Community and Heritage

By David Ware

“The South was always proud and independent and believed with the Founding Fathers, that centralized and powerful government invariably slides into tyranny. But the North, less proud, less conscious of national tradition, less independent, less manly in many ways, craves the dictator’s hand, the tyrants force, for many of its people have come from nations whose people were subjected to and dependent on government. It may be, in the future, that it will be the South who will prevent, for many long decades, the collapse of American Freedom into Caesarism.” Taylor Caldwell, from “Captains and the Kings”

It has been said that the Southerner is the last of America’s people to know who they are and where they come from. This is because the people of the South have a deep and devout attachment to their heritage and community. They are able to trace their ancestry back to the War to Prevent Southern Independence, the Revolutionary War and beyond. Their parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents and great-great-great grandparents knew one another. They loved their land and home place. Names were given to the homes of Southerners: My family had Windsor, Sunnyside, Hard Bargain, Plumsite, Lombardy, Pinewoods, Bellevue and others. These were the places where our ancestors raised their families with other like minded people to be self responsible, productive members of a cohesive community.

This relationship is a complex connection between people, their land and nature. All neighbors are included in an intense personal bond to ancestors, the self, family, the land and its inhabitants. Arts to the Southern people more to do with hospitality, hunting, fishing, conversation and vegetable gardening than with rock concerts and the signing bonuses of professional athletes . Their definition of “mind your own business” is forged by a mutual respect for the rights and property of the individual.

Tied to the love of the dollar, the Yankees are Nomads wandering to advance “careers” and to always position themselves to make as much and spend as little money as possible. They typically have no heritage that they know of, bluster on about forgetting the past and “planning” for the future. They are self proclaimed soothsayers who predict their future based on government programs, laws and bailouts. To them, a community is complete because they are in it. They believe that the tyrannical forces of planning, zoning, building regulations, taxes and laws perpetuate true community. They prefer to live in a subdivision with a guard at the gate craving the “dictators hand” of homeowners associations , their idea of connection to nature has to do with lawn care and walking the dog. Freedom, to the Yankee mentality, is the elimination of self responsibility and worry and a plethora of fast food choices, Costcos and WalMarts.

Their mindset wants cell phones with no cell towers, electricity with no generating plants, gasoline with no oil refineries, airplanes with no airports and less taxes with more government spending. This makes perfect sense to their culture that teaches that you spend to save, borrow to get out of debt and kill for peace.

We Southern people must cure ourselves of Republican and Democrat Part thinking. We have no friends in either major party. We do our ancestors a disservice to pay homage to these people as they and their policies run counter to everything our ancestors stood for. We need to pay more attention to our complete heritage starting with the hospitality of Pocahontas, the brilliance of Jefferson, the example of Washington, the perseverance of Calhoun, the chivalry of Lee, the determination and valor of Jackson and most of all to the idea that we are descended from the heirs of limited government, individual freedom and personal responsibility.

We should cease supporting wars of foreign aggression. Our ancestors fought to be left alone and we, of all people, should respect that desire when it unfolds against our military and political presence. We are descended from people that knew the pain and dismay of having our homes and families devastated by an unprincipled aggressor. How can we support efforts to bend foreign countries under the heavy foot of the U. S. might while lamenting the same thing when it was done by the same mentality against our people?