The South in Geopolitics

I.  Land and Sea

In finding a country’s place in world politics, the categories of ‘land’ and ‘sea’ are key.  Alexander Dugin writes,

The two primary concepts of geopolitics are land and sea. Just these two elements —Earth and Water — lie at the roots of human qualitative representation of earthly space. Through the experience of land and sea, earth and water, man enters into contact with the fundamental aspects of his existence. Land is stability, gravity, fixity, space as such. Water is mobility, softness, dynamics, time.

 . . . At the level of global geopolitical phenomena, Land and Sea generated the terms: thalassocratia and tellurocratia, i.e. “ power by means of the sea ” and “ power by means of the land ” (‘Sacred Geography to Geopolitics’).

He says elsewhere,

In planetary history, two opposing and constantly competing approaches to the mastery of the Earth’s space, the “land” and “sea” approaches, have existed. Depending on which orientation (“land” or “sea”) this or that state, people, or nation belongs to, their historical consciousness, their foreign and domestic policies, their psychology, and their worldview accord with entirely separate rules. Given this peculiarity, it is fully possible to speak of a “land”, “continental,” or even “steppe” (“steppe” is land in its pure, ideal form) worldview, and a “sea”, “island”, “oceanic” or “aquatic” one (let us note in passing that we can find the first hints at such an approach in the works of the Russian Slavophiles, such as Khomyakov and Kireevsky).

In the ancient history of “sea” power, Phoenicia (Carthage) became the historic symbol of “sea civilization” as a whole. The land empire opposing Carthage was Rome. The Punic Wars are the clearest example of the confrontation between “sea civilization” and “land civilization.” In modern history, England became the “island” and “sea” pole, the “mistress of the seas” followed by the giant island-continent America. 

England, like ancient Phoenicia, used primarily maritime trade and the colonization of coastal areas as the main instrument of its rule. The Phoenician-Anglo-Saxon geopolitical type generated a special “trade-capitalist-market” model of civilization based on economic and material interests and the principles of economic liberalism. Therefore, despite all possible historical variations, the general “sea” type of civilization has always been associated with the “primacy of economics over politics.” 

Unlike the Phoenician model, Rome presents itself as a model military-authoritarian structure based on administrative control, civil religiosity, and on the primacy of “politics over economics.” Rome is an example of colonization not by sea, but by land, a purely continental type which penetrated deep into the continent and assimilated conquered peoples, who automatically became “Romans” upon conquest. 

In modern history, the epitome of “land” power was the Russian Empire along with the Central European Austro-Hungarian and German empires. Russia, Germany, and Austro-Hungary are essential symbols of “geopolitical land” in the period of modern history.

In the last several centuries, “sea civilization” has tended to be identified with Atlanticism, just as the “sea powers” of today par excellence are England and America, i.e., the Anglo-Saxon countries. 

Atlanticism embodies the primacy of individualism, “economic liberalism” and “democracy of the Protestant type,” and opposes Eurasianism which presupposes authoritarianism, hierarchy, and the posing of community-based, nation-state principles against small human, individualist, hedonistic, and economic interests. The Eurasian orientation in character is primarily pronounced in Russia and Germany, the two most powerful continental powers whose geopolitical, economic, and, most importantly, deep ideological interests are fully opposed to the interests of England and the USA, that is, the Atlanticists (‘The Great War of Continents’). 

Finally, Boris Nad writes,

The principle of the Sea (or Ocean), in the end, symbolizes the blind forces, volatility, inconstancy, chaos – the principle of Land, on the contrary, is static, unchangeable, Order. Symbol of man's existence on the sea is a Ship, a symbol of man's existence on land is static, is Home. From the principle of the Sea we can take the principle of techniques, and techniques which is "separated from all the norms of tradition" (Arnold Toynbee).  . . .  

All this does not apply to thalassocracy, in which is no trace of the idea of sacred authority of the state. Trade based republics of the Mediterranean, as well as the North American republics, remain completely secular constructs, administered by understanding and interests of those who are, essentially, equal each other. Tellurocratic states, in their final sense, are – Space which is sacralized, sanctified, thalassocracy states are opposite – the Time, with its dynamics, variability, volatility. The ideal type of these second is therefore merchantilistic Republic; but, the ideal tellurocratic form is the Empire, an empire based on the sacred authority of the state and its ruler. The person of the ruler is personification of the sacred principle: he is not only the object of worship, but and of real apotheosis, as the elect of God, God's anointed (‘The East and the West’).

II.  Two Forenotes

With this introduction in place, we would like to explain why the South (or Dixie; also known aforetime as the Confederate States of America) is a ‘Land’ people, and how this should guide her relations with other countries going forward.

But first we would like to say two things.

A.  On Determinism

First, following the teachings of the Orthodox Church, we acknowledge the free will of man, that he is not subject to a mechanical determinism of any kind.  Thus there is no reason to believe that a clash of land and sea civilizations is unavoidable.  The Lord Jesus Christ is reconciling all things in Himself through His Holy Church, His Body here in this world, and as more people enter the Orthodox Church, the more the world will resemble the harmonious unity in diversity of the All-Holy Trinity rather than the chaotic strife amongst different groups we witness now.  But we nevertheless believe that the land and sea distinction is a helpful one when trying to understand global politics.

B.  Anglo-Saxons and Vikings

Second, though we are most unlearned, we would like to try to bring a bit more precision into the above discussion about England, America, and Anglo-Saxons, which will lead us into what we have to say about the South’s ‘landedness’.

