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1. 1 Comment by Allen Wilson on 25 July 2008:

   The earring is a good indicator of decline. In old Europe, it didn’t mean effeminacy or indicate degeneration as it does now. It would be an informative commentary on our cultural and social decline to research just how and why earrings and all those other body rings, studs, etc., came into vogue, and the underlying reasons for it all.

2. 2 Comment by Rob on 25 July 2008:

   “What good has the CIA ever done? Has an account ever been made of its mistakes and failures? Hasn’t its main accomplishment been to affront the world with the arrogant and incompetent side of the Yankee national character? (Attentive readers will know what I mean by “Yankee.”)

   Why did the U.S. not stand down at the end of the Cold War and return to a peaceful demeanour instead of seeking hegemony? (Because of that same Yankee national character. There is a large category of Americans whose natural tendency is to make themselves feel important and righteous by inventing holy missions and interfering in other peoples’ business. That is why it is useless to discuss foreign affairs in practical terms.)”

   Those darn Yankess getting into everyone’s business as opposed to the peaceful Southerners! Please. As Dr. Wilson is well aware while there were some dissenters (Calhoun and Alexander H. Stephens come to mind), a lot of the Old South was all for going south of the border down Mexico way. And into Cuba. And into the Isthmus with William Walker. The South bought into the same holy missions and interfered in other people’s business just like the North did.

3. 3 Comment by Sean D. McGuire on 25 July 2008:

   It is disturbing that neo-cons are considered right wing. I came to identify with conservatism after being a misguided young liberal through what has been referred to as “paleo” conservatism. The neo-cons and the liberals seem intent on allowing our nation to fall to pieces, I only hope that there are some with enough wisdom to pick up the mess that they leave behind.

4. 4 Comment by MAP on 25 July 2008:

   Rob @2 You miss Dr. Wilson’s point. He’s referring to the missionary mentality, where everybody else’s business is our own, and where our mission is to intrude, boss around and judge. It’s an arrogant, do-gooder mentality with a long American history. It’s also one of the reasons this country is hated all over the globe.

5. 5 Comment by Rob on 25 July 2008:

   Oh I agree totally MAP. But I think Dr. Wilson is being a bit short sighted to think it is a Yankee attitude. That thought had been going on in both North and South before the war. Was it probably worse in the North? Yes and the Northern victory in the War for Southern Independence probably accelerated things. But the South was pretty guilty of the same mind set.

6. 6 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 25 July 2008:

   Is Dr. Wilson going to disclaim that son of the South, Woodrow Wilson, he who would “make the world safe for democracy” and in many ways the forerunner of our present Fearless Leader?

   Our if you take the boy out of the South (to Princeton, NJ), do you take the South out of the boy?

   I take most of Dr. Wilson’s points, but on this one, I’m just askin’.

7. 7 Comment by Steve on 25 July 2008:

   Why do we actively accept and promote the homosexual agenda and teach our children that it is just an alternative lifestyle when most all of the Old Testament clearly shows that for the people of Israel to be judged righteous before God, the ruler of the people would first need to rid the land of all the sodomites? Just asking.

   Why were our grandparents and great grandparents so stupid and uninformed so as to approve a Constitutional amendment that would place unlimited access to their earnings and wealth in the hands of federal govt. bureaucrats? (Informed readers will know that it didn’t happen.)

8. 8 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 25 July 2008:

   Rob, It is silly not to distinguish between war on our borders for land that our people can settle and getting involved in European and Asian wars for some “holy principle.” If you can’t make that distinction you don’t understand anything about American history at all. Only a tiny minority of not very respectable Southerners were interested in Cuba and Central America and then not for do-gooder purposes. It is sadly true that Southerners tend to support the current war, but that is not because they believe in the Yankee invention of spreading democracy. It is because some foreign b——s harmed us and they believed the lies of the constituted leaders about how we should respond.
   You also miss the point that by Yankee I mean, as I have often said on this site, not all Northern people but a clearly identifiable type. See my article on “The Yankee Problem in American History.”

9. 9 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 25 July 2008:

   Dear Grumpy, True, Woodrow Wilson was raised in the South and had some Southern sympathies, as anyone growing up in the South after the war would have. But his parents were Calvinists from Ohio. True, Southerners were sympathetic to him, at least in the beginning, because they had been excluded from influence for so long. But the strongest opponents of Wilson’s War were a whole contingent of Southern Democrat populists. Claude Kitchin of N.C. lost his leadership of the House by opposing Wilson on Jeffersonian grounds. Bryan was of Southern and not Yankee background. Meanwhile, the Yankees were fervid for the war—Teddy R., Lodge, etc., etc.

