Posted on 06/23/2012 7:52:50 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
150 years after the great divide in America, reality seems to be proving that the South was right on everything but slavery, lets look!
The Kennedy brothers, Donnie and Ron shook book stores across the land when their book The South Was Right boldly proclaimed a view which asserts that the original founders of America were right, and Lincoln and the progressives were wrong!
The Kennedy twins are intelligent, educated, successful southerners who focused their intellects on researching the politics and economics of the ante bellum era and found considerable evidence that the South was right. It's a terrific book available at Barnes and Nobles, and if you are an American who believes in God, the original founders of America and Declaration of Independence, then The South Was Right should be in your library.
Now, before we go further let's do what we have to do, condemn slavery as the sin of the past. It was wrong. It was wrong in the North, and wrong in the South. Taking a man's liberty is taking a gift from the Almighty Father and that is wrong. No point wasting a lot of space in debate, or discussion. So let's move on.
This article is not about the past, it is about today. It is about an America seemingly in cardiac arrest. It is about an America over regulated, over taxed, over governed. It is about present day fashions and trends crushing the spirit of liberty which made us America. America is headed in the wrong direction and the markets, and our economy, and our young know it. America needs a new direction, and that direction can be found in the South, in its past, and in its present.
The division in America started almost before the Constitution was dry. Justice Abel P. Upshur, of Virginia, wrote a treatise on the Southern interpretation of the Constitution. Within that work Upshur points to God as the author/creator of soveriegnty. Soveriegnty is handed from God to man. From man, soveriegnty is passed to the states. And it is the states who share a small portion of soveriegnty with the federeal government. The federal government is last, not first, and the Constitution is a leash to restrain the natural inclination of men in power to seek more power.
Let's start with the beginning. The South, Dixie, is also known as the Bible Belt. 150 years ago, in the Preamble to the Confederate Constitution, the southern founding fathers called on God for His protection and His guidance. God was invited to the "governing table." This was not something new in America, but it was one of the things the North was changing and the South wanted to keep. If you read Forged in Faith or The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States you will discover that Christ had been with America since before its conception. Christ and the church were with each of the colonies as they were discovered and settled. Christianity was at the heart of the laws, at the core of the spirit of the people who made the venture from Europe to America. Christ was about liberty, the rule of law, consent of the governed and majority rule. Sovereignty came from God. God is sovereign. From Him all authority flows.
Many of today's writers on this subject credit the Pilgrims and Massachusetts with using the Bible, and Higher Law to write the Mayflower Compact and plant the seeds for American democracy. The separate religious faiths of Christianity and the pulpit was critical to the foundation of Ameirca. The first cohesiveness of America, the first spirit of unity amongst the colonies came from a mutual belief in a Christian God. All believed that God had brought us to America, and that God was in charge.
The North is portrayed as the original Bible Belt. Yet something happened. The North has moved away from God. The South today, has not. Barack Obama, as President, has declared we are not a Christian nation. That may work in New York, or with the main stream media, but it don't set well if you live south of the Mason Dixon Line, or in the Heartland. America is Christian today. We do believe in the Bible. We do believe in Christ. Our morality, our sense of right and wrong, come from the Higher law. Everything that America can be stems from this starting point. Everything that man can be emanates from the understanding that God exists, that the Bible is His word.
This is not past. This is today. This is the South. Go in its towns. Go to its churches. Talk to people. Listen. The South is not conservative because it has less colleges or universities. The South is not conservative through some genetic fault. The South is conservative because the root of conservatism is a Christian God. It is a belief in something other than government. It is a belief in the partnership between God and man. The South is Right!
Since Eden man has wrestled with the questions of right and wrong. There's no need to. God outlined right and wrong. Like a loving parent He wrote a letter to mankind in the form of the Bible. It tells us right and wrong. No secrets. Nothing scientists have to discover. Nope. Like the basic laws of physics right and wrong do NOT change. Yet, so much of man's energy is wasted in the ebb tides of morality. Yet like gravity, or magnetism, right and wrong are consistent, not changed or altered by man.
The South is this place. It is a place where the anchor of God sets the table. While other parts of the nation, or people within the nation may chide the South for being the Bible Belt, we wear that description knowing Christ told us we should endure in living His word.
But the South is about much more then its bedrock faith.
