What Are People For?
A review of What Are People For? by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1990) “We should love life,” Dostoyevski once said, “more than the idea of life.” It is this concreteness, this rootedness, that seemingly… »
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Podcast Episode 134
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 13-17, 2018. Topics: Reconciliation, Southern music, Southern culture, agrarianism, Ronnie Van Zant, Wendell Berry
Podcast Episode 134
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 13-17, 2018. Topics: Reconciliation, Southern music, Southern culture, agrarianism, Ronnie Van Zant, Wendell Berry
End of an Era
I was saddened to hear that Phil Harris had died. I knew the man. You might say we were old friends. As a matter of fact, we first met in 1954 in Monterey, California. I… »
The Sounds of the Mississippi Delta and Appalachia
Because we live in such a hurried time, we hear countless “noises” but have little time to appreciate the actual “sounds.” Sound is a sensation that you can feel, not just something you can hear.… »
Anything Is Nice If It Come From Dixieland
In October 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the executive mansion. This was an unprecedented move. No African-American had ever been asked to dine with the president, and while neither… »
What Are People For?
A review of What Are People For? by Wendell Berry (North Point Press, 1990) “We should love life,” Dostoyevski once said, “more than the idea of life.” It is this concreteness, this rootedness, that seemingly… »
The Southern Muse of Ronnie Van Zant
The 1970’s were an interesting time in the South. The 1970’s were the last time Southerners could be Southern without feeling the need to apologize for, or be ironic about, their Southern identity. In fact,… »
Podcast Episode 133
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, August 6-10, 2018 Topics: the War, Political Correctness, Neoconservatives, Reconstruction, Southern Culture, Southern Literature.
The Southern Saga
In the book The Mystery of the Wonder-Worker of Ostrog, the main character, Mladjen, a fictional representation of the modern Serb uprooted from his traditions by the lingering effects of Communism (who is very much… »
Causes of the “Civil War”
In a PBS interview seven years ago historian and Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust identified slavery as the cause of the Civil War. “Historians are pretty united on the cause of the Civil War being slavery,”… »
Southward Returning/Sanctuary
Southward Returning To you, Virginia, Tennessee, To Georgia’s red roads, to the past That binds the delta and the sea, Your Southern sons return at last. No more the always going forth From ruin and… »
The Power of Memory: How to Remember America’s Most Traumatic Crisis
A review of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory by David Blight (Harvard University Press, 2001). In Race and Reunion, historian David Blight recounts the first fifty years after the Civil War in order… »
The Death of Historical Accuracy
In case you haven’t heard, there is a new “conservative” film out; it is titled “Death of a Nation: Can We Save America a Second Time?” It’s director and screenwriter is Dinesh D’Souza, the somewhat… »
