‘Lawfare for Me but not for Thee’

 

Conservatives have been complaining loudly about rulings by federal district court judges that are obstructing the Trump administration’s objectives.  However, during the Clinton, Obama, and Biden years, they happily used the same tactics to gum up the operations of those administrations.  CNN captures some of the irony:

‘President Donald Trump and top allies who have questioned the constitutionality of recent court orders blocking the administration’s agenda touted similar rulings by federal courts as “great news” and “brilliant” when they paused President Joe Biden’s policies.

‘When a federal judge in Texas halted a Biden administration pause on deportations six days after Trump was inaugurated, presidential aide Stephen Miller took to social media to describe the temporary restraining order as “great news.” When a judge in Louisiana blocked Biden aides from asking social media platforms to remove content, Trump called the decision “amazing.”

‘“Just last week, in a historic ruling, a brilliant federal judge ordered the Biden administration to cease and desist from their illegal and unconstitutional censorship in collusion with social media,” Trump told an audience in Florida in 2023. (The Supreme Court months later would decide in Biden’s favor.)

‘ . . . Republicans have increasingly complained about outside groups choosing courts they believe will rule in their favor – a practice known as judge shopping. Democrats loudly protested that same practice during the Biden and Obama administrations, when Republican-aligned groups frequently sued in Texas or Louisiana where they could bring appeals to the especially conservative 5th Circuit.

‘ . . . Sebastian Gorka, who worked in Trump’s first White House and who the president has named senior director for counterterrorism this time around, reposted a message on X last month describing US District Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, as a “rogue judge.” But he celebrated a nationwide injunction against Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal workers in 2021 in a social media repost, suggesting that a “Federal Judge” had stepped in to block Biden’s “abuse of power.”

‘Trump himself repeatedly touted or commented on temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions that blocked the Biden administration’s policies.

‘When a federal judge in Louisiana in 2022 issued a preliminary injunction halting the administration from ending the Title 42 program, which allowed the administration to speed the removal of certain migrants, Trump reposted a supporter on his Truth Social platform thanking US District Judge Robert Summerhays for the ruling. Trump appointed Summerhays to the bench during his first term’ (John Fritze, ‘Trump and allies celebrated court orders against Biden they now claim are ‘tyrannical’,’ cnn.com).

The Revivalists on the Right have their answer for the charge of inconsistency:

‘White House spokesperson Harrison Fields dismissed the comparison between the Biden-era orders and those issued in the early weeks of the Trump administration.

‘“It’s simple: Biden abused his executive power to implement policies not within the scope of his presidential powers, while President Trump is appropriately using his executive authority to implement his America First agenda,” Fields told CNN. “These court orders from left-wing judges are a continuation of judicial weaponization that Americans voted against at the ballot box on November 5”’ (Ibid.).

Therein lies the problem:  a fundamental disagreement amongst the peoples of the States over the nature of government and the legitimate ends it is meant to accomplish.  Thomas Sowell in his book A Conflict of Visions located the source of the disagreement in two opposing views of human nature – one utopian and unconstrained, leading to a centralized, all-powerful government, the other experiential/pragmatic and constrained, tending toward a smaller, decentralized, weaker government.  An older version of this dichotomy is the Alexander Hamilton (the US as a centralized empire) and Thomas Jefferson (the US as a decentralized confederation) difference of views.

But even these are oversimplifications of the problem.  Many people – whether on talk radio or in academia or in government or etc. – speak of the US as though we were one people with one common culture.  This is a false notion.  There are several different cultures spread out over the States, and, owing to the dominant ethnic groups that settled them, they all have their particular ways of viewing the world, man, government, etc.  The Scandinavian-Germanic Great Plains States are not the same as Dixie with her folkways formed largely in southwestern England, the Celtic lands (Ireland, Scotland, Wales), and sub-Saharan Africa, with some Spanish and French mixed in as well.  New England and their offspring in Utah are from the coastal counties of southeastern England.  And so forth and so on.

Now then, folks on the Right have been rightly reiterating the point that transgenderism is a denial of reality, that no matter how much a man may pretend he is a woman (or vice versa), it doesn’t alter the fact that he is really a man.  The same argument may be applied to the United States:  No matter how deeply one believes that the States are all one homogenous people, it does not change the underlying reality that we are in truth several peoples.  There are plenty of essays and books about this; one of the most recent we have read is Grady McWhiney’s Cracker Culture:  Celtic Ways in the Old South.

