Tom’s Big Picture

In November 2005 I started reading the late Shelby Foote’s 3-volume narrative, The Civil War. If you’ve ever seen Ken Burns’ (liberal, biased and inaccurate) PBS series of the same title, Mr. Foote plays the unofficial voice of the South, interviewed by Burns whenever the Confederate perspective is needed. Foote has a most comforting voice to me, the old Southern accent that older people used to have (including many of my relatives) before the universalizing influence of television.

Now, a few caveats about Foote, who passed away in Memphis in 2005. He was a politically self-loathing Southerner, a man who never supported state sovereignty as an abstract right, either in the last century or the one before. He makes this clear in his notes in The Civil War series when he thanks mid-20th-century states’ rights Southern politicians for helping keep his natural bias towards southern valor in the war in check. Despite being from Mississippi, Foote was an open admirer of Lincoln, Grant and Sherman; Foote was also a defeatist who never thought the war was winnable on the Southern side.

But even with all of this baggage, the series is so well-written and Foote so constrains himself to the facts that he successfully overcomes these problems; and in the end, Foote is still a Southerner who can’t help himself but give his people a fair record of events. Lincoln, who was objectively a political genius on the level of Bismarck, is portrayed in all of his despotic, manipulative and deceptive glory. Even when it comes to Grant, who Foote admires more than anyone else (I think Foote identified with Grant’s humble origins, and resented the more aristocratic origins of most Southern leaders), he does not hold back in describing Grant’s tactical incompetence as a butcher of men who nevertheless prevails due to strategic genius. Only in the case of Sherman does Foote do injustice to the historical record of suffering on the part of the people of Georgia and the Carolinas. Sherman is an interesting case in himself, a devil of a man who brought about the demonic practice of war against women and children, a practice continued by the federal government to this day. Nevertheless, Foote can be somewhat excused due to the propaganda campaign after the war by Sherman apologists who contradicted and smeared Southern eyewitnesses to the atrocities. Only now are historians returning to the original sources for unbiased accounts of Sherman’s war crimes. Except for a few retribution raids conducted by Southern secret agents stationed in Canada, executed in revenge for Sherman’s atrocities against a few New England towns near the Canadian border, of all the major and minor invasions of Union territory by Southern forces resulted in almost no destruction of civilian property and certainly not a deliberate campaign of terror against the populace.

I finished Foote’s trilogy (each paperback books about 3 inches thick) in mid-2006. The series is so enjoyable because it is written like a novel, but relies on real history to tell its story. Stylistically, it reads like an epic, almost like poetry, and the author lulls you into a suspension of reality where you get chills down your spine that things might turn out differently. I’m reminded of a quote by William Faulkner:

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago….

There’s lots of “maybe this time” in the series, as Foote withholds information about what’s going to happen and writes in a tone that leaves open the possibility of a different outcome, right up until the last possible moment.

If you’re a Southerner, or even just an American with roots in the country, you owe it to yourself to read these books- it was a shame I knew so little about the great struggle for so long.

The War Between the States retains an almost mythological status in our history; many of the events of the war, especially told from Foote’s master pen, have a surreal mythological theme to them. Even its outcome is viewed in romanticized terms. As Ron Maxwell pointed out in his essay describing what he hoped to achieve with his latest movie Gods and Generals, interpretations of the war have been subject to a false historical compromise. Namely, we are allowed to believe that the South was justified in its actions if we also consent to believe that the nation is better off for its losing. Yet, such a view is entirely inconsistent with the motives and actions of the men who actually fought the war.

Why would a man like Stonewall Jackson, who taught Bible classes to slaves and personally thought slavery to be a poor system (but not necessarily an immoral one, thus justifying the death of half a million Americans- a key distinction), say that he would rather die than see the banking and railroad interests of the North win the war? If the benefits of continued Union were so obvious, why did so many fight and die to resist those supposed benefits?

The South did not resist because she was eager for a fight, but rather because she recognized in its embryonic form the destruction of states’ rights under a new federal tyranny. As we observe the continued slouching of our country towards socialism, we see its roots in abolitionism. For both are artificial ideologies that force unnatural notions of equality onto an all too unequal world. The natural response of the ideologue, when confronted with a lack of cooperation in nature, is to impose a tyranny to correct the shortcomings of disagreeable reality.