10. 10 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 25 July 2008:

    Dr. Wilson,

    Thanks for your prompt response. I understand that the core of support for WWI was in the Northeast, especially its Anglophile upper class and those who profited from trade with Britain. Southerners just did a large share of the dying, as they always do.

    W.J. Bryan’s a hero of mine, for his principled resignation as Sec. of State.

    I think the last Cabinet resignation on principle was by Cyrus Vance, over the last Iran adventure, which failed.

    A pity we don’t have more principled resignations these days.

11. 11 Comment by Rob on 25 July 2008:

    I thank Dr. Wilson for his response though I fail to see why he calls John Quitman and Jefferson Davis, who both backed the adventures of Narciso Lopez (indeed Mr. Davis even recommended to Lopez an up and coming soldier by the name of Robert E. Lee), “not very respectable Southerners.” If memory serves a mob attacked the Spanish consulate in New Orleans after the execution of Lopez and the Americans who backed him. As for the Mexican border, I am not so sure. I would say Wilson and the many Southerners who backed him-McAdoo, Josephus Daniels, Col. House, Carter Glass, Oscar W. Underwood, A. Mitchell Palmer, James McReynolds, Albert Burelson, David Houston-sadly I can go on-would not agree with Dr. Wilson (the good one, not the one who was president). No, the South has sadly backed a number of our imperialist masters-Polk, Wilson, FDR with Jimmy Byrnes and Cordell Hull along for the ride, LBJ with Dean Rusk riding shotgun and of course W.

    I will be sure to read Dr. Wilson’s article and thank him for the reference.

12. 12 Comment by saltine on 25 July 2008:

    Dr. Wilson suggests that we should see the popularity of earrings among American males as a sign of cultural decline. While I agree with Dr. Wilson’s implicit point about the feminization of American society – it has been a disaster whose full extent we are only just beginning to discern – I find it odd that he cites the fact that earrings “died out among Europeans” a long time ago. European mores are hardly a reliable guide for us, in any venue at all. Earrings or not, European culture under the aegis of the EU plutocracy is, on the whole, far more destructively homosexualized than is American culture (unbelievable as that may seem) whether European men still flaunt earrings or not. Earrings, and the disgusting body-piercing fad, may not really be such reliable indicators of what is going on in a culture on the broad scale. The earring thing may just be a sign of widespread vulgarity of taste. Such vulgarity is, by definition, common to every culture.

13. 13 Comment by H.F. Wolff on 25 July 2008:

    H.F. Wolff

    Why, why, why…

    I partook in a training course once where one of the themes was a method to arrive at the root cause of a problem or failure.

    In a nutshell: Ask ‘why’ and after each answer, ask ‘why’ again. Do this three times, four times at the most. If the answers were truthfully given, ie. not ‘politically correct’, one can expect to have arrived at the root cause of the difficulty.

    I would venture my opinion, based on oh, 40 years of political awareness and observations, that the root cause of today’s society began with the acceptance of historical lies roughly 100 years ago or so.

    This has gotten so bad that individuals risk career and freedom if questions are asked about the ‘power behind the throne’.

    Do the names Walt / Mearsheimer, Cole, Zuendel, Mahler, Rudolf, etc., etc. ring a bell?

    In a democracy where questions can only be asked on pain of ruination or loss of freedom, with no truthful answers forthcoming or corrective action possible, what, in truth, will be the ultimate result?

    I don’t know, but I am sure many here would agree that things cannot go on, in any western country, the way they are going now.

    For a long time I believed that information and debate was the answer but this is no longer possible.

    H.F. Wolff

14. 14 Comment by robert m. peters on 25 July 2008:

    Rob @ 11

    If by “W,” you mean George W. Bush, he, to put it in the vernacular, ain’t no Southerner; he is a Connecticut Yankee with an affected twang! It is, as I understand it, true that Southerners have been the willing Janissary of the very empire which destroyed the South and the union of constitutionally federated republics in which the South thrived and which the South was willing to defend. However, not all but most Southerners have served those who “drove Ol’ Dixie down” because they wrongly believed in the truce and because they have believed, rightly or wrongly, that someone, the Japanese or the Germans or others were a threat to them/us; generally, they have not done it for some high-minded reason, some noble cause, some abstraction or some ideological scheme.

    H.F. Wolff @ 13

    While the framework which Ernst Zündel has created for his questioning of certain facts and motives associated with the Nazis in general and the Endlösung in particular negate even the valid points which he makes, I do hold that the statutes masquerading as laws, namely various hate-crime laws, which have been applied to Mr. Zündel and others such as the historian David Erving should be scorned and denounced by all free men.