Denying this reality is leading us down a dangerous road, one that could end in another terrible war if we aren’t careful.  Rod Dreher, the far-seeing Louisiana writer living in Hungary, has been warning his readers that the political climate in the US today resemble the heated ideological turmoil of Spain prior to the civil war there (1936-9).  The documentary video about the prelude to the Spanish Civil War that he included recently at the end of one of his essays is worth a look by all serious-minded political observers.  As he put it in the essay:

‘Last night, I was talking with a retired military officer. He was telling me how happy he is that Trump is righting so many woke wrongs. Yet, he said, “This is all happening so fast and so powerfully that I can’t help wondering what’s going to happen when the other side gets back into power. Are they going to come at us like this?”

‘I invite you to watch this first episode of the Granada TV documentary from the 1980s, about the Spanish Civil War. That dynamic is exactly what happened in Spain prior to the outbreak of fighting’ (‘I'd Salute Trump Too,’ roddreher.substack.com).

Despite claims to the contrary, Trump’s victory in 2024 wasn’t a landslide.  Yes, he won a lot of States and counties/parishes, but the overall margins in many of those States was very narrow.  The current configuration of the federal House and Senate confirm the large ideological divide that persists across the US.  If we continue down the road of insisting on the ‘one people’ fallacy and, following from that, use the power of the federal government to force an ideology (whether Leftist or Rightist) on all the States, we’re going to find ourselves in the middle of another violent clash at some point.  That is lesson of the War between the States of 1861-5, the lesson of the Spanish Civil War, the French Revolution, etc.

However, if we are going to live in Realville, to use Rush Limbaugh’s words, we will notice that there are other, better, options:  radical decentralization of the powers now held in DC as well as a separation of the States into more culturally coherent federations.  The first constitution of the States after their secession from the British Empire, the Articles of Confederation, is a good model of decentralized governance.  It had some defects, but it also protected the States from what has come to be under the current constitution:  consolidation into a centralized empire that is ‘aggressive abroad and despotic at home,’ to quote the perceptive Robert E. Lee’s letter to Lord Acton (15 Dec 1866, leefamilyarchive.org).

But there is some hope in this regard, as even Left-leaning States like California are speaking about the virtues of federalism/decentralization/States’ rights:

‘The governor of California for example, upon hearing of Trump’s success, very quickly announced on social media (on X) that “California is ready to fight”, and federalism, as he added, “is the cornerstone of our democracy. It’s the United STATES of America”. Unbelievable! Paradoxically, one must admit that there is something satisfying in observing how the Left that governs or dominates in some states, in trying to defend itself against the administration of Donald Trump, reaches for the instruments of resistance to federal power that it has hated so far and so much’ (Karol Mazur, ‘Progressive States’ Rights,’ abbevilleinstitute.org).

The Trump era won’t last forever; Leftist Democrats will assume the powers of the federal government at some point in the future.  The peoples of the States, if they indeed remain together in one federation, ought to retool their coordinating government in DC such that changes at the federal level are not viewed as existential dangers to their well-being that necessitate all-out legal warfare in the judiciary – or worse.  Allow each State and culture to largely direct their own affairs; it is the only way peaceful relations between them will be established and maintained.

***

Originally posted at https://identitydixie.com/2025/03/30/lawfare-for-me-but-not-for-thee/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

‘The Gulag Is Being Prepared in the US by the Left and the Right’

 

From the Right, the Trump regime is contributing to the construction of the gulag by criminalizing wrongthink about the Jews.  As Michael Hoffman points out in a recent essay, the communists in Russia did precisely the same thing shortly after they took power (bolding not added):

 

Donald Trump is the last person most Americans would consider to be a Communist. However, consider these facts from history:

 

The first Soviet Bolshevik secret police bureau was the Cheka (Чрезвычайная комиссия —"Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution"). It was established December 20, after the October Revolution of 1917. It was the precursor to Soviet secret police agencies such as the GPU, NKVD, and KGB.

 

One of the first orders imposed by the Bolsheviks for enforcement by Cheka was a decree against anti-Semitism. On July 27, 1918, the Soviet dictatorship, under Vladimir Lenin, issued a directive making anti-Semitism a criminal offense.