However, the moral status of the Confederacy and its society is beyond the scope of my expertise- in this area I defer to Robert Lewis Dabney, Jackson’s chief of staff, biographer and Presbyterian theologian, whose A Defense of Virginia and the South remains the gold standard of a Biblical analysis of Southern society. I have commissioned a PDF of this work to soon be released here, so I will leave this discussion and its inevitable detractors in the hands of the capable Dr. Dabney.

What interests me more about the War Between the States is what it teaches us about ourselves, not what it teaches us about our enemies. I am one of those who believes that the South should have won- not only in a moral sense, but I believe the outcome of the war was somewhat improbable. If a little country like Vietnam can force out the world’s most powerful nation, if backwards Muslims in Algeria can push out the French and if Arabs who bow down to a meteorite can push the Soviets out of Afghanistan and the US out of Iraq, then why couldn’t a bunch of Southerners with much less of a disadvantage in numbers and with none of the cultural liabilities of the aforementioned groups push out the relatively weak federal government of the time?

The answer, I think, is paradoxical- the South was too good militarily for its own good. What should have been a guerilla war of slow bleeding of the invader, denying him the satisfaction of any real victories, turned into a conventional war. Foote describes how Lincoln, ever the grim melancholic schemer, was a leader who could handle the arithemetic of war by attrition. Lincoln calculated that, even after Lee’s greatest battlefield victory, Chancellorsville (the battle which preceded Gettysburg), if Chancellorsville were fought several more times with the same levels of casualties, then Lee’s army would be gone and a large portion of the Union army would remain.

Yet how beautiful was the victory- the thrill of Jackson’s men sneaking through a thicket to turn the flank, the panicked retreat of the enemy, the satisfaction of forcing yet another foe out of Virginia. Yet it was deadly beautiful, and throughout the war the South engaged in costly, beautiful, daring offensive actions which she could ill afford. But even as I write this, I hesitate, for the temptation of a victory, however costly, is great- almost as if part of me enjoys the thrill of the deadly beautiful loss more than an ugly arithmetic victory.

As a counterpoint, I’m sure Lee was aware of the attrition rates as well, and the goal, as always, was to capture the entire Union Army, march on Washington and end the war. But that, in perfect retrospection of course, was a high-risk strategy. If the capture of two large Confederate armies didn’t end the war by 1863, why would the capture of a Union army make any difference? And the war demonstrates the validity of the defensive, slow victory- as it was only when the butcher Grant took over in Virginia, and Lee could no longer afford an offensive, that the attrition arithemetic started to favor the South. Grant would kill 1000 of his men to kill 100 of Lee’s- and that was something that would eventually (if the strategy had been pursued earlier) enable the South to win.

The key character issue this demonstrates for us is the Southern vice of impatience- we wanted to win, settle it, and go home. No one, save the melancholic depressive Lincoln (who was the perfect personality for a melancholic depressive war the North had to fight), had the willingness to see the conflict in the long-term.

I believe much of this has its roots in our deep culture, if not biology. One of the distinctive themes of Nordic mythology is pessimism- in short, warriors go to the great hall of Valhalla, where they gather in preparation of the final battle between good and evil, Ragnarök. It has already been prophesied, and is known and believed, that evil will win the battle. Yet, stoically, the warriors prepare for battle anyway, for glory and duty have meaning beyond mere victory.

Similarly, Southerners have a sense of fatalism about them, but ironically instead of manifesting itself in apathy it becomes fierce aggression- since the outcome, whatever it is, is already pre-ordained, the only controllable variables are stoic resolve, daring and glory.

Perhaps no other officer in the Confederacy embodied this ideal than Texan John Bell Hood- after reading about his record as a commander, though glorious, I can understand why the feds named the largest military base in the free world after him.

I recently read a book about Jefferson Davis by Hamilton Eckenrode, the state historian of Virginia in the 1920’s. The book has many flaws, but its uniqueness is its anthropological analysis of the characters of the war. He describes Hood this way, at the time when he was appointed as Western commander, a time when the South demanded someone who would yet again launch an offensive:

John B. Hood was an office of rising reputation…Fame had come to him as the head of a Texas brigade, the best in the service…A born fighter, a perfect animal organism without knowledge of fear, he was little affected by wounds that would have killed men of less superabundant vitality [at this point Hood had lost use of his left arm and had his right leg amputated]. In appearance, as in character, he was the typical Nordic fighting man, with his stalwart presence, his blue eyes and his long golden beard. He might have been Coeur de Lion reincarnated. It shows how unerringly race tells that in the last crisis of the Confederacy, when a fighter was demanded, the choice fell on a pure-blooded Nordic, this descendant of the Viking past.

