I hope Grandfather fed them wellFrom out his meager store of cornOr fodder pulled by Mother‘Neath a blazing autumn sun–So hot sometimes she saidThat she and sister sickenedTo the vomit…
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I am not from where I live, yet I have a deep fear that where I live won’t be where I live for very much longer. The god of progress…
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
From the 2020 Abbeville Institute conference on “Who Owns America?” October 16-17, 2020 in Charleston, SC.
Edited by Robert Hoyle. A Discourse delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hampden-Sydney College, June 15, 1882, before the Philanthropic and Union Literary Societies.[1] Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and…
The chief conflict in American history was and remains the conflict between the center and the periphery. Geographically, this conflict plays out as a powerful antagonism between the large, urbanized,…
It is not often enough, but I do set aside blocks of time to express gratitude to God for all the many blessings He has bestowed on me in my…
Not long after I moved my family to Bangkok, Thailand — where we lived for three years — I happened to be walking through a park with an environmental specialist…
Travel writing about the American South is a genre of its own. One such observer was Henry Miller, who traveled through the South in 1941. Miller was born in 1891…
“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land, doesn’t mean anything to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth workin’ for,…
Have any of you all heard about the film, “General Orders No. 9” ? It’s a visual & musical tone poem—an experimental film which appeared in 2011. The filmmaker, Robert…
I was raised in one of the poorest counties in North West Arkansas, where my ancestors settled in the 1850s and scratched a living out of poor, rocky hillsides. They…
In Memory of Dr. Neil Compton, Arkansas Hero, 1912-1999 Neil Compton of Bentonville, Arkansas, my beloved hometown, stands as a paragon of civic virtue. Born in Falling Springs, western Benton…
Part of the blood that flows through the veins of the Southern ethnos is French blood, both of the high-born that settled in places like New Orleans and the plainer…
In Ideas Have Consequences (1948), Richard Weaver described comfort as the god of modern man. Even in our post-modern times, mass man continues to kneel at the altar of comfort…
“Where you gonna be when half of California riots? Where you gonna run to when the lights go out? I won’t be hangin’ out in California, I won’t try it….
A review of The Hobbit Party: The Vision of Freedom That Tolkien Got, and the West Forgot (Ignatius Press, 2014), by Jonathan Witt and Jay W. Richards. Russell Kirk often…
A review of Who Owns America? A New Declaration of Independence (ISI Books, 1999) edited by Herbert Agar and Allen Tate In graduate school, I was assigned by the resident…
I started my political journey on what I thought to be the Left. Books like Klein’s The Shock Doctrine resonated with me, as did films like American Beauty and Revolutionary…
A review of Burden of Dependency: Colonial Themes in Southern Economic Thought (Johns Hopkins, 1992) by Joseph Persky An Under-Appreciated Book In 1973, the young economist Joseph J. Persky wrote…
A review of Wendell Berry: Port William Novels and Stories (Library of America, 2018), Jack Shoemaker, ed. The long shelf of fiction by Wendell Berry—overshadowed by the colossal green canopy…
George Mason, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, was happiest at home, either in the fields and woods, with a good book by the hearth, or entertaining neighbors and family. …
A review of The Southern Tradition: The Achievements and Limitations of Southern Conservatism (Harvard, 1994) by Eugene Genovese The notion of a Southern political tradition can be understood as conservative,…
In I Kings 21, we see that Naboth did not feel that he had the right to sell the family land no matter how much money King Ahab offered. The…
A review of How To Be a Conservative (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2015), by Sir Roger Scruton. It is highly unusual for any political leader to articulate any sort of learned political…
Genetically engineered crops have been grown in large numbers across the States since 1996. These genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are created by taking a gene (or genes) from an unrelated…
For all of the pontificating of the virtues of the South, we have increasingly seen our agrarian landscape polluted by strip malls and environmental contamination. I make the case that…
A review of Andrew Durnford, A Black Sugar Planter in the Antebellum South by David O. Whitten, (Transaction Publishers, 1995). I In the year 1800 the Viceroyalty of New Spain was…
A review of Taking Root: The Nature Writing of William and Adam Summer of Pomaria by James Kibler (editor) and Wendell Berry (Foreword) (University of South Carolina Press, 2017). Perhaps…