It is not the Anglo-Saxons of England or America who are primarily to blame for the drive towards the shallow unipolar world of money and pleasure.  This must be laid at the feet of the Scandinavian Vikings, whose wanderings and new settlements gave rise to two intensely militaristic peoples, Normans and New Englanders.  In all three of them one sees the ‘sea’ element quite clearly. 

After a period in the 900s spent settling the area of northern France (Normandy) they (the Vikings) had conquered and mixing with some of the local population, there boiled forth a new people, the Normans, bent on the conquest of as many lands as they could reach:  Southern Italy, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Levant, and so on (‘Normans’).

It was only after conquering England in 1066 that England seems to take on the character of an expansive, warlike, sea-faring country.  But this is not the character of the native English; it is rather that of the new ruling class of Normans. 

The Anglo-Saxons, the Old English, were a people of home, soil, and custom.  Maurice Hewlett in his long poem The Song of the Plow, put it this way:

Danes and Normans and Scottishmen,

Frenchmen, Brunswickers, son after sire,

They come and conquer, they ruffle and reign,

They rule, they ride, they spend, they grudge,

They bicker their threescore years and ten,

They slay, and thieve, and go; but Hodge

The Englishman stoops to fork and flail,

And serves Saint Use [i.e., custom, tradition--W.G.], and will not budge,

But drives the furrow and fills the pail,

Raining sweat lest the land go dry:

He sees his masters, he gives them hail

With hand to forelock as they ride by—

They that eat what he doth bake,

They that hold what he must buy,

They that spend what he doth make,

They that are rich by other men's toil;

They of the sword and he of the rake,

The lords of the land, the son of the soil! 

 . . .

Is it not his yet, this dear soil,

Rich with his blood and sweat and tears?

Warm with his love, quick with his toil,

Where kings and their stewards come and go,

And take his earnings as tribute royal,

And suffer him keep a shilling or so?

They come, they pass, their names grow dim;

He bends to plow, or plies his hoe;

And what are they to the land or him?

They shall perish but he endure

(Thus saith the Scripture old and grim),

He shall shed them like a vesture;

But he is the same, his tale untold;

And to his sons' sons shall inure

The land whereon he was bought and sold (ll. 198-215, 330-44, pgs. 10-11, 15).

Furthermore, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, deeply acquainted with Old English ways, shows their anti-Norman, unsea-ish character in two ways:  through the life of the Rohirrim and the life of the Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings.

As horsemen living on the hills and plains of Rohan, which they cherished and guarded but did not try to enlarge by foreign expeditions, long attached to their place and seeking no other, the Rohirrim are a picture of Old English life before the Norman inbreaking (Higgens, Anglo-Saxon Community, p. 61).  In the words of one of their own, the high-born Éomer, which were said to Aragorn,

 . . . we desire only to be free, and to live as we have lived, keeping our own, and serving no foreign lord, good or evil (Tolkien, The Two Towers, in The Lord of the Rings, p. 433)

And the Hobbits, ‘who love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favorite haunt’ (Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, in The Lord of the Rings, p. 1), who are suspicious of any who go about on boats at all (ibid., pgs. 22-3) or who go on ‘adventures or did anything unexpected’ (Tolkien, The Hobbit, p. 4) are likewise a picture of the non-Norman English in Tolkien’s day (Higgens, Anglo-Saxon Community, pgs. 147-50).

Clearly, some English have betrayed their own people by working with the Norman invaders and accepting the Norman mindset, but we think it is unfair to identify all Anglo-Saxons, all England, with the Atlanticist ‘sea civilization’.  That identification must be made first and foremost with the Normans, or their Viking forebears.

In like manner, it is not quite accurate to say of all citizens of the USA that they are Anglo-Saxon Atlanticists.  For the same kind of conquest that happened in England has happened in the territory of the United States, with the New Englanders invading and gaining dominion over the Southern States.

The people who first settled the South and gave her the main features of her culture were largely from southwest England, where rural farming life, hierarchy, large manors, few cities, and tradition in religion (high-church Anglicans) and politics (royalists) were highly valued (Fischer, Albion’s Seed, pgs. 240-6). 

Those who settled the New England States were quite the opposite.  They came mainly from the southeast coastal counties of England, where industrialism, densely populated cities, equalitarianism, and rebelliousness in religion (Puritanism) and politics (Cromwellian roundheads) held sway (ibid., pgs. 42-9).  Just as importantly, these coastal areas had seen the greatest settlement of Scandinavian invaders in England (ibid, p. 44).

It is no surprise, then, that the most iconic representations of the South should be images of the land - the plantation home or the Southern gentleman with his horse:

(Plantation house in Destrehan, Louisiana.  Wikipedia.  17 March 2012.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_complexes_in_the_Southern_United_States#/media/File:Destrehan_Plantation_House_2012.jpg, accessed 27 Aug. 2016)

(General Robert E. Lee and Traveller.  Wikipedia.  24 March 2012.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(horse)#/media/File:General_R._E._Lee_and_Traveler.jpg, accessed 27 Aug. 2016)

Likewise, the images most representative of New England are those of the sea or commerce, like the schooner or the factory:

(The schooner Wyoming.  Wikipedia.  17 March 2010.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_(schooner)#/media/File:Schooner_Wyoming,_1917.JPG, accessed 27 Aug. 2016)

(Boston Manufacturing Company, in Waltham, Mass.  Wikipedia.  21 July 2008.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Manufacturing_Company#/media/File:BMC_habs1.jpg, accessed 27 Aug. 2016)

When the War of Northern Aggression began (the so-called Civil War of 1861-5), it should likewise be no surprise that the North featured a great navy and state-of-the-art artillery, and the South an excellent cavalry and infantry under the leadership of men like Generals J. E. B. Stuart and Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.

