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The following essay forms my chapter in the recently-published book, The Vanishing Tradition: Perspectives on American Conservatism , edited by Paul E. Gottfried, 2020. Full publication credits and permission to reprint are found at the end of the essay. This chapter was re-published in the September/October issue of the Confederate Veteran magazine. A couple of small edits were made in the following version.
No discussion of Southern conservatism, its history and its relationship to what is termed broadly the “American conservative movement” would be complete without an examination of events that have transpired over the past fifty or so years and the pivotal role of the powerful intellectual current known as neoconservatism.
From the 1950s into the 1980s Southerners who defended the traditions of the South, and even more so, of the Confederacy, were welcomed as allies and confreres by their Northern and Western counterparts. William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review and Dr. Russell Kirk’s Modern Age, perhaps the two leading conservative journals of the period, welcomed Southerners into the “movement” and onto the pages of those organs of conservative thought. Kirk dedicated an entire issue of Modern Age to the South and its traditions (Fall issue, 1958), and explicitly supported its historic defense of the originalist constitutionalism of the Framers. And throughout the critical period that saw the enactment of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, Buckley’s magazine defended the “Southern position,” arguing forcefully on constitutional grounds that the proposed legislation would undercut not just the guaranteed rights of the states but also the protected rights of citizens. Southern authors like Mel Bradford, Richard Weaver, Clyde Wilson, Tom Landess, and James J. Kilpatrick lent their intelligence, skill as writers, and arguments to a defense of the South.
Yet by the 1990s, that “Southern voice” had pretty much been exiled—expelled—from major establishment conservative journals. Indeed, friendly writers from outside the South, but who were identified with what became known as the Old (or Paleo) Right, that is, the non-neoconservative “Right,” were also soon purged from the mastheads of the conservative “mainstream” organs of opinion: noted authors such as Joe Sobran (from National Review), Sam Francis (from The Washington Times), Paul Gottfried (from Modern Age) and others were soon shown the door.
Perhaps the first major example of this critical process came in early 1981, after the election of Ronald Reagan as president. Conservative Republican stalwarts Senators Jesse Helms and John East, both from North Carolina, joined by Democrat Howell Heflin of Alabama, lobbied hard for the nomination of the distinguished Southern scholar, Mel Bradford, to head the National Endowment for the Humanities. Bradford was originally tapped for the position by Reagan.
According to intellectual historian David Gordon, Reagan’s wish “to elevate [Bradford] to the prestigious post did not stem solely from Bradford’s academic credentials. The president and he were acquaintances, and he had worked hard in Reagan’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. Influential conservatives such as Russell Kirk and Senator Jesse Helms also knew and admired Bradford.”[1]David Gordon, “Southern Cross: The Meaning of the Mel Bradford Moment,” The American Conservative, April 1, 2010, accessed at: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/sou...cross/ But the selection met with strong opposition from various neoconservative writers and pundits, including syndicated columnist George Will and prominent figures like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, who objected strongly to Bradford’s criticisms of Abraham Lincoln. They circulated to the press and to Republican political leaders quotes from Bradford characterizing Lincoln as “a dangerous man” and “indeed almost sinister.” He was even accused of comparing Lincoln to Hitler. More, Bradford’s support for the 1972 presidential campaign of Governor George C. Wallace was brought up negatively. In the end, it was neoconservative choice, William Bennett, who was selected for the post later in 1981.[2]David Frum, “Culture Clash on the Right,” The Wall Street Journal, June 2, 1989; and Gordon, “Southern Cross: The Meaning of the Mel Bradford Moment.”
What had happened? How had the movement that began with such promise in the 1950s, essentially with the publication of Kirk’s seminal volume, The Conservative Mind [1953], descended into internecine purges, excommunications, and the sometimes brutal triumph of those who only a few years earlier had shown links to the Marxist Left?
To address this question we must first examine the history of the non-Stalinist Left in the United States before and after World War II. And we need to pinpoint significant differences between neoconservatives who made the pilgrimage from the Left into the conservative movement, and those more traditional conservatives, whose basic beliefs and philosophy were at odds with those of the newcomers. As a mostly neglected but useful source of information, we might look at a long list of critical interpreters of American conservatism, starting with Richard Weaver, Russell Kirk, and Mel Bradford, and continuing through Paul Gottfried, Gary Dorrien (The Neoconservative Mind, 1993), and Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke (America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, 2004). I also bring in my own experience as a witness to the transformation under discussion. That transformation saw the triumph of a pattern of thinking that went back to only partially recovered onetime adherents of certain deviationist forms of Marxist Leninism.
The complex history of that ideology and, in particular, of the aggravated differences between developing factions in the dominant power structure in Russia would have profound effects on the Communist movement in the United States. After the death in 1924 of the leader of the newly-formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Vladimir Lenin, a political struggle between the two major leaders who emerged, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, revealed the fissures in Marxist Leninist theory and practice. While both men had served the Communist revolution in Russia, 1918-1921, Trotsky advanced a Marxist Leninist position that would stress global proletarian revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation, and a form of mass (workers’) democracy. Unlike the Stalinist position which posited the establishment of “socialism in one country” as a prerequisite for furthering the socialist cause elsewhere, Trotsky advanced the theory of “permanent revolution” among the working class. Trotsky’s desired that revolution would be worldwide and pay homage to “democracy.” This would set it apart from Stalin’s more insular emphasis on Russian geopolitical interests.[3]See Elliott Johnson, Elliott David Walker and Daniel Gray, Daniel. Historical Dictionary of Marxism. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements (2nd ed.). (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland, 2014), p. 294; and also generally, Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects [1906]. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974 edition.
In the United States, the prominent American Marxist Jay Lovestone (born Jacob Liebstein, of Jewish parentage, in what is now Lithuania) would play a pivotal role not only in the early history of the Communist Party USA, but also in the eventual emergence of what is now known as neoconservatism.[4]Paul Buhle, “Jay Lovestone’s Thin Red Line,” The Nation, May 6, 1999, accessed at: https://www.thenation.com/article/lovestones-thin-re...-line/ Lovestone’s allegiances were with the Trotsky and another adversary of Stalin, Nikolai Bukharin. Their faction of Communism stressed internationalism, workers’ revolution, and opposition to what was perceived as the overly bureaucratic concentration of power in the hands of high party members.[5]Ted Morgan, A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster. (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 4-6 et sq.
Eventually expelled from the Communist Party in 1929, Lovestone began a pilgrimage to the Right that brought him finally into the ranks of fierce anti-Communist union activities and eventually counter-espionage action on behalf of the CIA. Thus the title of Ted Morgan’s exhaustive biography, Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, Spymaster [1999], which chronicles his subject’s intellectual journey, and also indicates a direction taken by other American Marxists, beginning in the late 1930s and continuing until their entry into the ranks of staunch anti-Communist movement conservatism in the 1970s.
Indeed, the final breaking point for many of those Marxists who would within a few decades gain a foothold in the American conservative movement probably came with the recrudescence of anti-Semitism under Stalin in post-World War II Russia (e.g., the infamous “doctors’ plot”). Horrified and disillusioned by the further derailment of the socialist revolution, these “pilgrims from the Communist Left”—who were largely Jewish in origin—moved toward an explicit anti-Communism. Notable among them were Podhoretz and Kristol, both of whom had sons who would figure prominently in the current neoconservative establishment.
Embraced by an older generation of conservatives, and invited to write for conservative publications, the neoconservatives soon began to occupy positions of leadership and importance. More significantly they changed views associated with the older movement to mirror their own vision. For even though shell-shocked by the effects of Soviet Communism, they nevertheless brought with them a world view drawn from the Left. And they brought with them relentless zeal for furthering this worldview.
A remarkable admission of this genealogy came in 2007, in the pages of NationalReviewOnline. Here one finds the expression of sympathies clearly imported from the onetime far Left and presented in a onetime Old Right publication. As explained by the contributor Stephen Schwartz:
“To my last breath, I will defend Trotsky who alone and pursued from country to country and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling to Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit that he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology. Let the neofascists and Stalinists in their second childhood make of it what they will.”[6]Quoted by Paul Gottfried in Takimag.com, April 17, 2007
Integral to their quest for power within the conservative movement, members of the conservative “new class” were also motivated by a strong desire for professional advancement. This too made it necessary that older, more traditional conservatives give way. Although not a Southerner (albeit sympathetic to Southern conservatives), the respected Old Right scholar Paul Gottfried is a case in point. Advanced by the relevant departments as a candidate for a chair in the humanities at the Catholic University of America, he saw his nomination, like that of Bradford, torpedoed by massive neoconservative intervention. This may have occurred, he subsequently learned, because his neoconservative opponents had someone else in mind for the position that he had sought and was on the point of obtaining.
By the late 1990s the neoconservatives had taken over most of the major conservative organs of opinion, journals, and think-tanks. They also, significantly, exercised tremendous influence politically in the Republican Party (and to some degree within the Democratic Party, at least during the presidency of Bill Clinton). Irving Kristol, one of the intellectual godfathers of neoconservatism, carefully distinguished his doctrine from traditional conservatism. It was “forward-looking” and progressive in its attitude toward social issues like civil rights, rather than reactionary like the earlier conservatism. Its adherents rejoiced over the Civil Rights bills of the 1960s, unlike Buckley’s National Review at the time. Neoconservatives were also favorable to the efforts to legislate more equality for women and for other groups who they felt had hitherto been kept from realizing the American Dream.