 

Many tens of thousands of Russians were arrested and imprisoned in the Gulag for this thought crime, including hundreds of priests of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As we speak, the US FedGov’s Antisemitism Task Force is fanning out across the States to intimidate anyone who would dare speak out against the atrocities being committed by Netanyahu & Co in Old Israel.  David DeCamp reporting:

 

The US Department of Justice said Thursday that its recently created “Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism” will be heading to four US cities as part of the Trump administration’s broad crackdown on college protests critical of Israel.

 

The DOJ said the task force, led by attorney Leo Terrell, will be visiting the leadership of New York, Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles to discuss “their responses to incidents of antisemitism at schools and on college campuses in their cities over the last two years.”

Never you mind that there were actual Jews who participated in the protests in question:

 

While the pro-Palestine protests that swept college campuses have been labeled “antisemitic,” many Jewish students and organizations have participated.

Already, one legal US resident has been jailed by the Trump regime for the ‘crime’ of speaking out against the Israeli war in Gaza:

 

Civil liberties groups have sounded the alarm about the administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestine protests, including the effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder arrested by ICE over the weekend for his role in protests at Columbia. Khalil has not been accused of a crime, and the administration is trying to deport him by claiming he’s been involved in activities “contrary to US foreign policy.”

 

Khalil has been accused of being “pro-Hamas,” a label that the administration hasn’t defined and appears to apply to all critics of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The White House alleged Khalil was involved in distributing “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers,” but hasn’t offered evidence for the claim.

The threats coming from the Trump DOJ are chilling:

 

The administration does not just want to target foreigners, as Terrel has said he wants to put “Hamas supporters” in jail and that federal hate crime indictments would be coming soon. “You see all these disorderly demonstrations, supporting Hamas and trying to intimidate Jews? We are going to put these people in jail — not for 24 hours, but for years,” he told Israeli media last month.

To echo the thinking of others out there, it is ironic that the Right, which has railed for years about the injustice of so-called ‘hate crimes’ charges, is now engaging in the same tactic vis-à-vis their amorphous definition of ‘antisemitism’.

Such is the pure and righteous MAGA Right.

But the Leftists are no better.  From Raw Egg Nationalist:

 . . .

The rest is at https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-gulag-is-being-prepared-in-the-us-by-the-left-and-the-right/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

‘Green Men and Green Churches’

 

A modern prophet from England, Paul Kingsnorth, has made the comment in a number of his essays that he appreciates how the ancient churches in England look as if they grew out of the soil itself rather than were constructed by human hands.  If one looks into Southern life, he will find that our churches share a strong resemblance to this description of his.

Mary Eastman opened her book Aunt Phillis’s Cabin; or, Southern Life as It Is, with this word-picture of a church in Virginia:

‘The old Episcopal church, standing at the entrance of the town, could not fail to be attractive from its appearance of age; but from this alone.  No monuments adorn the churchyard; head-stones of all sizes meet the eye, some worn and leaning against a shrub or tree for support, others new and white, and glistening in the sunset.  Several family vaults, unpretending in their appearance, are perceived on a closer scrutiny, to which the plants usually found in burial-grounds are clinging, shadowed too by large trees.  The walls where they are visible are worn and discolored, but they are almost covered with ivy, clad in summer’s deepest green.  Many a stranger stopped his horse in passing by to wonder at its look of other days; and some, it may be, to wish they were sleeping in the shades of its mouldering walls’ (Lippincott, Grambo & Co., Philadelphia, 1852, Dodo Press reprint, p. 1).

Margaret Junkin Preston wrote in her novel Silverwood:  Book of Memories,

‘Beautifully stood the antique, moss-grown church, almost hidden on its sloping knoll, among giant, white-branched sycamores, and stalwart oaks, and mountain ashes—the heroic remnants of the primeval forest, which, like the race whose council-fires they may have shaded, alone remained to give token of former glory. A stream of clear water crossed the road, just at the foot of the knoll on which this old structure, dating away back to colonial times, reared its venerable walls. A steep roof, with wide, projecting eves, windows and doors scattered about with not much reference to symmetry, an outside covered stairway, all combined to make it a most quaint-looking pile’ (Derby & Jackson, New York, 1856, p. 100).

