Which Way Forward?

If 'returning to the Constitution' is not the proper response to today's troubles in the States, what is?  In another essay by Father Johnson, we find models in history to look to and learn from.  Below are a few of the more noteworthy passages from his essay, but the whole of it is worth the time to read.

Old Russia was and is represented by the Old Faith and the Cossack uprisings under Bulavin and Pugachev. In short, their programs were identical: a popular monarchy, the free peasant commune and the Old Faith: the three ancient pillars of justice. In opposition is the “Egyptian” rule of technology, centralization and oligarchy, the three pillars of injustice. Such as view is echoed in early medieval Ireland and medieval Serbia. Society was divided up into self governing communes, who elected their clergy and were loyal to local custom. Local monastics offered spiritual guidance and sainthood, not to mention education and social welfare. The state, if it can be called such, was represented by a monarch with a tiny retinue of supporters. His role was purely to defend the faith from outside influences, as he had little role in the functioning of the mir or rod.

...

Order exists through tradition and paternal authority. Decisions were taken by the sobor, where all needed to agree on a course of action. Mutual aid was at the center of the Old Rite, based on asceticism and the limitation of wants. Bothering with technology and money was viewed as involving the Orthodox faithful in the world of Satan, who, according to the Scriptures, controls all the states of the world. The Old Faith never had a modern state, nor do the Hasidic Jews or Amish in America, and yet order was maintained and a certain degree of prosperity and open displays of happiness were regular features of such communal lives. In addition, despite small numbers, the above groups all had an influence on their respective communal lives far out of proportion to any kind of traditional state power.

...

The free peasant commune was always at the forefront of the Old Faith and the rebellions against bureaucratism under Bulavin and Razin. The free commune, as is traditional, should elect its leaders and law enforcers, all should be represented in the capacity of heads of households, for the economy is based on the natural institution of the extended family, of which both the parish, commune, ethnos and labor association is a natural outgrowth. This was largely the case in medieval Serbia, Ireland and the Cossack host, and remains part of their nationalist heritage even until today. Kingship and commune and based on law, which itself is based on custom, ethnic tradition and the canon laws of the church, all of which are, in turn, based on experience, survival and suffering. The commune (or labor association/artel in a more industrial capacity) should exist in coordination with the local parish and monastery for instruction and social welfare measures. Forming a web of institutions that serve both for the worship of God and for the fulfilling of natural needs.

Is 'Returning to the Constitution' the Answer?

Or is the U.S. Constitution itself the very source of many of our political troubles?  Father Matthew Johnson, in his reading of the Anti-Federalists, is firmly in the latter camp.  Before joining the crowd chanting the former, I strongly suggest reading this essay.

A Kinship of Agrarian Peoples II

In Anton Chekhov’s 'The Cherry Orchard' we see the beginning of a process that happens often today:  productive agricultural land being sold for the upraising of suburban homes, offices, factories, and the rest of it.  This process is mostly looked upon either indifferently or as a positive good, but it is in fact a great evil.

The characters of 'The Cherry Orchard' help us understand some of the forces at work then and now in this act of beneficent Progress.  The widowed Madame Lubov is the current owner of a large cherry orchard that has been in her family for generations.  But through lack of thrift and the forgetting of her forebears’ wise farming practices, she has fallen deeply in debt.  Her own incompetence in well-managing the orchard is matched by her brother Gaev; and her daughters Varya and Anya seem to have more interest in traveling than in staying on their ancestral land.  The only one who remembers anything about the old ways is the agèd but loyal servant of the family, Fiers: 

FIERS. In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them. . .

...

FIERS. And then we'd send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy, sweet, and nicely scented. . . They knew the way. . . .

Yet no sooner has he begun to speak than Gaev foolishly admonishes him, ‘Be quiet Fiers.’  And Fiers himself admits he does not know how to do these things:  ‘They’ve forgotten.  Nobody remembers.’ 

