Confederate Pride

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September, 2001

In response to “How can you even think about the Southern Cause now?” we say, “Because now our mission is more urgent than ever.”

The tragic events of 11 September are the direct result of Washington DC’s policies. They were a backlash against its interventionism and arrogance. Instead of furling the colours and joining lockstep with the war hysteria and the voluntary surrender of our civil liberties, it is time for all activists in the Southern Movement to clarify what we stand for and what we oppose. Our mission has never been more critical, because Washington is now dead-set on a course that can only lead to more violence, less freedom, and greater insecurity at home and abroad.

Before the backlash, our warnings about the repercussions of global bullying, uncontrolled immigration, and the unconstitutional growth of Washington DC’s power were largely theoretical. If 200,000 Iraqi children died from US bombing of irrigation systems, it did not affect us. If Clinton wanted to kill 50,000 Serbian civilians, or blast an aspirin factory in Sudan to divert attention from his sex scandals, Americans were unconcerned.

Before the backlash, the notion of patriotism, which is loyalty to one’s own people, was scorned. Both political parties scoffed at concerns about the impact of Federal policies on native-born Americans. The Republicans welcomed the cheap labour, while the Democrats cheered the arrival of more voters that sneaked across the border. As jobs at home went increasingly to imported foreigners, many of them illegal, even more jobs disappeared into Mexico, thanks to NAFTA. When Southern governors Hodges of South Carolina, Mike Easley of North Carolina, Roy Barnes of Georgia, and Don Siegelman of Alabama appealed to President Bush to help Southern textile workers, his office replied that he was otherwise occupied. That was true — he was busy in Toledo, Ohio with President Fox of Mexico discussing yet another pardon of illegal Mexican immigrants. “I know there are some in this world and our country who want to build walls between Mexico and the United States,” Bush chided, only five days before the World Trade Center tragedy. “I want to remind people, fearful people build walls. Confident people tear them down.”

What everyone is confident about now is that open borders not only let in cheap labour and Democratic voters, but also the World Trade Center terrorists and their sprawling network of ground support, many of whom are now being arrested for — hold your breath — immigration violations. Here in North Carolina, the terrorist organisation Hezbollah, which has worked with bin Laden, was caught in July, 2000 running a cigarette smuggling ring in Charlotte to finance its operations. On 23 September, the Border Patrol reported that the number of non-Mexicans, including foreigners from Asia and the Middle East, who have been caught crossing that porous border has increased by 42%. And those are just the ones who were caught. Tearing down our protective walls for those who do not share our cultural values is not an act of “confidence.” It is now revealed as a breach of trust committed by Washington.

Before the backlash, attempts to protect our Christian culture were branded as racist and xenophobic. Now, as people express sympathy for the WTC victims, and resistance to invasion, the powers that be suddenly approve of patriotism and prayer. It was obvious to many people on the National Day of Prayer that the leaders of Washington DC enjoy privileges which are denied to the people: the freedom to pray and quote scripture on public property. Our leaders’ hypocrisy is even more evident as they attempt to channel people’s emotions into unquestioned support for government surveillance of private communications through passage of the “Cyber Security Information Act,” and the surrender of due process if the “Mobilization Against Terrorism” bill is passed. Equally disturbing is the administration’s perversion of public grief and anger into support for escalating the ongoing war in Iraq into a ground war, as well as invasion of Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s recurring role in history is that of a bloody stumbling block for empires. Britain lost much prestige and influence when it failed to subdue the region, and the Soviet Union collapsed shortly after its defeat there.

So, Washington deliberately weakens security at our borders, wastes defence dollars on worldwide garrisons, provokes resentment all over the globe, encourages foreign cultures to colonise our homeland, and when the inevitable disaster strikes, mounts a campaign to erase our traditional rights at home, and to kill more innocent civilians abroad.

