Southern Populism and the South’s Agrarian Identity
In what passes for political and cultural discourse today, the term “populist” is something of a pejorative, conjuring up images in the mind of the cultural and academic elite of dangerous folks with pitchforks and… »
Where the Grapes of Wrath are Stored
This essay was presented at our 2019 Summer School on the New South. Fundamentalism is often viewed as the most Southern of religions. Yet this is not so. It was an alien seed planted in… »
The Limits of a Politics of Tolerance
Secession, nullification, and interposition, like the poor, we shall always have with us. These are as American, indeed more American, than apple pie and baseball. Our new federal union, outlined in the Constitution written at… »
John Randolph of Roanoke and the Formation of a Southern Conservatism
One of the great issues of American political history is whether an authentic American conservatism exists. This is a crucial question for Southerners, as the South is historically viewed as the most conservative of the… »
Modern Monetary Theory: A Jeffersonian Critique
The chattering class’ newest obsession, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has seized the policy initiative from the Democratic Party’s geriatrics by promoting a “Green New Deal.” T’is clever branding to combine left-wing eco virtue signaling with FDR’s version… »
Contested Ground: Southern Identity and the Southern Tradition
In the popular imagination the South is viewed as a region typified by racism, poverty, and ignorance save a few special islands, such as Chapel Hill and Charlotte, which lay in the archipelago of enlightenment. … »
Hamilton on Steroids
“The revenue of the state is the state.” Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution Washington D. C. finds itself in the midst of an entertaining, nay consuming, Kabuki theatre. The federal government has “shut… »
Catholics’ Lost Cause
A review of Catholics’ Lost Cause: South Carolina Catholics and the American South, 1820-1861 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018) by Adam L. Tate Some thirty odd years ago, scholars began to peer into the… »
