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Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin wrote some wise words on constitutions in a 1948
essay (trans. by Mark Hackard). The
reader may note their likeness to ideas spoken of highly by Western traditionalists
from Edmund Burke to Russell Kirk, namely, that a constitution is something
organic that grows out of the habits of a people through long years, not
something abstract that is written on a piece of paper in the span of a few
weeks or months to which the theod (people, country) is to be fitted to.
. . .
Suvorov
prepared every battle, explaining to his soldiers the course and meaning of an
upcoming operation; and exactly thanks to that he won one battle after another.
So it is in political life: it is made by living men, their patriotic love,
their understanding of sovereignty, sense of duty, organizational skills, and
their respect for the law. All this must be cultivated. It is ridiculous to
introduce a sovereign form into a country without considering the level and
habits of the popular consciousness of justice. Further, a sovereign form must
reckon with the territorial size of the country and the numerical strength of
its population. In the Republic
of San Marino, executive
power to this day belongs to two captains elected by the Grand Council (parliament)
for six months. And to this day some very small Swiss cantons gather once a
year for their “one-day chamber” on a square, or in the case of rain, under
umbrellas. In the majority of Switzerland’s
remaining cantons, this is already impossible.
Further,
a sovereign form must consider the climate and nature of a land. A harsh
climate hinders the whole organization of a people, all relationships, and all
government. Nature influences the character of men, the country’s produce, and
its industry; it determines its geographic and strategic borders, its defense,
and the character and frequency of its wars. All this must be accounted for in
a sovereign form.
The
multinational composition of a population presents its requirements to a
sovereign form. I can become a factor of disintegration and lead to ruinous
civil wars. Yet this danger can be overcome: by the nature of the country and
the mountaineers’ love of freedom among peoples in solidarity with each other
(Switzerland); or the longtime and free selection of emigrants, the overseas
position of the country and the commercial-industrial character of the state
(United States); or, finally, the religious-cultural predominance and
successful political leadership of the numerically strongest tribe, if it is
distinguished by genuine accommodation and kindness (Russia).
Our
conclusions: every people and every land are a living individuality with their
special characteristics, their own unrepeatable history, soul, and nature. To
every people is therefore due its own special individual form of sovereignty
and a constitution corresponding to that people only. There are no identical
peoples, and there should not be identical forms of sovereignty and
constitutions. Blind borrowing and imitation is absurd, dangerous, and can
become ruinous.
Plants
demand individual care. Animals in a zoological park have – by their species
and type – individual schedules. Even people are sewn clothing by their
measurements… Whence, then, comes this ridiculous idea that a system of
sovereignty can be transferred by mechanical adoption from one country to
another? Whence comes this naïve conception that the most unique English
sovereignty, which was forged over centuries in a unique land (The blending of
blood! An island! The sea! Climate! History!) by a most unique people
(Character! Temperament! Sense of justice! Culture!), can be reproduced by any
people with any sense of law and any character, and in any country of any size
with any climate?! Can we truly think that educated politicians have never read
any of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, or Buckle?
. . .
Source: ‘On
Forms of Sovereignty’, Soul of the East,
http://souloftheeast.org/2015/04/24/ivan-ilyin-on-forms-of-sovereignty/,
posted 24 April 2015, accessed 30 April 2015
Southerners
likewise held to such a view. George
Fitzhugh wrote in Sociology for the South
(1854),
. . . Men's
minds were heated and blinded when they [the Declaration of Independence and Virginia's Bill of
Rights--W. G.] were written, as well by patriotic zeal, as by a false
philosophy, which, beginning with Locke, in a refined materialism, had ripened
on the Continent into open infidelity. In England,
the doctrine of prescriptive government, the divine right of kings, had met with
signal overthrow, and in France
there was faith in nothing, speculation about everything. The human mind became
extremely presumptuous, and undertook to form governments on exact
philosophical principles, just as men make clocks, watches or mills. They confounded
the moral with the physical world, and this was not strange, because they had
begun to doubt whether there was any other than a physical world. Society
seemed to them a thing whose movement and action could be controlled with as
much certainty as the motion of a spinning wheel, provided it was organized on
proper principles. It would have been less presumptuous in them to have
attempted to have made a tree, for a tree is not half so complex as a society
of human beings, each of whom is fearfully and wonderfully compounded of soul
and body, and whose aggregate, society, is still more complex and difficult of
comprehension than its individual members. Trees grow and man may lop, trim,
train and cultivate them, and thus hasten their growth, and improve their size,
beauty and fruitfulness. Laws, institutions, societies, and governments grow,
and men may aid their growth, improve their strength and beauty, and lop off
their deformities and excrescences, by punishing crime and rewarding virtue.