Hood left Georgia with an army, and came back from Tennessee without one. But, oh, what a glorious trip- you’ll have to read Foote for the details.

What are the practical implications of this character flaw of Southerners, this impatience, this need to settle things quickly and throw dice in the face of the odds? How can we correct for this problem in future political struggles? For such contains the secrets to the liberation of our country- not just the South, but the rest of the Heartland under occupation from the respective coastal elites. I’ll cover that in part two.

I recently had time to see the new movie 300, about the Battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans held the pass against the entire Persian army- many believe it to be the glorious battle of Western history. With a bit of editing out of gratuitious sex and nudity (we now have editors than can snip DVD footage without recompression), the movie will be a classic worth showing to young men of the West for many years to come.

It shows our pagan ancestors in their full glory, hardened men of war, utterly merciless when facing a foe as equally unforgiving. Before we judge them too heavily, let’s remember the kind of wars fought at this time, those like Biblical wars of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Canaanites, divinely commanded and sanctioned. The sort of wars Stonewall Jackson said should be fought under the black flag of death, as he recommended the Confederacy do when the federal government exceeded its constitutional bounds. When one’s very civilization is at stake, as Jackson understood, there can be no mercy. As we see the federal government continue its reign of evil and death (50 million+ abortions and counting), Jackson does not sound so unreasonable.

To change gears a bit, what if I told you that Thermopylae was not the most glorious battle of all time? Some think it actually occurred 154 years ago, during the war Jackson fought.

In an 1882 speech, former Confederate president Jefferson Davis made an exuberant claim: “That battle at Sabine Pass was more remarkable than the battle at Thermopylae.”

In arresting prose, Edward T. Cotham, Jr., recounts the momentous hours of September 8, 1863, during which a handful of Texans—almost all of Irish descent—under the leadership of Houston saloonkeeper Richard W. Dowling, prevented a Union military force of more than 5,000 men, 22 transport vessels, and 4 gunboats from occupying Sabine Pass, the starting place for a large invasion that would soon have given the Union control of Texas.

The Davis Guards, a Confederate Army unit named for Jefferson Davis^qv and composed of forty-five enlisted men, one engineer, and one surgeon, all Irish and all in their twenties or younger, belonged to Company F, Texas Heavy Artillery, under Capt. Frederick H. Odlum. The recruits were hand-picked from the docks at Houston and Galveston and were known as the Fighting Irishmen. In August 1863 the unit, under command of Richard W. (Dick) Dowling,^qv was ordered to man the guns at Fort Sabine,^qv half a mile below Sabine City. They constructed an earthen-work fort large enough to hold their six guns. In the battle of Sabine Pass,^qv September 8, 1863, in the space of forty minutes, they fired 137 shots without stopping to swab the guns. Although they captured 350 prisoners and killed 50 Union soldiers, the Davis Guards sustained no losses. Gen. John B. Magruder^qv gave them a special citation and presented them with silver medals, said to be the only medals struck during the Confederacy.

It’s been called the “Alamo in Reverse”. Somebody should make a movie of this one too.

This is an enjoyable poem from Henry Timrod, one of the forgotten Southern writers of the 1800’s who were cheated of their literary legacy because their political opinions on the War Between the States were not compatible with the spirit of our age.

Right now I am enjoying a novel called The Golden Christmas by South Carolinian William Gilmore Simms (the first of a genre Simms invented, the plantation romance), a contemporary of Timrod’s. Simms may have been our country’s most prolific novelist at the time, authoring over 82 works of fiction and poetry; Edgar Allen Poe, no literary slouch himself, said that Simms was “The best novelist which this country has, on the whole, produced.”. Yet only two of his novels are in print, thankfully due to the efforts of the William Gilmore Simms Society and the University of South Carolina.

