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February 2016
The PC Attack on the South
TOPIC: The politically correct assault on Confederate symbols now includes nearly all things Southern. The statue of John C. Calhoun in Charleston was vandalized. Southern founding fathers are rejected because they were slave holders. Universities are removing or renaming buildings, monuments and symbols with links to the pre‑1960s South. Not understanding the world‑inverting character of ideological thinking, many well meaning people seek to appease these militant demands. But they do so at their peril. The Southern vision of society was…
Find out more »June 2016
Abbeville Institute Fourteenth Annual Summer School
“The Southern Tradition and the Renewal of America” St. Christopher Conference Center Seabrook Island, South Carolina June 12-17, 2016 Disordered by the fumes of political correctness, our cultural and political elites are falling over themselves to rid the land of Confederate symbols and monuments. They forget that the South was largely the guiding moral and political force that created the America of 1776-1861. That America was overwhelmed by the brute force of an aggressive sectional Northern nationalism. The new Lincolnian…
Find out more »August 2016
Nullification: A 21st Century Remedy
The general government in Washington D.C. is out of control. All three branches of government are complicit in the destruction of real federalism, what was once considered the cornerstone of the American polity. "States' Rights," in fact, were a recognized fact of the original Constitution, both North and South. As virtually every proponent of the Constitution insisted during the ratification process, the States were to be the pillars of the American federal republic with virtually unlimited power over the domestic concerns of their people. The general government had expressly delegated powers for the general purposes of the Union, namely commerce and defense.
Find out more »July 2017
Fifteenth Abbeville Institute Summer School
ON BEING SOUTHERN IN AN AGE OF RADICALISM St Christopher Conference Center, July 9-14, 2017 Seabrook Island, South Carolina The South has a depth of meaning not available to other regions of the country. It is older than the United States, and for four years it was a nation fighting for its independence. It has known tragedy, greatness, and humility. Having changed, it has yet retained a substantial character. To be Southern does not require being born in the South,…
Find out more »February 2018
Charleston, SC: Attacking Confederate Monuments and Its Meaning for America
Before “political correctness,” Americans respected Confederate memorials. They knew the War was a conflict that went back to the founding fathers and that the secessionist descendants of Jefferson were as much good Americans as the Union descendants of Lincoln. Today, however, our elites are kindling fires to consume not only Confederate symbols but much else besides. A modest plaque with only the words: “In Memory of George Washington” was removed from Christ Church in Alexandria along with an identically styled…
Find out more »July 2018
Sixteenth Annual Abbeville Institute Summer School
Southern Identity Through Music St Christopher Conference Center, July 15-20, 2018 Seabrook Island, South Carolina Music has been described as "the soul of the world embedded in sound." Southern music exemplifies the traditions and culture of its people "embedded in sound." It sprang from the mud, the rivers, the forests, the fields, and the mountains. From the land and place, to religion, folk songs, poverty and defeat, a "new South" and and old culture, the South has a story to…
Find out more »November 2018
The Revival of Secession and State Nullification
TOPIC: The secession of 15 states from the Soviet Union in 1991 was the greatest peaceful revolution in modern history. Secession and decentralist movements are firmly entrenched throughout Europe. Discourse of secession and state interposition to federal tyranny is now mainstream in America on the left and right. Are we witnessing a paradigm shift away from runaway centralization? Join us for a thoughtful discussion of secession and the prospects for decentralization in the United States. FORMAT AND COST: Lectures and…
Find out more »July 2019
Seventeenth Annual Summer School: The New South
TOPIC The War, Reconstruction, and the new status of the South as a conquered colony of the industrial North created something historians call the “New South.” The term suggests a radical break with the past. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Northern elites hoped to transform the South through Yankee immigration, technology, ideas, and money into a Southern version of New England. Southerners struggled with great changes in labor and capital, race relations, manners, religion, education, and with a new vision…
Find out more »June 2020
(EVENT CANCELED) Eighteenth Annual Summer School: Recovering What is Valuable in the Southern Tradition
DUE TO THE COVID-19 AND OUT OF AN ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION, WE HAVE DECIDED TO CANCEL THE 2020 SUMMER SCHOOL ABBEVILLE INSTITUTE EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL SUMMER SCHOOL “Recovering What is Valuable in the Southern Tradition” St. Christopher Conference Center, Seabrook Island, South Carolina June 21-26, 2020 TOPIC. The South was once an independent country. Though conquered, it retained a distinctive identity and was known as “a nation within a nation.” But the American nation that contained it is being hollowed…
Find out more »October 2020
Who Owns America? October 16-17, 2020
TOPIC: “WHO OWNS AMERICA?” The classic manifesto I’ll Take My Stand by Twelve Southerners is 90 years old this year, 2020. When the book was published in 1930 the Depression raged, and American discourse was a combat between corporate capitalism and socialism. For the Southern Agrarians, these alternatives were merely two sides of the same coin—both implying inhuman mass working and living, fallacies of endless progress and bigger is better, and the loss of real culture. The Agrarians proposed a…
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