William Gilmore Simms presents a similar image of forest and church merging in his poem ‘Sabbath in the Forest’:

‘THE mighty and the massy of the wood

Compel my worship: satisfied I lie,

With naught in sight but forest, earth, and sky,

And give sweet sustenance to precious mood! —

'Tis thus from visible but inanimate things,

We gather mortal reverence.  They declare

In silence, a persuasion we must share,

Of hidden sources, spiritual springs,

Fountains of deep intelligence, and powers,

That man himself implores not; and I grow

From wonder into worship, as the show,

Majestic, but unvoiced, through noteless hours,

Imposes on my soul, with musings high,

That, like Jacob's Ladder, lifts them to the sky!’

(Poems:  Descriptive, Dramatic, Legendary and Contemplative, Vol. II, Redfield, New York, 1853, p. 12)

This way of seeing the world has survived into modern times in Dixie, in Cormac McCarthy’s novel Suttree, for instance:

‘In his solitary wanderings, hallucinations, and dream visions in the “cool green fire” of the mountains, Suttree comes to look at “a world of incredible loveliness.  Old distaff Celt’s blood in some back chamber of his brain moved him to discourse with the birches, with the oaks….  He could hear the footsteps of the dead.  Everything had fallen from him” (286).  Suttree, in effect, becomes a Southern version of Yeats’s Mad Sweeney.  He is now the true Celtic gealt, the madman whose insanity allows him to see and comprehend truths which the sane wish to avoid and are able to ignore.  At the end of his immersion into this “greenly phosphorescent” natural world, he comes to see “with a madman’s clarity the perishability of his flesh” (287).  In other words, he reaches the humility of human finitude.  The world Suttree has left is a world of incredible cruelty, violations, and dispossessions.  He enters a world of wonder.  We now see Suttree “muttering along half mindless, an aberrant journeyman in the trade of wonder” (290)’ (Dr James Everett Kibler, Jr, The Classical Origins of Southern Literature, Abbeville Institute Press, McClellanville, SC, 2017, p. 174).

Every culture has symbols that are peculiarly their own.  The nature-church, or the green church as we shall call it, is one such belonging to Dixie.  It represents the sacramental view of nature that traditional Southerner’s hold, that God is present in his creation in a mysterious yet very real way.  Though it resembles the Romantics’ view of nature, it nevertheless does not fall like them into pantheism:  It remains a Christian vision.

This symbol of ours is related to a symbol found in England, the land of the South’s first settlers:  the green man, or the foliate head.  It appears on a number of old churches there.  While several theories have been put forward to explain its presence on these churches, Josh Robinson offers the most reasonable one in an essay he wrote for The Symbolic World:  It is a pictorial representation of a story, ‘The Life of Adam,’ from the medieval book The Golden Legend (13^th century) –

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/green-men-and-green-churches/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Remembrances for February - 2026

 

Dear friends, if you have time, please pray for these members of the Southern family on the day they reposed.  Many thanks.

But one may ask:  ‘What good does it do to pray for the departed?’  An answer is offered here:  https://orthochristian.com/130608.html

Along with prayers and hymns for the departed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6je5axPodI

1 Feb.

Cmdr Matthew Fontaine Maury.  A pioneer in sciences of the sea:  ‘Honored all over the world as the founder of a new science, Maury was the first man to describe the Gulf Stream and to mark sea routes across the Atlantic Ocean. He instituted the system of deep-sea sounding and suggested the laying of transoceanic telegraph cables, which later became a reality. His work earned him the nickname “Pathfinder of the Seas.”’

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/matthew-fontaine-maury/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-Fontaine-Maury

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8835/matthew-fontaine-maury

4 Feb.

Jean Laffite.  Brother of Pierre Laffite, he was the ‘respectable’ business manager of the two pirate brothers of Barataria Bay, Louisiana.  He and Pierre are well-known for their role in the Battle of New Orleans and other acts of mischief.  Quintessential lovable rogues.  New Orleans’s Grace King gives details of their life:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Louisiana/New_Orleans/_Texts/KINPAP/10*.html

11 Feb.

Charles Gayarré.  ‘New Orleans native Charles Gayarré wrote the first complete history of Louisiana: a four-volume series entitled Louisiana History (1866). Originally written in French, his study focused on the region’s domination by France, Spain, and then the United States. Many of the components for this work came out of public lectures that Gayarré began giving in the 1840s. He also wrote and published other histories, political tracts, government reports, plays, novels, biographies, and articles in numerous journals, establishing himself as one of Louisiana’s literary pioneers.’

https://64parishes.org/entry/charles-gayarr

13 Feb.

Bishop William Green.  He oversaw the building of 41 churches in his diocese in Mississippi during the years of his pastoral ministry, and later became the chancellor of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., which he founded.

