline racial tension with their policies), and disrespectful to the past at worst. Slavery was a major issue of the war, and to let the Nazification charges go unanswered, or to make ridiculous arguments about the Confederacy being some sort of lost multicultural paradise, gives credence to the very serious moral charges leveled at our ancestors and their society.

It’s important to understand that these charges do not exist in a vacuum. The Globalist Elites are attempting to impose a new religion onto our society, and that religion is Equality. In the name of the false god Equality, all national borders can be erased (thus easing the way for cheap labor and universal consumer markets) and the relatively small minority of people in this world who cause trouble for the elites (a large number of whom are Scots-Irish in the South) can be marginalized.

That’s the purpose of the attacks- to make us feel guilty for who we are so we stop resisting attempts to remake our nation in the image of Babel. And like all good cults, Equality merely twists the truth instead of telling outright falsehoods.

One of these twisting is the elevation of the issue of slavery out of proportion to its actual importance- and since Southerners have always been at the forefront of resisting the Cult of Equality, one convenient use of this twisting is to marginalize the moral authority of those who question the Cult’s edicts.

With Dabney’s help, and not just for Southerners but for all Americans (as the elites, having marginalized the South morally, are attempting to do the same to the heritage of the entire nation), we can regain our sense of moral authority and have renewed confidence in the righteousness of our resistance to the Globalist agenda.

Man is injured on road, 40 people pass by and no offers to help.  Where’s a Samaritan when you need one?

Recently a minister named Mark Driscoll, of an interesting “emerging” church with uncharacteristically conservative theology, put together a video about church planting making analogies from Scripture about the task and being a soldier. I don’t know much else about him, but he makes good points about the feminization of the church. The video was very man-focused, “edgy” and was shot in a veterans’ cemetary. I find it interesting, and unlike the “masculine Christianity” movement of Eldredge (which has a great premise of men wanting to fight for something instead of being feminized Christian “nice guys” singing love songs to Jesus- but with little practical advice for what or who to fight- honestly the book Wild at Heart seemed rather anticlimactic, with all of its Braveheart rhetoric ending up as advice- as far as I could tell- to spend more time outdoors with other men- I’m sorry, but I don’t think real William Wallace masculinity is satisfied with a fishing trip), Driscoll makes some comments that take guts.

Driscoll prepared the video for a church planting conference attended by Bill Clinton’s spiritual adviser, Bill Hybels. And we know how much both Bills care about women- Clinton for the usual reasons and Hybels’ for his pet “relevant” theology of ordaining women pastors and deacons in direct contradiction of Scriptural instruction on the subject.

After this video was presented at a conference, Bill Hybels, the next speaker, immediately criticizes the video for failing to include or affirm the role of women in church planting. What kind of screwed-up, politically-correct, bizarro-world freak sees that video (whatever else one may think of it) and comes away with some kind of beef against it because it’s unfair to women?!! I stand by my assertion that Hybels is a fruitcake with no business in any church, much less promoted as a leader to be emulated. Link to the controversy and video here.

The economic value of stay-at-home moms.  One of the problems of feminism and libertarianism is its inability to see the value of the “shadow economy” of households that involves no monetary transactions- as usual, feminism cheats women.  By my calculations, out of over $100,000 a year on average after taxes and expenses.