Howsobeit, the South was bested in that War and forced to remain in the union, and from thenceforward the sea element predominated in America, though Southerners continue to be a voice of protest against it.

Here again, we see that it is not primarily the Anglo-Saxon or English people at the root of the militarism of the modern American Empire, but the Viking/Scandinavian folk.  As they had done with the French earlier, their intermingling with a people they had invaded and settled amongst (the southeastern English), gave birth to a restless people (New Englanders) bent on conquest.  Southerners were among the first to encounter their rising battle lust but nowhere near the last.

III.  The South and Land

Now that these forewords are finished, let us say a few things about the South as a ‘land’ people, and what this means for her.

The knowledge of a difference between the land and sea types has been persistent in the South, though its expression has changed at times.  Oftentimes, one will find the ‘sea’ equated with fiat money, industrialism, and other such terms. 

The Revered Robert Lewis Dabney, who served under Gen Jackson during the War, wrote in 1866,

The Northern were maritime States; the Southern were, by population, climate, habits, and geographical position, inclined to agricultural pursuits (Life and Campaigns, p. 137).

Miss Flannery O’Connor, Georgia’s great novelist and short story writer, put the distinction this way in her story ‘The Life You Save May Be Your Own’ (p. 1875):

“A body and a spirit,” he repeated.  “The body, lady, is like a house:  it don’t go anywhere; but the spirit, lady, is like a automobile; always on the move, always . . .”

Nearer to our own time, Wendell Berry, the Kentucky writer and farmer, wrote in 2002,

The fundamental difference between industrialism and agrarianism is this:  whereas industrialism is a way of thought based on monetary capital and technology, agrarianism is a way of thought based on land.

Agrarianism, furthermore, is a culture at the same time that it is an economy.  Industrialism is an economy before it is a culture.  Industrial culture is an accidental by-product of the ubiquitous effort to sell unnecessary products for more than they are worth (‘The Whole Horse’, pgs. 238-9).

The self-sufficient house is always central to Southern thought.  Again from Mr Berry:

An agrarian economy is always a subsistence economy before it is a market economy.  The center of the agrarian farm is the household (ibid., p. 239).

This market economy

 . . . substitutes for the real economy, by which we build and maintain (or do not maintain) our household, a symbolic economy of money, which in the long run, . . . cannot symbolize or account for anything but itself (‘The Idea of a Local Economy’, p. 252).

 . . . the global economy is based upon cheap long-distance transportation . . . .  Whatever may be said for the “efficiency” of such a system, its result (and I assume, its purpose) is to destroy local production capacities, local diversity, and local economic independence (ibid., pgs. 254-5).

Thomas Jefferson wrote some two centuries earlier about the land economy vs the paper economy of the sea civilization:

“We are now taught to believe that legerdemain tricks upon paper can produce as solid wealth as hard labor in the earth. It is vain for common sense to urge that nothing can produce but nothing; that it is an idle dream to believe in a philosopher’s stone which is to turn everything into gold, and to redeem man from the original sentence of his Maker, ‘in the sweat of his brow shall he eat his bread” (Kimball, ‘Thomas Jefferson vs. Paul Krugman, Alan Greenspan, et. al.’)

With this emphasis upon the homeplace and the real products of the earth, technology is not looked upon as a savior.  Mr Berry again gives a good example of the Southern temperament when discussing his experiences with a hand scythe and a gasoline-powered scythe: 

 . . . I never took the least pleasure in using the power scythe, whereas in using the Marugg scythe, whatever the weather and however difficult the cutting, I always work with the pleasure that one invariably gets from using a good tool.  . . .

The power scythe—and it is far from being an isolated or unusual example—is not a labor saver or a shortcut.  It is a labor maker (you have to work to pay for it as well as to use it) and a long cut.  Apologists for such expensive technological solutions love to say that “you can’t turn back the clock.”  But when it makes perfect sense to do so—as when the clock is wrong—of course you can (‘A Good Scythe’, pgs. 174-5)!

It is plain that in the South there is still a strong current of the sentiment voiced by the North Carolina statesman Nathaniel Macon in the early 19^th hundredyear:

Why depart from the good old way which has kept us in quiet, peace, and harmony—everyone living under his own vine and fig tree, and none to make him afraid?  Why leave the road of experience, which has satisfied us all and made us all happy, to take this new way . . . of which we have no experience (Evangelicals and Conservatives, p. 169)?

This sentiment may be seen in two other areas, hierarchy and religion.

Hierarchy was present in the South from the start:

 . . . the feudal concept of aristocracy was expressed in the development of slavery and great estates, and in the growing belief that the slavemasters were the descendants of the Cavaliers (Simkins, A History of the South, p. 58).

It reached its highest development as the War approached, when public calls began to be heard for the crowning of a king in the South.  For example:

In Georgia, the unionist Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel . . . proposed a constitutional monarchy for the new southern Confederacy (Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Mind of the Master Class, p. 705).

