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Southern Confederate Hegelians and Marxists
PGA Weblog ^

Posted on 02/18/2021 8:30:54 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica

There is a cancer among most conservative websites that devalues and glosses over the importance of history. This glossing leaves a conservative in a position to assert that x is true, because they heard it or saw it or read it somewhere. But then we look foolish, I look foolish because while yes, x is in fact true, what I read didn't carry the necessary follow through. That's how truth becomes a lie while lies remain true. Case in point is this article from The Federalist which glosses over what is arguably the most important fact of the article. The article points out:

Southern intellectuals found the argument they were looking for in the thinking of the German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Wait, what? Full stop. What did you say? Is this true? If so, how did you even complete the article with a straight face without detailing this? Thats a huge deal! This busts so many myths that dozens of books could be written about it if one chose to do so.

Now, the Civil War isn't my fight. If I've talked with one person who finds the era fascinating, I've talked with two dozen of them. They're "everywhere", in the sense that "they" actually have an established title: "Civil War Buff". You know of any "Progressive Era Buffs"? Yeah, I'm the only one and I know it, and I'm fine with that. I only have a tangential interest in this instance because of the lies that progressives tell. Progressivism is my main area of interest. But here's the problem and why it gets my attention. We're led to believe by Civil War buffs and professional historians alike that the Confederacy was this pinnacle of conservative thought or at least deeply conservative in its outlook.

There's just one problem. There's no room for Hegel nor Marx in conservatism.

This is too big of a contradiction and there's too much of it that can be referenced to ignore it. Now, to get back to the Federalist article I did go looking around in some of the sources I have access to, but the copyright firewall was strong with this one. Many historians have glossed over the fact that Hegel did in fact hold quite a big sway with southern slaveholders, and I get the distinct feeling that these historians want that fact erased from the books. It doesn't fit the narrative. The south MUST be remembered in connection with conservatism and this Hegel thing is just a distraction from what the historians know to be true. It was extremely difficult to get names, speech titles, books, and more to independently verify this fact, but I did find one. The usual web of footnotes pointing to another historian who points to another historian was momentously annoying. But historians do this as a tactic in order to shroud history they dislike while using direct footnotes to promote history they prefer.

This is of course why I have such a beef with ideological historians, which is pretty much all of them, but I'll save that for another day. Were there Hegelians in the South? Yes there were. And Marxists too, which during the course of researching this I remembered that I had once posted about Fitzhugh in a similar one-off post at the time. Fitzhugh wrote that "A Southern farm is the beau ideal of Communism." Now doesn't that conservative to you? /sarcasm

Looking back that post makes a little more sense to me in its actual historical context. The natural course of Hegel is ------> Marx. When asking the question of how George Fitzhugh could come to a place of being pro-communism, it's because the intellectual generation that preceded him were reading Hegel. This viewpoint of idealizing Hegel even made it into the United States Congress. In a speech in 1860, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II said the following:

I propose, just here, to read from Hegel's Philosophy of History, an imperishable monument of human genius, in which the author holds "freedom to be the essence of humanity, and slavery the condition of injustice." And what does he say?

"The negro, as already observed, exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence and morality, all that we call feeling, if we would rightly comprehend him. There is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in this type of character." (Page 97.)

"The undervaluing of humanity among them reaches an incredible degree of intensity. Tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper.... The devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant with the general principles of the African race. To the sensual negro, human flesh is but an object of sense, mere flesh." (Pages 99, 100)

After describing many other characteristics, the author concludes "slavery to have been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among the negroes. The doctrine which we deduce from this condition of slavery among the negroes, and which constitutes he only side of the question that has an interest for our inquiry, is that which we deduce from the idea, viz: that the 'natural condition' itself is one of absolute and thorough injustice, contravention of the right and just. Every intermediate grade between this and the realization of a rational state retains, as might be expected, elements and aspects of injustice; Therefore, we find slavery even in the Greek and Roman States, as we do serfdom, down to the latest times. But thus existing in a State, slavery is itself a phase of advance from the merely isolated sensual existence, a phase t of education, a mode of becoming participant in a higher morality and the culture connected with it." (Page 104)

Now, it is fairly common knowledge that Karl Marx was a racist as was Che and many other hardcore communists. But I will admit I never thought to examine if Hegel was also on that list. It's quite clear though that he too is there.

But the real issue isn't yet another quote that won't go anywhere if obsessively used in twitter tweets. The issue is how on earth do we arrive at a place where the southern confederacy is constantly cast as a bastion of conservatism when deep examinations of their ideological works unearths collectivism, Marxism, and Hegelianism?

Other than historical malpractice, of course.

Here's another fair question: Just how deep did the rejection of the Founding Fathers go with those in the south in the 1800s?


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: communism; confederacy; hegel; marxism; progressingamerica
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I'm going out of my comfort zone on this one but the article in The Federalist glossed over this and I couldn't let it go.
1 posted on 02/18/2021 8:30:54 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
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To: x

Were you aware of this?


