Secession and the South
John M. writes:
I have always enjoyed reading your site and I appreciate you trying to think through what needs to be done to save the West.
I have never quite understood, however, your seeming dislike of the South and everything Southern because many of the beliefs you espouse seem to be consistent with Southern culture:
What other group of people believe in racial differences but distrusts Darwinism and strongly embraces Christianity? Name another group of people who have more consistently stood against Political Correctness than Southerners?
It would seem that you should be a strong defender of the South—but that is not the case. Why?
I suspect that you see some sort of weakness in the concept of decentralization; that secession prevents a united front against invaders.
But now you seem to be toying with the idea of salvaging some part of the West to serve as a nidus for a rebirth of the West. Is that correct? If so, there is really only one place to start—the South. They are still very conservative people and with Celtic backwardness do not care what anyone else thinks. They just need better leaders/elites.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
LA replies:
First, I don’t know where you got the idea that I dislike the South and everything Southern. There is no basis for you to say that, and it’s a smear to say it.
Second, I don’t oppose the idea of secession as such, something I’ve often acknowledged may become necessary or unavoidable at some point. What I’ve opposed is the nihilistic contempt for the United States of America, expressed both by the original secessionists and their spiritual heirs, today’s neo-confederates and paleolibertarians. I’ve often said the South had a case for secession, given that the North and South truly had incompatible social systems. But, if they were set on secession, they should have sought IT though a process of mutual consent with the other states. If they had failed to get that consent, then, if they had proceeded to secede anyway, they would have stood on some kind of reasonable ground. As it was, they said “screw you” to the United States of America, they launched war against the United States of America, and they thus brought on themselves the war that ruined the South.
These issues have been gone over a great deal in past years at VFR, where I have had contentious debates with neo-confederates:
Hate-Lincolniana
Must Southern partisans condemn the immorality of slavery?
The True Cause of the Civil War: Moral Libertarianism (This was the biggest thread, as I remember.)
Washington on the meaning of the national union
Sobran joins the Rothbardians
McConnell and Buchanan versus the “War Party”
Exchange with a friend on the anti-war right
John M. replies:
You say it “ruined the South”. I am open to that argument. The South may be dead forever. On the other hand, it seems to me that the Civil War was so psychologically painful to the South that it made the people determined to resist the inevitability of liberalism/progressivism that has conquered the North. It appears to me the South is the strongest defender of Western culture in the world. Do you think this is a correct statement?
LA replies:
I liked Richard Weaver’s description of the American South as the last non-commercial society in Western civilization. But that’s a long time ago. Today the South still has a military tradition (which has been traduced into fighting and dying to spread democracy to Iraq), and still has a more masculine culture, as I see it, than other parts of the country. But everything in the U.S. is so homogenized today. Is the South that different any more?
Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 14, 2008 03:05 PM | Send