The cover story of the January/February 2015 issue of The American Conservative titled ‘A Nation of Prisoners’ deals with the high rate of incarceration in the United States. The cover story was yet another opportunity for Washington centered conservatives to remind Southerners of our proper place upon the “stools of everlasting repentance.” The fact at a national “conservative” journal that prides itself in being the organ of record for anti-neocon thought would so easily use the South as America’s “whipping boy” is demonstrative of the South’s subservient position in the Federal Empire. The sad reality is that national conservative wordsmiths do not have the ability to recognize their penmanship for the slanderous and insulting anti-South verbiage that it is. The Federal Empire—a supreme Federal government where, by definition, real States’ Rights do not exist—is their frame of reference. It is the metric by which they judge their world—a world in which “we the people” of the once sovereign states of Dixie are relegated to the role of subjects who must simply pay and obey.
To be fair I must acknowledge that the author of the cover story, most likely, did not set out to insult the South and most “Yankee” educated Southerners would likely not even recognize the implied insults contained therein. This fact does not remove the anti-South insults and slander; it merely demonstrates how effective one hundred and fifty years of Yankee propaganda has been. In modern America it is even difficult for the children of the conquered and occupied nation (the Confederate States of America) to recognize when the sycophants of the Federal Empire are being insulting. No doubt the post Appomattox pacification of Southerners is almost complete but a few of us unreconstructed Southern nationalists still remain.
The author noted that while the incarceration rate is a “nationwide” problem it is a problem “particularly in the South.” A graphic display is used to demonstrate how unfair the South is by displaying the incarceration rates per 100,000 of population for numerous countries—Mexico having 210 while Louisiana has 1,341 and Texas 1,063! And why do you think this is the case? The answer is simple according to the article: “You can’t have centuries of slavery and abject racism that don’t have consequences across generations.” There you have it! Case closed—will all Southerners—i.e. second class Yankees—please resume your assigned positions upon the “stools of everlasting repentance” and thank you very much for your docile cooperation. And by-the-way, don’t forget to go to the polls and vote for Lincoln’s Republican Party during the next election.
The origin of Southern poverty as well as the South’s high incarceration rate has nothing to do with the vestige of slavery and racism but everything to do with the breakdown of traditional families within the South’s black communities. The author interviewed Mark Earley, Virginia’s Republican Attorney General 1998-2001, as part of the article. Mr. Earley suggests that welfare is not the problem because “nations with more lavish welfare states, as in Northern Europe, have radically lower incarceration rates.” He supports the idea of “tying federal grant money” to idealistic reforms. It appears that first they blame the South and then appeal for more Federal money and of course Federal intervention—you have to stop and remind yourself that this is a “conservative” journal.
The Federal Empire’s sycophants have a long history of blaming the South for problems created by the Federal Empire’s agents and foisted upon the defenseless people of the South. The South is blamed for generations of poverty but did the South voluntarily exchange pre-War prosperity for post-War poverty? Did the post-Appomattox state governments in Dixie represent the organic destiny of the Southern people or did it become the puppets of the Federal Empire’s ruling elite in Washington and Wall Street? Did government in post-War Dixie resemble government under the original, constitutionally limited, republic of republics or the government under occupied Vichy France or Quisling’s Norway? Since the War for Southern Independence have Southern resources been used to develop the Southern economy or have they been used to benefit financial interests on Wall Street? The basic point that the article misses is that: It is invasion, conquest, and occupation by an evil empire that have consequences that spans generations! But of course this does not fit the Yankee narrative—a slanderous narrative of slavery and racism down South.
According to the logic implied in the article, the social distresses endured by a conquered nation are the fault, not of the invader, but the fault of the conquered and politically enslaved people. Such is the logic that is required in order to maintain the Federal Empire. Such is the logic that “we the people” of the occupied Confederate States of America must endure as we remain dutifully seated upon the stools of everlasting repentance. As with Jeremiah we can only lament—how much longer must our people suffer?
