An Afterword for Memorial Day 2015

Holy days of the American religious calendar like Memorial Day serve to highlight how out of place the South remains in the American Empire, and will remain so long as she remains true to her calling as a Christian people (which calling she is in great danger of walking away from).

Quoting again from Bellah’s essay from the foregoing post, he says of the (in his view) wretched South,

 . . . Still, it has been difficult to use the words of Jefferson and Lincoln to support special interests and undermine personal freedom. The defenders of slavery before the Civil War came to reject the thinking of the Declaration of Independence. Some of the most consistent of them turned against not only Jeffersonian democracy but Reformation religion; they dreamed of a South dominated by medieval chivalry and divine-right monarchy.

 . . . The first time of trial had to do with the question of independence, whether we should or could run our own affairs in our own way [Why, then, was the South not allowed to peacefully secede so that she could ‘run her own affairs in her own way’?--W.G.]. The second time of trial was over the issue of slavery, which in turn was only the most salient aspect of the more general problem of the full institutionalization of democracy within our country. This second problem we are still far from solving though we have some notable successes to our credit.

So then, for trying to make the best of a bad situation (i. e., slavery, to which the Northmen contributed) and daring to hold to an understanding of God, man, and the creation that was different than the American understanding (which is to say, the Puritan-Yankee-New England view), Father Abraham and his Holy Army are to be justified and praised for sweeping down upon the South breathing murther and wrecking every bit of our theod (nation) - churches, houses, farms, fields, animals.  And after the bodily attacks had ended, those on Southern beliefs continued (even to this day), whether by promoting secular scientism, writing a false history of the [u]nited States, destroying the symbols of the South, or besmirching our heroes.

Any Southerner who thinks he needs to be a ‘good American’ first and foremost had better take some time to think about what that entails for him, his family, and his conquered and subjugated people.