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/green-william-mercer

13 Feb.

Lt Gen Charles Pitman, Sr.  A uS Marine in New Orleans who helped end a shooting rampage by a Black Panther sympathizer in 1973 by taking a helicopter up without official approval.  Not a native-born Dixian, but ne’ertheless a good ensample of the fighting Southern spirit and of old-fashioned Southern leadership and guts who helped Dixie in her time of need.

https://www.nola.com/news/crime_police/u-s-marine-pilot-whose-heroics-helped-stop-1973-new-orleans-sniper-dies-at-84/article_2b288cf0-527d-11ea-bffa-13c453033b9c.html

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/02/19/marine-pilot-who-borrowed-helicopter-end-sniper-situation-has-died.html

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/207283816/charles-henry-pitman

14 Feb.

Alcée Fortier.  ‘Fortier published numerous works on language, literature, Louisiana history, folklore, Louisiana Créole languages, and personal reminiscence. His perspective was valuable because of his French Créole ancestry and he became the first historian to apply the folklore concept to Louisiana's cultural traditions.’

https://64parishes.org/entry-image/alce-fortier

http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/stjames/bios/fortiera.txt

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/146777449/alcee-fortier

15 Feb.

Oscar Adams, Jr.  A sharp lawyer and judge in Alabama.  He was the first black man to serve on Alabama’s Supreme Court.

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3138

24 Feb.

Nicola Marschall, born in Prussia, he made his way to Alabama.  He was a successful painter and designed both the first Confederate flag and the Confederate soldier’s uniform.  He also served as a soldier in the War.

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1134

http://www.artnet.com/artists/nicola-marschall/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Marschall#Gallery

27 Feb.

General Francis Marion (Swamp Fox), the wily South Carolinian who caused much grief for the British in the War for Independence.

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/marion-francis/

https://www.carolana.com/SC/Revolution/patriot_leaders_sc_francis_marion.html

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/669/francis-marion

William Gilmore Simms’s biography of Marion is available to read here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/843/pg843-images.html

28 Feb.

Abel Upshur, one of Virginia’s many talented and well-respected sons.  He died young in a naval accident while serving as Secretary of State in 1844.  He wrote an important refutation of Justice Joseph Story’s theory that the united States are one, inseparable nation.  It is A Brief Enquiry, linked here along with another of his works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_P._Upshur#External_links

More about Sec Upshur is at these pages:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/abel-p-upshur/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/lectures/abel-upshurs-critique-of-joseph-storys-commentaries-on-the-constitution-of-the-united-states-by-donald-livingston/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37679771/abel-parker-upshur/photo

Also, to celebrate some of the saints of February from the South’s Christian inheritance of various lands, follow these links on over if you’d like:

https://southernorthodox.org/orthodox-saints-for-dixie-february/

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/02/happy-feast-for-saints-of-february.html

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

‘The Mystery of October Twelfth’

 

For five long years

General Lee led the army

Defending Christian Dixie

From invading

Pagan Yankees.

Defeated, his life lasted

Only five years more,

Exhausted by the strains

Of war-battle

And of heart-sadness,

Forced to watch

His people suffer

Under the wrathful rule

Of the Northern foe.

On October twelfth

His soul departed

From his weary body

And began its ascent

To the heavens.

 

***

 

Twelve hundred years before

In Northumberland,

A pagan king named Edwin

Was enlightened with the Gospel

By the preaching

Of an holy bishop –

Paulinus of York.

Baptized into Christ,

He banished idolatry

From his realm

And ruled with great virtue

Until Satan stirred up

Evil within the soul

Of merciless Penda,

Mercia’s heathen king.

At the Battle of Hatfield Chase

Young Edwin was slain,

To his people’s great dismay,

On that same October twelfth.

 

***

 

As the soul of Robert Edward Lee

Began its journey

Up towards God,

It was mighty fitting

That it be met

By the Christian Martyr

Saint Edwin of the English,

Who suffered cruelties

From the heathen

Together with his people,

As had General Lee,

Whose own lineage

Reaches far into

The English past.

And on those two went –

The pair whose death-days

Likewise coincided –

On to the Kingdom of Heaven,

To enjoy rest from their labors

In the sweetness of Paradise

With the angelic powers

And with many

Other godly men

Of every age.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!