Having traveled in all fifty states, I must admit there are certain areas of this great country that continue to draw me back, time and again, to enjoy their natural…
Jimmy Carter may have been the last Jeffersonian to be president. A recent article in the Washington Post labeled him the “Un-Celebrity President.” In either case, Carter is a reflection of…
They were standing at the ledge. Their view mirrored a panorama of buildings and smoke stacks. Great edifices, heaving asymmetrically, skewed with monster cylinders venting plumes of expended energy. The…
Mel Bradford has argued that no individual has exerted more influence upon the development of a profession of letters this century in the South than Donald Davidson. The poet, essayist,…
When William Jennings Bryan died in 1925, H.L. Mencken wrote a scathing eulogy stating: “There was something peculiarly fitting in the fact that [Bryan’s] last days were spent in a…
If you travel I-20 east from Jackson, Mississippi, somewhere about 20 miles short of Meridian you’ll see a sign: Hickory Exit. This sign is one almost ad infinitum of green…
When I was very young, I recall my father telling me of George “No-Show” Jones, a country music legend. The moniker, I was told, was given after Jones failed to…
“The modern man has lost his sense of vocation.” “A Statement of Principles,” I’ll Take My Stand “One wonders what the authors of our Constitution would have thought of that…
I have made a discovery. There does, indeed, exist a place where nobody wants to leave. It is possible to breathe there without worrying about what you are inhaling. This…
Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the, symposium I’ll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive…
William S. Belko, Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America: An Old Republican in King Andrew’s Court (The University of Alabama Press, 2016). Sometimes a professional historian gets it right. William…
This essay was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. It occurred to me today that one of the nice things about not having much money is that I don’t have…
Omitting minor points of difference, it may be said that “the difference between the old Democrat and Whig parties” was the same as that which separated the schools of Jefferson…
Reprinted from The Deliberate Agrarian. Part I and Part II Back in August of last year my oldest son was telling me about the Duck Dynasty television show. He said…
Editor’s note: This piece was originally printed as an unsigned piece in DeBow’s Review in 1866. The author had already recognized that the deal struck between Midwestern farmers and Northeastern…
Reprinted from The Deliberate Agrarian. We are not called to be slaves. In My Previous Blog Post I wrote about the family economy and posted Returning To The Family Economy, a chapter from a…
This essay was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. In my previous blog post I mentioned Allan C. Carlson’s soon-to-be-published book, The Natural Family Where It Belongs: New Agrarian Essays,…
Of the twelve agrarians who wrote the symposium I’ll Take My Stand, only three are alive: Robert Penn Warren, the poet and novelist, Lyle Lanier, a psychologist and former executive…
General Lee was a soldier and leader of men, not a politician. Although several of his decisions as soldier had an important political impact in American history, he seldom discussed…
This essay was published as a new introduction for Lytle’s Bedford Forrest and His Critter Company and is published here in honor of Forrest’s birthday, July 13. This is a…
The one consolation of the Antifederalist persuasion is telling everyone you meet “I told you so.” Granted, this does not go down well in most circles, be they progressive, socialist,…
This essay was originally published in Louis D. Rubin, Jr., The American South: Portrait of a Culture, 1979, 27-37. In 1928, an unusually far-sighted southerner named Broadus Mitchell pondered the implications…
This essay was originally printed at The Imaginative Conservative. Among the contributions to I’ll Take My Stand, Allen Tate’s “Remarks on the Southern Religion” is usually interpreted as the most…
This post was originally published at The Deliberate Agrarian. The original strength of our American republic was found in the ability to supply our own needs. That is the very…
Over time a man, if he is perceptive, comes to certain conclusions. The most startling is that the greatest truths were spoken to him throughout his life by ordinary men,…
A Review of A Plague on Both Your Houses, by Robert W. Whitaker. New York: Robert B. Luce, 1976, 208 pages. Hardly anyone has commented upon the seeming disappearance from…
This essay was published in Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I’ll Take My Stand, edited by Clyde Wilson, 1981. When…
Recent attempts made by the left and the right to make Pope Francis one of “their” own has sparked considerable debate among the political class and their voices in the…