Rather than simply attacking state power or advocating a return to states’ rights, the new conservatives, according to Kristol, hoped to build on the existing federal administration. They believed that the promise of equality, which neoconservatives found in the Declaration of Independence, had to be promoted at home and abroad, and American conservatives, they preached, must lead the efforts to achieve global democracy, as opposed to the illogical and destructive efforts of the hard Left, or the reactionary stance of the Old Right.[7]See Irving Kristol, “American Conservatism, 1945-1995,” The Public Interest, Fall 1995. It goes without saying that this neoconservative vision would clash glaringly with traditional Southern conservatism and its foundational principle of states’ rights and opposition to what was perceived to be government social engineering.
Neoconservative rhetoric and initiatives did not go unopposed in the ranks of more traditional conservatives. Indeed, no less than the “father” of the conservative intellectual movement of the 1950s, Russell Kirk, publicly denounced the neoconservatives in the 1980s. Singling out the Jewish intellectual genealogy of major neoconservative writers, Kirk boldly declared in 1988: “Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.”[8]Russell Kirk, “The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species,” Address, The Heritage Foundation, December 15, 1988, accessed at: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/th...pecies In response to Kirk’s comments, Midge Decter, wife of Norman Podhoretz and director of the Neoconservative-oriented Committee for the Free World, denounced his remark as “a bloody piece of anti-Semitism.” See John Judis, “The Conservative Crackup,” The American Prospect, Fall 1990, accessed at: http://prospect.org/article/conservative-crackup Kirk’s resistance, and the warnings of Paul Gottfried, Sam Francis, Patrick Buchanan and others of like mind emphasized the sharp differences between the Old Right and the ascending neoconservatives.
From the perspective of the Old Right the neoconservatives were “unpatriotic” in the sense that they placed their globalist values of equality and liberal democracy above their allegiance to any historic nation. Indeed they converted their bizarre nationalism into a kind of world faith. According to this post-Christian faith, America was the “exceptional nation,” which held a duty to go round the world and impose its vision, as articulated by neoconservatives, on unenlightened countries. The term “American exceptionalism” enjoyed favor with Lovestone and his break-away, radical socialists. These partisans insisted that the United States existed independently of the otherwise ironclad Marxist laws of history because of its economic abundance and the lack of rigid class distinctions in our society. Lovestone and his followers believed that the strength of a self-reforming American capitalism rendered unnecessary a Communist revolution. America was uniquely open to gradualist approaches for righting social and racial inequalities.[9]Albert Fried, Communism in America: A History in Documents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 7.
As the former Marxists made their trek rightward more than a half century ago, the linguistic template and ideas associated with “American exceptionalism” were deployed to signify the universal superiority of their conception of the American experience. Further, these retread Marxists read their conception of a reformed and crusading American democracy back into the American Founding. For example, a neoconservative favored political thinker Allan Bloom offers this opinion in The Closing of the American Mind: “And when we Americans speak seriously about politics we mean that our principles of freedom and equality and the rights based on them are rational and everywhere applicable.” Americans must engage in “an educational experiment undertaken to force those who do not accept these principles to do so.”[10]Allan Bloom, quoted in Paul Gottfried, War and Democracy: Selected Essays, 1975-2012 (London: Arktos Media, 2012), p. 110.
Although the two groups may seem at times in major disagreement, both the multicultural Left and the neoconservative Right share a basic commitment to certain ideas and tropes. Both use comparable phraseology—about “equality” and “democracy,” “human rights” and “freedom,” and the desirability of exporting “our values.” Despite this overlap, both the dominant Left and the neoconservative Right will try to give their discrete meanings to the foundational doctrine of equality that the two sides share with equal enthusiasm
In their defense of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s and their advocacy of moderate feminism and equal rights for women (now extended to same sex marriage and even transgenderism), the neoconservatives mirror the political stances of the Left. They also seem to agree with the Left’s overarching premises while also criticizing the Left for being excessive in how they implement their policies. Thus we have such neoconservative notables as Ben Shapiro, Jonah Goldberg, George Will, Guy Benson, and others essentially endorsing same sex marriage and wishing to accommodate transgenderism but also insisting that they are moderate “conservatives” who are recognized by reasonable liberals as such.[11]See, for example: Jonah Goldberg, “America Is Not As Intolerant We Make It Out To Be,” National Review, April 20, 2018, accessed at: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/america-not-m...lide-1 ; Seth Stevenson, “The Many Faces of Ben Shapiro,” Slate, January 24, 2018, accessed at: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/is-ben-s...n.html ; and Guy Benson, “SCOTUS Rules 7-2 Against Anti-Religious Bullying, But Punts on Key Legal Question,” Townhall.com, June 4, 2018, accessed at: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/06/04/s...tterad =. While Benson defends the recent Supreme Court decision supporting the Christian bakers’ refusal to bake an individualized cake for a gay wedding, he also declares “some of us [conservatives] support LGBT rights,” an increasing number within the conservative movement. Benson, himself, is openly gay.
From the showcasing of such figures one gains the impression that the most recent reversal of traditional moral standards—same sex marriage, or transgenderism—is actually conservative. Or, in foreign policy that it is critically necessary to send American soldiers to fight in faraway jungles or deserts to establish democracy, in effect, to prevent one group of rebels in a Asia or Africa from killing off another group of rebels in that territory—that other group being willing to do the bidding economically and politically of the United States. This crusade takes place supposedly in the name of spreading global equality and freedom and other benefits of American democracy.
Not surprisingly, the Southern conservative historian Mel Bradford stressed the incompatibility of the neoconservative vision with the older republican constitutionalism of the Founders and Framers. According to Bradford, our old republic was not founded on abstractions about equality or democracy, or on some imperative to impose our democracy on the rest of the world.[12]M. E. Bradford, “The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa,” Modern Age, Winter 1976, pp. 62-77, accessed at: https://www.unz.com/print/ModernAge-1976q1-00062 We were not intended to be “the model for the rest of the world,” to paraphrase Allan Bloom. Those notions in the case of the neoconservatives were a hangover from their immersion in a universalism that owed its origin to the radical Left. Traditional Southerners by contrast regarded as the basis for their unity, kinship and blood, an attachment to community and the land. Moreover, both states’ rights and a central religious core annealed the older republican tradition as understood by Southern traditionalists.
Understanding the old republican legacy, as interpreted by Bradford and likeminded Southerners, is essential for differentiating Southern traditional conservatism from the neoconservative vision. North Carolinian Richard Weaver aptly described the society created in the Old South, a century before the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, as one based on a communal or “social bond” individualism.[13]Richard Weaver, “Two Types of American Individualism,” reprinted as chapter five in The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, edited by George M. Curtis III and James J. Thompson Jr. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 82, 102. See also, generally, Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Post-Bellum Thought (New Rochelle, NY, first edition, 1968). By that Weaver meant that colonists from Europe brought with them to the South a community-oriented individualism which offered enumerated liberties and autarky to each of its members within the parameters of a hierarchical society anchored in commonly accepted traditions.
Settlers on America’s Southern shores, according to Southern conservatives, were not seeking to create an “exceptional nation” dedicated to spreading the gospel of equality and democracy. They were only trying to preserve the order in which they already lived. Paramount for Southerners was the defense of localism and co-existing with other communities and states within a federalized union. According to this Southern conservative understanding of American history, the Northern victory in 1865 overthrew the original republic and paved the way for the present-day success of what the late author Sam Francis called the managerial state…and what we now characterize as the Deep State.
In the so-called “conservative wars” of the 1970s and 1980s Southern conservatism found itself fighting side-by-side with a dwindling contingent of the Old Right. That was understandable, seeing that the Old Right treated the South and even the Confederacy with some sympathy. By contrast, the neoconservatives never hid their contempt for the white South as a quagmire of reaction and racist attitudes. This now supposed linkage between the white South and reactionary bigotry was reflected in the recent efforts of neoconservative TV celebrity Ben Shapiro to defame conservative Republican candidate Corey Stewart in the Virginia Republican primary for the US Senate. Not only did Stewart’s support for Confederate heritage become a negative issue for Shapiro and other neoconservatives, he also made much of the fact that Stewart at one time associated with a former congressional candidate, Paul Nehlen, who later made statements that some observers characterized as anti-Semitic.[14]Peter d’Abrosca, “Daily Wire Tries to Coerce Jerry Falwell Jr. to Drop Corey Stewart Endorsement,” Big League Politics, June 6, 2018, accessed at: https://bigleaguepolitics.com/texts-daily-wire-tries...ement/ The tarring of Stewart through guilt by association with someone’s hypothetical anti-Semitism followed a customary neoconservative script. Southern whites who stray to the Right of the neoconservatives are pummeled with charges of racism and anti-Semitism.