So the door is left open for the merchant Lopakhin, who shares his ideas on how the family can pay its debts:

LOPAKHIN. Your estate is only thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into building lots and are then leased off for villas you'll get at least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

. . .

LOPAKHIN. You will get twenty-five roubles a year for each dessiatin from the leaseholders at the very least, and if you advertise now I'm willing to bet that you won't have a vacant plot left by the autumn; they'll all go. In a word, you're saved. I congratulate you. Only, of course, you'll have to put things straight, and clean up. . . . For instance, you'll have to pull down all the old buildings, this house, which isn't any use to anybody now, and cut down the old cherry orchard. . .

Lubov and Gaev offer a weak protest, mentioning that the cherry orchard is a well-known landmark in the province - but little else. 

When they cannot find sufficient money to pay their bills, an auction is called to settle them.  Lopakhin swoops in, buys the land, and begins to follow through with his plan only a couple of months later.  The family is reduced to a rootless, dispossessed existence, each going his separate way:  Lubov back to an erstwhile lover in Paris who had robbed her; Gaev, to a bureaucrat’s career of boredom in a bank; Varya, 50 miles away to be a housekeeper; and Anya, off to school and then to a job as a wage-slave.  All that is left to be done in the end is to listen to the sound of the axes falling against the cherry trees - hewing, splintering, devouring - and of Fiers lying alone in the abandoned family home, forgotten by everyone, the symbol of a better way of living that is all too easily lost.

Though Lubov and the others (who represent the typical farming family of today) shed many tears over the loss of their orchard, it was their lack of imagination and other virtues (prudence, temperance, and fortitude) that led them to their doom at the hands of Lopakhin (the representative of the modern, distant, urban financier class that owns and ‘develops’ so much of our land).  And here are we, in the South, a century down the road, experiencing all that was described by Chekhov but to an even higher degree:  industrialisation, estrangement from the soil, wage-slavery, debt, centralisation, etc.  All of which is deadly to what remains of our Southern way of living - devotion to the extended family, jealousy of local authority, neighbourliness, hierarchy, Christianity, and such like. 

We are indeed far down the road leading toward cultural oblivion; the Sun in his chariot is racing toward Ocean.  This does not mean that Dawn will not eventually rise, radiant and rose-red, as she always has.  Nevertheless, we have plunged ourselves needlessly into the thick darkness of Night’s embrace. 

And that darkness will be so much the worse if we go on believing our local and national politicians and other leaders who claim they can clear the gloom and murk by adding to their causes:  building larger and more complex networks of highways, factories, shopping centres, and utilitarian public schools that eat away at the social fabric passed down to us from our forefathers.

Works Cited

Chekhov, Anton. ‘The Cherry Orchard.’ Plays. 2^nd series. tr. Julius West.  New York: Scribner’s, 1917.  Accessed 9 May 2012 from http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/ac/chorch.htm .

A Ray of Hope II

Nations can become too big for their own good, as Aristotle, Leopold Kohr, Kirkpatrick Sale, and others have told us.  Thankfully, several places in Europe are re-awakening to this truth.  A goodly number in Vermont have as well.  But will enough open their eyes, and is there enough fortitude, to actually bring about the healthy downsizing that is needed in England, Spain, the United States, and elsewhere?  (Again, our thanks to the folks at LewRockwell.com for the link.)

One Million Dead Former Slaves in the South?

So says a new book, Sick from Freedom.  Again we are forced to ask:  Was the War between the States really necessary (or beneficial)?

A Ray of Hope

Kings are being welcomed back and taking on larger roles across Eastern Europe, much to the dismay of the oligarchs who need weak, divided opposition in the form of millions of atomised voters to retain their power and wealth.  Many thanks to LewRockwell.com for posting the link.

A Kinship of Agrarian Peoples

Some similarities between the South and Serbia emerge in this podcast by Father Matthew Raphael Johnson:

http://reasonradionetwork.com/20120419/the-orthodox-nationalist-serbian-philosophy-in-the-19th-and-20th-centuries