Simms’ novels are steeped in Biblical allegory- even his most famous non-fiction work, A City Laid Waste, documenting Sherman’s crimes against humanity in the capture of Columbia, SC, alludes to the book of Job. The South, in his view, was like Job- beaten, many of its residents literally in sackcloth and ashes, and everyone assumed that their fate was God’s judgment. Simms hoped his work in documenting the unprecedented evil of the Union armies under Sherman would put a lie to that notion, and that a self-confident South could re-emerge, like the phoenix, sometime in the future. With the federal government insanely commiting financial suicide with entitlements and foreign entanglements, perhaps Simms’ dream of a South restored after much abuse, like Job, is not too far off. Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.

But I digress. Back to Timrod.

Timrod’s works are still published online, and this one is a light and pleasant one I thought many would enjoy:

A Year’s Courtship

I saw her, Harry, first, in March –
You know the street that leadeth down
By the old bridge’s crumbling arch? –
Just where it leaves the dusty town

A lonely house stands grim and dark –
You’ve seen it? then I need not say
How quaint the place is — did you mark
An ivied window? Well! one day,

I, chasing some forgotten dream,
And in a poet’s idlest mood,
Caught, as I passed, a white hand’s gleam –
A shutter opened — there she stood

Training the ivy to its prop.
Two dark eyes and a brow of snow
Flashed down upon me — did I stop? –
She says I did — I do not know.

But all that day did something glow
Just where the heart beats; frail and slight,
A germ had slipped its shell, and now
Was pushing softly for the light.

And April saw me at her feet,
Dear month of sunshine and of rain!
My very fears were sometimes sweet,
And hope was often touched with pain.

For she was frank, and she was coy,
A willful April in her ways;
And in a dream of doubtful joy
I passed some truly April days.

May came, and on that arch, sweet mouth,
The smile was graver in its play,
And, softening with the softening South,
My April melted into May.

She loved me, yet my heart would doubt,
And ere I spoke the month was June –
One warm still night we wandered out
To watch a slowly setting moon.

Something which I saw not — my eyes
Were not on heaven — a star, perchance,
Or some bright drapery of the skies,
Had caught her earnest, upper glance.

And as she paused — Hal! we have played
Upon the very spot — a fir
Just touched me with its dreamy shade,
But the full moonlight fell on her –

And as she paused — I know not why –
I longed to speak, yet could not speak;
The bashful are the boldest — I –
I stooped and gently kissed her cheek.

A murmur (else some fragrant air
Stirred softly) and the faintest start –
O Hal! we were the happiest pair!
O Hal! I clasped her heart to heart!

And kissed away some tears that gushed;
But how she trembled, timid dove,
When my soul broke its silence, flushed
With a whole burning June of love.

Since then a happy year hath sped
Through months that seemed all June and May,
And soon a March sun, overhead,
Will usher in the crowning day.

Twelve blessed moons that seemed to glow
All summer, Hal! — my peerless Kate!
She is the dearest — “Angel?” — no!
Thank God! — but you shall see her — wait.

So all is told! I count on thee
To see the Priest, Hal! Pass the wine!
Here’s to my darling wife to be!
And here’s to — when thou find’st her — thine!

De Toqueville’s opinion of American women and their virtues, as compared to the decadence of Europe at the time.

Until I discovered his poetry on the Internet, I was unaware that Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, was also a poet. His poems are similar to Kipling’s in the broader sense of showing fine craftsmanship of verse and rhyme, the sort of poetry that an entire nation could appreciate- whereas in our time, poetry is the domain of decadent elites and their culturally hostile hangers-on, like a person who calls himself “Amiri Baraka”, a black Muslim who was the poet laureate of New Jersey and penned the following lovely piece after 9/11, called “Somebody Blew Up America”.

They say its some terrorist, some
barbaric
A Rab, in
Afghanistan
It wasn’t our American terrorists
It wasn’t the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn’t Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring

It wasn’t
the gonorrhea in costume
the white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases

They say (who say? Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks

Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation

It continues on this theme ad nauseum for another 5 pages. That’s poetry in 21st century America.

So while this sort of hatred of the majority culture is tolerated and even subsidized by the government, Kipling is banned because of his most infamous poem, “The White Man’s Burden“, and Stevenson is criticized as well, for a little ditty he wrote in his lovely book of children’s poetry called A Child’s Garden of Verses:

Foreign Children

Little Indian, Sioux, or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?

You have seen the scarlet trees
And the lions over seas;
You have eaten ostrich eggs,
And turned the turtle off their legs.