Neoconservative historian and Fox News media star, Victor Davis Hanson, also can’t quite master his hatred of Southern white society. In a critique of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for her insistence on her claimed remote Native American ancestry, Hanson compared modern hard core Leftists to Southerners on the eve of war in 1861. He predictably dredged up images of Southern white racism, accusing Warren of “harkening back to the old South’s ‘one drop rule’ of ‘invisible blackness.’ Supposedly any proof of sub-Saharan ancestry, even one drop of ‘black blood,’ made one black and therefore subject to second-class citizenship.” Further: “The yellow star rectifies this strange situation in which one human group that is radically opposed to the people of white blood, and which for eternity is unassimilable to this blood, cannot be identified at first glance.” Hanson’s linkage between Nazis and traditional Southern conservatives was unmistakable but also unlikely to render him unpopular with his equally bigoted sponsors.[15]Victor Davis Hanson, “The Confederate Mind,” National Review, March 20, 2018, accessed at: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/progressives-...dview/
It may be relevant to mention that neoconservative revulsion for white Southerners of a traditionalist persuasion does not seem to be grounded in an unforgiving attitude toward the South for having once practiced slavery and segregation. As Gary Dorrien and other historians have noted about the origins of neoconservatism, a strong identification of this movement with the civil rights revolution came mostly long after the event.[16]See Gary Dorrien, The Neoconservative Mind (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 150-155, for a discussion of Kristol’s controversial essay, “My Negro Problem—And Ours,” Commentary 35, no. 2 (February 1963). In the 1970s neoconservative authors were openly critical of black civil rights leaders for opposing Jewish public educators in New York City and for failing to support Israel. It was the campaign to unseat the Southern conservative Mel Bradford for the directorship of the NEH in 1981 that turned neoconservative journalists into raging enemies of supposed Southern bigotry. This emotion was not however entirely feigned. Neoconservatives have fairly consistently associated the white South with anti-Jewish prejudice; and the invective they unleashed on Bradford may well have been motivated by hostility to someone whom they saw as culturally different from and possibly hostile to their own Jewish subgroup.
Given their profound repugnance for defenders of the white South, it seems unlikely that establishment conservatives would be welcoming them back into their movement very soon. But other developments occurred that suggest that such a welcome would be unnecessary. With the Civil Rights revolution and the subsequent abandoning of the South by the Democratic Party, a change took place in political party identification in the former Confederacy. From the mid-twentieth century when figures such as Senators Harry Byrd Sr. of Virginia, Richard Russell of Georgia, and Sam Ervin of North Carolina—all Southern Democrats—defined Southern conservative politics, the political leadership of the South has undergone transformation.
Ervin is now remembered mostly as the “Watergate senator” who helped bring down Richard Nixon. A Bible-quoting, story-telling, and well-educated, conservative Democrat who rose to become North Carolina’s senior US senator, “Senator Sam” was an archetypal traditional Southern conservative. His speeches on the Constitution and his autobiography, Preserving the Constitution: The Autobiography of Senator Sam J. Ervin [1984], are like a journey back into the mind of the Framers. Ervin defended an American republic and American society that have all but vanished. As a leader of the opposition to the Civil Rights bills of the 1960s he warned against the long-range consequences of federal overreach. Ervin upheld strict-constructionism, and his understanding of states’ rights as an effort to create a bulwark against the modern social-engineering state. His strictures against the Watergate break-in were also directed against the same target, unchecked centralized government.[17]See Boyd Cathey, “Rejecting Progressivism by Recovering the Fullness of the American Past: Senator Sam Ervin,” My Corner by Boyd Cathey, October 23, 2017, accessed at: http://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2017/10...d.html
Ironically, despite its Northern and Jewish roots, neoconservatism gained adherents in the states of the old Confederacy and today seems to dominate Southern Republican politics. In this it was aided by favorable conservative media, and, in particular, by the generally neoconservative-oriented Fox News Channel. This network offers neoconservative views on a wide range of themes, from American intervention in Syria or Afghanistan and an often awkward outreach to racial minorities, to militantly pro-Likud policies for the Middle East.
Although some political leaders in the South continue to claim the conservative mantle, they stand worlds apart from men like Ervin, Jesse Helms and Harry Byrd. A Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for example, demonstrates the influence of the pervasive neoconservative narrative. Like many other Southern solons in Washington, such Republicans have advocated vigorous American intervention across the globe and accept the enunciated tenets of an American exceptionalism that would, in effect, impose American-style democracy and equality on nations that appear backward or “undemocratic.” Southern political leaders who are sometimes ranked as “conservatives” also affirm such once-taboo practices as same sex marriage, couching their acceptance as a matter of individual choice. In June 2015, after the Supreme Court rendered its Obergefell vs. Hodges decision, Senator Graham announced that he no longer favored a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman because it might hurt the Republican brand among independents and millennial voters: “…no, I would not engage in the Constitutional amendment process as a party going into 2016. Accept the Court’s ruling.”[18]Stassa Edwards, “GOP Should Change Its Position on Gay Marriage,” Jezebel.com, June 28, 2015, accessed at: https://jezebel.com/lindsey-graham-gop-should-change...496783
Graham also joined South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley and other political and cultural leaders in calling for the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol. This came after the shooting in a black church in Charleston in 2015 by a lone gunman who displayed Confederate iconography.[19]Eugene Scott, “Graham: ‘Flag had to Come Down. And thank God it has’,” CNN, July 9, 2015, accessed at: https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/09/politics/confederate-...x.html The connection between the flag on the capitol grounds and the shooter was tenuous at best, but it afforded the occasion for nervous Southern politicians to discard an indelible image of Southern heritage identified by the media as a hate symbol. The position taken by many Southern Republican politicians was one more reminder of the difference between traditional Southern conservatives and their putative newer incarnations.
Neoconservatives have also enjoyed success in bringing over to their side Southern Evangelicals. Neoconservative positions have often dovetailed with those of Southerners who profess Dispensationalism or “end times theology,” in which the modern State of Israel is seen to possess the divine mandate given to Israel of the Old Testament. Perhaps most notable here has been Pastor John Hagee, Pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, with his international media network.[20]“Pastor John Hagee,” Christians United for Israel. Leadership, accessed at: https://www.cufi.org/impact/leadership/executive-boa...hagee/ Hagee’s role and activities are similar to those of other church figures, and their influence among Southern Evangelicals is significant. Because of their unswerving theological devotion to the Israeli state and its policies, these advocates and their followers have been open to neoconservative influence generally.
Among traditionally conservative Southern Baptists, moreover, there has been a tendency to adapt to the leftward drifting media. A notable example can be found in the reaction to the violent confrontation between demonstrators from the militant Left and militant Right that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017. A scheduled march by various partisans in defense of a threatened monument to General Robert E. Lee was met by counter-protesters from Black Lives Matter, the Antifa movement, and others on the Left. One counter-protester was killed in the resulting melee’. The media denounced only the right-wing “extremist” demonstrators but avoided mentioning the complicity of the Left in the violence that erupted.[21]See Boyd Cathey, “Thoughts on Charlottesville and What It Means for Us, The Unz Review, August 15, 2017, accessed at: https://www.unz.com/article/thoughts-on-charlottesvi...or-us/ . Among Neoconservative pundits Ben Shapiro has been consistent in his attacks on President Trump’s response to the Charlottesville incident, accusing the president of turning a blind eye to what he called “increasingly reactionary racial polarization” by not forcefully singling out for condemnation the Alt-right and what he terms white nationalism. See Shapiro, “Left Tries To Blame Trump For Charlottesville. Here’s Why They’re Wrong,” The Daily Wire, August 14, 2017, accessed at: https://www.dailywire.com/news/19676/left-tries-blam...hapiro
Whereupon a group of Evangelical Protestant leaders announced the formation of a group, “Unifying Leadership,” and sent an “Open Letter” to President Donald Trump. Spearheaded by such prominent Southern Baptists as Dr. Steve Gaines, President of the Southern Baptist Convention; Danny Akin, President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Baptist social activist Russell Moore, the group urged President Trump to denounce the “Alt-Right” movement and “white nationalism.” (Trump had previously condemned provocateurs on both sides at Charlottesville, an act that raised the hackles of the Washington establishment and prominent neoconservatives.)
The signers also asked the president to “join with many other political and religious leaders to proclaim with one voice that the ‘alt-right’ is racist, evil, and antithetical to a well-ordered, peaceful society.” Other leaders of American Evangelical Protestantism soon added their signatures to his document.[22]“Southern Baptists, Others Release Letter on ‘Alt-Right’ to Trump,” Christian Index, October 2, 2017, accessed at: https://christianindex.org/southern-baptists-others-...trump/ This followed a condemnation by the Southern Baptist Convention earlier that year of what was termed “white supremacy.” Thus in addition to their ultra-Zionist position, Baptist and Evangelical Protestant leaders made common cause with neoconservatives in highlighting the danger of white racism that government must continue to address.
The surprise election of Donald Trump with his vision to “make America great again” was an indication that a somnolent and older grass roots tradition, a native populism that owed more to William Jennings Bryan than to George W. Bush, was on the rise again. The future president’s apparent questioning of the shared Left/Right consensus on America’s duty to spread democracy and equality together with his later refusal to follow the consensus narrative on the Charlottesville incident suggested that he was not in the mold of establishment Republicans.