This progress before the War in politics was matched by a similar advancement in religious thought:

Protestant Southerners increasingly wondered aloud:  Did the Reformation bear responsibility for the individualism that was now careening out of hand (ibid., p. 652)?

This movement away from an atomistic individualism in politics, religion, and economics was stopped abruptly by the War, Reconstruction, and so forth. 

Eliza Frances Andrews of Georgia cried [after the South had been defeated in the War--W.G.], “In another generation or two, this beautiful country of ours will have lost its distinctive civilization and become no better than a nation of Yankee shopkeepers (Genovese, Consuming Fire, p. 104).”

It has not quite gotten that bad.  Something more than dull democratic equality and uniformity and the truncated, deformed Christianity of Fundamentalism (both New England imports into the South) has survived in Dixie, especially as one gets away from the big cities and finds himself in the midst of an extended family with a patriarch or matriarch at its head.  Or as he reads the fiction and non-fiction of Flannery O’Connor, Richard Weaver, Walker Percy, M. E. Bradford, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and others.  To speak more specifically of religion, however -

The Uncreated may be known through the created:  Many Southerners still believe this to be true at some level.  For them the creation still has a sacred quality to it.  Why else would the image of Eden appear so often in Southern literature?  To illustrate, Alexander Meek in 1857 opened one of his poems, ‘Come to the South’, thusly:

Oh, come to the South, sweet, beautiful one,

'Tis the clime of the heart, 'tis the shrine of the sun;

Where the sky ever shines with a passionate glow,

And flowers spread their treasures of crimson and snow;

Where the breeze, o'er bright waters, wafts incense along,

And gay birds are glancing in beauty and song;

Where summer smiles ever o'er mountain and plain,

And the best gifts of Eden, unshadowed, remain (Songs and Poems of the South, p. 1).

This may also explain in part the appearance of the half-Christian, half-heathen abomination - the sportsman fleur-de-lis - on so many Southern pick-up trucks:  The Southern soul is looking for a more satisfying belief about the relationship between God and His creation than His absolute absence from it that has been offered to her by Protestant and Roman Catholic theology.

(From https://www.pinterest.com/pin/206813807863281861/, accessed 29 Aug. 2016)

Whatever the real cause, this mixing of the Holy Trinity with animal idolatry is a dangerous road for Southerners to be going down.  The ascetical writings of Orthodox monks like The Philokalia are a safer place to look for insights into the relation between God, man, and the creation than the latest marketing gimmicks.

IV.  The South and Rome

The South follows the Roman pattern of land civilization described above fairly closely, but there is one other important tie between the two:  The South sees herself as having relived in a way the ancient Roman experience itself.  Professor M. E. Bradford wrote about this in the following way.  Alluding to a poem on Southern origins he quoted from earlier in his essay, he said,

Drayton envisions no attempt to improve upon the dominant culture of Britannia.  The plantation of Virginia will be new in the sense of extension or re-creation—as Rome was a fresh but minimally different Troy, made out of the residue from a particular stream of history and for the sake of its perpetuation, with the possibility of felt discontinuity reduced to whatever comes from the experience of setting as opportunity sans impiety.  . . .

The allusion to Aeneas, looking both back and forward, is therefore an expected commonplace in the serious literature of the South (‘First Fathers’, p. 172).

How natural, then, should it be for the South, who identifies herself so closely with Old Rome, to seek an alliance with Moscow, the Third Rome (New Rome or Constantinople being the second, which fell to the Turkish Muslims in 1453), the leader of the ‘land’ civilizations in the world today, as she seeks to free herself from ‘Carthage’ - from the yoke of the ‘sea’ civilization of Washington, D. C.-New England?  To quote Mr Dugin again,

In modern history, the epitome of “land” power was the Russian Empire along with the Central European Austro-Hungarian and German empires. Russia, Germany, and Austro-Hungary are essential symbols of “geopolitical land” in the period of modern history (‘The Great War of Continents’).

Elsewhere he elaborated,

The “Rich mondialist North” [the ‘First World’, i.e., USA and Western Europe--W.G.] globalizes its domination over the planet through partition and destruction of the “Second world” [Russia and other former Soviet satellites--W.G.]. In modern geopolitics this is also called as the “new world order”. The active forces of antitradition consolidate their victory over the passive recalcitrance of southern regions, preserving their economic backwardness and defending Tradition in its residual forms. The internal geopolitical energies of the “Second world ” are put before a choice — either to be incorporated in the system of the “civilized northern belt” and definitively to tear off any connection with a sacred history (project of leftist mondialism), or to turn into an occupied territory being allowed a partial restoration of some aspects of tradition (project of the rightist mondialism). In this direction the events today are developing and will develop in the near future.

As the alternative project it is possible theoretically to formulate a different path of geopolitical transformation based on rejecting the North – South mondialist logics and on returning to the spirit of genuine sacred geography — as far as it possible at the end of dark era. It is the project of the “Great Return” or, in different terminology, of the “Great War of Continents”.

In its most general features, the essence of this project is as follows.