Such a life is very fine,
But it’s not so nice as mine:
You must often as you trod,
Have wearied NOT to be abroad.

You have curious things to eat,
I am fed on proper meat;
You must dwell upon the foam,
But I am safe and live at home.
Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Oh! don’t you wish that you were me?

You see, this little poem teaches children to hate, don’t you know? Many subsequent printings of ACGOV have omitted this poem in compliance with politically correct demands. This volume is wonderful for children, with or without the omission, though we should vote with our dollars and get the unabridged version if possible.

Now, Stevenson is not a particular favorite of mine, as many of his poems are very sentimental- it’s great poetry, but some of it is not my cup of tea. But the following is one of my favorites, simply titled “Prayer”, and is a wonderful reminder of the days we once enjoyed, when “art” and “culture” were not things you had to protect your children from, but were rather the highest expressions of faith, confidence and heritage in the nation of one’s birth. By steeping our children in the heritage of a healthy past, perhaps they can one day, with God-given talent, restore the great Western cultural traditions that produced the greatest art the world has ever known. And no one will have to pay taxes to support half-literate obscenities masquerading as “poetry”.

Prayer by RL Stevenson

I ask good things that I detest,
With speeches fair;
Heed not, I pray Thee, Lord, my breast,
But hear my prayer.

I say ill things I would not say -
Things unaware:
Regard my breast, Lord, in Thy day,
And not my prayer.

My heart is evil in Thy sight:
My good thoughts flee:
O Lord, I cannot wish aright -
Wish Thou for me.

O bend my words and acts to Thee,
However ill,
That I, whate’er I say or be,
May serve Thee still.

O let my thoughts abide in Thee
Lest I should fall:
Show me Thyself in all I see,
Thou Lord of all.

As a counterbalance to my anti-feminist post of last week, I thought it appropriate to feature one of my favorite Kipling poems, “The Female of the Species”. The tragedy of feminism is that it actually disenfranchises women of their natural role, of their much more important work in the home, in the church and the community. How can the Proverbs 31 woman “consider a field” and buy it if she’s stuck in a cubicle grinding out corporate spreadsheets?

The particular theme of this poem is the natural willingness of a woman to kill for her children- the crowning beauty and grace of all creation, the epitome of love and gentleness, turned instantly into a cold-blooded killer when her babies are threatened. A beautiful paradox illustrated by the master pen of Kipling. This, folks, is real female empowerment.

The Female of the Species

1911

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale –
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise, –
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger — Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue — to the scandal of The Sex!

But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity — must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions — not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

She is wedded to convictions — in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! –
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

Unprovoked and awful charges — even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons — even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish — like the Jesuit with the squaw!

So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice — which no woman understands.

And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern — shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

I will probably start doing the quotes of poetry and prose on Mondays, as that’s easier for starting the week than writing something of my own.

The following is a short little poem of Kipling’s relevant to our multi-culti immigration practices.  Particularly salient is his line about “when the Gods of his far-off land shall repossess his blood”.

In the 1950’s, many Europeans thought Muslims were the perfect immigrants- moral to a fault, with a silly little faith no one took seriously, hard workers who didn’t drink and didn’t ask for much.  Then resurgent Islam took hold in the latter half of the twentieth century, and now Europe is held by the neck by high-fertility Muslims amidst dying native populations.  For Europe to recover her birthright, it will take a ruthlessness of leadership that will make Putin look like George Washington.  Much evil could have been avoided by simply preventing the immigration in the first place.  After all, simply refusing someone entry to your country is not immoral, because they have no right to it and they’re not any worse off as a result.

Similarly, the elites in our country think people from Mexico and Central American are the perfect docile workers, just like Europeans thought of Muslims.  But history teaches us that no group of people wants to do dirty work for another group of people in the long term.  And in a universal suffrage democracy, a large poor ethnic group of people will demand socialism to assuage their egos from the inevitable inequalities of a meritocratic society. 

Democracy, Liberty, Multiculturalism.

Choose two.

The Stranger by Rudyard Kipling

The Stranger within my gate,
  He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk–
  I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
  But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
   They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
   They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
   When we go to buy or sell.
  
The Stranger within my gates,
  He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control–
  What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
   Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
   Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
  And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
   They think of the likes of me.

This was my father’s belief
  And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf–
  And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
  By bitter bread and wine.