The rise of Trump threw both the neoconservatives and their Southern imitators off stride, at least temporarily. Despite his New York origin and his brashness of manner and language, the electoral earthquake occasioned by Trump’s triumph had wide–ranging consequences beyond the election of a president. Such stalwart neoconservatives and establishment Republicans as Bill Kristol (Irving’s son), George W. Bush aide Peter Wehner, Steve Schmidt (who ran John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign), former New Hampshire Senator Gordon Humphrey, and Max Boot (major foreign policy advisor to McCain) joined the Never Trump opposition. Boot, in a Washington Post column, announced that he was leaving the Republican Party and blasted what he termed the “Trumpian revolution” that was working “to transform the GOP into a European-style nationalist party that…believes in deportation of undocumented immigrants, white identity politics, protectionism and isolationism backed by hyper-macho threats to bomb the living daylights out of anyone who messes with us.”[23]
Indeed, the alacrity and eagerness with which white Southerners voted for the new president has been frequently noted, and not always favorably. But since white Southern support for the GOP has been surging for decades, none of this should have been entirely unexpected. Certainly Trump did not go out of his way to appoint Southern conservatives to his administration, but he has also not been hostile to them and even came out in defense of preserving Confederate monuments.[24]
There has also been a revival of interest in preserving “Southern heritage” which has found followers in all social classes. This has been fueled by the war to pull down monuments and plaques commemorating the Confederacy and by efforts to remove the Confederate Battle Flag in the South from public buildings. In this crusade neoconservatives have been largely vocal as enemies of anything that treats the Southern white past favorably. But opposition to the leftist anti-Confederate Taliban project has surfaced nonetheless at the same time. During the furious debate over monuments, much to the surprise and shock of both pollsters and the governing class, nearly two-thirds of Southerners favored keeping them in place.[25]
What is abundantly evident, however, is that Southern conservatives, properly understood, have no place in the present establishment conservative movement. Well over a century ago Jefferson Davis declared: “Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.” It will be interesting to see if this will be true for that older Southern conservatism. They are plainly a hindrance to the “movement” as it reaches out and tries to form alliances and frame dialogues with the opposition, always on the Left. Southern conservatives may also be anathema to the conservative movement in its present instantiation because that movement continues to depend on neoconservative funders and media personalities. In any case what has happened to this ousted and defamed part of the Old Right warrants our attention if we seek to understand where the conservative movement has gone since the 1960s. In this case as in others those bearing an ideology with leftist roots have been allowed to marginalize the true Right.
[1] David Gordon, “Southern Cross: The Meaning of the Mel Bradford Moment,” The American Conservative, April 1, 2010, accessed at: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/southern-cross/
[2] David Frum, “Culture Clash on the Right,” The Wall Street Journal, June 2, 1989; and Gordon, “Southern Cross: The Meaning of the Mel Bradford Moment.”
[3] See Elliott Johnson, Elliott David Walker and Daniel Gray, Daniel. Historical Dictionary of Marxism. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements (2nd ed.). (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Maryland, 2014), p. 294; and also generally, Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects [1906]. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1974 edition.
[4] Paul Buhle, “Jay Lovestone’s Thin Red Line,” The Nation, May 6, 1999, accessed at: https://www.thenation.com/article/lovestones-thin-red-line/
[5] Ted Morgan, A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster. (New York: Random House, 1999), pp. 4-6 et sq.
[6] Quoted by Paul Gottfried in Takimag.com, April 17, 2007
[7] See Irving Kristol, “American Conservatism, 1945-1995,” The Public Interest, Fall 1995.
[8] Russell Kirk, “The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species,” Address, The Heritage Foundation, December 15, 1988, accessed at: https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-neoconservatives-endangered-species In response to Kirk’s comments, Midge Decter, wife of Norman Podhoretz and director of the Neoconservative-oriented Committee for the Free World, denounced his remark as “a bloody piece of anti-Semitism.” See John Judis, “The Conservative Crackup,” The American Prospect, Fall 1990, accessed at: http://prospect.org/article/conservative-crackup
[9] Albert Fried, Communism in America: A History in Documents (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 7.
[10] Allan Bloom, quoted in Paul Gottfried, War and Democracy: Selected Essays, 1975-2012 (London: Arktos Media, 2012), p. 110.
[11] See, for example: Jonah Goldberg, “America Is Not As Intolerant We Make It Out To Be,” National Review, April 20, 2018, accessed at: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/america-not-most-racist-sexist-nation-progress-made/#slide-1 ; Seth Stevenson, “The Many Faces of Ben Shapiro,” Slate, January 24, 2018, accessed at: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/01/is-ben-shapiro-a-conservative-liberals-can-count-on.html ; and Guy Benson, “SCOTUS Rules 7-2 Against Anti-Religious Bullying, But Punts on Key Legal Question,” Townhall.com, June 4, 2018, accessed at: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2018/06/04/scotus-sides-with-christian-baker-72-what-the-ruling-does-and-doesnt-mean-n2487144?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad =. While Benson defends the recent Supreme Court decision supporting the Christian bakers’ refusal to bake an individualized cake for a gay wedding, he also declares “some of us [conservatives] support LGBT rights,” an increasing number within the conservative movement. Benson, himself, is openly gay.
[12] M. E. Bradford, “The Heresy of Equality: Bradford Replies to Jaffa,” Modern Age, Winter 1976, pp. 62-77, accessed at: https://www.unz.com/print/ModernAge-1976q1-00062
[13] Richard Weaver, “Two Types of American Individualism,” reprinted as chapter five in The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, edited by George M. Curtis III and James J. Thompson Jr. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 82, 102. See also, generally, Weaver, The Southern Tradition at Bay: A History of Post-Bellum Thought (New Rochelle, NY, first edition, 1968).
[14] Peter d’Abrosca, “Daily Wire Tries to Coerce Jerry Falwell Jr. to Drop Corey Stewart Endorsement,” Big League Politics, June 6, 2018, accessed at: https://bigleaguepolitics.com/texts-daily-wire-tries-to-coerce-jerry-falwell-jr-to-drop-corey-stewart-endorsement/
[15] Victor Davis Hanson, “The Confederate Mind,” National Review, March 20, 2018, accessed at: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/progressives-elizabeth-warren-hillary-clinton-race-based-worldview/
[16] See Gary Dorrien, The Neoconservative Mind (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 150-155, for a discussion of Kristol’s controversial essay, “My Negro Problem—And Ours,” Commentary 35, no. 2 (February 1963).
[17] See Boyd Cathey, “Rejecting Progressivism by Recovering the Fullness of the American Past: Senator Sam Ervin,” My Corner by Boyd Cathey, October 23, 2017, accessed at: http://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2017/10/october-23-2017-my-corner-by-boyd.html
[18] Stassa Edwards, “GOP Should Change Its Position on Gay Marriage,” Jezebel.com, June 28, 2015, accessed at: https://jezebel.com/lindsey-graham-gop-should-change-its-position-on-gay-m-1714496783
[19] Eugene Scott, “Graham: ‘Flag had to Come Down. And thank God it has’,” CNN, July 9, 2015, accessed at: https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/09/politics/confederate-flag-2016-south-carolina-lindsey-graham/index.html
[20] “Pastor John Hagee,” Christians United for Israel. Leadership, accessed at: https://www.cufi.org/impact/leadership/executive-board/pastor-john-hagee/
[21] See Boyd Cathey, “Thoughts on Charlottesville and What It Means for Us, The Unz Review, August 15, 2017, accessed at: https://www.unz.com/article/thoughts-on-charlottesville-and-what-it-means-for-us/ . Among Neoconservative pundits Ben Shapiro has been consistent in his attacks on President Trump’s response to the Charlottesville incident, accusing the president of turning a blind eye to what he called “increasingly reactionary racial polarization” by not forcefully singling out for condemnation the Alt-right and what he terms white nationalism. See Shapiro, “Left Tries To Blame Trump For Charlottesville. Here’s Why They’re Wrong,” The Daily Wire, August 14, 2017, accessed at: https://www.dailywire.com/news/19676/left-tries-blame-trump-charlottesville-terror-ben-shapiro
[22] “Southern Baptists, Others Release Letter on ‘Alt-Right’ to Trump,” Christian Index, October 2, 2017, accessed at: https://christianindex.org/southern-baptists-others-release-letter-on-alt-right-to-trump/
[24] John Savage, “Where the Confederacy Is Rising Again,” Politico, August 10, 2016, accessed at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/texas-confederacy-rising-again-214159 ; Max Greenwood, “Trump on removing Confederate statues: They’re trying to take away our culture,” The Hill, August 22, 2017, accessed at: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/347589-trump-on-removing-confederate-statues-theyre-trying-to-take-away-our ; and a northern perspective, “Feeling Kinship With The South Northerners Let Their Confederate Flags Fly,” National Public Radio, May 4, 2017, accessed at: https://www.npr.org/2017/05/04/526539906/feeling-kinship-with-the-south-northerners-let-their-confederate-flags-fly . For a fearful but revealing Leftist view: Mason Adams, “How the Rebel Flag Rose Again—and Is Helping Trump,” Politico, June 16, 2016, accessed at: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-south-confederate-flag-racism-charleston-shooting-213954
[25] See, for example: Jennifer Agiesta, “Poll: Majority see Confederate Flag as Southern pride symbol, not racist,” CNN, July 2, 2015, accessed at: https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/politics/confederate-flag-poll-racism-southern-pride/index.html ; also, Elon University Poll results and article, News and Observer, October 3, 2017, accessed at: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article176748721.html#storylink=cpy ; Meredith College Poll, October 11, 2017, accessed at: https://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/according-to-a-new-poll-61-percent-of-north-carolina-voters-are-fine-with-confederate-monuments/Content?oid=8681113 ; and Marist College Poll, August 17, 2017, accessed at: http://maristpoll.marist.edu/nprpbs-newshourmarist-poll-results-on-charlottesville/
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Religion is unpredictable. John Hagee’s continued influence is not guaranteed. We will have to see if the former Congressman Ron Paul (and Senator son) will have an upsurge. The Afghan conquest will reverberate as it is impactful as the loss of the Algerian war to the French.