At the farmer’s market on Saturday morning a question often expressed is, “are you an organic farm?” It’s encouraging and admirable that the standards by which food is grown is…
Now that a third Reconstruction is very much underway in the South, it is more needful than ever to know and understand her history and her ways of living. Thankfully,…
Your other lecturers have pleasant and upbeat subjects to consider. I am stuck with economics, which is a notoriously dreary subject. It is even more of a downer when we…
One of America’s most successful diplomats of the 20th century, was Horace C. Holmes, who spent over 30 years in the diplomatic service. Most of that time was spent in…
This piece was originally printed in Southern Partisan magazine in 1986. Some miles beyond Charlotte Court House, in Southside Virginia, one may find his way to Roanoke Plantation, which seems…
This essay served as the introduction to Why the South Will Survive(University of Georgia Press, 1981). OF THE MAKING of books about the South there is no end. This one…
An address delivered on August 10, 1950, before the annual reunion of the Weaver family. Everybody admits, I believe, that the most difficult people of all for a man to…
Henry Timrod, the greatest Southern poet next to Edgar Allan Poe, the “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy,” died during Reconstruction in 1867 at the young age of 38. Dr. James…
What exactly makes the South, the South? Hosts of scholars have puzzled mightily over this one. Historians might point to the old Confederacy, human geographers might look for the proliferation…
It has been fifty-seven years since the Weaverville, North Carolina native Richard Weaver (1910-1963) published an article in Modern Age titled Up From Liberalism (Fall-Winter 1957-8, Vol. 3, No. 1,…
Coal miners have their canaries; we have colinus virginiánus, the bobwhite quail. Like the canary that goes silent as the oxygen levels in a mine drop, so too has the…
I have called M.E. Bradford the Agrarian Aquinas. He did not write a Summa, but his work as a whole enriched and carried into new territory the message of I’ll…
States’ rights may have been the defining force in Antebellum America, but modern, mainstream historians would have you believe that they were nothing more than a wicked creed cooked up…
Part V of a Five Part Series. Part I, II, III, and IV. 1. Taylor as a Liberal “Individualist” Taylor writes that society not made up of individuals is a…
Geologists say Earth’s clay is dust of star. That I believe But not from science chart or learned formulae. Dwarf iris prove it. Blue aster and blue gentian too, Sky-coloured…
Cold metal arms, skeletal, sepulchral, Reaching upwards, grasping. Devil’s towers topped with devil’s claws, Tearing the creation – earth and sky, Wind and water, what is seen, what is not….
Originally published at the Jenny Jack Sun Farm blog, August 2014. The old man in the long Lincoln Town Car died yesterday. Perry Gene Williams visited the farm nearly every…
If you were to conjure up an image in your head of an exploitive, money-grubbing industrialist with no regards for pollution or conservation, and I’ll bet a Yankee pops into…
When I first heard of the topic “Small is Beautiful,” I thought of the wonderful motto of Chilton Williamson’s friend Edward Abbey: “Growth is the Enemy of Progress.” Abbey went…
The fall vegetable garden is a delight in the Mid-South. The greens and reds are vivid. Fresh lettuce and beans will grace the table until the first heavy frosts; perhaps…
This morning the farm looked especially inviting, like a photographed far off place meant to attract the soul seeking solace. A diffused, soft light blanketed everything and sound limited itself…
Dislocation brings with it a multiplicity of dissonance. Moving disrupts the consonance of time and place, of family, friends, parish, and all the landmarks and milestones that speak to us…
The Callaway Gardens visitors center in Pine Mountain, Georgia shows a film explaining the history of the Callaway family, their conservation efforts, and the Gardens itself. At one point, the…
Although I’m not a mountain man, and I would never dare call myself smart enough to be a farmer, I do live on a farm back in the woods of…
It feels good to be outside alongside Mother Nature as she greens, casually, lovingly transforming from those calloused, wobbly, winter-time ways into something indescribably perfect. April in Pine Mountain makes…
A phenomenon that has always intrigued me is how certain books achieved importance not because of their literary merit or substance but because they accommodated the political trends of the…
The consummation of farming year number six arrived abruptly, almost automatic like the next breath. The ease of external inhalation and exhalation mask a clandestine, internal arrangement intimately crafted and…
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