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.
I’m recalling my Georgia/Virginia roots ...
As a matter of fact I do, but I’m willing to bet you don’t. Granted, it was pure symbolism, but Mississippi was the last state to ratify the 13th Amendment...In 1995.
Your history is faulty. Alexander Stephens was the vice president of the confederate states. Judah Benjamin is who you’re thinking of, and he was the secretary of state.
oh no ... we here in the south must take credit for bill and hillary. Can we point at byrd, and carter? Though none of the mentioned were Dixiecrats or were they? Dixiecrats equals democrats, right? The south did move away from the republican party after and shortly before the War Between the States, if my recollection of history is correct, and started to return to the republican party with IKE. So do we have to take credit for byrd, carter, bill and hillary? Maybe the south would have won if those aforementioned souls would have been born up north.
courtesy ping
...plant the seeds for American democracy.
We're a Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. America has democratic elements.
Christ was about liberty, the rule of law, consent of the governed and majority rule. Sovereignty came from God.
Again we're not a democracy which is all a democracy is.
If majority rule were the precept to be followed we would all be worshiping Moloch, Baal or some other false god.
“the South was right on everything but slavery”
That’s a pretty big “but” that will always muddy the water anytime anyone tries to discuss these kinds of things sensibly.
Well, the Constitution doesn’t set forth any such restrictions on secession, so I’d say that’s just your opinion.
Double duh.
;]
Well, the anti-slavery attacks of John Brown predated the pro-slavery raids, so what’s your point?
Well you were still wrong about slavery. There would have been little peace between countries where one viewed certain people as mere property.
Modernization would have forced you to give up slavery anyway, the South would not have been able to compete economically.
I don’t disagree about being able to secede, there are valid reasons to do it and also invalid ones. It also doesn’t mean the rest of the states may not have differing opinions as to what if anything needs to be done to the seceding states. And their assessments could also be right, or wrong.
Nowhere else in the country comes close
Being southern is an identity from Texas and Oklahoma to whats left of Virginia
Anyone from here gets it.....as do plenty who move here.....it is truly a blessing to be American and from Dixie.......ironic we are the last to cling...bitterly i might add.....to the whats left of American traditional culture when we were once rebels basically.......funny how history unfolds
In today's world slavery continues to exist on a massive scale, and regretfully slavery exists in America. Our politicians invited slavery back to America and for decades refused to acknowledge it (slavery) existed, once more in America. There are new forms of slavery being enacted by our politicians both in the present and in our past. The politicians would disagree. People, in America, are not as free as they once were, instead Americans are burdened with countless methods to keep Americans under the yoke of one form or another of slavery. Our politicians tell us this is a matter of perspective though regretfully the perspective of a politician is how do I hold power while the perspective of the masses of the citizens is how do I survive. Survival verses Power. Which offers (survival or power) the opportunity for slavery to flourish?
courtesy ping and yes I’m a rebel by today’s standards.
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