As one who had embraced radical libertarianism while in college in the early 1970’s, I fully understand the attraction of an individual-based system. I associated with others who introduced me to the libertarian concept, and who were active in the libertarian political scene. That was a time when trusting in “self” and radical self-government appeared to be the solution to all life’s problems. Instead, it was a Utopian fantasy. One of the blessings of growing up is the ability to understand the shortcomings of all men, including ones self.

He goes into much greater detail, but this section of the post will give you a good idea of what it is about. Be sure to read the entire post.

If humanity does not shrug off this illusion, it will self-destruct.

Here at Amerika, we retaliate with a few ideas:

• There is no equality. Crush their primal taboo, which is the idea of no hierarchy. We all have different abilities and most importantly, moral character. Some are stronger than others.
• Bring back the monarchy. We trust in institutions and lists of rules to make our leaders honest. It doesn’t work. Instead, pick honest leaders, or people who are ahead of the rest of us in moral character and leadership ability.
• Social Darwinism is a friend. Stop saving people from themselves. Stop welfare, stop subsidies, stop warnings. We don’t need (to) save people from themselves. Let natural selection work for us.
• Focus on nature. Our cities and even suburbs are designed to hide nature away. Instead, make sure everything is surrounded by forest so that people always know primal fear, and transcendental beauty.

Mr. Stevens’ Amerika blog has been a part of my regular reading for quite a while – highly recommended.

In Great Britain, the Queen is known for being exceptionally frugal, using the same car until it practically falls apart. In fact, in a recent year, the travel expenses for the entire British Royal Family was considerably less than the travel expenses for President Obama and his small crew.
•••
(W)hen people think of Marie Antoinette, they think lavishness and frivolity, they do not think of a woman who gave large amounts to charity, who broke down social barriers at court and who invited poor children to eat with her own royal offspring at Versailles. When it comes to royal children for that matter, it may surprise some to know how much more luxuriously the children of a President of the United States live compared to royal or even imperial offspring.
•••
The Romanov Archduchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, for example, had to sleep on camp beds and take cold baths. Their educational schedule was positively Spartan with dawn till dark studies and exercises. The White House may not be the Winter Palace but you can be sure the Obama daughters are taking hot baths at night. Similarly, when one thinks of an Emperor one doesn’t usually think of someone like Emperor Francis Joseph who slept on an army cot and wore clothes until they were worn out -and then patched them and wore them some more!
•••
In Russia, Emperor Alexander III preferred the simple meals of his servants to the delicacies of the banquets thrown by the upper class and his idea of recreation was a simple walk in the Russian wilderness with some sausage and a piece of bread for his lunch. These imperial leaders were hardly men of lavish, wasteful luxury and indulgence.

So… what is the point of this, you may ask? Why are we reading about monarchies on the Confederate Colonel blog? Aside from the fact that monarchies are a time-proven form of government that is grossly misunderstood by those who depend on American public schools for their education, it would behoove us give some serious thought as to what will replace the republican form of government here in America once it fully self-destructs. If you don’t see that coming, then you’re not paying attention. Am I advocating that America become a monarchy? The fact that I cannot see any realistic path from “here” to “there” precludes that. Still, it is a form of government that has stood the test of time for far longer than any form of self-government has. It’s a sad commentary on our ability to govern ourselves.

One matter that I was completely unaware of is that South Carolina was governed explicitly as an aristocracy, and there is ample discussion of that – enough that I look forward to learning more about it.

Another subject that caught my interest on a more personal level is the role – and rationale – of the abolitionist Cassius Clay, cousin of Henry Clay. These men are among my ancestors, and that is where my middle name came from (a middle name that I share with my father and my grandfather). Heavyweight boxer Cassius Clay (who later changed his name to Mohamed Ali) was named after Cassius Clay with the understanding that he was an abolitionist. He was, indeed an abolitionist, but I am confident that his father who named him was quite unaware of exactly why the original Cassius Clay embraced abolition. The article points out that Clay hoped to make Kentucky into a White ethnostate, and outlawing slavery was the means to exclude Blacks from that state. History has many little nuances like that when we take the time to look beyond the official “approved” story. Was this motivation more wide-spread? Was that part of the North’s enthusiasm for abolition? Interesting questions that beg for answers.

At 4574 words, this is not a short article. If you are not prepared to read it in its entirety, then either understand that you may be missing key points, or don’t start at all. Read it with an open mind and you will gain a much deeper insight into the circumstances that led up to secession and the war, what the political landscape looked like, and perhaps even a few “alternative futures” had things gone differently. This is “Part 1″ – I look forward to reading what follows.