The War for Southern Independence is America’s longest war. Patience. We’ll some day see a familiar scene at the Atlanta Airport.
“We’ve got a media whose owners make $10 billion per year and pay TV anchors $10 million per year to tell people earning $100 thousand per year that people making $10 thousand per year are the problem.”
Gee, you’re pretty good at math. (as long as things are kept in even multiples of ten)
Virgil Caine is the name and I served on the Danville train
‘Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again
In the winter of ’65, we were hungry, just barely alive
By May the tenth, Richmond had fell
It’s a time I remember, oh so well
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, “La, la, la”
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Live version is way better. (RIP Levon Helm…)
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I actually like Joan Baez’s version better
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Agreed. I like her version of Joe Hill as well.
I liked her better when she was screwing MLK.
She screwed Bob Dylan and Steve Jobs, not so sure about MLK.
Joan’s more casual pop cover has a place, e.g. at parties. But can’t compete with the original as an emotionally deep Southern anthem of sorts. And I don’t understand how Joan Baez could go through a whole recording process without ever bothering to get correct lyrics to the song she’s singing…
Most of The Band was Canadian, but Levon Helm was a native son of Dixie and brought a passion that can’t be matched by Joan’s girly pop version—clearly didn’t even know what she was singing about. Perhaps why she didn’t object to singing of “old Dixie” in the first place, despite those days paling around with Hanoi Jane and Martin L King (if FBI records are to be believed, Joan may have “performed” a lot more for MLK than just sing for him on Selma to Montgomery…)
Levon Helm:
Joan Baez (womanized version):
Also Joan can live whatever personal life fits, but I don’t think Tennessee had legalized gay marriage in 1865. Baez freely re-writes the rest of the lyrics in her head but leaves verbatim one line implying she is in a lesbian marriage, or Virgil Caine is some kind of drag king alter ego, perhaps à la Mollie Bean or Mary/Molly Bell (but with a wife.)
This is a more reality based discussion of the southern conservative and how their ilk has come to rule America today https://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/
This is a well-written obituary of Southern conservatism, which for what it’s worth was always more authentic and rooted than the Yankee variety.
That said, where do legitimate heartfelt conservatives plan to go from here? Paleocons like Paul Gottfried et al have been eulogizing conservatism for decades (Sam Francis, Larry Auster, Pat Buchanan etc..).
There is no place left in politics for reactionary conservatism. There simply isn’t enough left to save. For Whites to survive, adapt to the new ugly realities and persevere, they have to adopt a more radical and revolutionary attitude.
They have to be willing to go to the same lengths as the Left, discard their process-worship and simply will themselves to power on crucial family values – renewing their commitment to heterosexuality, religion, social and economic policies that enable and support households with one working father and one homemaking/child-rearing mother, as well as (gods forbid) ethno-nationalism, trade protectionism, (White) America First foreign policy and all the other things that Sam, Pat and others have lamented the loss of since the 1980’s.
It remains to be seen whether any of these men or their aspiring intellectual heirs are up to that challenge.
Straight from the pen of an Igbo princess:
https://diamondcelebrities.org/2017/11/04/martin-luther-king-had-love-child-bedded-joan-baez-jfk-files/
Southerners aren’t reproducing enough, and there’s been a great deal of immigration into the South. Before A/C, we received less immigration. The concern used to be that blacks would come to outnumber us and take charge. Today, there are so many immigrants that even the whites can be left wing. You don’t hear Southern accents in wealthy parts of my state.
People seem to want very different (opposing) things with Southern conservatism but mostly just to honour our dead. I’m of British descent and an FFV as well as FFSC (first families in those states). I figure I’ve been turned into an ethnic Brit by mass immigration. It doesn’t make sense for me to identify with a Guatemalan or Yankee living in my state.
The Southern Agrarian ideal of the small farmer isn’t reasonable today, but similar ideals can be found in the Catholic distributist ideal. Gardening or small hydroponics can be done today if wanting to be agrarian, but often food is harvested today with illegal workers, which is very bad. Southerners can still have an impact today if applying Southern values without labeling them as such.
I see a great many marriages not only between Amerindians and whites but also blacks and whites. It’s a very different South today.
Classical liberal ideals seem too common, as well as support for imperial wars, in the South. The South was also part of the mistaken push into WWII. The US might have avoided Pearl Harbor had there not been some support for entering the war. But I suppose it was Hitler who ultimately declared war on the US.
James Edwards has a wonderful talk show that respects the South, but the best to do is to make a place in current society as best one can. Mike Tuggle has become a writer. Paul Craig Roberts is still one of the most brilliant economists, when he takes himself seriously. Pat Buchanan might be claimed by the South. It can surprise you which leaders are Southern.
We’re just not allowed our flags, statues, and heroes, not publicly anyway.
Wow she got around huh
It’s not unknown for women to sing a male narrator’s part
I can’t see a reference to that horrid old commie without having Al Capp’s mockery of her in his “Lil Abner” comic as “Joanie Phoanie” being brought vividly to mind.
Thank you for providing exceptionally important information.
Your effort is greatly appreciated.
Right now, throughout the West, the previously dominant city-based political parties are failing. The industrial/shipping cities of the 1800s and early 1900s are no longer economically viable, and are (like Rome during the Roman Empire) living off of politically enforced levies on the countryside. The Neocons merely provided a plausible reason (“American Exceptionalism”) to extend the financial base of US urban parasitism to include the rest of the world, using a combination of military force and monetary seigniorage. The political ability to enforce this urban parasitism is nearing its end, or perhaps has reached it. The conversion of Western urban areas into strongholds of non-Western societies marks the end of rural tolerance of urban dominated politics, and the failure of US expeditionary forces in Asia (Iraq, Afghanistan) has crippled income from non-US sources. The extreme reliance on monetary policy to maintain funding for US urban areas is a profound confession that the old methods aren’t bringing in resources anymore.
You are seeing, in real time, live action, the withdrawal of every economically viable rural area from the urban areas. This is most obvious in Texas and Florida. Both are interfaces between US and non-US societies, Texas with Mexico and Latin America, Florida with the Caribbean. Such areas tend to develop independent societies and, after the breakup of the states to which they once gave allegiance, to form new states.
So, we’re probably looking at a new political entity. Probably formation would involve an independent Texas/Florida alliance, the development of coalitions such as the second amendment States (https://www.uslawshield.com/second-amendment-sanctuaries/), and the eventual formation of a new politics (quite likely retaining the form of the present United States) centered around Florida, Texas, and the rural areas. Note that Florida/Texas would control shipping from the entire Mississippi Valley.
Urban areas in this scenario would simply decline in population and infrastructure, as did the small towns in what used to be called the Rust Belt (https://www.thoughtco.com/rust-belt-industrial-heartland-of-the-united-states-1435759). This decline is well underway, as can be seen by the present raids on suburbs by urban residents who have no better source of income, and by urban infrastructure so undermaintained the people in NYC have recently drowned in their basement apartments from water welling up through storm drains to blocked sewers (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/nyregion/nyc-flooding-deaths.html).
The US neocons were necessarily spokesmen for US urban areas and the urban politics that supplied the urban areas. Their support for expeditionary wars and foreign country subversion was a thin cover for support of what used to be called tribute from conquered countries. Towards the end, the Neocons tried to subjugate the entire world by including it in trade that was denominated in US Dollars. Granted, the trade would probably have been beneficial for all parties, but it also would have ensconced US seigniorage. The AUKUS treaty signals the end of US attempts to knit together the world with trade.
What will the rural politics look like? Well, the rural people have been subject to oppression severe enough to greatly reduce rural population. US rural areas in non-urban dominated states are now inundated with rural refugees from urban dominated States, refugees who tell of even worse treatment in the areas they fled. These refugees are willing to live in unimproved woodland in areas of harsh winters just to escape the urban dominated States, and serve as a warning to local rural inhabitants of just what an urban dominated future holds for them.
This seems to displease the rural population.
You can bet that the new politics won’t tolerate further oppression that drives people off their land (such as making small and medium scale farming uneconomic and promotion of immigration of any sort), and will try to reduce such oppression in formerly urban dominated States. If Old Southern political theory supports that, then that’s what they will adapt and use.
Such a politics is in fundamental opposition to contemporary urban politics. Taking NYC as a leader of cities, NYC restriction of COVID treatment by race (https://nypost.com/2022/01/01/nyc-considering-race-in-distributing-life-saving-covid-treatment/) and various lessenings of restrictions on free-lance socialists (https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/222-21/city-council-passes-comprehensive-police-reform-resolution-confront-legacy-racialized) more or less end any possibility of rural areas accepting urban rule as legitimate.