The South is about American values. It is about federalism, state's rights and local control. It is about the people in the local area having the most to say about governing themselves. The South is about limiting federal government. The South is about limiting the benefits of working for the government! The best and brightest should not be in government. They should be in medicine, or inventing new technologies, or creating new business formations, or caring for the land and resources of a region.
The South is about capitalism. It is about competition. The right to work is a southern concept, and unions are seen as a socialist tool to organize workers. Unions have become their own political parties, their own sources of power. Unions do not represent their members. What American jobs did unions fight for? Unions are internationals, not American. They are not Christian, they are secular. Unions are myopic; they are manifestations of cumulative greed seeking power and advantage for a small set of people. And because the South rejected unionism, and wealthy investors poured their monies into the north and not the South, the South was spared the natural inflation which comes with unions.
The South is about understanding that wealth is not money. Wealth is in the land, in the family, and in the things we produce. Money is a tool, not a source of value.
The South is about pride in one's home town, and region. The South is about a regional identity and unity. It is about a way of thinking, a way of singing, and a way of enjoying life. What other region in America has a symbol equal to the Confederate battle flag?; a symbol internationally known and respected, a symbol in opposition to tyranny and oppression. And then there is the South's national anthem; Dixie.
The South offers an alternative American model, one that is needed in the modern world. The South is the antithesis to modern global hegemony and collectivism. The South is about nationalism, independence, autonomy, personal liberty, limited government. The South embraces God as the sole supreme authority. The South provides an alternative course, alternative direction, an alternative to human secularism and socialism. The South is right.
You do realize that slavery was dying out and that it disappeared in the North earlier because they could pay “slave wages” to newly arrived immigrants instead, right? They didn’t do away with slavery up there because it was “wrong” but because the alternative made more economic sense. If the roles had been reversed, I have no doubt that almost nothing would’ve changed.
“Kind of like saying the Nazi’s were alright except for that holocaust thing.”
Well, yeah, except that is the dumbest and least related possible analogy you could possibly come up with. I think the holocaust and Sherman’s wholesale slaughter of southerners is closer, but that’s just my gut reaction to genocidal maniacs in general.
I don't understand the thought process of the North.
How a State can call a murderer a Lion of the Senate and reelect him term after term.
Those same people are in horror about Trent Lott for praising a 100 year old Senator by saying he was right in States Rights. Strom Thurmond.
Aaaaaannnndd the thing that the North didn’t (and probably still doesn’t) understand is that the Constitution is a contract that every state has the right to opt out of at any time. If we in GA tell the federal government tomorrow to leave, then it should pack its bags and go.
Yeh, for real. Never mind that South tried to end slavery prior to the war. The slavery issue in civil war studies is a red herring.
“I don’t understand the thought process of the North.”
Impossible to understand a non-existent process...
copperhead
Your analogy is incorrect. The allies were not practicing genocide before or during the war.
I do know that the South was fighting not only to preserve slavery but to expand it from Kansas to even Southern California. Pro-slavery raids and attacks only barely predate the war. That’s just a fact that cannot be disputed.
Before one is too hard in condemning Sherman, I think a study of the general oppression and exploitation of Southerners by the Confederate authorities can add a little perspective. It’s no wonder that many southern locales welcomed the advancing Union army as liberators.
for later
Who, me?
End of discussion. Without slavery, there would have never been a Civil War.
We all know this stuff down here.
End of discussion. Without slavery, there would have never been a Civil War.
We’re not all liberals up here in the North East lady, anymore than everyone of you Southerners is a knuckle-dragging Klansmen and since the CSA and the Klan were Democrat creations and Lincoln was a Republican I find it mighty strange to see a bunch of people claiming to be conservatives coming to a conservative web-site to venerate a bunch of Dixiecrats.
Indonesian Go Home
Yeh, for real. Never mind that South tried to end slavery prior to the war. The slavery issue in civil war studies is a red herring.
Now don’t let the facts get in the way of the rewriting of history....
Grinnnn so I stepped on some toes…Sorry about that! I am not a Dixiecrat either. I have been a Republican ever since I registered to vote, way back in 1972.
I am part Yankee myself, my Dad was born in White Plains (Valhalla), NY. He married a Southern gal. His Dad was born in the South and married a Yankee gal. I happened to be born in NC.
Really? How many people did Sherman 'slaughter?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.