“The American Conservative” founders: Scott McConnell, Patrick J. Buchanan, and Taki Theodoracopulos
Back in the “dark ages” I was one of the early subscribers to TAC, probably for most of the reasons that these founders had raised a flag which waved a more truthful and accurate flag of conservatism.
That is, to say, in part, that once-upon-a-time, flag wavers of conservatism such as “The National Review” had become pirates of neoconservative seamanship and cast overboard the true sailors of conservative thought.
Such is the stuff of irony. So, it is the neocons today who wave the Jolly Roger happily and grandiloquently as they praise wars and pass the ammunition. Skull and crossbones with a smile. But none of that Cross of St Andrew trash!
To these founders (and me) it was sink, or swim to the nearest shore and build a new ship. They did and I signed on as a supporter as did many conservatives, many, many being Southerners. Southerners being the truest conservatives (Jeffersonian) as opposed to the (Hamiltonian) Yankees; those being the guys who made fortunes on the African slave trade, of course, and have tortuously from that episode blamed the American South for world-wide slavery since Egypt’s Pharoahs and the Hebrews until and through the Civil Rights acts and activity through the 20th Century .
My credentials were (and are) of a conservative Southerner whose first vote in a federal (NOT national dammit) election was for Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater was politically massacred in the ’64 election but…
In 1981 M.E. Bradford was selected by Ronald Reagan as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He had the support of no less prominent conservatives than Russel Kirk and Forrest McDonald. But he was disdained as a Southerner by neocons such as Norman Podhoretz and William Kristol. Neocon Bob Bennett was selected after Reagan caved. Like Caesar before him and Trump after him, Reagan had his Brutus shadow men (and of course today his shadow women).
The fox (today, Fox) and the hen were in the same house but needed to ally themselves against the weasel who was there. Southern conservatives (natural) and Northen Conservatives (novel) had formed with Republicans (the weasels) as republicans.
Donald Trump recently said that if elected he would have the military bases that had had their names changed from Confederate heroes to something else, changed back from the tweaked cowardice renaming via the neocon Republicans and the ahistorical modern Democrats.
A prevailing notion throughout the grand land of America is that the constant brouhaha down South among many of us regarding monuments and flags and statues is much ado. . . so forth and so on. . . and that neo-confederates (so-called) are living in the past. While not calling myself a neo-confederate (paleo) I certainly live for the past.
Interestingly, most neoconservatives and liberals seem to live in the past, as well. But it is not a curse if they do so, only if Southerners do so. After all, there is a monument to Lincoln and one to Jefferson both of which the Egyptians would be proud of in size and colossally ostentatious grandeur; such for at least one of the two who, by today’s judgment (strangely, it is a prejudgment), didn’t seem to think black lives mattered– at least not in America. And it ain’t what Uncle Remus said, it’s what old “Honest” Abe said.
Lincoln belonged to the American Colonization Society along with other well-known personages: the aforementioned Thomas Jefferson, as well as James Madison, John Marshall and Francis Scott Key to name only a few additional notables.
The ACS of course (if you are readers George W. Bush, Mike Huckabee, Nicky Haly, et al) was the society that wanted to repatriate free Negroes to the continent of Africa. The reasons for this are easily researched but the bottom line is Negroes generally were considered inferior and criminally dangerous. This was not a Southern issue nor a slave issue as approximately ten percent of blacks in the South prior to The War Between the States were free (some of whom owned slaves themselves) and though thought of as somewhat inferior, prior to the war neither apartheid laws (first passed in the North)* nor civil laws against miscegenation were on the books in the South.
This in the light of former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s thrill at having been politically rewarded by the Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling that the city of New Orleans (where a million people turned out for Jefferson Davis’ funeral in 1890) could remove Lee’s statue, P.G.T. Beauregard’s statue and Davis’ (adopter of a black orphan) statue as well.
“There may have been a time when that monument reflected who we were as a city, but times change. And so do we,” Landrieu said.
Now, I do not believe Mayor Landrieu nor do most of those with whom I talk believe him either; though, in fairness (perhaps, though, not in truth) there are many who actually believe him. I suspect that the only lives that mattered to Landrieu wewre voting lives, whether black or white. Just an opinion. Politicians seek votes regardless of race, creed, color, sex or principle.
Pitiful little men like Dick Cheney can figuratively spit on the grave of a supposed friend, Floyd Spence, and George W. Bush can have lackeys sneak around at night and steal property paid for by others and in so doing tell their political friends that conservatism means the Republican party, and Southerners are welcome only if they understand this.
And Mike Huckabee and such ilk can promulgate scholarships for illegal immigrants as an atonement for slavery but disdain their Southern brethren as unrepentant non-scholar (this now seems to be the current Southern Baptist teaching in today’s stagecraft pulpits) racists and still deceive true conservatives into voting for the damnable Republican party.
A 19th century author, famous for his caring for political liberal manners and comportments would see through today’s neoconservative twaddle it would seem.
“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.”
Charles Dickens, 1862
And from the man Republicans and Democrats alike have come to defile:
“Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity. History is not the relation of campaigns and battles and generals or other individuals, but that which shows the principles for which the South contended, and which justified her struggle for those principles. ”
Robert E. Lee
And, finally from a man who has been quoted as often as any and more than most in the political arena with his famous “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” dispatching in a lengthy correspondence with Lee after the war:
“I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic (sic) have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform (sic) would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics (sic). Therefore, I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.” Lord Acton
It is for these reasons that Southerners, honorable conservative minds and mindsets, honor men like Robert E. Lee and offer up Go Fund Me programs to fight for him and in some meager way to thank him.
I hope TAC doesn’t end up in the same graveyard as “The National Review.”
*The Strange Career of Jim Crow: C. Vann Woodward.
Great column, Paul!
Thank you.
Mr. Paul, I enjoy reading your published work at the Abbeville Institute. Excellent piece. I love it when you take shots at such ilk like Half-moon Mitch Landrieu. Southerners, who don’t know their history and/or culture will continue to elect Southernern hating politicians like Rep Steve Scalise.