    Dr. Wilson:

    Your words:

    “What happens to a country where judges make up the law as they go along?”

    We no longer have the rule of law which is the Nomos manifesting itself through the commonwealths of men, but we have the rule of men themselves, moving on the ever changing winds of the Zeitgeist, and imposing on the rest of us during their fleeting time on stage their edicts as counterfeit law in a fashion most heteronomous to our own customs, traditions and ancient rights such as praying in the name of the Christ in our own councils, schools and gatherings.

15. 15 Comment by Brock H. on 26 July 2008:

    “What happens to a country when the government and the citizens spend borrowed money for years and years?”

    Our land, businesses, homes, buildings, and indeed our entire infrastructure, will be auctioned off to the highest bidders.

    “Why do leftists persist in calling neocons “right-wing”?”

    For the left-wing purpose of marginalizing and isolating real conservatives from the American political mainstream. Left-wingers smartly figure that if neocons are what the electorate views as “conservatives,” all the voters will have to do is look at our $9 trillion debt, our imperial overstretch, our growing trade deficit, and our hollowed-out infrastructure, then they will be forever sorry they ever voted “conservatives” into office. Then again, neocons are so very clever. If their political party vehicle, the GOP, is soon driven to miniscule numbers in Congress and loses the presidency, I wonder if they will simply flock back over to the Democrats from whence they came all those decades ago? Will Barack Obama and the far left-wing Democratic Party operatives then fall victim to the neocons’ charms? The one-time party of Robert Taft did, and today neoconservatism has added Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle to its list of converts, so what makes another power-hungry political party any different?

16. 16 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 26 July 2008:

    Brock. No doubt the neocons will, as you suggest, land on their feet and blame everybody but themselves for the (probably irreparable) damage they have done us. However, I doubt they can take over the Democrats as easily as they did the Republicans. The Democrat leaders are not nearly as stupid as the Republicans and some of the Democrats actually believe what they say.

17. 17 Comment by Rob on 26 July 2008:

    To Mr. Peters at #14:

    I make no claim that W. is a Southerner any more than I would claim that Dutchess County NY squire FDR, who I also included in my list, is from Dixie. Having said that, the South rallied around both of those imperialist, and imperial, presidents.

18. 18 Comment by PcH on 26 July 2008:

    Rob-

    Pro-Southerners have never backed aggressive, imperialist warfare. But if they had, such would still be evil. Christianity has always condemned aggressive, imperialist warfare. Moreover, such warfare goes against what the US was founded for; our Independence was won defending ourselves against just that kind of wicked mindset.

    I imagine you must cheer on Darth Vader in the Star Wars series. Perhaps pictures of Joseph Stalin standing in his balcony above the troops on Red Square stir your heart. But the people of the world cheered when Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

19. 19 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 26 July 2008:

    Brock @15 makes an excellent point. I recall that during the late 90s, neocon Bill Kristol seriously considered bolting the Republican Party because rank-and-file Republicans and much of Congress werent so gung ho for Bosnia or Kosovo.

    In the end I suspect Dr. Wilson is correct. Expect a decades-long, drawn out, and ridiculous ‘war on terror’. I wouldnt be surprised if Dr. Wilson, Lew Rockwell and other anti war critics in their 60s dont even live long enough to see the end of it. Final thought – what excuse for the Empire will be concocted after the war on terror has finally run its course?

20. 20 Comment by robert m. peters on 26 July 2008:

    Rob @ 17

    Yes, in my understanding far too many Southerners have embraced the empire which destroyed them and have become its Janissary to most evil ends(that was actually the import of my post); yet, and yet, there is deep within our tradition as seen in Lee and many others as well as in our literature and simply our way of life, another way of understanding the world, ante-nation and ante-empire as well as anti-nation and anti-empire, a way which the South had embraced and lived out. This way is what I, in my limited capacity in the fleeting time left to me, is what I would awaken Southerners to -abandon the “nation,” abandon the “empire,” cease serving it and seek the higher calling that your ancestors, even in their fallen state, aspired to.

21. 21 Comment by pablo H on 26 July 2008:

    Lot of whitewashing of the South going on here – as usual. The fact is that every imperialist war, Mexico, Korea, Vietnam, WW II, WW I, Spanish American war was supported by Southern politicians.

    America was probably 75-25 against getting into European War before Pearl Harbor, but in the South most wanted war. America First didn’t even have a chapter in the South, because the South loved FDR and war. Lend-lease, which gave FDR a blank check, was supported almost unanimously by the Southern senators and congressmen. In the rest of country it was a 50-50 proposition.