1) The “Rich North is opposed not to the “poor South” [the ‘Third World’--W.G.], but to the “poor North”. The “Poor North ” is an ideal, the sacred ideal of returning to the nordic sources of civilization. Such North is “Poor” because it is based on total ascetism, on radical devotion to the highest values of Tradition, on the complete despise of the material for the sake of the spiritual. “Poor North” geographically exists only on the territories of Russia, which, being in effect, “ by the Second world ”, socio-politically resisted until the last moment to the final adoption of a mondialist civilization in its most “progressive” forms. Northern eurasian lands of Russia are the only territories on earth which have been not completely mastered by the “rich North”, inhabited by traditional peoples and being a terra incognita of the modern world. The path of “Poor North ” for Russia means the refusal of incorporating in the mondialist belt, of achaicizing its own traditions and of reducing them to the folkloric level of an ethno-religious reserve. “Poor North” should be spiritual, intellectual, active and aggressive. In other regions of the “rich North” a potential opposition of the “poor North” is also possible too – which can be shown in a radical sabotage on part of the intellectual western élite to the establishied course of the “mercantilistic civilization”, in the rebellion against the world of finance for the ancient and eternal values of Spirit, equity, self-sacrifice. “Poor North” starts a geopolitical and ideological fight with the “rich North”, rejecting its projects, blasting from the inside and from the outside its plans, bating its stainless efficiency, crashing its social and political manipulations.

2) The “Poor South”, unable to counter itself the “rich North”, engages a radical alliance with the “poor (eurasian) North” and starts a liberation struggle against “northern” dictatorship. It is especially important to strike the representants of the ideology of the “rich South ”, i.e. those forces which, working in the “rich North”, stand up for “development”, “progress” and “modernization” of traditional countries, which practically will mean only an increasing withdrawal from the remains of sacred Tradition.

3) The “Poor North” of the eurasian East, together with the “poor South”, extending on a circle around the whole planet, concentrate the forces struggling against the “rich North” of the atlantist West. Thus an end is forever put to the ideologically vulgar versions of Anglo-Saxon racism, hailing the “technical civilization of the white peoples” and echoing the mondialist propaganda. (Alain de Benoist expressed this idea in the title of his famous book “The Third world and Europe: the same fight” [L’Europe, Tiersmonde — même combat]; its argument is, of course, “spiritual Europe”, the “Europe of the peoples and traditions”, instead of the “Maastricht Europe of goods”.) Intellectuality, activity and the spiritual profile of the genuine sacred North make the traditions of the revert to a nordic Source [‘nordic’ in a metaphysical sense, not a biological sense, as Mr Dugin says in this same essay--W.G.], and raise the “South” to a planetary revolt against the only geopolitical enemy. The passive recalcitrance of the “South” acquires thus a fulcrum in the planetary messianism of the “nordics”, radically rejecting the degenerated and antisacred branch of those white peoples which followed the path of technical progress and material development. Flares the planetary supra-racial and supra-national Geopolitical Revolution based on the fundamental solidarity of the “Third world” with that part of the “Second world” which rejects the project of the “rich North” (‘Sacred Geography to Geopolitics’).

It was not so long ago that Southerners described New Englanders in these kinds of words:

This reflected the widely held opinion that Northerners were temperamentally unstable, incapable of distinguishing between the superficial and the fundamental, and consequently always victimized by fads and notions (Weaver, Southern Tradition at Bay, p. 139).

 . . .

In broad outline the victory of the Yankee was viewed by the South as a triumph of the forces of materialism, equalitarianism, and irreligion.  Richard Taylor, who spent much of his time after the war in the North interceding for Confederates in distress, was appalled by the saturnalia he witnessed there.  It appeared to him that the masses had “lost all power of discrimination.”  The new men of influence were those who had just acquired fortunes, and who showed themselves ‘destitute of manners, taste, or principles.”  The great moral crusade had ended in a mockery:

The vulgar insolence of wealth held complete possession of public places and carried by storm the citadels of society.  Indeed, society disappeared.  As in the middle ages, to escape pollution, honorable men and refined women (and there are many such in the North) fled to sanctuary and desert, or, like the early Christians in the Catacombs, met secretly and in fear (ibid., pgs. 205-6).

But after decades of brainwashing by America’s public schools and popular culture (all dominated by New Englanders), many Southerners have proudly taken on some of these same traits that they used to bemoan in New Englanders.  But if the Yankeefication of the South is not yet complete, if there is a flicker of a memory of the better ways of the Old South still living in the hearts of Southern men and women, they need to disengage from Washington, D. C., stop trying to reform and change it (for the principles its government are founded upon are at odds with what they hold dear), turn their gaze to Orthodox Christian Russia, and begin a long dialogue with her on how to revive what remains of their downtrodden culture. 

Works Cited

Berry, Wendell.  ‘A Good Scythe’.  The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural.  Berkeley, Cal.: Counterpoint, 1981.

--.  ‘The Idea of a Local Economy’.  The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry.  Ed. Wirzba, Norman.  Berkeley, Cal.: Counterpoint, 2002.

--.  ‘The Whole Horse’.  The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry.  Ed. Wirzba, Norman.  Berkeley, Cal.: Counterpoint, 2002.

Bradford, M.E. ‘First Fathers: The Colonial Origins of the Southern Tradition’. A Better Guide than Reason: Federalists and Anti-Federalists. New Brunswick, Nj.: Transaction, 1994.

Calhoon, Robert.  Evangelicals and Conservatives in the Early South, 1740-1861. Columbia, S. Car.: U of SC Press, 1988.

Dabney, Rev Robert Lewis. Life and Campaigns of Lieut. Gen. T.J. (Stonewall) Jackson. Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle Publications, 1983.

Dugin, Alexander.  ‘The Great War of Continents’.  The Fourth Political Theory.  http://4pt.su/en/content/great-war-continents.  Accessed 16 Aug. 2016.