Noah Webster

Any serious discussion about why the “American Experiment” has failed will eventually come to the same conclusion: The problem is not who we have in positions of leadership – the problem is who votes to put those people into positions of leadership. In a word, the fate of America is determined by Suffrage – who is permitted to vote.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.”
Alexander Tyler on the fall of the Athenian Republic

Why would we place the fate of the nation in the hands of those who do not have a concrete and well-established stake in the future of that nation? Why would we place the fate of the nation in the hands of those who base their decisions on kumbaya-style feelings rather than on solid moral principles? Why would we place the fate of the nation in the hands of those who receive direct financial support from the treasury?

The question of who has the right to vote has generally been decided by the individual states. Early criteria typically included white male property-owners over the age of 21. The vote of men was presumed to represent the corporate vote of a household, with the husband being the head of the household. Back when it was clearly understood that the family unit was the solid foundation upon which all civilized society is based, there was little or no controversy about having only men voting. Society recognized that by having one vote per family, there was a built-in incentive to vote for candidates who would support the family. Further restricting the voting pool was the requirement that the voter be a significant property owner – one who had a financial stake in maintaining the all-important legal concept of private property rights. One who owned property was not likely to support someone who might be in favor of taking away property to redistribute to others. Yes, it was “unfair” to single women and to poor men – at least that is the way today’s society would see it.

The election that carried Thomas Jefferson to the White House sent Noah Webster to the statehouse. In 1880, Webster was elected to the Connecticut legislature. He served until 1807. As a legislator, he chiefly occupied himself with attempting to block bills eliminating the property qualification for voting – in the hope that no more fools and knaves like Jefferson would ever be elected again. He called men without property “porpoises” (by which he meant that they would swim in a school, and not think for themselves). He himself had earned the right to vote, he was keen to point out, by writing his spelling books. “I am a farmer’s son and have collected all the small portion of property which I possess by untiring efforts and labors to promote the literary improvements of my fellow citizens.” He would not stand for political decisions to be made for him by men who had no similar stake in the world. “If all men have an equal right of suffrage, those who have little and those who have no property, have the power of making regulations respecting the property of others,” he reasons. “In truth, this principle of equal suffrage operates to produce extreme inequality of rights, a monstrous inversion of the natural order of society.”

Despite Webster’s best efforts, the United States grew more and more democratic, as more and more states lifted property restrictions on voting, and declaimed in favor of universal suffrage. “The men who preached these doctrines have never defined what they mean by the people, or what they mean by democracy, nor how the people are to govern themselves,” Webster complained. As he saw it, democracy is rule by the people and the people are, generally, insufferable idiots. In his 1828 dictionary, he put it this way:

PEOPLE, n…2. The vulgar, the mass of illiterate persons. The knowing artist may judge better than the people.

One lone legislator, however ill-natured, could scarcely slow the expansion of the franchise. As his home state grew more democratic, Webster insisted that he “wished to be forever delivered from the democracy of Connecticut.” He would even be willing to make the great sacrifice of moving to Vermont, if that state could be “freed from our democracy,” adding, “as to the cold winters, I would, if necessary, become a troglodyte, and live in a cave.”

Noah Webster’s worst fears have come to pass.

(Note: portions of this post were copied from a book about Noah Webster, but I cannot locate the original source. I will add the source credit if/when I find it again.)

You can get rid of a monarchy, you cannot ever get rid of the reason for monarchy. Part of that reason, somewhat lamentably to traditionalists, is the glossy-magazine aspect. There is a great swath of the people, even in the most advanced nations, that seek to live vicariously through the tabloid media. This is nothing new, though the nature of modern media has made the process far more rapacious. The peasants gossiping about their monarch’s personal affairs was not then a vast and profitable industry.

It is one of the beneficial features of monarchy, especially one so well established and conservative as ours, is that it can direct this rather prurient interest toward, generally, more worthy objects. In the American Republic the fascination with the rich and famous tends to settle on Hollywood celebrities, among the most vapid creatures ever to draw breadth upon creation. There is not in that soulless place a stern matriarch calling her progeny, with varying degrees of success, back upon the path of relative decency. Hollywood: Nothings seeking to be exalted above the nil in a vast nowhere.

