Free Republic

When he mentions that his daddy fought for the Confederacy, H.V. Booth gets more than a few raised eyebrows. “Really? Really?” Booth says, mimicking people’s incredulity. “They just can’t believe it.” His father, Isham Johnson Booth, a country boy from north of Athens, played a bit part in the Civil War. But it was a grim role, the memory of which never left him and was something he rarely spoke about. He was a guard at Andersonville, the prisoner-of-war camp in south-central Georgia that has become synonymous with suffering. Booth, who turns 92 this month, is the end of a...

For Democrats in the South, the most ominous part of a disastrous year may not be what happened on Election Day but what has happened in the weeks since. After suffering a historic rout — in which nearly every white Deep South Democrat in the U.S. House was defeated and Republicans took over or gained seats in legislatures across the region — the party’s ranks in Dixie have thinned even further. In Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama, Democratic state legislators have become Republicans, concluding that there is no future in the party that once dominated the so-called Solid South. That the...

(LEAD) Military: artillery sound from within North's territory, no shells land in southern waters SEOUL, Nov. 26 (Yonhap) -- The series of explosion sounds heard Friday on the border island attacked by North Korea earlier this week appear related to training within the North's territory, military officials said. No shells landed in waters on either side of the Koreas' Yellow Sea border or near Yeonpyeong Island, said Col. Lee Bung-woo, a spokesman at the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff. "The firing was not aimed at us, and we believe the sounds were heard as North Korea conducted its routine training...

I'd like to hear from any Freepers down in Dixie on a societal question. I'd like to know if the old southern virtues survive, or if mass-media culture has erased or eroded them. I'm talking about the basic manners, and in particular, the relationship of young people to adults. Allow me a moment to explain. I was born and raised in New Jersey. I was in many respects NOT raised right. EXCEPT, I was fortunate enough to spend extended periods down in Alabama with my grandmother. I attended public school for a short time in Alabama as well. This was...

The Midterm Election That Restored AmericaWarning to Republicans hoping to take control of Congress: A single ill-considered law can undo much of the good you will do. It’s not often that a midterm election changes the direction of the United States. Signs are that next Tuesday’s will. Sixty-eight years ago, one certainly did. On November 3, 1942, voters went to the polls to hand FDR and the Democrats a defeat so resounding that it halted the country’s decade-long leftward shift, while their GOP rivals found a clear mandate to reverse the biggest expansion of government in American history, the New...

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn.—The Republican Party is poised in the coming election to remove the vestiges of Democratic control from state governments in the heart of the South. In Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, the GOP appears likely to win every state elected office as well as take or strengthen control over legislatures. Republican sweeps in these states would give the party control over the redrawing of congressional districts after the 2010 census, and enhance its ability to raise funds and campaign for Republican candidates in the 2012 races. White conservative voters in the South have been turning to the GOP...

KING, N.C. – The Christian flag is everywhere in the small city of King: flying in front of barbecue joints and hair salons, stuck to the bumpers of trucks, hanging in windows and emblazoned on T-shirts. The relatively obscure emblem has become omnipresent because of one place it can't appear: flying above a war memorial in a public park. The city council decided last month to remove the flag from above the monument in Central Park after a resident complained, and after city leaders got letters from the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church...

When it comes to Christian art and culture, it's sometimes embarrassing to admit how far we've drifted over these past few decades from our age-old emphasis on "timelessness" and "organic development." Nevertheless, in an effort to find the silver lining in the dark cloud that passes (in some aging circles) for "relevance", we here at Southern-fried Catholicism hang our heads low and would like to take this opportunity to highlight some ridiculously low points in Christian art, architecture and culture in a new series we're calling "Christian Cheese." We hope you enjoy forehead smackingly sad examples of Christians trying their...

Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell's recent proclamation of Confederate History Month provoked a firestorm of criticism, with many accusing him and those who commemorate their Southern ancestors' bravery of ignoring or even defending slavery. But the cruel and evil institution of slavery was not the sole or even primary reason for the South's secession from the Union, nor was it a significant motivating factor for individual Confederate soldiers. Yet many of us in the South, including those descended from old Jewish families of the Confederacy, still struggle to expose the truth about why Southern soldiers fought, the courage they showed...

The unusually cool summer continued in Southern California, where several new record-low temperatures were recorded on Wednesday. The 68-degree low at Los Angeles International Airport broke the old record low for the day, which was 70 degrees in 1991. Santa Barbara (68) and San Luis Obispo (69) broke records as well. The temperature at USC, 75, tied the record low set in 1999. UCLA also set a record, 56 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. While the region saw a heat wave a few weeks ago, temperatures have been gradually going down again as July comes to an end....

In an unprecedented move, the Israeli Defense Forces have released sensitive intelligence information about the situation in southern Lebanon (available at the IDF blog). Hezbollah forces have taken over more than a hundred villages to store their heavy artillery, and their command posts are near schools and hospitals. This represents a major shift in strategy for Hezbollah since 2006, when they stored most of their weaponry away from habitations, as befits any army that claims to want to protect its own people. But the IDF hit most of their supply in the first days of hostilities.

I came across a historical marker for the Kentucky Confederate Home. There was nothing left of the building itself, but I was fascinated that, well into the twentieth century, these old veterans of a war that had ended sixty years before still lived together, still saluted the old flags, still wore the old uniforms. . .

Who was Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne?

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is very influential in the current administration, almost single handedly responsible for defining “domestic terrorists” for the Department of Homeland Security and ratcheting up the racial rhetoric like never before in U.S. history, in the name of so-called “social justice.” In the latest diatribe to come out of the Montgomery Alabama based mini-ACLU, titled - Rage on the Right - The Year in Hate and Extremism—the group lays out their justification for striking fear in the hearts of every Tea Party, 912 and town hall activist, angry over the federal governments mishandling of their...

Dear Old Friend, It was wholly a pleasure to hear your theory about where the South ends, probably because any theory about the South will get a conversation going around dinner tables, at barber shops, in graduate seminars on Southern history, and just about anywhere else in these talkative latitudes. Your theory is that the South ends where the last monument to the Confederate soldier can be seen. This would mean that Bentonville, up in the far northwest corner of Arkansas, and known far and wide as the capital of Wal-Mart, qualifies as Southern. This might comes as a surprise,...

onathan Bray, one of the organizers of Southern Decadence, a celebration that has become known as the gay Mardi Gras, spent his time this week getting ready for the big party and watching weather reports. "I looked out in the Gulf and didn't see a storm," Bray said. "No Katrina, no Gustav. I'm so happy." In the almost four decades since it started, Southern Decadence has become a traditional Labor Day weekend, end-of-summer, event. But for two of the last four years, hurricanes crashed the French Quarter-centered party. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Gustav last year both generated evacuation orders...

Y'all gotta watch this speech!

My oh my, what would the critics, the Civil War publications, publishers, and bloggers do if it weren't for the bad boys of the Confederacy and those who study them and also those who wish to honor their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy?

David Powell is a retired civil engineer who has resided in Pasadena for the past 37 years. He is a 1949 graduate of Caltech. His engineering career of nearly 40 years with Bookman-Edmonston Engineering was largely involved in the planning of public works projects, including project formulation, evaluation of alternatives (including economic evaluation), preparation of project reports, development of financing programs and related activities. A few thoughts on California water issues from one who had a reasonably responsible forty-year career a a water engineer and water engineering executive. I also can claim some familiarly with Pasadena, having lived in the...

Now comes Time Magazine with a piece saying that Calvinism is back as a dominating force in American culture. What does this mean for our future, politically and culturally. . .