Jus' a little mo' on "neo-Confederate reactionaries", and then I'll shut up on this 'un.
Fo' 'awhile, anyhow. I was jus' re-readin' my convursashun with Ben DeGrow over at his blog Mt. Virtus, and fokused agin on his statement, which I had misread inishually, that "neo-Confederate reactionaries" are them folks who " feel compelled to apologize for the Confederacy in defense of some current conservative-oriented idea or agenda item." He had a-menshuned historian Thomas Woods as an example, and I knowd he was tawking about Ole Snaggle-Tooth too and all other paleocons who are at the same time Confed'rate. I'd like-ta commint ohn-at.
I gis the first thang I'd say is that paleocons don't find theyseves defendin' "some current conservative-oriented idea or agenda item". They find theyselves, rathuh, defendin' a whole panoplee of ideas and agendas (that's plur'l, Ben), both current and historic, but mainly historic. That's why they's called "paleo"cons. Also why Ben's stripe of conservatism is called "neo"conservatism, cuz it's thrown off much of the old in favuh of much that is new. And untested.
Next thang I'd say is-iss: if'n one would but examun the partic'lar incarnation of tradishunalist conservatism in the American settin', observin' its organic develupmint, he jus' might come to lurn hisself and maybe even 'ppresheeate the cunnection betwixt the kinda things, say, Russell Kirk used to tawk 'bout, and how Southron conservatism and accordinly the Confed'racy came to be. Might even make-at body wanna become a confederatarian. 'At's what a-happen'd to Ole Snaggle-Tooth, tho' they was additional, mo' familial and emotive cornsiderashuns too: all my kin r' from the Southland, even tho' I weren't borned and raised there. And I luv em. Once I threw off all my hippie-like sinnin' and grew both a brain and a heart, I began to obsurv a certun nobility in these hick relatuvs of mine. Add a little Eugene Genovese et al. to all that, and poof, got that raggly ole paradime shift a-goin'.
'Course, even before that I came to start luvin' the Southland. We used to go down South fo' summah vacation, and I would commandeer the vehicle and go drivin' 'around smokin' pot, but gettin' higher, I thank, on the beautiful Southland and all its slow, mellow ways. I moved there years latuh, aftah repentin' and gettin' my life cleaned up, and I came to luv it even mo'. Events out of my control brought me here to Colorader, but I still love the Southland. Hope to buy me some good earth there and retire ohn it sum day.
So to my mind, Missur DeGrow, ain't no separatin' conservatism from the Confed'racy. The War fo' Southern Independence wuz simply the outgrowth of the War of Independence from Grate Britun, and Washinton had become London (though now it is Rome ). Southrons rebelled with Yankees 'ginst the Brits, but then they had to start rebellin' against Brit-style tyranny shohtly theyafter: the Virginia and Kentucky Resolushuns; attempted nullification of abom'nable Northern tariffs; etc. Finally came to a head in 1861. To the Confed'rate's way o' thinkin', the American Reverlution has thus been defeated, and given how thangs developed from 1865 to 2007, we can't hep thinkin' that the neocon's distain for the "neo-Confederates" is nothin' shoht of a miracle o' blindness. Where did the centralist statism of the liberal-left come from? Y'all guessed it, and it's not jus' we Confed'rates who see the cunnection. You jus' might relate to this-un', Missur DeGrow, since ye a proponent of home-schoolin' like I am: John Taylor Gatto sees the problem with the publick skool system as rooted, historically, in the centralization that took place aftuh the defeat of the South, and in the mentality of the Northeast. Ye should read about it some time, if'n ye havint already. But that's jus' one thang of several tendin' to show that our modern cultural pathologies, 'ssociated as they always is with the librul-left, had they genesis in wut happened as a result That War. We think ye neocons cain't recugnize any o' this in large part cuz in some respecks ye as deluded by liberal statism as are the libby-lefties. Yes, ye a-hangin' on to some, mossly late, tenants of conservatism, Reagan-Bush style, but in the main part yer ignurnt as to what conservatism really is. And-at's why yo' assessment of us "neo-Confederate reactionaries" sorta falls on deaf ears. We don't think you really speak fo' conservatism.
Lassly, regardin' that term "neo-Confed'rate": miny of us take umbrage at that appalachian, cuz it sorta suggests the Confed'rates wint away, or that all Southrons really got Reconstructed, and that wut we have here is sumthin' of a reenaysawnce ex nihilo. No, the Rebs just laid dormant, thass-all. While the Armies of the Confed'racy had t' surrender for the sake of mercy, the Confed'racy nevuh did, and generashuns of Southrons since them dark days have held the Confed'racy in they hearts. I think this is prob'ly why ole Shelby Foote said, "Southerners are strange about that war". We strange about it cuz we really have a sense, mo' so as time goes on, and mo' so as the culture rots, that it really ain't ovah. We have a sense that maybe the South will rise agin', or if'n it don't, Yankeedumb will at least fall. We really do believe that God'll bless us, 'n so we often sign our communikays with the Latin phrase, "Deo Vindice." Becuz we believe-at t' be so, we also write, "Resurgam". And also the Tolkienesque "Dum Spiro Spero".
Now, y'all kin come at us with ye argeements 'bout slavery and all. History will bear out our "apology" on the mattuh. But yer main problem is that ye so obsessed 'bout why the South wuz wrong that ye cumpletely blind about how and why she wuz right. And I think modern conservatives have a lot to lurn 'bout that.
S. Jones
P.S.: Commints is offishully open.
Snaggle-Tooth Jones
in Revolutionary Roots
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