The great dig against the monarchy is that its operatives, if we may call the Royal Family that, have not earned their position. True. They have at the very least been taught how to behave like civilized human beings in public. A behavioural trait that is frequently missing among the “earned” elite of the modern media. Breeding isn’t everything. Neither is a specious understanding of merit.

(Emphasis mine)

I have often thought that a Constitutional Monarchy is a superior form of government to what we have now in America. What we have now is something slightly more civilized than mob rule – but not by much.  We have legal protections – in writing – but they are routinely and increasingly ignored, much as they were under the old Soviet Union.

Here in American, we pretend that a nation is made up of geographical boundaries and laws. There is no mention of and no protection for that which truly defines a nation – the people and the culture of those people. Having a monarchy does not, of course, prevent a culture from losing its identity. The once-great England is a prime example of how to have a monarchy and still destroy a nation. England has ceased to exist as a nation – it is now over-run with immigrants who bring with them their own cultures that are at war with what used to be English culture. I am not familiar enough with the political system of Britain to even start to understand where things went wrong, but if the monarchy had taken seriously their responsibility to maintain the culture instead of wanting to be liked by Marxists, I am confident that things would be quite different there now. A constitutional monarchy is certainly not without its own set of problems, but it is a system that has the potential to be the best form of government possible when it comes to governing  a nation containing fewer and fewer men of moral courage, wisdom, and a fear of God.

The Old South, with its aristocratic traditions, would have been far more sympathetic to a constitutional monarchy – or at least a clear recognition of the importance of culture and the people that make up the Southern nation. I am quite confident that had the Confederate States survived as a political entity, mass immigration would not have been permitted as it has under the Kennedy-led assault on American culture beginning with the Immigration Act of 1965.

Grand Old Days
by Nancy B. Brewer

The ruffled dresses, petticoats and fancifully ways,
Ice tea, fried chicken and all our Southern ways,
Are slowly fading down the river,
Like ships upon the bay

Poise and manners have gone astray,
Replaced by the rude awakening of modern way,
Our Southern independence fought and lost,
Souls pass and bodies decay.

Yet, who will shed a tear or shout hooray?
If only I could beg or plea you to stay,
Would you smile and kiss my hand,
Just once more.. for the grand old days?

Mrs. Brewer is an author of historical fiction, reenactor, and story-teller from North Carolina. She is the author of Carolina Rain and Beyond Sandy Ridge. Her web site is http://www.nancybbrewer.com/

Mr. Horton has been kind enough to grant us permission to reprint the article in its entirety. He is the great-grandson of Pvt. Lawrence Churchill Jones of the Kershaw Brigade that watched the gallant Pelham (my first cousin, 2 generations removed) from Marye’s Heights that day he was magnificent at Fredericksburg.

Scarcely a sighting of him has been reported since Y2K. A decade ago it was said that he could often be found in Charleston before noon walking briskly along Broad Street, Wall Street Journal in one hand, legal folder in another.

Someone mentioned walking over plowed cotton fields in the upstate with a true southern gentleman. Yet, another thinks she spotted one in the general assembly – attired in a three-piece suit complete with gold pocket watch. Several seekers noted seeing one elderly gentleman, a cardiologist, making grand rounds with residents at MUSC. Think back to the last time when you had a confirmed sighting of a southern gentleman. Could it be that the breed that flourished here for so many years is now going extinct?

It might be simpler to get a consensus on nationalized health care than to define what is meant today by the out-of-date term “gentleman.” Three centuries ago a gentleman was that most favored of males for whom the expression “to the manor born” was coined. Inherited property, formal education, a stint in the military – there frequently appear as items in their obituary.

However, elevating one’s station by the principles of industry and thrift seems more often a part of the American gentleman’s mystique than is the inheritance of great wealth and properties.

The manor house tradition is almost exclusively the English model of the gentleman. Tax laws in the United Kingdom and the exclusion of hereditary peers from the House of Lords have relegated the traditional English gentleman to the realm of Victorian literature.

Far more significant for defining him than the southern gentleman’s ancestry, abode, and list of diplomas is the long-standing reputation that he has for being foremost in service to the common good. He can be counted on time and again to do the right thing in the right way.

But where does the southern gentleman acquire the background for this princely expectation that the new south for him? The answer is simpler than one would expect – he’s been held accountable to a high standard since his early youth —first by his mother who taught him the duty to obey a higher calling. The gentleman’s mother knows instinctively that our culture revolves around two treasured ideals —that of motherhood and the ideal of the gentleman.