    The Deep South voted for Stevenson in 1952 – though Stevenson would have continued the failed Korean War policy of Truman. Had it been up to the South LBJ would been reelected.

    Not only that, but as in the Civil War the Southern politico’s have always been in favor of a draft, total war, and letting the commander in chief (whether Davis, Wilson, FDR, Truman, or LBJ) run the war like some kind of Emperor.

    No doubt if the Confederacy had won independence, they would have set off on creating a slave empire in Haiti, the Dominican republic and Mexico. After all, if you like Slavery like the old South did, why not annex Cuba, Haiti and the D.R?

22. 22 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 26 July 2008:

    Pablo, you suffer from Republican propaganda. I wish people would quit retailing old propaganda and get some familiarity with substantial facts. The folks who founded and fought for the Confederacy only wanted to be let alone. Except for a small minority of agitators they were uninterested in the kind of expansion you are talking about, opposed to creating a “slave empire.” Anyone who has studied real public opinion rather than the acts of a few fireaters who were mostly tweaking the Yankees beaks knows that. The Confederate Constitution emphatically forbade foreign slave importations, that is preserved the status quo. What in the world would the Confederacy have wanted with Haiti? I bring to your attention that it was the Yankees, after they had consolidated imperial government in 1865, who began to do the kind of things you suggest. Grant finagled to get control of Haiti and the good ole Republicans dominated the Caribbean and Central America with military force for the next 75 years. And not for self-defense as in the case of the South but for the greed of the capitalists who controlled the party.
    It is true that there was some disagreement about how much Mexican territory should be taken when Mexico was defeated, but that was not a North /South issue. It was New York Democrats who floated the idea of Manifest Destiny to take over the whole of the Americas, not Southerners.
    Cuba was a slightly different case. Beginning with Jefferson, American patriots were concerned about Cuba, which overlooked
    communication between the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts, which was a defense problem. The weak Spanish colony was not of too much concern, but there was ever present the possibility that the British might take over and use it as a base against the U.S.
    (Remember the Battle of New Orleans, 1815). Or they might create a slave revolt similar to what happened in Haiti. Thus they might weaken the U.S. and destroy competiition for their own sugar colonies. Southerners had sympathy for the native Cubans, caught between a nasty Spanish government and a dangerous black population. Just as they had provided a haven for the French refugees from the Haitian disaster.

23. 23 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 26 July 2008:

    People are still making assumptions about the history of that period from old South-hating propaganda. Here is another unacknowledged fact—the Americans had a financial stake in Cuba and who were part of the agitation for it were NEW ENGLAND YANKEES. They competed with the British for control of the trade and a number of the most respectable NEW ENGLAND families owned slave sugar plantations in Cuba—some for years after slavery ended in the U.S.
    Give us a break.

24. 24 Comment by Rob on 26 July 2008:

    PcH is amusing. Somehow he seems to insist that the South never cheered on empire. I’d advise him to read the first chapter of G.B. Tindall’s Emergence of the New South in the LSU history of the South series to see how closely the South was connected to Wilson. I’d also have him take a look at Kendall Clements, who I think was at South Carolina with Dr. Wilson, and his entry in the Kansas University Press presidential series on Woodrow Wilson. Again, the South fell for Woodrow Wilson hook, line and sinker. It’s too bad. Somehow PcH seems to think my pointing out the South’s cheerleading of imperialism makes me a fan of Stalin and Darth Vader. I’d have him know I am fan of Soltzinhtsyn and I relate to the Tuskan Raiders in the Star Wars saga. They live in the desert and while everyone else has starships and laser guns, they have spears and ride giant goats. I can relate to that sadly. The Tuskan Raiders are the true paleocons of the Star Wars saga.

    While I agree with Dr. Wilson that the Yankees had interest in Cuba, I’d remind him that the likes of Lopez were backed, again, by Quitman and Jeff Davis. Even Quitman’s filibustering plans were financially backed by some pretty big names-John Slidell, Duncan Kerner, Pierre Soule and even some Lamars (Georgia branch). Thankfully President Pierce gave the kabosh to these plans. Still Lewis Ayer, Keitt and Rhett from South Carolina dreamed on carrying on Manifest Destiny in the Caribbean. Did some Southerners oppose it? Sure, Calhoun and Andrew Butler and the likes of Little Alec. Even old Edmund Ruffin, who met Walker, was not a fan of filibustering. While I agree that the South was not universally ready to head out and take Cuba and the Isthmus, I do not think this imperialism was as uninfluential as Dr. Wilson would make it out to be.

