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Thomas Landess

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The Statue of Liberty is Falling to Pieces, and I’m Glad

I don’t like the thing. I hate what it stands for, and I respect the givers even less than I respect the gift. Most of the problems we face today can be traced to the Statue of Liberty. If we’d just send it back to the French, crime in the streets would disappear, we’d have a surplus in the federal…
Thomas Landess
August 9, 2019
Blog

The Southern Tradition: Twenty Years After Richard Weaver

The image of Richard Weaver that sticks in my memory is a disturbing one. He is standing before an audience in a conference room at Vanderbilt University, his gnome-like features barely rising above the tall, polished oak podium that holds his manuscript. He wears a brown, wrinkled suit, shiny at the elbows; and at midmorning he is already in need…
Thomas Landess
May 3, 2019
Blog

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 was attending the Army Language School, learning Russian, and Phil was playing in the Bing Crosby Pro-Am tournament. His professional partner was Dutch Harrison, a…
Thomas Landess
August 17, 2018
Blog

With Friends Like That…

The recent Klan activities in Forsyth County, Georgia and Summerville, South Carolina make it more and more difficult for those of us who are trying to keep the battle flag flying and Dixie in the repertoire of bands around the region. You saw them on your television screen: angry little clusters of the ignorant, assembled in front of the ravenous…
Thomas Landess
March 29, 2018
Blog

The Real Reason Confederate Symbols are Attacked

This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan Magazine in 1994. By the 1970s, all vestiges of legal discrimination in the South had been eliminated. Indeed, affirmative action programs, minority entitlements, and special considerations in the marketplace have given blacks a solid place at the table of mainstream American life. A new black middle class, driven by the work ethic and…
Thomas Landess
June 22, 2017
Blog

Republican Death Wish

As readers of this column well know, I have never really trusted the Republican Party. Even in 1962, when I first worked actively for a Republican candidate (the late Bill Workman), I saw the arrogance of the Party leadership—its love of money and power, its fine contempt for grassroots beliefs and sensibilities. Over the years I have come to understand…
Thomas Landess
April 6, 2017
Blog

Supping with Norman Lear

Editor's note: Norman Lear's People for the American Way recently made a lot of noise about Donald Trump's "hate speech." Not much has changed in twenty years. This piece was originally published in in First Quarter, 1995 issue of Southern Partisan magazine. The Associated Press reports that 17 groups, all combatants in the "culture war," have come together and agreed…
Thomas Landess
November 7, 2016
Blog

Freedom and More Freedom

Several years ago a friend of mine, head of the Education Department at a Southern university, came reeling back from a visit to New York City schools, eyes glazed. It seems that she had seen two things while on her trip that still haunted her memory. First she discovered teachers up there who were actually conducting their classes from cages…
Thomas Landess
September 5, 2016
Review Posts

The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln

By way of prologue, let me say that all of us like the Lincoln whose face appears on the penny. He is the Lincoln of myth: kindly, hum­ble, a man of sorrows who believes in malice toward none and char­ity toward all, who simply wants to preserve the Union so that we can all live together as one people. The…
Thomas Landess
December 10, 2015
Review Posts

Fugitive Agrarians

I’ll Take My Stand, the classic statement of Southern Agrarianism, was first published in 1930. Since that time, it has never been out of print. You have to ask yourself why people have continued to read it. There are several good reasons why they shouldn’t. It’s a quirky book. The 12 essays—written by men of varying backgrounds and talents—are uneven…
Thomas Landess
April 3, 2014
Blog

Four Puzzles

Washington, where I have been living for the past six months, is an intriguing city in at least two meanings of the word. Let’s take care of the more sinister meaning first. You can’t step into a Washington elevator without hearing a conversation suddenly die. You move to the rear, smile, and stare straight ahead as the two intriguers look…
Thomas Landess
January 1, 1970