For the gentleman, standing up for the weak, assisting those less fortunate, defending what is noble from that which is vulgar and impure is not just a byproduct of anachronistic chivalry – Walter Scott’s notion of noblesse oblige. Advancing what is virtuous and thwarting that which is tawdry is the noble calling of today’s gentleman just as much as it was when Arthur and Guinevere set the standard.

From his father, grandfather, and likely, his Boy Scout leaders, the southern male learns to weigh the consequences of his words and his actions. And if he errs in judgment, as he surely will from time to time, he stands ready to accept the responsibility of the ill-chosen words and actions. A gentleman does not let the sun go down on an injustice that he has had a hand in, albeit unintentionally.

Observers have never mistaken the southern gentleman for a candidate for sainthood, however. Since the gentleman, by nature of having early-on set high expectations for himself, is often among the decision-makers – he is blamed when decisions weigh more heavily upon one faction than another.

To the charge of favoritism, he can only plead that he has done his best to bring fairness where injustice had been the norm.

The gentleman knows that often he will fall short.

In western culture it was an Italian courtier of Lombardy, Baldassaar Castiglione (d. 1529), who first set pen to paper listing the qualities of the modern gentleman. Of course, Castiglione’s little book, The Courtier, had one objective – preferment at the court of the king. Every dictate was designed to make the adherent influential within a circle of elites.

The Brits have had centuries to perfect their notion of the idea of the gentleman.

Douglas Sutherland wrote a delightful book entitled The English Gentleman (DeBrett, 1978). Sutherlanland did for etiquette what Machiavelli did for kings and the use of power.

One of Sutherland’s maxims states that a gentleman always uses a bread knife and a bread plate, even when he is dining alone in his home. That stipulation discourages practically every South Carolina contender for the distinction.

Southerners have long looked to the old Cavalier state, Virginia, to set the standard for what might be done and what might not be done in terms of gentlemanly conduct. Mr. Jefferson’s school in Charlottesville has long been accustomed to refining the young males of the South. The same applies to Washington and Lee.

Virginia Military Institute still requires the male cadets to live by the “Code of the Gentleman.” “Without a strict observance of the fundamental Code of Honor, no man, no matter how polished,’ can be considered a gentleman. The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles. He is the descendant of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice . . . or he is not a Gentleman. A gentleman . . . Does not display his wealth, money or possessions. Does not put his manners on and off, whether in the club or in a ballroom. He treats people with courtesy, no matter what their social position may be. Does not slap strangers on the back nor so much as lay a finger on a lady.”

Hampden-Sidney College in Farmville, Virginia, continues to instruct its young men in the age-old art of gentlemanly deportment. One can easily spot a Hampden-Sidney man; he’s usually the one in charge.

The Citadel has been a name synonymous with the ideal of gentlemanly demeanor for over a 160 years, recent unfortunate events notwithstanding. A generation ago cadets went through hours of training in the social graces with Mrs. Dufour, the school’s hostess. Passing the Blue Book’s test of do’s and don’t’s was part of the plebe year rigors.

Let’s not allow our beloved South to lose its reputation for requiring its males to live up to the old-fashioned Code of the Gentleman.

As the VMI Code states, “A gentleman can become what he wills to be.”

Tom Horton

Tom Horton
Reprinted with permission.
(Dr. Thomas B. Horton is a history teacher at Porter-Gaud School. He lives in the Old Village of Mount Pleasant. Visit his Web site at www.historyslostmoments.com)

Here is what I found in the book, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About The South:

Daniel Hindley was a Harvard-trained lawyer from Alabama who wrote on the subject in 1860. He described the Southern Gentleman as having “a natural dignity of manner” and “the utmost self-possession – that much coveted savoir faire, which causes a man to appear perfectly at home, whether it be in a hut or a palace.” He is “remarkably easy and natural, never haughty in appearance, or loud of voice – even when angry rarely raising his voice above the ordinary tone of gentlemanly conversation.”

I like that part about “in a hut or a palace”. It makes the point that being a Southern Gentleman has absolutely nothing to do with wealth. Any Southerner who has paid any attention to such things has met men with dirt and grease under their fingernails and grease-stained cloths, who are truly Southern Gentlemen. At the same time, there are plenty of “wannabes” who think that having money somehow qualifies one as a Southern Gentleman. The only association between Southern Gentleman and wealth is that the qualities that make one a Southern Gentleman are the same qualities of responsibility, duty, and the absolute drive to do what is right, that is valued in any society. In most situations, that translates into a higher salary or other financial compensation.