There is an old principle in North Carolina politics called the Hole Rule. Simply stated: when you realise you’re digging yourself into a hole, stop digging. Washington has gutted the Constitution and usurped the sovereignty of the States. With power and wealth concentrated in Washington, abuse of that terrifying amount of power is inevitable. Yet, when the tragic consequences of uncontrolled power hit home, Washington digs deeper and faster, amassing its military resources abroad while eliminating freedom at home. The message Southern activists must carry to our people more urgently than ever is that there is a practical, effective solution: it is possible to control our borders, and to stop antagonising peoples around the world by simply leaving them alone. Bush, on the other hand, is steering the country toward an impossible task, to “end” the states that harbour terrorists. It is one thing to bring the World Trade Center terrorists to justice; it is another to wipe out all who might threaten us. Bush is leading this country toward the same suicidal goal that Kurtz, the mad colonel in “Apocalypse Now” succumbed to as he descended into madness: “Kill them all.” It is impossible to eradicate all who will fight back against American bullying. The current war hysteria will only incite more desperation and bitterness against us and transform this country into a police state.

At this time, the Justice Department has more than 50 “hate crimes” against Muslims to investigate around the country. Once the Afghan invasion begins, body bags will roll out of the C-130 transport planes, more terrorist acts will hit our homes and businesses in wave after wave of backlash, and more domestic anger will undoubtedly be stirred up. More aggressive “hate crime” laws will be needed, further extending Federal control over our lives. So while the Pentagon directs the incineration of innocent Muslims overseas, the Justice Department will ensure that no one calls them bad names at home. No matter how you look at it, the entire panorama puts Washington DC in high cotton.

The basic issues that launched the Southern Movement have not changed. Washington has not changed. The over-centralised, ever-meddling Washington regime still seeks the eradication of our culture, our identity, and our values. Its leaders now pray in public as they send Southerners out to fight their latest war, but the moment Washington no longer needs our support, it will resume its real war against our Christian faith, the cornerstone of Southern culture. It will not give back the freedoms we surrender when and if the current hysteria is over, because we will have ceded all the mechanisms that protected those freedoms.

When Pat Buchanon predicted that it will “take some cataclysmic atrocity on US soil to awaken our global gamesmen to the going price of empire,” people laughed at him. We in the Southern Movement have endured similar derision when we warned about the consequences of ignoring the Founding Fathers’ strict Constitutional limits on government power, and avoiding foreign entanglements. Now that the “cataclysmic atrocity” has vindicated our message, we must not abandon it now since it offers the only hope for peace, freedom, and security.

The Southern Cause is not just a yearning for a mythical Old South of moonlight and magnolias, as our critics would charge. It is a calling to renew the real things in life, the things that matter: the natural social bonds of a shared culture based on a living faith. It is a calling to heed the mandate of history as the old ideological megastates of the 19th and 20th centuries give way to voluntary, spontaneous groupings of small, culturally based nations. Southern independence is neither traitorous nor subversive. The Founding Fathers established a “Republic of Republics” designed to avoid the deadly tendency toward centralisation. Knowing that absolute power would corrupt, the Founding Fathers created a system of separated powers so that each sovereign State retained all powers not delegated to Washington. It is Washington that has broken both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, and it is the Southern Cause that seeks to restore both. The goal of the Southern Movement, then, is not only legal within the present Constitutional system, but the only means to true peace, security, and freedom.

Bush’s Jihad will prove to be a wasteful, painful attempt to hold together the last superpower by extending its global reach. Human nature and the march of historical progress have already taught us that such an attempt will fail. As the world reconfigures itself on a model of small, peaceful states whose interaction is that of cooperation rather than domination, the US finds itself fighting the tide, still clinging to a failed system of economic exploitation based on military supremacy.

The Southern Cause is the future, and it is the solution. The world of interconnected, yet distinct, cultural groupings is rapidly replacing the world of client states subordinate to one of two superpowers. In the dying days of the 20th century, the Soviet Union and the United States frequently bloodied nations that failed to toe the line. Now, as new nations coalesce around cultural, as opposed to ideological, foundations, mutual respect and cooperation must replace intimidation and submission. Samuel P. Huntington, the famous Harvard political scientist, has remarked that “Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world.” In the United States, Southern culture is the most distinct and best organised alternative to the old imperial paradigm of forced social and political uniformity that surrenders all authority to the center. Southern political independence is the natural and logical means of implementing that alternative. In the bloodlust and fever of the current crisis, we must keep that vision foremost in our minds and hearts, for it is the only genuine solution.