In my high school, and I assume most high schools, the final study of literature is divided into a two-year course, the first covering American literature and the second in the senior year covering British literature. I enjoyed British literature; I suffered through American literature.

Is this really fair to our country? I don’t think so, given the inordinate amount of time spent on Northeastern “transcendentalist” literature. Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, etc. From what I could tell, a bunch of universalist Gnostic Yankees walking around the woods barefoot pondering the meaning of life and navel-gazing their emotional states like a 7th grade girl’s diary. There was only one transcendentalist I kind of liked, and that was Nathaniel Hawthorne- but I think I liked him because he was a contrarian to the transcendentalist belief in the fundamental goodness of man, and presented man’s dark and evil nature as a reality in his works (of course, his anti-heroes were often historical Christians, see The Scarlet Letter, etc, as Hawthorne was very eager to malign his Puritan ancestors). Nevertheless, there was more real literature to Hawthorne than any of the other authors- and to his credit, he was a Copperhead, with one of his short stories, The Birthmark, being an allegory for the sectional struggle (this dark short story concerns an obsessive scientist who marries a beautiful woman name Georgiana- Hawthorne’s stories are pretty transparent in their symbolism- who has a birthmark on her face; the physician becomes obsessed with the birthmark to the point of being unable to appreciate her otherwise beautiful appearance- and then proceeds with stronger and stronger “treatments” to “cure” the birthmark- until he kills her).

Hawthorne aside, most of the rest was unbearable. Case in point was Emily Dickinson- this was a lady that needed Prozac more than a publisher. But this promotion of abnormalcy, of spiritual defectiveness, as the measure of true art, continues to this day. You are only qualified to be a poet if you’ve been through some horribly traumatic experience and want to share the entrails of your subconscious with the world; or else, write about unspeakable obscenity and aggression towards the majority culture. The art, the craft of verse has been cast aside- a Kipling in our day would be writing lyrics for country music instead of published poetry.

This analysis, of course, ignores the vast riches of Southern literature, including 19th century contemporaries of the transcendentalists. Men like William Gilmore Simms and Henry Timrod- normal men who married and had children, and generally loved their neighbors and the society into which they were born. Men who didn’t scorn the better in pursuit of the perfect, and thus approached closer to truth in this fallen world.

Of course, I was never exposed to this kind of American literature in high school- the best American writers don’t fit neatly into the mythology of political correctness. 

Before moving into the “heavier” political poems of Timrod, it being Valentine’s Day and all, I thought I would share this one, a piece written from the perspective of a mother upon her daughter’s wedding:

A Mother Gazes Upon Her Daughter by Henry Timrod

Is she not lovely! Oh! when, long ago,
My own dead mother gazed upon my face,
As I stood blushing near in bridal snow,
I had not half her beauty and her grace.

Yet that fond mother praised, the world caressed,
And ONE adored me — how shall HE who soon
Shall wear my gentle flower upon his breast,
Prize to its utmost worth the priceless boon?

Shall he not gird her, guard her, make her rich,
(Not as the world is rich, in outward show,)
With all the love and watchful kindness which
A wise and tender manhood may bestow?

Oh! I shall part from her with many tears,
My earthly treasure, pure and undefiled!
And not without a weight of anxious fears
For the new future of my darling child.

And yet — for well I know that virgin heart –
No wifely duty will she leave undone;
Nor will her love neglect that woman’s art
Which courts and keeps a love already won.

In no light girlish levity she goes
Unto the altar where they wait her now,
But with a thoughtful, prayerful heart that knows
The solemn purport of a marriage vow.

And she will keep, with all her soul’s deep truth,
The lightest pledge which binds her love and life;
And she will be — no less in age than youth
My noble child will be — a noble wife.

And he, her lover! husband! what of him?
Yes, he will shield, I think, my bud from blight!
Yet griefs will come — enough! my eyes are dim
With tears I must not shed — at least, to-night.

Bless thee, my daughter! — Oh! she is so fair! –
Heaven bend above thee with its starriest skies!
And make thee truly all thou dost appear
Unto a lover’s and thy mother’s eyes!

One of the most destructive myths about our country is that we are a “nation of immigrants.” This is related to a myth that American culture (not pop culture, but traditional American culture) is an indigenous creation resulting from American institutions and the environment of the country.