--.  ‘Sacred Geography to Geopolitics’.  The Fourth Political Theory.  http://4pt.su/en/content/sacred-geography-geopolitics-0.  Accessed 20 Aug. 2016.

Fischer, David Hackett.  Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York, Ny.: Oxford UP, 1989.

Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, and Eugene D. Genovese.  The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview.  New York:  Cambridge UP, 2005.

Genovese, Eugene D.  A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South.  Athens, Ga.:  U of Georgia Press, 1998.

Hewlett, Maurice.  The Song of the Plow: Being the English Chronicle.  Internet Archive.  12 March 2008.  https://archive.org/stream/ofplowbeingesong00hewlrich#page/n5/mode/2up, accessed 26 Aug. 2016.

Higgens, Deborah.  Anglo-Saxon Community in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.  Oloris Publishing, 2014.

Kimball, Herrick.  ‘Thomas Jefferson vs. Paul Krugman, Alan Greenspan, et. al.’  Abbeville Institute.  19 May 2016.  http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/thomas-jefferson-vs-paul-krugman-alan-greenspan-et-al/.  Accessed 28 Aug. 2016.

Meek, Alexander B.  Songs and Poems of the South.  3^rd ed.  Internet Archive.  13 April 2011.  https://archive.org/download/songspoemsofsout00meek/songspoemsofsout00meek.pdf.  Accessed 29 Aug. 2016.

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The New Aristocracy of the South: From Plantations to Monasteries, Part 4th

What would this monastic aristocracy look like in practice?  We may get some idea by looking back at a couple of very influential monks in the West, St Anthony the Great of Egypt (+356), who is called the Father of Monks (though monasticism has been in the Orthodox Church from the beginning; he and others helped give it an organized life that allowed it to flourish all the more, however.  Thus, he is a pillar of both the East and the West), and St Illtyd of Wales (reposed early 6th hundredyear).  Both were men of great holiness, so not all monastics will be able to achieve quite what they did.  But overall there will be a likeness between their lives and the life of all monks and nuns.  So let us see how monastics have raised to a higher plane the good works begun by the gentlemen-planters. 

St Anthony:

All quotes about St Anthony below are from the Life of St Anthony (by St Athanasius the Great), http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm, accessed 24 Aug. 2016.

Of his fierce battles with the passions and the demons:

7. This was Antony's first struggle against the devil, or rather this victory was the Saviour's work in Antony , 'Who condemned sin in the flesh that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.' But neither did Antony, although the evil one had fallen, henceforth relax his care and despise him; nor did the enemy as though conquered cease to lay snares for him. For again he went round as a lion seeking some occasion against him. But Antony having learned from the Scriptures that the devices of the devil are many, zealously continued the discipline, reckoning that though the devil had not been able to deceive his heart by bodily pleasure, he would endeavour to ensnare him by other means. For the demon loves sin. Wherefore more and more he repressed the body and kept it in subjection , lest haply having conquered on one side, he should be dragged down on the other. He therefore planned to accustom himself to a severer mode of life. And many marvelled, but he himself used to bear the labour easily; for the eagerness of soul, through the length of time it had abode in him, had wrought a good habit in him, so that taking but little initiation from others he showed great zeal in this matter. He kept vigil to such an extent that he often continued the whole night without sleep; and this not once but often, to the marvel of others. He ate once a day, after sunset, sometimes once in two days, and often even in four. His food was bread and salt, his drink, water only. Of flesh and wine it is superfluous even to speak, since no such thing was found with the other earnest men. A rush mat served him to sleep upon, but for the most part he lay upon the bare ground. He would not anoint himself with oil, saying it behooved young men to be earnest in training and not to seek what would enervate the body; but they must accustom it to labour, mindful of the Apostle's words, 'when I am weak, then am I strong.' 'For,' said he, 'the fibre of the soul is then sound when the pleasures of the body are diminished.' And he had come to this truly wonderful conclusion, 'that progress in virtue, and retirement from the world for the sake of it, ought not to be measured by time, but by desire and fixity of purpose.' He at least gave no thought to the past, but day by day, as if he were at the beginning of his discipline, applied greater pains for advancement, often repeating to himself the saying of Paul :'Forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before.' He was also mindful of the words spoken by the prophet Elias 1 Kings 18:15, 'the Lord lives before whose presence I stand today.' For he observed that in saying 'today' the prophet did not compute the time that had gone by: but daily as though ever commencing he eagerly endeavoured to make himself fit to appear before God, being pure in heart and ever ready to submit to His counsel, and to Him alone. And he used to say to himself that from the life of the great Elias the hermit ought to see his own as in a mirror.

8. Thus tightening his hold upon himself, Antony departed to the tombs, which happened to be at a distance from the village; and having bid one of his acquaintances to bring him bread at intervals of many days, he entered one of the tombs, and the other having shut the door on him, he remained within alone. And when the enemy could not endure it, but was even fearful that in a short time Antony would fill the desert with the discipline, coming one night with a multitude of demons, he so cut him with stripes that he lay on the ground speechless from the excessive pain. For he affirmed that the torture had been so excessive that no blows inflicted by man could ever have caused him such torment. But by the Providence of God— for the Lord never overlooks them that hope in Him— the next day his acquaintance came bringing him the loaves. And having opened the door and seeing him lying on the ground as though dead, he lifted him up and carried him to the church in the village, and laid him upon the ground. And many of his kinsfolk and the villagers sat around Antony as round a corpse. But about midnight he came to himself and arose, and when he saw them all asleep and his comrade alone watching, he motioned with his head for him to approach, and asked him to carry him again to the tombs without waking anybody.