    I’d also point out the fire-eaters somehow prevailed in 1860. While some were out of touch as the new roles in the new government (Yancey did not win a seat at the Montgomery convention; Rhett was quickly eclipsed and spent the war complaining in the Mercury about Davis; Ruffin, easily the most admirable, made no pretense of being a politician; Tom Cobb became a non-entity in Montgomery and went off to fight and die-an aside, while Tom Cobb was a martinet and a pompous ass, the rumor that his own men killed him on purpose at Fredericksburg is a slanderous lie ), they still carried the day.

    While I understand the frustration of trying to overcompensate for decades of Yankee saints and Southern sinners, Dr. Wilson is too good a historian to play the game of Southern saints and Yankee sinners. As the book of essays that Dr. Wilson edited made clear, the late Prof. Bradford was not one to have the Southern blinders on which is why he could find virtue in some of the Yankee Federalist conservatives. Indeed, in one of Bradford’s last books, Against the Barbarians, he writes on a number of them and offers a good deal of praise.

25. 25 Comment by Brock H. on 26 July 2008:

    Prof. Wilson @22 and 23:

    Upon finding this website and becoming a devoted reader of your posts, I have come to love and appreciate the South, certainly much more than I do my own degenerate, hedonistic, and self-worshipping California Yankee culture. It is superior to the North and the North’s regional offspring, the West, in its selfless devotion to duty, honor, traditions, and of course, God. It seems to reject so many new fads and crazes which emanate from above the Mason-Dixon Line.

    But I must inquire of you: What say you, directly, in response to Mr. Pablo’s claim of overwhelming Southern acquiescence to and support of past American wars and imperial ventures? His mention of the South’s electoral support of Wilson, FDR, and Stevenson sounds convincing to me at this juncture.

    And one other thing: What are your opinions on Robert Taft as a non-Southern source of American conservative thought? I have come to admire him after reading his 1950 tome titled “A Foreign Policy for Americans.”

26. 26 Comment by Roland on 26 July 2008:

    Professor Wilson uses ‘yankee’ to refer to those tedious, silly people present throughout American history who spent the 19th century giving us oddball religious movements and wars. In the twentieth century their religious fervor has faded and twisted into liberal self-righteousness, but the taste for war remains as long as it doesn’t serve the national interest. It’s clear he does not mean to disparage the other kind of ‘yankee’ who is traditional, hard working, and independent-minded. Think of Ethan Allen, Calvin Coolidge, and Eli Whitney.

27. 27 Comment by Scotsbard on 26 July 2008:

    I’d also point out the fire-eaters somehow prevailed in 1860.

    Really? Have you ever looked at the men who actually prevailed in the Confederate government. Were more than a trickle of them fire-eaters? I think not.

28. 28 Comment by Jack on 27 July 2008:

    What happens when large swaths of the population disbelieve and oppose modern science, and advocate pseudo-science, except when they need cell phones, computers, and life-saving drugs?

29. 29 Comment by Brock H. on 27 July 2008:

    “Who said nothing good ever came out of San Francisco? I hear they are naming a sewage plant after George W. Bush.”

    They are doing it for dishonorable reasons, Professor. You and I would name a sewage plant after him because we love our land and our law and our traditions, all of which W. is an enemy of. San Franciscans are doing it because they are extremely socially liberal Democrats, while W. on the other hand is a Republican who did everything in his power during his presidency to increase the fortunes of that party. He also expressed opposition to abortion and homosexual rights. If a socially liberal Democrat had been in King George’s place carrying out the “War on Terror” all these years, the City by the Bay would be defending him tooth and nail.

    “Why did the U.S. not stand down at the end of the Cold War and return to a peaceful demeanour instead of seeking hegemony?”

    Because our government decided to trust our foreign policy to neocons (Reagan and the Bushes), their close cousins neoliberals and globalists (Clinton), and the Council on Foreign Relations (all presidents since FDR), rather than to principled conservatives who just wanted communism in its grave.

30. 30 Comment by Rob on 27 July 2008:

    Scotsbard, I said the fire eaters prevailed in 1860. The Confederate government was not formed until 1861. I am thinking of Yancey and his role in the shattering of the Democratic party in 1860 and Rhett and the SC secession. Had you bothered to the rest of my post, you would see I spell out the political decline of a number of the fire eaters. The fact remains the South went out of the nation despite Jeff Davis crying his eyes out as he left the Senate or Alex Stephen taking to the stump for Stephen Douglas and Union.

31. 31 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 July 2008:

    Yes, Southerners supported wars often. Unlike New England we never failed to support the U.S. when actually at war. But we have never had the decisive power over national decisions in the imperial era. And we filled up the armed services for the same reason that Scots and Irish fought for the British Empire—poverty brought on by central government exploitation.
    The flurry of expansionist sentiment in the late antebellum South was brought on by the need for self-defense. If the Yankees had been good fellow countrymen and not threatened and boasted that they were going to dominate the South as a permanent exploited minority, then filibustering would not have happened.