The latter myth is exploded by David Hackett Fischer’s authoritative book on the subject, Albion’s Seed. Fischer is a liberal Northerner, and thus his books are a bit biased towards the Puritans and Quakers, but his accounts of the two Southern groups, the Virginians and the Scots-Irish, are valuable. In particular, he shows that all essential parts of American culture can be traced directly back to England. Even something as minor as cuisine (fried chicken comes from South England, where the Virginians came from) or housing (the prevalence of trailer parks in the South is related to the Scots-Irish tendency towards cheap housing, a cultural artifact of having their homes burned and raided in various English/Scottish wars). More importantly, our political traditions, to the extent they remain, of small government and personal liberty are directly descended from Scots-Irish suspicion towards government- the Scots-Irish being the dominant American ethnic group, largely because of their high historical fertility. The state of Texas, in particular, is almost entirely organically Scots-Irish- while other groups might be willing to live near the relatively docile Cherokee and Choctaw Indian tribes, only the Scots-Irish were brave enough to endure the raids of the Apache and Comanche.

Related to the Scots-Irish suspicion of government is the Scots-Irish romanticism of the outlaw. This is understandable since historically so many of them were outlaws- Scottish outlaws in England were forcibly deported to North Ireland, and the worst outlaws of North Ireland were deported to the American frontier. Later on, many outlaws of the frontier made their way to Texas to start a new life. So in Texas we have a founding population that is a triple distillation of the worst outlaws of England, Ireland, and America. Of course, that’s what history tells us, but we know the real story about history from the opening lines of Braveheart: “History is written by those who hang heroes.”

As I talked about in my last post, our people have an abstract notion of right and wrong that supersedes the so-called law. When the laws are written by lying politicians, how can they possibly be right in themselves? No, the laws are just to the extent they are right in the higher sense, and any law that is not can and should be ignored. This is the attitude of the Scots-Irish throughout their history. It was the Scots-Irishman Patrick Henry who said “Give me liberty or give me death”. And the Scots-Irishman William Wallace (at least in the Mel Gibson version) who said “I AM William Wallace! And I see a whole army of my country men, here, in defiance of tyranny. You’ve come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?…Aye, fight and you may die, run, and you’ll live… at least for a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin’ to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take… OUR FREEDOM!”

With this knowledge we can understand why “Rob Roy”, or Robert Roy MacGregor is the national folk hero of Scotland and also the quintessential Scots-Irishman according to Fischer. He tried to do right and earn an honest living- but when the law turned against him, he became an outlaw rather than submit to tyranny. To paraphrase the ballad of latter-day pop culture Scots-Irish outlaws: He was just a good old boy, doing the best that he could, but that was just a little bit more than the law would allow.

The following poem by William Wordsworth, describing the philosophy of Rob Roy and the Scots-Irish contempt for unjust law, has a contemporary application. “Burn all the statutes and their shelves” - I can’t think of better advice in an age when we deal with such legal abominations as Roe v. Wade and a thousand other tyrannical rulings and laws.

Rob Roy’s Grave

By William Wordsworth

A famous man is Robin Hood,
The English ballad-singer’s joy!
And Scotland has a thief as good,
An outlaw of as daring mood;
She has her brave ROB ROY!

Then clear the weeds from off his Grave,
And let us chant a passing stave,
In honor of that Hero brave!

Heaven gave Rob Roy a dauntless heart
And wondrous length and strength of arm:
Nor craved he more to quell his foes,
Or keep his friends from harm.

Yet was Rob Roy as wise as brave;
Forgive me if the phrase be strong; –
A Poet worthy of Rob Roy
Must scorn a timid song.

Say, then, that he was wise as brave;
As wise in thought as bold in deed:
For in the principles of things
He sought his moral creed.

Said generous Rob, What need of books?
Burn all the statutes and their shelves:
They stir us up against our kind;
And worse, against ourselves.

We have a passion — make a law,
Too false to guide us or control!
And for the law itself we fight
In bitterness of soul.

And, puzzled, blinded thus, we lose
Distinctions that are plain and few:
These find I graven on my heart:
That tells me what to do.

The creatures see of flood and field,
And those that travel on the wind!
With them no strife can last; they live
In peace, and peace of mind.

For why? — because the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep who can.

A lesson that is quickly learned,
A signal this which all can see!
Thus nothing here provokes the strong
To wanton cruelty.

