Originally posted at Reckonin.com My last post (Hitler’s New Fans) has received a fair amount of comment, mostly negative. Some have questioned why I addressed the subject? Because I thought someone needed to take notice of an unfortunate trend. I have no quarrel with the Alternative Right as long as it is attacking the evil Yankee Empire. But to bring...| Abbeville Institute
Thomas Jefferson has been depicted by many scholars as a pacifist, and a “conciliatorian”: that is, person adverse to conflict to solve problems and issues. He was a strict supporter of limited government and a militia, not a standing army, to defend and protect the country and to preserve liberty for the people. Yet he also birthed West Point Military...| Abbeville Institute
At a recent Abbeville Conference, I tackled a subject that’s been hiding in plain sight all along – the Southern accent. I’ve lived in Alabama almost my whole life, so I’m definitely familiar with the Southern accent. Now it’s true that my wife and I lived in Iowa for three years, but we actually kind of liked it up there....| Abbeville Institute
For the past week, Dinesh D’Souza has engaged in an ongoing debate on social media concerning the meaning of American conservatism and the influence of the South in American history. D’Souza—like Victor Davis Hanson, Harry Jaffa, Larry Arnn, Allen Guelzo, and a host of other mainstream conservatives—argue that while Robert E. Lee has admirable traits, the South cannot be integrated...| Abbeville Institute
This piece was originally published in 1931 in the Montgomery Advertiser. God willed that even trees should have an individuality. In the world’s history, there is the “Charter Oak” and there was the “Washington Elm,” and in Athens, Ga., a tree has a deed to its own plot of ground. Most of us have heard of the “Cedars of Lebanon,”...| Abbeville Institute
I have been a big advocate for decentralized power, which in our American context has been connected to “states’ rights;” the most prominent period and example being the American Civil War, where the Southern states resisted centralized federal control and both fought for and applied to their Constitution a strong decentralized states’ rights policy.| Abbeville Institute
A key element of the philosophy that made Radio Free Dixie important was the understanding of the interconnectedness of global struggle. The show made it clear that the same capitalist forces that killed and brutalized people around the world were the same that made life miserable for Black folks in the U.S. Read more via Scalawag: Radio Free Dixie: A revolutionary cultural institution.| Scalawag
This graphic novel depicts the story of the 1891 Coal Creek War—one of the most significant yet overlooked labor and abolitionist uprisings in US History.| Scalawag
Murray’s work acts as a site of possibility, utilizing historical memory to think through the imaginative and mystical potential of the Black body. The artist’s works shed light on the narratives and folklore that have become colloquial to Black history, especially Black Southern histories, such as the myth of the Flying Africans. Read more via Scalawag: Ambrose Rhapsody Murray and Recalling Myth.| Scalawag
Today is John C. Calhoun’s 243 birthday. Several years ago, I took some time to visit John C. Calhoun’s grave in Charleston, SC., a massive stone monument at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church erected in the 1880s to honor the State’s greatest son. Calhoun’s body had been exhumed three times, once from Washington D.C. after he died in 1850 so it could be moved back to South Carolina, once to protect it from marauding Union soldiers during the War (he was placed in an unmarked grave), and...| Abbeville Institute
As editor-in-Chief of the inaugural issue of the now-defunct theme-based journal, The Journal of Thomas Jefferson’s Life and Times, I was asked to write the feature, introductory essay, which I titled “‘A silent execution of duty’: The Republican Pen of Thomas Jefferson.” It was a daunting task, as I aimed to introduce the journal by constructing an essay that would give readers some feel for the breadth and depth of Jefferson’s mind. Given the obvious spatial constraints, there w...| Abbeville Institute
The central issue of the 2024 election was the question, what is democracy? The Democrats in particular claimed that they were the defenders of “democracy.” They were sincere, although to their opponents this claim seemed the epitome of gaslighting. Their view is that democracy is top-down, whereby elite institutions (e.g., universities, foundations, the science establishment, big business, the media, government itself) use government power to formulate and impose the will of those ...| Abbeville Institute
Originally published in Southern Partisan in 1979.| Abbeville Institute
The following remarks were delivered at the fourth annual Jefferson Davis Conference at Mount Crawford, Virginia on June 27, 2024.| Abbeville Institute
Originally published at Truthscript.com| Abbeville Institute
A Critique of Thomas Fleming’s The Great Divide: The Conflict between Washington and Jefferson that Defined a Nation| Abbeville Institute
It is common in Civil War circles to hear about the so-called “Lost Cause”, variously termed a myth or a narrative. Are those two terms synonymous? Let’s look. Dictionary.com defines myth as: “a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.”| Abbeville Institute
Mr. Leevonne Mitchell was my teacher. I graduated from Auburn High School in 1978, and he was technically and officially my Speech teacher in 10th grade. But, man, he was SO much more than that…| Abbeville Institute