32. 32 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 July 2008:

    American history is told and retold as a story of Southerners (apparently naturally evil people) doing bad things. No mention of why, or of the actions and motives of the other side, which are by definition always pure and unoffending. Remind you of the way foreign wars like the present are justified by the aggressors?

33. 33 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 July 2008:

    25 Brock. Southerners did NOT vote for Wilson, FDR, and Stevenson because of their war policies. I was around in 1952 and it was not an issue. (likewise Bush). I repeat, we have never been more than an exploited junior partner in the policies of the imperial ruling class. Why not blame them instead of us for the mess Yankees have made?

34. 34 Comment by pablo H on 27 July 2008:

    Dr. Wilson,

    Are you saying the Korean War wasn’t an issue in 1952? And thanks for the response regarding the South and possible expansion in the Caribbean. I’ll have to do some more reading.

35. 35 Comment by robert m. peters on 27 July 2008:

    Dr. Wilson,

    My father, his brother and his uncle – my great uncle – are good examples of your point.

    My uncle and great uncle served in WWI. They both, by their words to me in the late 50’s and early 60’s, went into the army, conscription not withstanding, because the big saw mill in the Pollock area, the Big Creek Lumber Company, an entity founded and owned originally by Mr. Gould, had cut out and burned out (Cajun lightning as we say down here). The mill was the manifestation of the second wave of carpetbagging by Northern investors: they cut all of the timber, left the land barren and abandoned the people who had worked their mills. My father’s oldest sister, born twenty years before he, spent most of her young married life in tent cities which grew up around these mills. Neither my uncle nor my great uncle, who was wounded in France, went into the army and off to war in order to “make the world safe for Democracy” or to “punish the Hun.”

    My father and again my uncle, my father’s oldest brother mentioned supra, were hurled into WWII. My father, at the age of 21, joined the Louisiana National Guard after having, to no avail, gone through all of the New Deal job training. There were no jobs to be had. The Louisiana Guard was federalized in 1940 even as FDR campaigned that he would not send our boys off to war. My uncle who had served in WWI and who loathed the army was, in his early 40’s, without work. He joined the army with the understanding, given his age, that he would be training recruits. The army, of course, did not abide by that understanding and hurled him along with thousands of other men into the Allied invasion of North Africa. He was a platoon sergeant. His entire platoon was killed as it landed, having received a direct salvo hit on their landing craft from friendly U.S. naval fire. He alone survived, having received shrapnel wounds to the head which would send him to a V.A. hospital from 1943 until his death in 1976. My father was sent to England in 1942 and was like thousands of other men hurled against Hitler’s Atlantic Wall in June of 1944.

    Neither of them wanted to be in the army. Neither wanted to go kill Germans. Neither wanted to liberate Europe. They were compelled by economics and law to be in the army, and they both did their duty, primarily to their buddies. The last thing my uncle did in war was to cradle even as he struggled to remain conscious his dying platoon leader, who like him was an older man and who, despite the difference in rank, had been a friend. He told me when I would visit him that part of his mental struggle in the V.A. hospital was seeing the face of his friend in the mangled young men who came into the hospital during the last of WWII, during Korea and during Vietnam.

    I cannot attest to the motives of other Americans and Southerners of their generation who did the actual fighting, but I can attest to theirs and frankly to those of other men in our community who served. For them, it was at the very best a duty and at the worst a simple response to circumstance. It was, however, not for some high-minded noble cause.

36. 36 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 27 July 2008:

    When the jury box and the ballot box fail, then reach for the cratridge box!

37. 37 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 27 July 2008:

    Correction
    When the jury box and the ballot box fail, then reach for the cartridge box!

38. 38 Comment by Scotsbard on 28 July 2008:

    I can see the point about the fire-eaters in 1860, and I did read the entire post. I think we would need a much longer thread to sort this out, one that would derail the thread (to mix metaphors). The argument would be about the fire-eaters being rabble-rousers for the secessionist cause. I believe their power vastly overrated, but allowing them to have their head was the single greatest tactical error the South made, at least for posterity.

39. 39 Comment by Allen Wilson on 28 July 2008:

    I wonder if some of the more hostile posters here have a grudge against Dr Wilson, or just against the South in general?

    So Lopez came to America and looked for support wherever he could find it for an expedition to liberate Cuba from Spanish oppression. He asked Davis to lead the expedition, Davis turned it down, then recommended Lee, who also turned it down. That’s not a very good bit of evidence to suggest that Davis was somehow supporting evil filibusters out to undermine and oppress the poor Latin Americans and build an evil Southern empire over them.

