Sayings By or For Southerners, Part XXVI

By February 24, 2016Blog

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A friend’s encounter with a clergyman:  His mission, he says, is Social Justice.  Our South Carolina governor, when she removed the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds, had “a Jesus moment,” a Divine Revelation of Social Justice.  He hopes that  others will have such a Moment.  What impressed me most about this leader of the faith was not the arrogant complacency but the sheer stupidity.   –Clyde Wilson

I did not believe more than I ever had, that the nation would unite indefinitely behind any Southerner.  One reason the country could not rally behind a Southern president, I was convinced, was that the metropolitan press of the Eastern Seaboard would never permit it.  My experience in office had confirmed this reaction.  I was not thinking just of the derisive articles about my style, my clothes, my manner, my accent, and my family—although I admit I received enough of that kind of treatment in my first few months as President to last a lifetime.  I was also thinking of a more deep-seated and far-reaching attitude—a disdain for the South that seems to be woven into the fabric of Northern experience.  This is a subject that deserves a more profound explanation than I can give it here—a subject that has never been sufficiently examined.      –President Lyndon B. Johnson

My message to Christians:  You can wimp, but you can’t hide.     –Peter Brimelow

Even the dullest consumer has got the point that no matter how he casts his vote for president or Congress, his interests will never been represented because the oligarchy serves only itself . . . they are happier with the way things are . . . .          –Gore Vidal

The destiny of Europe and Asia has not been committed, under God, to the keeping of the United States;  and  only conceit, dreams of grandeur, vain imaginings, lust for power, or a desire to escape from our domestic perils and obligations could possibly make us suppose that Providence has appointed us his chosen people for the pacification of the earth.   –Charles A. Beard

There is nothing like being powerful and feared to cause enemies with malicious intentions to spring up on every side.    –Arturo Perez-Reverte

We intend to fight the Yankees to the last drop of bourbon.  –Character in “The Big Clock”

The South is a garden.  It has been worn out by the War, Reconstruction, the Period of Desolation, the Depression and the worst ravages of all—Modernity;  yet, a worn-out garden, its contours perceived by keen eyes, the fruitfulness of its past stored in memory, can be over time, a time which will last no longer than those of us who initially set our minds to the task, restored, to once again produce, for the time appointed unto it, the fruits which nurture the human spirit and which foreshadow the Garden of which there will be no end.    Dr Robert M. Peters of Louisiana


Clyde Wilson

Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina where he was the editor of the multivolume The Papers of John C. Calhoun. He is the M.E. Bradford Distinguished Chair at the Abbeville Institute. He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews and is co-publisher of www.shotwellpublishing.com, a source  for unreconstructed Southern books.

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