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Jerry Salyer

Blog

Calhoun, Reagan, and States’ Rights

Not long ago, California governor Gavin Newsom condemned President Trump's nationalization of California's National Guard units, characterizing it as an attempt “to usurp state authority and resources.”  Newsom went on to accuse Trump of “inflaming fear in the community, inciting fear and violence, and endangering state sovereignty.”  While nationalist-leaning conservatives are quick to compare the governor to Jefferson Davis, the…
Jerry Salyer
September 17, 2025
Blog

Puritans, Quakers, and Michel Foucault

Although he is not “one of us,” Southern conservatives can certainly learn something from the eloquent blogger Steve Sailer.  For instance, Sailer recently summarized a new theory from a book which relates the Woke Cult to the North’s two characteristic religious strains:  “Puritans tended to be intense and Quakers nice,” Sailer observes.  “Put them together and you get an intolerant…
Jerry Salyer
January 23, 2025
Blog

[Southern] History Matters

Granted that there is a longstanding tradition of promoting the pro-life cause precisely by appealing to Equality and Human Rights.  At the same time, it is worth remembering that the actual battles of abortion have had at least as much to do with far less fashionable principles such as federalism, constitutional limits, and states' rights.  Through Roe v. Wade, the…
Jerry Salyer
March 21, 2023
Review Posts

Know Dixie, Know America

A review of Conserving America (St. Augustine Press, 2016) by Patrick J. Deneen Man has been created by God in such a way that the larger the object of his love the less directly attached he is to it.  His heart needs particular passions; he needs limited objects for his attraction to keep these firm and enduring … I am…
Jerry Salyer
July 9, 2019
Blog

Dignity and Peace

Catholic and non-Catholic Southerners alike have reason to mourn the loss of Father James Schall, S.J., who passed away shortly before Easter at the age of 91.  As an erudite representative of an older generation, Father Schall preserved for the benefit of the 21st-Century a perspective that has been largely swept away with the many communities and neighborhoods upon which…
Jerry Salyer
May 30, 2019
Blog

Lord Acton: Confederate Sympathizer

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Among Catholic students of political thought, few figures are more liable to provoke vigorous debate than does that famous dictum’s author, Cambridge history lecturer John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, a.k.a., the First Lord Acton, Catholic godfather of classical liberalism. Where Acton’s critics identify classical liberalism as a theory incompatible with the Catholic faith,…
Jerry Salyer
February 20, 2019
Blog

Kentucky’s Confederate Sons

Suffering from a nasty bacterial infection, the insomnia induced by a lamp kept lit in his cell at all hours, and the very real possibility of being hanged by a kangaroo court, Jefferson Davis drew strength during his postbellum imprisonment from a certain slender little volume that was once renowned throughout Christendom – the The Imitation of Christ.  The Imitation…
Jerry Salyer
January 30, 2019
Blog

A Neoconservative Wakes Up

Pro-Southern writers have long been suspicious of Victor Davis Hanson, given his association with the neoconservative ascendance of the Bush II era.   Yet unlike most of his former colleagues, the California classicist seems to have learned something from the dramatic transformations of recent years.  His book Mexifornia marked his enlistment in the unfashionable cause of border control, in part because…
Jerry Salyer
October 31, 2018
Blog

Star Wars and Gone With The Wind

Given that the Star Wars franchise seems to have degenerated into yet another vehicle for the transmission of political-correctness, it seems a little ironic that the newest installment of the series will revolve around the one character with an undeniable connection to the South -- Han Solo.  George Lucas's wisecracking smuggler borrowed some of his best lines from the cynical…
Jerry Salyer
May 25, 2018
Blog

“No Other Gods Before Me.”

From its port side northern Kentucky’s foremost tourist attraction looks exactly like a real vessel, a big one, with a ramp fitted along it to take on animals and supplies.  From bow to stern it is 510 feet long, about as long as a modern missile frigate, and the designers have gone to great lengths to make the structure appear…
Jerry Salyer
November 30, 2017
Blog

Terrorism, Chivalry, and “The Great Compromise”

It is unsurprising that one of the antifa groups that have been making the news lately identifies itself with John Brown, the revolutionary abolitionist who was hanged shortly after leading an attack upon Harper’s Ferry in 1859.  Brown’s career embodies the progressive fixation with being on the ostensibly “right” side of history, and as the attempted massacre of Republican senators…
Jerry Salyer
September 21, 2017