Clyde-n-wilson

Clyde N. Wilson is a contributing editor to Chronicles. A retired professor of history at the University of South Carolina, he is the author of numerous books, including Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew and Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture. He is the editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun.
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Articles and Posts by Clyde-n-wilson:

• Regional Cinema(6)

  Like it or not, movies are the main art form of our time, the storytelling medium that reaches the largest audience and captures the attention of us all, high and low, wise and foolish. It is also arguable that movies, like literature and architecture, reflect something of the soul of the particular nation that produces them. If so, we indeed need to be concerned about the American soul.

• Strange Words for Strange Days(27)

  Charity.

  Old version: Open-handedness toward our neighbour in need.

  New version: Getting the government to spend other people’s money on politically favoured groups, at home and abroad.

• Devil’s Brew in Dixie(47)

  Our small but proud State can’t seem to stay out of the political spotlight. We had barely recovered from the exposure of our present Governor’s exotic extra-marital affair when we made the headlines again as a result of the surprising outcome of the Republican primary for the next governor.

• Call Me Simple . . . (2)(13)

  But I don’t understand:

  How all those “experts” who are always mouthing off in the media and who are not really experts manage to get on the air.

  Why people can’t tell the difference between speculation and investment.

• Call Me Simple . . .(12)

  But I don’t understand:

  Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem.

  Why the government spends billions on education and the population gets dumber and dumber.

• The Disgrace of Disgrace(32)

  This film has won a major prize and is being given the big hype by all the trendy thinkers as a profound look at the “new South Africa.” That it may be, though not in the way they mean. Disgrace is one of the vilest movies ever produced for normal viewing, and I cannot recommend it for anyone. Even though I fast-forwarded through much of it, I admit it haunts me like a bad dream—a hellish tour of Western decadence.

• Maxims for American Intellectuals(19)

  (good for putting down right-wing bigots at cocktail parties or in the classroom)

  Taking off your shoes at the airport is patriotic and makes you safer.

  If college athletes fail academically it is obviously society’s fault.

• Filmlog: Laila’s Birthday and The Lemon Tree(4)

  I hold with Washington and Jefferson—it is dangerous folly for our government to get involved in conflicts among different bunches of foreigners. But that wisdom was long ago trashed by our rulers, who imagine themselves Masters of the Universe of Global Democracy, and their court intellectuals, who imagine themselves to be prophets when they are only second-string and rather comic soothsayers.

• On Being America’s Red-Headed Stepchild(71)

  Are you puzzled and irritated by the viciousness and falsity of most of what is being published these days about the South and Southern history? The beginning of all wisdom on this subject is to know that in American public discourse and so-called scholarship there is usually no effort to understand the South, like any other human phenomenon, as it is. Rather the South is raw material in a morality play about American, that is, about Northern righteousness.

• Looking for the Hen’s Tooth(29)

  An unindicted Illinois governor.

  A teenager not talking on a cell phone.