2 posted on 02/18/2021 8:32:14 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica (Public meetings are superior to newspapers)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Bkmrk


3 posted on 02/18/2021 8:35:59 AM PST by RushIsMyTeddyBear (RIP my "teddy bear".)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Hegel, Kant, Sneezchie, Marx. These men were moochers who lived on the nickels of others. Their “philosophies” lead to the most brutally and senselessly murderous era in human history. And it’s not over yet as pedo-Joe tosses China’s oppressed minorities under the bus.


4 posted on 02/18/2021 8:36:34 AM PST by Seruzawa (TANSTAAFL)
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To: Seruzawa

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.


5 posted on 02/18/2021 8:40:51 AM PST by Fred Hayek (Antifa=BLM=RevCom=CPUSA = CCP=Democratic Party )
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To: Fred Hayek

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table


6 posted on 02/18/2021 8:43:37 AM PST by Seruzawa (TANSTAAFL)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

The Hegelian philosophy of thesis-antithesis-synthesis is the foundation for postmodern relativism. It essentially denies the existence of objective reality.


7 posted on 02/18/2021 8:49:26 AM PST by circlecity
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To: ProgressingAmerica

I blame this on Snooki and her new TV show.


8 posted on 02/18/2021 8:50:44 AM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer”)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

I hope no one is looking for philosophical consistency in the slave-holding South in the 19th century. Those fellows had huge swaths of conscience cauterized. Hard to make all the philosophical pieces fit together in that condition.


9 posted on 02/18/2021 8:53:08 AM PST by Migraine ( Liberalism is great (until it happens to YOU).)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

“ We’re led to believe by Civil War buffs and professional historians alike that the Confederacy was this pinnacle of conservative thought or at least deeply conservative in its outlook.”

Philosophy isn’t my thing, but this sounds like BS to me.


10 posted on 02/18/2021 8:53:15 AM PST by bk1000 (Banned from Breitbart)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Both Marx and Hegel had interesting analysis and terrible prescriptions.


11 posted on 02/18/2021 8:58:03 AM PST by RedStateRocker ("Never miss a good chance to Shut Up" - Will Rogers)
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To: bk1000

What I find funny is the people who wish to claim both the mantel of the Confederacy AND that of Lincoln.


12 posted on 02/18/2021 8:59:17 AM PST by RedStateRocker ("Never miss a good chance to Shut Up" - Will Rogers)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

What a waste of digital bytes in writing this.

That war was very similar to today. That is, two sides could not get along. There were many reasons for that war but, of course, slavery gets the wrap for the whole thing — which is, of course, fake news.

The book Albion’s Seed (http://bit.ly/2Ir3J3M) explains the social and “lifeway” divide that existed in this country which traced its roots back to the mother country. They did not get along in the mother country and, for the most part, they brought it here when they arrived on these shores 400 years ago.

That divide was with us and building up to 1861. And, it did not end in 1865, either.


13 posted on 02/18/2021 9:05:50 AM PST by icclearly
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To: ProgressingAmerica

Who wrote this garbage?


14 posted on 02/18/2021 9:14:45 AM PST by jmacusa (Liberals. Too stupid to be idiots.)
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To: ProgressingAmerica
You'll be truly comforted to know that Lincoln was quite an admirer of Marx's and courted the domestic communist movement. He was so supportive of the struggles of his fellow travelers that he practically drafted the whole of North America's share of the ‘48er diaspora into the Union army and head-hunted officers of the failed revolution for direct appointment into leading positions in his officer corps. He enjoined the unanimous support of self-declared communists the world over and communist histories never fail to endorse him. Perhaps, since you claimed to have studied, you know of a communist historical treatment which takes the side against him.
15 posted on 02/18/2021 9:29:01 AM PST by Brass Lamp
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To: ProgressingAmerica
I dont know how widespread belief or even knowledge of Hegelian thought was in The South, but it seems the ideas mentioned are little different from the concept of "white man's burden" or the attempts at civilizing the natives that missionaries engaged in when getting tribesmen to wear clothes and sing Christian hymns.

Accusing southerners of being closet commies is a stretch. It seems more like they used Hegel to aid in their rationalization of slavery.

16 posted on 02/18/2021 9:33:15 AM PST by who_would_fardels_bear (This is not my current tagline.)
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To: ProgressingAmerica

“Just how deep did the rejection of the Founding Fathers go with those in the south in the 1800s?”

Rejection? Plenty of the Founding Fathers were Southerners. And Southerners in the 1800s took the Founders at their word, especially the Declaration of Independence.


17 posted on 02/18/2021 9:36:46 AM PST by odawg
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To: Brass Lamp

And he crushed the Southern Confederacy into extinction.


18 posted on 02/18/2021 9:39:04 AM PST by Bull Snipe
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To: ProgressingAmerica
The issue is how on earth do we arrive at a place where the southern confederacy is constantly cast as a bastion of conservatism when deep examinations of their ideological works unearths collectivism, Marxism, and Hegelianism?

Nonsense. Their 'ideological works' were primarily to protect, maintain and extend the institution of chattel slavery. Any and every resource possible to further that goal would have been used - including trendy German philosophers.
19 posted on 02/18/2021 9:39:21 AM PST by larrytown (i like pie)
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To: Bull Snipe

So, no denial of his involvement in communism? So, you’ve learned to not even bother.


20 posted on 02/18/2021 9:46:58 AM PST by Brass Lamp
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