So things are down to both sides, urban and rural, realizing that the musical chairs is in its last round, and that both sides need the same resources. Such situations often don’t end well.
She also sang as male narrator on cover of Brothers in Arms originally performed by Dire Straits. I actually prefer her version which says a lot since I believe the original is also great.
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Because Canadians know all about the South.
not sure why, but white Midwesterners are cucks compared to traditional white southerners. white southerners at least used to know niggers were no good, but midwesterners seem enthusiastic about bowing down to both niggers and jews (then and now) lol, meanwhile they feel so tough when they spout off about hispanic/asian immigrants or foreign boogeymen while ignoring the two biggest threats to their own white interests (niggers and hebes)
If you spend any sort of time around rural rednecks, the answer is usually pretty obvious. Bluntly, there’s no value in building a coalition with people who live in dilapidated trailers, most of which fly either a (fake) confederate flag or a swastika flag. They’re largely anti-social simpletons, and you just can’t get much done with that sort of people.
Drew, old boy:
Did anybody ever tell you that the Democratic Party relies on urban Blacks to be its core constituency? That they’ve taken over the hard work of being the Democratic Party’s brains, producing BLM and the idea that the only cure for “discrimination” is more “discrimination”? That, perhaps, the areas were the Democrats’ brains live is not the spiffiest in town? That mean Black IQ is about 85? Anybody at all? That the Democrats are actively recruiting more and better from Africa and Haiti? Anybody?
Or has anybody told you that the Democrats’ who claim to have good educations are (pardon the expression) trained in the humanities to hate “white literature”, or in the social sciences to regard science as a kind of politics?
Anybody?
Nice, interesting article illustrating the extent of the divide between Conservatives and Neoconservatives (which today are Hillary Democrats, even if some self-label as Never Trump Republicans; they also seem indistinguishable(?) from the Globalist Neoliberals).
To me, the power of those old Southern Conservatives resulted from the Southern Strategy of Nixon; inadvertently (not affecting the end result) demonstrating the outrage of the Deep South who “threw their votes away” on third party George Wallace, who won five states. The Republicans were understandably nervous, and made huge concessions to the Southern Conservatives (Teddy Roosevelt did the same to the Republicans with his Progressive, Bull Moose Party).
The State Media always makes this about RACISM, but as the author touches on very slightly Southern political values (now diluted by influx particularly from the Rust Belt and Northern States) were largely Jeffersonian, based on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, the fear of over-reaching Federalism (as with Covid Vaccine mandates and notably going back to at least the Establishment of the Federal Reserve Banking system). Embracing Founding Fathers’ views, including non-intervention in foreign affairs, was a nation-wide standard view until after WWII (and US armies were mostly draftees until after Vietnam; Southerners provided more than their share, a contradiction of sorts).
The Civil Rights Act was pointedly only applied to Southern states– a major reason why it was not renewed by SCOTUS– although institutionalized racism has always been a nation-wide problem (as an aside a survey matching patients at >3000 hospitals to the demographics of their zipcodes showed profound segregation by race in many. The worst offending 30 (bottom 1%) included six hospitals in NJ, five in NY, five in Illinois, three in Indiana and three in California (70% of the worse). There was one such hospital in Alabama (the only true Southern state of 30), one in Florida, and four in Texas.) Most Southern politicians would have no problem with voting for Civil Rights if applied nation-wide.
The funniest line was about McCain (Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Iran!) sycophant Russian Max Boot complaining about Trump and the Republicans being “dangerous warmongers”. Trump was basically a non-interventionalist and started no new Forever Wars. He did a poor job restraining crazed Pompeo but did undercut crazed John Bolton, and basically Trump was ignored by the Generals and the Intelligence Agencies who were ever expanding the Empire.
You really call that article “reality based”? You’re joking, right? The author actually believes that the descendants of the Puritans had “communitarian values… and noblesse oblige”. She writes nonsense about these Yankee elites “dutifully pay(ing) their taxes” and having a “moral duty to care for its sick, educate its young and provide for its needy”. As if her teachers never told her about Northern slums and poverty. About the Yankee elite locking workers in their factories, working them from sunrise to sundown and paying subsistence wages. It’s dolts like this woman that end up with ideas that working class Whites somehow inherited “privilege” and are guilty for slavery. She condemns all Southern elites for their nice houses, but I guess she never drove through the wealthy neighborhoods of the rich in the North, houses and estates that rival any Southern plantation. And finally, while condemning the evil among Southern elites, she forgets the good Southerners, the men of strong religious tradition and an honor that obliged them to help others and serve their nation. Stepping back and looking at the conservative values and attitudes of the South, one can see the conservative values of the North, the same traditions and beliefs handed down from the Christian morality drilled into the European folk for centuries.
I have been told that. Has anyone told you that even the dumbest black person is smart enough to not bring swastika flags to political rallies and protests? Now imagine how dumb the dumbest rednecks must be if they, unlike every last black person, haven’t figured out Nazi memorabilia makes for really bad political optics in American political discourse. Now imagine how dumb you must be for me to have to explain this to you.
Midwesterners are generally of Germanic extraction and the more northern the Germanic, (Swedish, Norwegian) the more pussy they are.
Conversely, southerners are Scots-Irish. They’s fighty bastards all on their own.
which is very ironic, since Germans (back in Europe) since Bismarck in 1871 have the most impressive record in Europe, until the kikes destroyed the Reich in 1945. Scandinavians are kinda neither here nor there lol
Affirmative action is totally unconstitutional. You have the right of association… The government can’t tell you who you must socialize with… That’s the real socialism! Government can’t tell you who you must hire… and promote… That’s crazy! But Southern conservatives rolled over and went along… And any real discussion got taboed.
Affirmative action is totally unconstitutional. You have the right of association… The government can’t tell you who you must socialize with… That’s real socialism! Government can’t tell you who you must hire… and promote… That’s crazy! But Southern conservatives rolled over and went along… And any real discussion got taboed. That’s the con in NeoCon
Southern conservatives have been the focus of the small hats for 60 years. They were marginalized and soon they will be eliminated. Most people don’t even know who drove the civil rights movement and the attacks (Vitale vs Engel) on our culture removing Christianity from it. Those two factors destroyed the South and now the victors are removing the monuments and even the graves of Southerners. Learn the truth and never forget who is running this holocaust on the South.
Nice reference to the wholly imaginary parts of the rural South where the working class whites are commonly flying Nazi flags. And your pedantic complaint over the exact confederate flag that is being flown when it is flown, which though not rare isn’t ubiquitous either.
You’re an imbecile.
@16 Weaver: ” . . . but the best to do is to make a place in current society as best one can. ”
While I have no southern heritage, I am a southern sympathizer. Your suggestion, which might be considered sound by those anticipating today’s clownworld to continue endlessly into the future, appears to me short sighted. As you note, massive immigration (both international and internal) and intermarriage are hybridizing people. Those ‘flags, statues, and heroes’ that you may not publicly celebrate, will cease to be privately celebrated or even remembered as the people are replaced and altered.
Seeking a place in ‘current society’ is giving up without a fight. If you truly value your people and your past, you seek to preserve them – racially and culturally.
I wonder if Jewish people know that their love of un-restricted immigration drives a lot of anti semitism
IMO, you’re reading too much into it. Miss Baez likely just didn’t want to ruin the song – if you switch all the lyrics around, sex-wise, it would not make any sense.
Here’s one in which Linda Ronstadt sang a song originally written and song by Warren Zevon. She changed what lyrics she could pretty well, so only the last verse sounds silly. However, she sings the hell out of the song! I do like originals, so I’ll go with The Band’s version of The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down. (Same with Joni Mitchell’s own Both Sides Now vs. Judy Collins’ more polished version.)
Sorry to keep the big digression going, Mr. Cathey. Good article.
(I would really liked to have put the live version here, but this one’s cleaner.)
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(She’s also got Waddy Waddell on guitar!)
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“Conversely, southerners are Scots-Irish. They’s fighty bastards all on their own.”
That’s because they are all Rob Roy types. Lol.
Southerners actually fought tooth and nail, but the strength of the Federal government was too much and there was still a way out. They set up an alternate private school system, they moved to all White neighborhoods and dissociated from blacks as much as they could. They also encouraged black emigration to the cities and the North. They were so successful that some of the younger generation are unfamiliar with Negro criminality. That will change shortly.
My beef with Southern Conservatives is that they proudly offer up their best and brightest young men as cannon fodder for any and every war the US decides to engage in.
There is deep pathology involved at the psychological level.
Abstractions rule their lives and what they value.
One can only conclude that there is a lower overall IQ in this regard in Southern states.
God said to Abe, kill me a son
Abe said God, you must be puttin’ me on
US said to Southerners, kill me a son
Southerners said, sure, how many?
Hyperbole much? Please provide some links showing these conservative political rallies and protests where Nazi flags and such were displayed. Not some little neo-Nazi/skinhead rally. Prove that Nazi memorabilia has been displayed at Republican/conservative rallies or protests, as you allege.
The fact is you are dumber than a box of rocks and making wildly false claims. Making it sound like incidents that are virtually unheard-of rare are the norm.
Southerners disproportionately fought in the military in multiple wars for the benefit of the Jews and Jews repay them by destroying their culture and their states. Why did we ever allow those snakes into our country?