9. He was carried therefore by the man, and as he was wont, when the door was shut he was within alone. And he could not stand up on account of the blows, but he prayed as he lay. And after he had prayed, he said with a shout, Here am I, Antony; I flee not from your stripes, for even if you inflict more nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ. And then he sang, 'though a camp be set against me, my heart shall not be afraid. ' These were the thoughts and words of this ascetic. But the enemy, who hates good, marvelling that after the blows he dared to return, called together his hounds and burst forth, 'You see,' said he, 'that neither by the spirit of lust nor by blows did we stay the man, but that he braves us, let us attack him in another fashion.' But changes of form for evil are easy for the devil, so in the night they made such a din that the whole of that place seemed to be shaken by an earthquake, and the demons as if breaking the four walls of the dwelling seemed to enter through them, coming in the likeness of beasts and creeping things. And the place was on a sudden filled with the forms of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions, and wolves, and each of them was moving according to his nature. The lion was roaring, wishing to attack, the bull seeming to toss with its horns, the serpent writhing but unable to approach, and the wolf as it rushed on was restrained; altogether the noises of the apparitions, with their angry ragings, were dreadful. But Antony, stricken and goaded by them, felt bodily pains severer still. He lay watching, however, with unshaken soul, groaning from bodily anguish; but his mind was clear, and as in mockery he said, 'If there had been any power in you, it would have sufficed had one of you come, but since the Lord has made you weak, you attempt to terrify me by numbers: and a proof of your weakness is that you take the shapes of brute beasts.' And again with boldness he said, 'If you are able, and have received power against me, delay not to attack; but if you are unable, why trouble me in vain? For faith in our Lord is a seal and a wall of safety to us.' So after many attempts they gnashed their teeth upon him, because they were mocking themselves rather than him.

10. Nor was the Lord then forgetful of Antony's wrestling, but was at hand to help him. So looking up he saw the roof as it were opened, and a ray of light descending to him. The demons suddenly vanished, the pain of his body straightway ceased, and the building was again whole.  . . .

Of his kindness to neighbor and kinship with creation:

50. Antony then, as it were, moved by God, loved the place , for this was the spot which he who had spoken with him by the banks of the river had pointed out. So having first received loaves from his fellow travellers, he abode in the mountain alone, no one else being with him. And recognising it as his own home, he remained in that place for the future. But the Saracens, having seen the earnestness of Antony, purposely used to journey that way, and joyfully brought him loaves, while now and then the palm trees also afforded him a poor and frugal relish. But after this, the brethren learning of the place, like children mindful of their father, took care to send to him. But when Antony saw that the bread was the cause of trouble and hardships to some of them, to spare the monks this, he resolved to ask some of those who came to bring him a spade, an axe, and a little grain. And when these were brought, he went over the land round the mountain, and having found a small plot of suitable ground, tilled it; and having a plentiful supply of water for watering, he sowed. This doing year by year, he got his bread from thence, rejoicing that thus he would be troublesome to no one, and because he kept himself from being a burden to anybody. But after this, seeing again that people came, he cultivated a few pot-herbs, that he who came to him might have some slight solace after the labour of that hard journey. At first, however, the wild beasts in the desert, coming because of the water, often injured his seeds and husbandry. But he, gently laying hold of one of them, said to them all, 'Why do you hurt me, when I hurt none of you? Depart, and in the name of the Lord come not near this spot.' And from that time forward, as though fearful of his command, they no more came near the place.

How he influenced rulers:

81. And the fame of Antony came even unto kings. For Constantine Augustus, and his sons Constantius and Constans the Augusti wrote letters to him, as to a father, and begged an answer from him. But he made nothing very much of the letters, nor did he rejoice at the messages, but was the same as he had been before the Emperors wrote to him. But when they brought him the letters he called the monks and said, 'Do not be astonished if an emperor writes to us, for he is a man; but rather wonder that God wrote the Law for men and has spoken to us through His own Son.' And so he was unwilling to receive the letters, saying that he did not know how to write an answer to such things. But being urged by the monks because the emperors were Christians, and lest they should take offense on the ground that they had been spurned, he consented that they should be read, and wrote an answer approving them because they worshipped Christ, and giving them counsel on things pertaining to salvation: 'not to think much of the present, but rather to remember the judgment that is coming, and to know that Christ alone was the true and Eternal King.' He begged them to be merciful and to give heed to justice and the poor. And they having received the answer rejoiced. Thus he was dear to all, and all desired to consider him as a father.

How he influenced the plain folk:

44. While Antony was thus speaking all rejoiced; in some the love of virtue increased, in others carelessness was thrown aside, the self-conceit of others was stopped; and all were persuaded to despise the assaults of the Evil One, and marvelled at the grace given to Antony from the Lord for the discerning of spirits. So their cells were in the mountains, like filled with holy bands of men who sang psalms, loved reading, fasted, prayed, rejoiced in the hope of things to come, laboured in almsgiving, and preserved love and harmony one with another. And truly it was possible, as it were, to behold a land set by itself, filled with piety and justice. For then there was neither the evil-doer, nor the injured, nor the reproaches of the tax-gatherer: but instead a multitude of ascetics; and the one purpose of them all was to aim at virtue. So that any one beholding the cells again, and seeing such good order among the monks, would lift up his voice and say, 'How goodly are your dwellings, O Jacob, and your tents, O Israel; as shady glens and as a garden by a river; as tents which the Lord has pitched, and like cedars near waters.'