(The article below may contain spelling or grammatical errors, it is reproduced in its original format)

The Vanishing Gentleman

BY LOUISE COLLIER WILLCOX

AUTHOR OF “THE HUMAN WAY,” “THE ROAD TO JOY”

HE passed very quietly and quickly. One might almost assert that it was accomplished in one generation. The fathers still held a tradition of which the sons were unaware. There was no pomp and circumstance about the end; there was very little lamentation.

Mrs. Comer proclaimed loudly and eagerly the vanishing lady. She raised a pean of praise to the housed, headachy, hampered mid-Victorian type and she saw no good in the candid, athletic, open air, open minded creature who replaced her. But has anyone spoken of the vanishing gentleman? It is said that the bustle and hurry of modern life is the cause of his passing and one must admit that it is in the mart, in the centers of commercialism that one meets his successor. I have conversed with him in his office with his hat on and a cigar in his mouth. I have met him and lunched with him, when he was a representative in Congress, and winked across the table at a confrere when anything amused him. He is short and incisive of speech and definitely prefers bad grammar. In certain localities and grievous to state, from one university, he is capable of sitting in the presence of ladies, with his feet higher than his head. Yes, he even spits! He is the apotheosis of the lowbrow in manners. His speech is wrecked on a false ideal of freedom and ease; his traditions are huddled up under aggression and haste; his manners are sacrificed to a false democracy.

Since the days of Confucius, men have been outlining and defining the gentleman. We have been told that it takes three generations at least to make one. But I have seen two generations of perfect gentlemen produce the up-to-date hoodlum.

There are varying theories as to where a gentleman begins. It used to be the theory that if the heart was right, the manners followed. If I read William James aright, he says that we begin to cry and then are sorry and I know the New-thought prophets say that if you will but persistently smile, you will become happy; ergo, perhaps if you make the manners, the heart will grow right.

There are certain schools, one, at least, in this country and two in England who still lay stress upon all their graduates being gentlemen. Winchester has carven all over it “Manners maketh man.” And of a certain school, in our land, it is said that you can always recognize a representative by the way he apologizes for a mistake or an inadvertency.

Some one asked a Southern gentleman to define the difference between a Northern and a Southern gentleman, “Well,” he said, “the difference is this, one is born in the North and in a different environment, with different traditions, but whatever his thinking and his trappings, the gentleman part of him is just the same as the Southerner’s.” For after all being a gentleman is having a trained heart, just as being a scholar is having a trained mind. There is a hero of fiction whose life maxim was tristem neminem fecit. This type of gentleman may be found in every walk of life. He may load coal or collect pictures for a profession and live in an attic or a palace, but he is trained not to sadden or insult his fellow-sojourner. He may be a college professor or a butler, but at heart he is courtly and selfrestrained. He may be a gentleman because he owes it to other people, or because he feels that he owes it to himself, but he has learned somehow to “go softly.” He is thoughtful because thoughtlessness may do injuries; he is gentle because he knows that he is not alone in the world and that each person in it has a claim to consideration. He has been trained to believe that the world must be kept lovely as well as vigorous. Lafcadio Hearn speaks somewhere of someone who “never did anything which is not—I will not say right, that is commonplace—but beautiful.” This then is the aim of manners, to make life beautiful.

When one unexpectedly runs across a gentleman in an unexpected spot, it comes over one with a rush of pleasure, that a gentleman was after all nearly as wonderful a thing as a lady. Life is more fluid, more colored, freer in his presence. He is not listening for an inadvertence; he is taking his hearer on trust and for granted and he sets him at ease. He wants no advantage and he refrains from bullying or browbeating.

Oddly enough, this definition of a gentleman is some two thousand years old.

“A gentleman has nine aims: to see clearly; to understand what he hears; to be gentle in manner; dignified in bearing; faithful in speech; painstaking at work; to ask when in doubt; in anger to remember difficulties ; in sight of gain to remember right. His modesty escapes insult; his truth gains trust; his earnestness brings success; his kindness is a key to open men’s hearts.”

Tho the species is vanishing, there are still gentlemen in the world, and if the ideal were held aloft and waved there would still be many who would enroll themselves in the order of those who believe in the value of fine manners.

Paul Elmer More has recently made an eloquent plea that there should be a conscious solidarity at the core of the aristocratical class; that class which is capable of finer discriminations into grades of taste and character than exist in untutored nature. Tho he speaks for scholarship and moral and political standards, the result would include the manners also of the Vanishing Gentleman.

Norfolk, Virginia