The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, Jan 1-Dec 31 2017. Topics: Year in review, the Southern tradition https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-102
Brion McClanahanDecember 23, 2017
Well, the old mill closed down on us Tuesday night at 6 P.M. for the rest of the week, so as to give us a holiday for Christmas, which came this year on December 25th inst. And so when I came out of the shop and started home it was sunset, and all back to the west was the prettiest…
Clinton Martin BissellDecember 22, 2017
Reading on the Abbeville site articles about the South and the West, I was reminded of my newspaper piece on Florida as the Wild Wild (South) East, which had a popular run. It was inspired by a Frederic Remington article describing his adventures in Florida with cowboys in the 1880s. Our county (Marion, named for Gen. Francis Marion) was as…
Joscelyn DunlopDecember 21, 2017
The Setting Postcolonial studies have been all the rage for many decades. A great number of contributors to the field have come from India and their work wrestles (in part) with the socio-psychological situation of Indian bureaucrats in the British Raj. These functionaries were, after all, Indians of some kind working for His Majesty’s Government – not the one in…
Joseph R. StrombergDecember 20, 2017
A review of Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution by Harry Jafffa, (Regnery, 1994). When Professor Harry Jaffa, in his new book Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution: A Disputed Question, refers to Abraham Lincoln as the “greatest interpreter of the Founding Fathers,” one must wonder whose Founding Fathers he has in mind. From the outset…
William J. WatkinsDecember 19, 2017
Fred Douglas Young, Richard M. Weaver, 1910-1963: A Life of the Mind. University of Missouri Press, 1995. 217; Joseph Scotchie, editor, The Vision of Richard Weaver. Transaction Publishers, 1995. Early in the fall of 1939, while driving over "the monotonous prairies of Texas" to begin a third dismal year at Texas A & M with its "rampant philistinism, abetted by…
David MiddletonDecember 18, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 11-15, 2017 Topics: Southern culture, George Mason, original intent, political correctness, the War. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-101
Brion McClanahanDecember 16, 2017
A bit of free verse to address our current situation, which is probably not as good as I think it is. It marshals various lines from Donald Davidson’s poems. As Faulkner said, all of us writers are really only failed poets. You, Mel Bradford, told Of remembering who we are. A time has come When answers will not wait. But…
Clyde WilsonDecember 15, 2017
At the Battle of Nashville, on 16 December 1864, the Tennessean’s brigade, fought valiantly, but Brigadier General Thomas Benton Smith soon found himself surrounded on three sides by Federal troops. A bullet had pierced the skull of Colonel William M. Shy, the commander of Smith’s original regiment, the 20th Tennessee Infantry. He had fallen, fighting to the last, and holding…
Jeff WolvertonDecember 14, 2017
‘Just a post, just a post, just a post on a blog, just a post, just a post, and the war has begun’ (To the tune of “Sloth,” Fairport Convention, ca. 1978) General Uncivil Background Blessed as we are -- so the economists say (they never lie) -– with relentless, inescapable digital bother and cyber-mania, any one of us might…
Joseph R. StrombergDecember 13, 2017
A review of The World They Made Together, Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia, by Mechal Sobel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1987 I In America, in 1607 the first successful British settlement began in a land they called Virginia. Within a few decades another people began arriving, taken from their homes in Africa. Both peoples arrived…
Vito MussomeliDecember 12, 2017
Every fact bearing upon the character and service of the statesmen whose genius created a model form of human government should receive a warm greeting from those who are proud of the growth, progress, and prosperity of the republic. The harmonious working of the component parts which enter into the life of the country is to-day the result of the…
Fitzhugh LeeDecember 11, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, December 4-8, 2017 Topic: Special Interview with the President of the Abbeville Institute, Don Livingston https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-100
Brion McClanahanDecember 9, 2017
Upon the Painting by Paul Davis of the Statue of a Young Confederate Soldier —on the cover of The Fugitive Poets: Modern Southern Poetry in Perspective (William Pratt, editor, 1965)— in honor of Clyde Wilson The cover holds us from the poems within, This young Confederate Davis captured here, A private guarding gates at two removes, This painting of a…
David MiddletonDecember 8, 2017
A July 2017 article from Buzzfeed.com, the hallmark of all popular wisdom of our time, was entitled, “15 Things You'll Understand If You've Ever Eaten At A White Friend's House.” In the article, a series of snarky memes and illustrative pictures were meant to communicate the idea that “white people” don’t know anything about “spicing up” their food. In other…
David HarrisDecember 7, 2017
With the election of Rutherford B. Hayes by a one vote margin in the Electoral College, the Compromise of 1877 ended the era of Reconstruction in the minds of the people. As Southern States were re-admitted into the Union, Federal troops stood down or returned to the North. From about 1885 to 1924, before and after the 50th Anniversary of…
Cliff PageDecember 6, 2017
A review of Gettysburg Rebels: Five Native Sons Who Came Home To Fight As Confederate Soldiers, by Tom McMillan, Regnery, 2017. In 1912, the renowned publisher of books on The War for Sothern Independence, Neale Publishing Company of New York, released Fighting by Southern Federals, written by Charles C. Anderson. He argued that more than 600,000 Southerners fought for the…
Bill PotterDecember 5, 2017
There is an old saying in the theater that when one is acting the part of a butler in a play, the actor tends to regard it as a play about butlers. This manner of observing personages and events, both past and present is, of course, a sad fact of life within many levels of modern society. All too often,…
John MarquardtDecember 4, 2017
The Week in Review at the Abbeville Institute, November 27-December 1, 2017. Topics: the War, slavery, secession, war crimes, Southern literature, political correctness. https://soundcloud.com/the-abbeville-institute/episode-99
Brion McClanahanDecember 2, 2017
After the rousing success of Kansas University’s redesigned football uniforms in honor of Jennison’s Jay-hawkers of 1861, a competing Kansas university also recently unveiled a special-edition football uniform in commemoration of the atrocities of that bloody time. Planned for an upcoming series of games, the uniform features blue pants with yellow stripe and bloodied saber, and a blue jersey styled…
Lewis LibermanDecember 1, 2017
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