    There’s too much hateful finger pointing and attempts to incriminate going on here. It would take more than just a few cursory readings of internet pages to come at a true understanding of the filibuster issue. However, I would like to suggest that what Lopez was up to is common throughout history. Just look at the Byzantines and all their intrigues.

    Lastly, the lack of popular support for Lopez in Cuba when he invaded leads me to wonder if the Cuban people were really as badly treated as some Cubans claimed, or if perhaps they just didn’t think Lopez could be successful?

    It’s amazing how those who keep pointing out that modern Southerners tend to support imperialist presidents and ventures cant get it through their heads just how much effect school and college delivered propaganda has had on them from childhood onward.

    I have also heard of books written about William Walker which claimed that he was a front for Southern expansionists out to create a slave empire over Latin lands, but I also read in a magazine somewhere that he had financial and other support from Northern industrialists.

    Why all this rather overblown and badly founded accusation of evil Southern lust for slave dominion over Latin America when Yankees have had actual, real, economically, culturally, and socially exploitative imperial rule over both Dixie and Latin America for several generations now? How is it that the prostrate South, also under Yankee imperial rule, gets blamed for something the northeastern elite is actually guilty of?

40. 40 Comment by PcH on 29 July 2008:

    I wonder if some of the more hostile posters here have a grudge against Dr Wilson, or just against the South in general?

    Since the comments are random, I say they belong to outsiders who are just trying to stir up trouble. Like a little yellow jacket they come, they sting, and they fly away. And then you itch for a couple minutes.

41. 41 Comment by MAP on 29 July 2008:

    “Why do you keep fighting?” the Yankee asked the Southerner.
    “Because”, the Southerner replied “Yall keep shooting at me.”

42. 42 Comment by NGPM on 29 July 2008:

    The traditional South–to the extent that it still exists–represents the unquestionably better half of the American version of the Enlightenment and a desire to be left alone to its own will.

    Regrettably, whatever the “original intentions” of the Patriot Fathers in the American Revolution, that turn of events helped to inspire disaster in Europe and Latin America. This is why I am not convinced that the War of Independence was a “good thing” globally: it fed a much nastier series of conflicts elsewhere that, in turn, fed back onto the U.S. in 1860 and again in 1916 and 1941.

43. 43 Comment by T. Chan on 30 July 2008:

    Regrettably, whatever the “original intentions” of the Patriot Fathers in the American Revolution, that turn of events helped to inspire disaster in Europe and Latin America.

    But do the revolutionaries elsewhere look to the American Revolution for inspiration? Did not the freemasons and other free-thinkers play a prominent role in fomenting revolution elsewhere? It could be argued that they were accelerating the development of the nation-state in a certain direction, while [some of] the Founding Fathers were trying to reverse it.

44. 44 Comment by Allen Wilson on 30 July 2008:

    I think NGPM is right, to a degree. The American revolution was inspired more by English traditions than by the enlightenment despite the presence of nuts like Thomas Paine. Also, the French revolution was bound to happen anyway, with all the crazy ideological ferment going on there, and it was going to inspire Latin American rebellions as a consequence. Those rebellions were more inspired by the French revolution ideologically. Even so, the American revolution must have helped inspire the French disaster though it’s hard to tell how much.

    I view the American revolution much like the protestant reformation, in that it was just and necessary at the time, but that it was very unfortunate that it had to happen, and it had serious and often nasty consequences.

    I think Sam Dickson was right to say that the way that American independence came about was unfortunate and that it was premature, and that it warped the development of American society. Looking back, it would have been better if we had gotten independence peacefully, maybe a hundred or so years later, perhaps even around the time that Australia or Canada got theirs.

    Independence sure didn’t keep us out of the world wars.

    On the other hand, we cant judge the founders harshly, because they couldn’t foresee all that , and they had to do what they found it necessary to do. I would have been right there with them. Besides, if we had waited for independence despite all the injustices at the time, and even if those injustices had subsided, who is to say that we wouldn’t have asked for independence and then gotten the Rhodesia treatment?

45. 45 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 31 July 2008:

    Mr. Wilson, I think it is accurate to say that the French Revolution was inspired not by the American Revolution but by inaccurate ideas of the American Revolution. The Europeans, as always, applied their ideologies to the U.S. and saw what they wanted to see. A story about Jefferson as U.S. Minister to France during the early stages of the Revolution is pertinent. During a street riot, the American minister’s carriage appeared. The mob quieted and parted and allowed Jefferson through, then returned to their mayhem.