When society has worked long enough, under the hand of God and nature, man
observing its operations, may discover its laws and constitution. The common
law of England and the
constitution of England,
were discoveries of this kind. Fortunately for us, we adopted, with little
change, that common law and that constitution. Our institutions and our
ancestry were English. Those institutions were the growth and accretions of
many ages, not the work of legislating philosophers.
. . .
Moses
and Confucius, Solon, Lycurgus and English Alfred, were Reformers, Revisors of
the Code. They, too, were philosophers, but too profound to mistake the
province of philosophy and attempt to usurp that of nature. They did not frame
government on abstract principles, they indulged in no "a priori" reasoning; but simply
lopped off what was bad, and retained, modified and simplified what was good in
existing institutions –
"And
that’s
as high,
As metaphysic wit can fly."
As metaphysic wit can fly."
. . .
Institutions
are what men can sees feel, venerate and understand. The institutions of Moses
and of Alfred remain to this day, those of Numa and Lycurgus had a long and
flourishing life. These sages laid down no abstract propositions, founded their
institutions on no general principles, had no written constitutions.
They were wise from experience, adopted what history and experience had tested,
and never trusted to a priori
speculations, like a More, a Locke, a Jefferson, or an Abbe Sieyes.
Constitutions should never be written till several centuries after governments
have been instituted, for it requires that length of time to ascertain how
institutions will operate. No matter how you define and limit, in words, the
powers and duties of each department of government, they will each be sure to
exercise as much power as possible, and to encroach to the utmost of their
ability on the powers of other departments. When the Commons were invoked to
Parliament, the king had no idea they would usurp the taxing powers; but having
successfully done so; it became part of the English constitution, that the
people alone could tax themselves. It was never intended that ninety-nine
guilty should escape, sooner than one innocent man be punished; yet, finding
that the result of the English judicial system, the judges and lawyers made a
merit of necessity, and adopted it as a maxim of the common law. So, in a
hundred instances we could show, that in England a constitution means the modus operandi of institutions, not
prescribed, but ascertained from experience. In this country we shall soon have
two constitutions, that a priori
thing which nobody regards, and that practical constitution deduced from
observation of the workings of our institutions. - Whigs disregard our written
constitution, when banks, tariffs or internal improvements are in question;
Democrats respect it not when there is a chance to get more territory; and
Young America, the dominant party of the day, will jump through its paper
obstructions with as much dexterity as harlequin does through the hoop. State
governments, and senators, and representatives, and militia, and cities, and
churches, and colleges, and universities, and landed property, are
institutions. Things of flesh and blood, that know their rights, "and
knowing dare maintain them." We should cherish them. They will give
permanence to government, and security to State Rights. But the abstract
doctrines of nullification and secession, the general principles laid down in
the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and Constitution of the United States,
afford no protection of rights, no valid limitations of power, no security to
State Rights. The power to construe them, is the power to nullify them. Mere
paper guarantees, like the constitutions of Abbe Sieyes, are as worthless as
the paper on which they are written.
Our
institutions, founded on such generalities and abstractions as those of which
we are treating, are like a splendid edifice built upon kegs of gunpowder. . . .
Source: http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughsoc/fitzhugh.html,
posted 1998, accessed 5 May 2015 (© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by
individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement
of availability is included in the text.)
It
is no good for the American neocons/neo-Puritans trying to ‘export democracy’
to all the countries of the world. It
will only end in sadness and suffering for those involved (see Iraq, Afghanistan,
Tunisia, Egypt, Libya,
Syria, and the Ukraine for
some ensamples of late). Instead, let
all peoples embrace their own unique inheritance, the wisdom and work of their
forefathers. For the South, as Fitzhugh
says, there are these (but not limited to them): ‘State governments, and senators, and
representatives, and militia, and cities, and churches, and colleges, and
universities, and landed property’.
It
is significant that he made a connection between the South and King Ælfred (Dixie’s patron saint).
For we are truly children of his English kingdom, and he never ceases to
intercede at the throne of the Most Holy Trinity for all Englishmen, whithersoever
they have settled in the world, including us Southrons. Of all our inheritance, this is the most
important for us to embrace - the saints of our forefathers of Ireland, Scotland,
Africa, England,
and so on. Knowing their lives and
asking them to pray for us individually and as a whole people will do more good
for us than all the constitutional amendments man could dream up.
O
Holy Saints of our Souðern forefathers, pray for us sinners at the South!
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