I don’t see a difference between supposed conservatives like pat buchanan or any of the main stream left media. In fact, writers like derb are down right stupid on most matters.
Not to mention the fact that the writer of the song is half Joo.
Did all the Joo Spergs of Unz who obsessively bring this up on every goddamn subject know that?
Dig deeper.
Why do Southerners have such hatred of themselves that they WANT to die in wars for no good reason?
The answer is not with Joos.
It is in the sick and twisted Christianity that so animates the Southern culture.
maybe the point of the very good article has been missed.. Its subject matter origin was forged in Bolshevik controlled anti Christian post Czar Russia. It took from 1897 to 1917 for the Bolshevik to make happen the 1917 October revolution.
The real problem is not black, white, orange, yellow, red or whatever narrative.
The problem is in the question who shall rule? Those at the top with all of the wealth or those at the bottom who have not been been given the education, privilege and hand me down wealth, which those at the top have been privileged to be exposed to?
Educate a child born in the Southern Trailer park to a field hand mom, in a swank British School and one born in the upper class of Britain in the school yard nearest to the Souther Trailer park, and you will have inverted who is who at the top and who is at the bottom..
The whole problem is about access to and the distribution of that access to education, culture and environment. These variables are the tools of the wealthy. These tools with differentiate humanity keep us divided sufficiently so the wealthy can own, use and control us.
Our best route to a successful revolution, is to find ways to eliminate these differences.
There are 256 different nation states, each one differentiates our humanity further, and with great precision, those who own and control the nation states, use the nation states to target and manipulate us, so that we will be one against all others, until the manipulators point out which other we are each suppose to hate. Then the war starts, and we prove our manipulation, by dying for the cause which keeps the wealthy privileged few in power. Nothing will change until we change.
ItIts pretty easy to see why Southern conservatives were kicked to the curb. Neo cons are democrats “mostly northeastern Jews,” who jumped ship to the republican party because they didn’t aspouse the new social values of the democrat party. But needed a place to push their hegomonic, empire building foreign wars. And the new democrats were anti war, coming off the Korean and Vietnam wars. Once the neo cons established a foothold in the Republican party, they could now boot out the useful idiots, as they see them. The “southern conservatives.” The southern conservatives now also happen to be mostly guess what? Trump supporters!
Wellll–
White slavery was a Thing, too.
And while Australia is noted for being dumping ground for British criminals, plenty of lower class Brits were transported to the US colonies to punish them — is was an alternative to hanging.
White Southerners, including Scots-Irish, Irish, also Welsh who were so transported to US in penal status or as indentureds maybe ought to dig up some of that history and use it to counterbalance blm wailing and gnashing and tapping of acrylic fingernails.
Thomas Sowell has written that blacks learned their strange speech habits from Southern white Scots-Irish who were, generally, illiterate when they landed on a plantation in the South and followed a trajectory pretty much like African slaves, in learning, in gaining freedom, in gaining prosperity.
—
I’m with E M Jones is disassociating myself from “White.” The term is meaningless. I’m Italian. Italians are as different from, i.e. Poles, as Jews are from Eskimos. (but Italians were lumped in the same category as Jews in terms of migrant undesirability. It causes me pain to think how my grandparents and parents must have been treated when they arrived in USA in 19-teens and 1930s.)
Irish in USA, and Germans in USA, and Italians in USA etc. should form the same sort of cohesive “interest groups” and “lobbies” as Jews do, and demand that their histories be taught, and their cultural elements be respected, and not demeaned with lazy usages like “Neo-Nazi” and “mafia.”
btw — imo more people should fly swastikas. and Confederate flag. Allowing Jews to dictate what symbols Americans can display is what has led to toppling of essential American monuments.
who the truck cares if certain sensibilities are offended? It offends the hell out of me that my tax dollars that support libraries and public schools are exploited to facilitate pushing LGBTQ and holohoax education and museums.
Thanks, Vinny. That was one thing I thought was missing in the article. Mr. Cathey goes a lot farther back than me, but I did notice that these Neocons came to the forefront in politics just after the Cold War ended.
Yes, they had seen President Reagan and the Congress build up the military and win the Cold War. They were just giddy at the US being the sole superpower and didn’t want to be those “give peace a chance” people anymore. They switched to the GOP for better access to the funds and firepower. That was for the uses that you mention. Pretty obviously the Jewish contingent of the Neocons wanted and still wants for the American military to have a presence in the Middle East 24/7/365/Kingdom Come.
Peak Stupidity had 2 posts on “Peak Neocon” almost 5 years back – Part 1 and Part 2.
Hank Williams Jr. outlines the cultural psyops that the South has had to endure for the last 157 years, and his push-back against the same!
1. ‘The South’s Gonna Rattle Again’
2. ‘A Country Boy Can Survive
3. ‘Dixie On My Mind’
4. ‘If Heaven Ain’t a Lot Like Dixie’
5. ‘Waitin’ on the Tables to Turn’
6. ‘New South’
7. ‘Country State of Mind’
8. ‘I Ain’t Going Peacefully’
9.’Leave Them Boys Alone’
10. ‘Where Would We Be Without Yankees’
11. ‘The American Dream’
Good for Hank!
The problem with the South now is the ANTIFA / BLM / Zio-Communist movements in the Southern States. However-
I don’t think that the White Southerners are going to put up with this much longer.
The religious manipulations of the ‘Israel First’ doctrine in the Protestant Churches, the tearing down of geographical historical monuments, and the disinterment of Southern Confederate Generals along with the dissolving of Civil War Battlefields and demonizing the Sons of Confederate Veterans is coming to a quiet but forceful head perhaps in late 2022.
White Southerners are going to go by the law of the vote,…at first. IF those they El-ect do not comply with the wishes of the South, then we will probably see recalls in the US Congress, removal of the Zio-Communists in the Southern States, and finally if need be, succession from the Union.
Many former Confederate States are quietly on board with this, as are a few States in the Upper Mid-West and Rocky Mountain areas.
Southerners who are serving in the US Military ie Active Duty, National Guard, Reserves, and re-activated State Guards are also ready to take their planes, tanks, equipment and nukes to the Southern States when Biden declares war on Veterans, Southerners, etc..
Some Southerners have already begun stockpiling surplus equipment that they have paid for out of their own pockets in other locations outside of the DUMBS, and Military Bases in general.
While many State Guards have been re-activated under the guise of responding to ‘natural disasters as a result of climate change’, the other covert reason for these re-activations is in anticipation of the illegal and un-Constitutional Acts placed upon the American People by the Federal Government (NDAA is an example of such illegalities) getting worse under a Gray State of martial law, persecutions, and executions by the Zio-Communist Demoncratic Party in power.
Once the successions start after all else fails, the Southern States and the other States in the Mid-West that have also suffered and are sympathetic to the South will also rise-up.
IF Civil War ll begins, and since a good majority of Southerners have firearms and are Veterans, rest assured that the New Confederate Cause will win without either inside or outside interference or subversions by the Globalists, the Great Reset, and most of all AIPAC and the Mossad both of whom bought and paid for the US Congress to act in Is-Ra-El’s behalf at the expense of all Americans.
The RINOs and Demoncrats all need to go, but voting them out is not a given, based on 2020 El-ection interference and vote fraud. So, it will be up to the firearms experienced Southern Veterans to save our country from this continuing damage in the past and present tense!
Let’s put this “indentured servitude = slavery” bullshit to rest. Indentured servants entered into a contract and that contract had an end date. To pretend otherwise is super gay.
Indeed. He has been watching too many Hollywood movies (and believing them).
This post needs a Gold Frame.
Truthful and beautifully written as well.
Thank you, sir.
Neo-confederate historiography and coercive state legislation enforcing caste restrictions are not worth defending. Neither are restrictive covenants on real estate, violence and chicanery meant to keep native adult citizens from casting ballots, or systematic malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance by police and courts. Certain components of what counted as Southern Tradition in 1948 (some of which had been in place < 50 years) merited being discarded.
Paleotrash have been kvetching about M.E. Bradford's lost patronage appointment for 40 years. Get over it.
The term “White” just means “European”. It’s not something to walk, or run, from. And your Italian ancestors are much, much closer, genetically and culturally, to the Poles than Jews are to Eskimos. In fact, genetically European people are pretty much just distant cousins. Neopolitans are a lot closer to Calabrians than they are to Swedes, but in the end, we’re all descended from the first Pale skinned man who stood up in the Caucasus mountains and decided to set out and conquer the world. White is alright with me.
“So, it will be up to the firearms experienced Southern Veterans to save our country from this continuing damage in the past and present tense!“
Yet another armchair warrior chimes in.
Pull a Kyle. Document it via social media. Then we whites will take you seriously. Otherwise, it’s just Bugaboo Boi porn on your part.
The “expiration date” is precisely why “indentured servants” were given the most dangerous jobs.
You see, slaves were considered “valuable property” and had to be protected from dangerous work. On the other hand, laws in place required slaveowners to take care of their “property” for life.
Indentured servants were “a dime a dozen” and could easily be replaced without much, if any, financial loss to the “master”.
It is interesting to note that the jews ran the slave trade as well. From insuring the ships, to owning the ships outright, the auction houses, and financing the slaves themselves jews were not only slaveowners bur RAN the slave procurement business, lock stock and barrel…
Here she comes!
Here comes the big girl!