46. 46 Comment by Allen Wilson on 31 July 2008:

    Thank you for that insight, Dr Wilson.

47. 47 Comment by Robert Bruce on 31 July 2008:

    The genteel South has been lond dead, as the vast majority of military bases are south of the Mason Dixon line or out in CA. Those rednecks love war and want to waste those Ay-rabs bigtime, the sooner, the better!!! Uber nationalism at its best!!! It is funny what govt subsidies and an economy built on the industrial military complex can do to otherwise decent Christian folk, who in reality have been reduced to a bunch of Elmer Gantry’s. Southern culture is a lot closer to King of the Hill than to Gone with the Wind anymore. Not too many Rhett Butlers around, just a bunch of Bubbas!!!!!!

48. 48 Comment by NGPM on 2 August 2008:

    “I view the American revolution much like the protestant reformation, in that it was just and necessary at the time, but that it was very unfortunate that it had to happen, and it had serious and often nasty consequences.”

    Given the multiconfessional nature of the U.S. and this web site, I cannot articulate a full apologia of my views, as a Roman Catholic, to the contrary, but this does pick an interesting idea. There seems to be enough disparity among decent Americans and Chronicles readers as to the benignity (if that is a word) of the American Revolution that it might warrant an issue treating the subject from the various perspectives. Dr. Wilson, Dr. Fleming, what do ye say?

    My own opinion is well known: we have not kept the republic and liberal democracy is failing us badly, so shouldn’t we consider trying something else? But I should very much like to hear the manifestos of those who believe that the American Revolution was not inherently tainted by the Enlightenment, as well as their counterparts.

49. 49 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 2 August 2008:

    #48. It seems to me that in order to blame the American Revolution for the current state of the U.S. you would have to make the impossible case that Britain is somehow less “tainted by the Enlightenment” than America. I would say, rather, that the European Enlightenment tainted 19th century America and destroyed the republican legacy of the Revolution. A striking symbol of this would be Ralph Waldo Emerson going to Germany, becoming a Transcendentalist, repudiating Christianity, and becoming the most celebrated and exemplary American intellectual, which he still is. The leaders of the American Revolution sometimes talked Enlightenment, which was in the air, but the Revolution was essentially Christian and Medieval. There were no Emersons among the Founders.

50. 50 Comment by NGPM on 2 August 2008:

    @49: I think that Britain and Europe had already begun their stumbling well before 1776, that the seeds of destruction crossed the Atlantic during the colonisation process and the two fed back onto each other. Let me clarify: I do not want to suggest that the leaders in America were “proto-Marxists at heart.” They may not have intended Enlightenment but if they “sometimes talked Enlightenment” to achieve their aims then were they not playing with fire?

    … or maybe there was just nothing else to play with, on either side, at that point. Still, given our present conditions I don’t think a benevolent monarch (if one can be found) could hurt.

    The point about the Revolution’s character being “essentially Christian and Medieval” raises even more questions and touches confessional issues–and I am even less qualified to enter such a debate. Hence my appeal to Chronicles for a series on the subject.

51. 51 Comment by Robert Bruce on 2 August 2008:

    NGPM,

    Best thing to do would be to restore monarchies at this point or go back to city states. There you have both ends of the centralization/decentralization spectrum. Monarchies are heavily centralized, but since the person in charge is going to pass it(power) on to his kids he is more likely to care about what shape his nation/empire/state is in. It is like how a person who owns his own home takes better care of it than a renter or squatter. City states would work out better than the current regime as localities can concentrate on what is best for them without worrying about an intrusive federal or state govt looking to mess things up. A lot less waste in terms of money and resources.

52. 52 Comment by Allen Wilson on 5 August 2008:

    NGPM: If you want to do some research, you may wish to read a speech given by one of the liberators of Latin America (O’Higgins?, cant remember which one) to the Columbian parliament, in which he outlined why the North American colonies did so much better after independence than the Latin American ones.

    As for Latin America, I think it indisputable that independence came too soon and in the wrong way, considering the state of Latin American societies at that time. They needed time and experience to learn to govern themselves effectively, and insulation from enlightenment ideas which were a destablising factor from the beginning of independence.

    America needed slower westward expansion and slower or no immigration in order to develop its civilisation. In the end, it wasn’t that South European Catholics or East Europeans came over here, it was the speed at which they did. The rate of expansion in the colonial period and the early nineteenth century was natural. It was the result of the gradual growth and expansion of civilisation. The immigrant explosion of the late 19th – early 20th century, and resulting accelerated expansion westward and greatly accelerated growth of cities undermined society, to the detriment of the original Americans and the immigrants.