Offsite Post: ‘Dissenting Voices in the USA’

 

Mr Robert Bridge is mostly right when he says the American impulse to dominate other countries is quite old.   Mostly right, for he fails to mention that ‘America’ is not a monolithic entity that speaks with a single voice.  There are, in fact, several regional cultures and subcultures with their own folkways that often clash with one another.  Relationships with foreign countries is just one of many flash points that have risen between them over the years.

American exceptionalism, as he rightly sees, has its origins with the settlers of New England, who believed they were sent by God to build New Jerusalem in North America.  But the Pilgrims were not the only cultural group that settled in the land area that now belongs to the United States.  The Southern people, whose history begins at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, had quite a different temperament and beliefs than the Yankees of New England.  Their views of foreign policy were, accordingly, also quite different.

The well-known Farewell Address (1796) of President George Washington (a Southerner from Virginia), is a good place to begin.  In it he recommends the following to those in the States:

‘Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? . . . The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.’

Pres Thomas Jefferson, also of Virginia, echoes these sentiments:

‘Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto’ (letter of 1799).

‘The presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government is so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation as well as moral sentiment enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one [independent nations] and our equal execrations against the other [dictating to other nations]’ (letter of 1823).¹

Another important Southern voice is John Randolph of Roanoke:  ‘His political creed was that of a latter-day Antifederalist. “Love of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealousy of the state governments toward the general government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debt, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed jealousy, of the patronage of the President.”’

The critical moment for the United States was the so-called Civil War of 1861-1865 (more properly called the War of Northern Aggression or the War to Prevent Southern Independence, for the South was not fighting to take over Washington, D. C.; she wanted to peacefully separate form it and the Northern States and chart her own course).  Here Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s statement is key:  ‘The lust of empire impelled them [Yankees] to wage against their weaker neighbors [the South] a war of subjugation.’²

The dramatic change that was wrought in the Union through this horrible War – from a voluntary confederation of States to an involuntarily unified nation dominated by the Yankee ruling elite in Washington City – was admitted even by Yankees themselves.  . . .

The rest is at https://thesaker.is/dissenting-voices-in-the-usa/ .

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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!