 . . .

88. For this was the wonderful thing in Antony's discipline, that, as I said before, having the gift of discerning spirits, he recognised their movements, and was not ignorant whither any one of them turned his energy and made his attack. And not only was he not deceived by them himself, but cheering those who were troubled with doubts, he taught them how to defeat their plans, telling them of the weakness and craft of those who possessed them. Thus each one, as though prepared by him for battle, came down from the mountain, braving the designs of the devil and his demons. How many maidens who had suitors, having but seen Antony from afar, remained maidens for Christ's sake. And people came also from foreign parts to him, and like all others, having got some benefit, returned, as though set forward by a father. And certainly when he died, all as having been bereft of a father, consoled themselves solely by their remembrances of him, preserving at the same time his counsel and advice.

St Illtyd:

In the life of St Illtyd, one of the great saints of Wales whose influence together with that of other Welsh Orthodox Christians helped evangelize Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, and Brittany and later along with the Roman Orthodox missionaries helped to enlighten the heathen English, we see some of the same aspects of plantation life mentioned above as well as others:  education in the classics, communal life, poetry, Christian piety, and so on.

 . . . St. Illtyd is referred to in many sources as a disciple of St. Germanus of Auxerre (possibly a distant relative), who instructed and trained him either during one of his two visits to Britain or (which is less probable) in Gaul, where Illtyd came to gain experience in monastic life. St. Illtyd later became a monk and was ordained to the priesthood by Germanus, together with a number of other future saints. In the following years he founded many churches, monasteries and schools in Wales, the most famous of which was the monastery in Llantwit, named Llanilltud Fawr in Welsh, or Llantwit Major in English, literally meaning “the great church of Illtud”.

It was an angel who more than once directed Illtyd to the location of this monastery—in a beautiful wooded valley. The monastery was situated in Glamorgan in the south-east of Wales and today it is in the Vale of Glamorgan county borough. Illtyd became the first abbot of the monastery and ruled it for many years. Most of the saints of that period came from it. Hundreds of monks lived in Llantwit Major simultaneously and one early source says that at various points altogether some 3,000 brethren led the ascetic life there under the holy abbot Illtyd. Monastic life in this great center flourished until the Norman Conquest, and it gained fame for teaching Greek, Latin, theology, philosophy, grammar, poetry, rhetoric and mathematics. Indeed, it was one of the finest educational centers in Western Europe at that time and possibly the first center on such a scale in Britain. At the monastic church under St. Illtyd prayer never ceased—100 monks prayed and held vigil inside the church day and night.

St. Illtyd was venerated in his lifetime as a great wonderworker on whom the Lord also bestowed the ability to foresee future events. As was the case with many other Celtic saints who imitated the Egyptian, Syrian and Palestinian desert fathers, Illtyd led a severe ascetic life. It was recorded that the man of God used to go deep into cold water at night and to repeat the Lord’s Prayer there till the morning. As his life reads, the holy abbot of Llantwit devoted his time to manual work, fasting, abstinence, watching, kneeling and praying. He fed the hungry, clothed the naked, healed the sick and visited prisoners. He was filled with hospitality, compassion and humility, and he had no pride in spite of his numerous talents. It was said that solitude was dear to his heart and he spent almost three years absolutely alone in a secluded cave in prayer.

Among the disciples of St. Illtyd we can mention such illustrious early Church Fathers of Wales as St. David of Mynyw, St. Samson of Dol, St. Gildas the Wise, St. Tudwal, St. Paul Aurelian, and St. Maglorius. Many of his disciples later moved to enlighten Brittany and other Celtic regions like Devon and Cornwall. The great abbot-bishop St. Deiniol of Bangor can also be regarded as one of his disciples. A large number of spiritual children of Illtyd were to become celebrated teachers and missionaries. A multitude of young men from all over Wales, south-west England, Brittany and other regions of France, flocked to his monastery to study and live a holy life, with several princes among them. According to some sources (though it is not always chronologically correct), among close friends and spiritual companions, or perhaps rather spiritual descendants, of this great saint of God were such important figures as St. Cadoc (with whom Illtyd led the ascetic life in seclusion for some time) and Dyfryg (Dubricius). The noted bard of that era, named Taliesin, reputedly went there as well.

The Life of St. Samson, mentioned above, describes St. Illtyd as “the most prominent teacher of the Britons and of the whole of Britain.” This is a very important testimony and indeed the influence of this saint greatly contributed to the formation of monastic life, culture, education and learning in the Wales of that era. St. Illtyd closely communicated with wild animals. Thus, once he rescued a stag from King Meirchion who was hunting it. This stag became tame and even delivered timber for the saint on a cart in order to build his church.  . . .

Source:  Dmitry Lapa, ‘Venerable Illtyd, Abbot of Llantwit Major in Wales and the Teacher of the Welsh’, http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/87874.htm, accessed 22 Nov. 2015

Holy Saints Anthony and Illtyd, pray for us wretched sinners at the South!

(From https://oca.org/saints/lives/2015/01/17/100216-venerable-and-god-bearing-father-anthony-the-great)

(From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Illtyd_in_Holy_Trinity_Church,_Abergavenny.jpg)