All freakishness of mind is checked;
He tamed, who foolishly aspires;
While to the measure of his might
Each fashions his desires.

All kinds, and creatures, stand and fall
By strength of prowess or of wit:
‘Tis God’s appointment who must sway,
And who is to submit.

Since, then, the rule of right is plain,
And longest life is but a day;
To have my ends, maintain my rights,
I’ll take the shortest way.

And thus among these rocks he lived,
Through summer heat and winter snow:
The Eagle, he was lord above,
And Rob was lord below.

So was it — would, at least, have been
But through untowardness of fate;
For Polity was then too strong –
He came an age too late;

Or shall we say an age too soon?
For, were the bold Man living now,
How might he flourish in his pride,
With buds on every bough!

Then rents and factors, rights of chase,
Sheriffs, and lairds and their domains,
Would all have seemed but paltry things,
Not worth a moment’s pains.

Rob Roy had never lingered here,
To these few meagre Vales confined;
But thought how wide the world, the times
How fairly to his mind!

And to his Sword he would have said,
Do Thou my sovereign will enact
From land to land through half the earth!
Judge thou of law and fact!

‘Tis fit that we should do our part,
Becoming, that mankind should learn
That we are not to be surpassed
In fatherly concern.

Of old things all are over old,
Of good things none are good enough: –
We ‘ll show that we can help to frame
A world of other stuff.

I, too, will have my kings that take
From me the sign of life and death:
Kingdoms shall shift about, like clouds,
Obedient to my breath.

And, if the word had been fulfilled,
As might have been, then, thought of joy!
France would have had her present Boast,
And we our own Rob Roy!

Oh! say not so; compare them not;
I would not wrong thee, Champion brave!
Would wrong thee nowhere; least of all
Here standing by thy grave.

For Thou, although with some wild thoughts,
Wild Chieftain of a savage Clan!
Hadst this to boast of; thou didst love
The liberty of man.

And, had it been thy lot to live
With us who now behold the light,
Thou would’st have nobly stirred thyself,
And battled for the Right.

For thou wert still the poor man’s stay,
The poor man’s heart, the poor man’s hand;
And all the oppressed, who wanted strength,
Had thine at their command.

Bear witness many a pensive sigh
Of thoughtful Herdsman when he strays
Alone upon Loch Veol’s heights,
And by Loch Lomond’s braes!

And, far and near, through vale and hill,
Are faces that attest the same;
The proud heart flashing through the eyes,
At sound of ROB ROY’S name.

This poem by Kipling describes a dying Norman (i.e. the Germanic-blooded but French-speaking tribe that conquered England in 1066) instructing his son in how to lead and govern his Saxon charges, the older inhabitants of England with less refined manners, at least from a French perspective- in other words, the original rednecks. And good advice too, even for Saxons today seeking to lead their own people…

The other day while walking in our neighborhood with my wife and family (we live in a country subdivision with minimum 5-acre lots), I noticed some of my good-old-boy neighbors in full camouflage, coming out of the woods. Now, deer season is over, and they probably weren’t hunting.

But if they were, in their defense, they would merely be following the traditions of our ancestors for a thousand years, who even back in England shamelessly poached the “king’s deer” whenever possible. Even my wife, who is a much stricter rule-follower than myself, when I explained that they technically shouldn’t be hunting right now (assuming on the off chance that’s what they were doing), was offended at the notion that you can’t hunt “on your own land” unless it’s hunting season. Now, I’m not saying I oppose hunting regulation, as I support legitimate conservation efforts to preserve the game population for future generations, but I think her reaction illustrates our people’s tendency to appeal to the higher law of right and fairness instead of the technical letters of statutes- the latter being a purely French concoction alien to English freemen and their ancient common law.

While I am not a particularly eager outdoorsman myself (I make myself go fishing twice a year because I think it’s good for a man to go kill animals for food every now and then- and if I ever have a son, I’ll certainly want him to have the experience of shedding an animal’s blood, as it is an education on the realities of life), I am the exception among our people. I find it amusing that all across the South, the ultimate career goal of many a smart lawyer or doctor is to earn enough money to buy a piece of land in the middle of nowhere where they can go and sit in a tree, doused with raccoon or “doe in heat” urine, waiting to kill the big one.

The redneck has not been bred out of us yet, and good thing too.

Norman and Saxon
A.D. 1100