George F. Will is married to Jewess. Satan has placed his people (Jews) in strategic positions in the U.S. Biden’s three children are all married to Jews. Jared Kushner (a Jew) was Trump’s number one Mideast advisor. Sure, Jews are smart, but they also have their father the Devil to help them.
Nifty illustration of the ” So smart and so stupid” saying.
The only people in the entire world who are willing to defend you, and you repudiate them. Believe me on this — such repudiations are remembered. This includes the members of your local police department.
Next time around you can defend yourself, if you change your mind and want to. Perish the though, of course, that this will happen and that you become sick and twisted, or that you yourself should call upon sick and twisted people to help you. Morality above all, right?
In even impolite company, you can’t tell jokes about fags, niggers, kikes, cunts, trannies, spics, wops, dykes. etc……..but you can still have a go at southern whites. Why do southerners all fuck doggie style? So they can both watch the nascar race on tv. Hear the one about the southerner who had a torrid sexual relationship with his teacher? The problem was that he was being homeschooled at the time. What do southerners say when they break up? Let’s just be cousins. Soon in some not so distant future even the southerner will join the other protected species and all joking of any kind will be outlawed.
Explain how I need defending.
One could almost argue that Events and prominent politicians since the Outbreak of The Civil War (1800s) had been actively seeking to erase STATES Rights and bring about a Super Centralized ONE govt order…(global?)…The SCOTUS has been at the forefront of “legislating” states politics and evenly blocking states LAWS including those approved by the popular votrrs majorities…In the long run Southern Voices more specuficaslly Southern WHITE Conservative voices/policies/ will become OUTlaw…
Good work on your sight. I’ve been freaquenting it for years.
The most sacred race.
Great post SolontoCroesus. Scots-Irish were not just convicts or indentured servants, but were also kidnapped and sold as slaves in America. See White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh.
You classify me as an ‘armchair warrior’
The Department of Veterans Affairs classifies me as a Service Connected Disabled Veteran, beginning in Vietnam and ending 1 year past Gulf War One.
I know the mindset of my fellow Veterans from the Southern States, and I know what they are concerned about, what they are analyzing and what they have been discussing for planning purposes.
Certain elements are in motion at this time, and you can rest assured that these are well aware of federal infiltrators, and have taken great care to exclude the same. You won’t find them online, only via satellite phones, and point to point HUMINT.
Same goes for trolls…operating where all is seen. Like yourself, for instance…
Thanks General Ripper. That’s, what, your ninth name change pretending to be someone else?
Anyone on the internet can say whatever they want, Rambo. You’re harmless. I’ve heard this for the past 50 years how the South will rise again. Except the time it’s going to happen is always pushed back…
Have YOU ever served your country????
Probably not….
(((YOU))) ARE HAPPY “HOLOCAU$T REVISIONISTS” ARE IN PRISON .
(((Your contempt))) for the goyim is criminal.
We owe (((you))) nothing but our deepest contempt.
If Corvinus served his country, it was most likely israel in the IDF…
It’s Mossad. And you’re on the list.
I read it. A model of circular augmentation n delusional propaganda. Salon likely farmed it out to Buzzfeed.
The same conclusion was reached by Irving Kristol after serving in the U.S. Army during WWII: “I can’t make socialism with these people.” So he and Podhoretz and Leo Strauss decided they would manufacture consent by telling “noble lies” to the rabble.
Neoconservatism is built on condescension and Talmudic superiority. Adopt the same attitudes and yes, you just might find yourself in a coalition with the devil himself.
Drew
Will, since you’ve been told that, I think you can see that urban areas are deficient in the credentials area. It either has no credentials, or has worthless credentials.
I’d also like to point out that, unlike urban areas, the rural areas have, on the whole, kept control over their own territory, despite central government attempts to repopulate these areas. Areas such as Colorado and Virginia have been politically captured through immigrants put into cities (cities that are dependent on political support), but the rural areas are still held by descendants of their population a hundred years ago.
All things considered, the rural side has better credentials and more physical accomplishment. And you, personally, can’t substantiate your claim of “Nazi memorabilia “. Remember, the grandparents of the current rural population staffed the US Infantry and US Marines that fought to defeat the Nazis’ Axis alliance. The “Nazi” claim was clearly false back when _The Authoritarian Personality_ published. If you look at the group that is reviving Nazi methods of street fighting by paramilitary proxies (Antifa), false flag events (Charlottesville and the events of the “6th” to the Reichstag fire), and clearly false but massive propaganda techniques it’s the urban group.
Historically, the late 1960s almost perfectly replicated the fall of the Weimar Republic, right down to emphasizing massive propaganda, public rallies, organic food, tribalism, be-ins, and paramilitary efforts (Weather underground). That effort was a partial success, and it would appear that a second effort (again in urban areas) is in execution. That makes the organizers of these efforts Nazi imitators, or perhaps “crypto-Nazis” would be a better description. In short, it appears that the Left adopted Nazi methods to gain political power in Western societies, were partially successful the first time (960s) , and are now trying again.
So, I must conclude that your remarks serve only to highlight your own bigotry and mendaciousness, not to mention power lust.
Nor is this sort of thing a recent development. I encountered that baseless sense of superiority back in 1968, US Army, when training with a group of more or less useless draftees from the US Army, every one bragging of them about getting a non-combat MOS and cheating through the training. One could see the ones that ended up in the Infantry becoming the “armed mob” that US much of US infantry devolved into during the Vietnam conflict. It is doubtful if urban inhabitants would allow themselves to be drafted today, as the late 1960s appear to have made an actual draft politically impossible.
Unfortunately, one of those traditions was racial diversity, which is highly corrosive everywhere it exists. So without (re-)colonization, the South was doomed one way or another. If you can’t build a house on shifting sands, even less so can you build it on a mound of termites.
General Sherman’s gift to South Carolina was the white majority she never had before. Even that took almost a century to come about.
The ludicrous “Christian Zionist” movement is dying, and “Southern” Baptists are shedding members left and right. Southerners certainly will not embrace the now-communized mainstream Protestant sects and Catholicism of their past, but the degeneracy of persons such as Hagee has started the beginning of the end of a twisted and evil faux faith.
Southerners remind me much of Native Hawaiians and the Welsh, as different as those groups are. To the shock of everyone, Native Hawaiians, most notably, watched their culture nearly die and have an explosive rebirth in recent years.
I’ll go out on a limb here. The anticipated National Divorce will begin after Southerners fatally kick the GOP to the curb and form a regional party, and this will happen in response to blatantly fraudulent elections over the next two cycles. I can envision similar regional parties arising in what remains of the authentic West and in most of the Midwest as well, and a loose union forming among these groupings.
Lindsey Graham is a more malevolent Tecumseh Sherman, a small, closeted coward who wants to sell Atlanta rather than to burn it. He and his gang soon will be gone with the wind
Excellent eulogy for Southern conservatism. What comes next will be outside normal politics and ideology.
Excellent essay. Thank you for this overview. Every day it seems Calhoun and the Confederacy were more right than wrong. If the South rises again, it will be everywhere.
All of whom I’m guessing voted for neo-Bolshevik warmonger FDR four times, as did Theodore Bilbo and Strom Thurmond. Though once the old terrorist was dead, Thurmond found a way to vote against his successor without voting for a Republican. Why didn’t he do that before?
(This was before his stroke, so “President Wilson” refers to Woodrow, not Edith.)
The truth be told, the Democrat Party was essentially two different parties for over a century before one finally snuffed the other out in the 1960s. Its very hard to say with a straight face that the protestant, rural south ala Bull Connor and the bootleggin, catholic church goin’, immigrant vote exploitin’, big laborin’ urban cities ala John F Kennedy were really truly the same party. Somehow the latter gradually learned how to hate blacks slightly less, so, there’s another meaningful difference, I guess.
When people say its not your grandfather’s Dem party anymore, which is true, there’s some pretty clear pathologies from the 1960s that today’s commie organization borrowed from. The old school siphoning votes off of immigrants is the most obvious one, except somewhere along they decided to take it into overdrive. The melting pot of white ethnics post world war 2 was probably losing its punch, because all the promises of social mobility and progress in the USA was causing catholic, labor union, whites to be more likely to stray, think for themselves, and *gasp* assimilate.
The civil rights act of 1964 permanently killed the concept of the solid south/southern white vote, so the above was the only thing left to work with; the “Al Capone half” so to speak.
Kind of a coincidence the 1965 Hart-Celler Act came shortly after…
If you’re a short-sighted power broker at this point, you’d probably marvel at how solid the black and brown folks votes are, and try to court them, while also keeping a permanent anti-assimilation identity politics complex going.
Of course, if the party ever realized that the colored voting base was so reliable due to civilization-eroding ignorance, and that political kickbacks would involve essentially allowing street crime, it was probably too late. The old guard probably thought they could handle it, because they were used to dealing with whites- eg ‘throw an extra tithe and union job at someone and be done with it’ kinda thing.
I think someone was pissed that Tammany Hall died in the 1960s and there some shady council that would be damned if they didn’t try to build it up again.
Some of our “native adult citizens” are worthless garbage, and so anything that can be done to keep them away from political power is worth doing, whether or not it is strictly legal. Caste restrictions exist because people are not really equal, despite what the schoolmarm always said.