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Mark A
Thomey, SNC Vice-Chairman
Since the founding of the original American Republic in
the late eighteenth century, Southerners have always
been ardent patriots and practitioners of a great
martial tradition. As the old saying goes, the move for
secession and independence from the British Empire may
have begun in the northern Colonies, but it was
supported and won by the Southern Colonies. Had it not
been for hard fighting Southerners at Cowpens, Kings
Mountain, and Yorktown, the Union Jack might still be
flying over most of North America today.
However, the preceding commentary
begs the questions: What was the meaning of patriotism
to our Southern forebears? What was so dear to them
about this fundamental principle that legions of them
were willing to answer the call to arms and give their
lives for it?
The beginning of the answer lies, as
should any serious analysis of language, in the true
meaning of the word itself. The English word
‘patriotism’ comes to us from the Latin word ‘patria’,
which means fatherland, ones native country, homeland.
It is also associated with the Latin word ‘patrius’,
which means handed down from one’s forefathers. As you
can see, the Latin roots of our English word make the
notions of family and immediate proximity explicit in
patriotism’s true meaning, and that is how our Southern
ancestors understood it.
True patriotism is a healthy love of
one’s family, the place where you were born and raised,
and the people, culture, and ideals contained, nurtured,
and lived there. This understanding of patriotism is in
harmony with God’s created order. It is natural that our
strongest and most enduring affections should be for the
people and things closest to us, and that those
affections should diminish with distance and
unfamiliarity. We live with and love the family into
which we were born. We make friends with, and fall in
love with and marry, our neighbors. We farm, hunt, fish,
and explore the countryside where we live. Its features
and creatures become a part of us, and eventually we’re
buried beneath it. Everything that flows from this
fountainhead forms and sustains the culture, society,
principles, and worldview of our unique place on earth.
This is what binds a people and a place together so
intimately and strongly that they will work together to
nurture it, bequeath it to their children, and, if
necessary, die defending it from destruction. This is
quintessential Southern patriotism.
With this understanding of the word,
and a little reflection on Southern history, it should
be abundantly clear why the Southern People stood,
fought, and died for their homeland and their
inheritance in the 1860’s. True patriotism compelled
them to do so. Like the brave Leonidas and his heroic
Spartans at Thermopylae, our ancestors did not die for
far-off, abstract ideas like democracy, or financial
prosperity, or ‘the union’, or empire. As the actor who
portrayed General Armistead in the movie Gettysburg
said just before beginning Pickett’s Charge,
‘Virginians! For your lands, for your homes, for your
sweethearts, for your wives, for Virginia! Forward…
March!’ Sadly, since Lee’s surrender at Appomattox,
and the ascendancy of the centralized, unitary state in
Washington, D.C., the healthy, natural idea of
patriotism has been supplanted by a virulent, marxist
form of nationalism. Nationalism is the antithesis of
patriotism, as it turns the latter upside down and
backwards.
Think of the hierarchy of affections
and loyalties that the modern u. s. regime demands of it
subjects. Ultimate allegiance must be given to the
central state, i.e. the federal government and those
‘elected’ to administer it, and this idea is reinforced
by the daily recitation of a marxist ‘pledge of
allegiance’ in the government (public) schools. The
minions of the central government, and their accomplices
in the media, continually reiterate that the solutions
to ALL of our problems lie in Washington, D.C. There is
a saying that all politics is local, yet we are
subjected to a constant display of lobbying trips to,
shameless begging of, and acquiescence to, the federal
regime by our local and State politicians. We are
programmed to think of ‘the nation’ first. God, family,
home; those are secondary considerations, if they’re
considered at all.
Worse yet, this convoluted thinking
begets a haughty and condescending attitude towards
other peoples, their cultures, and their homelands. It
is displayed in phrases like, ‘America is a shining city
on a hill’, ‘we must make the world safe for democracy’,
‘the united States is the greatest country in the
history of the world’, and the like. Comments like these
necessarily imply that all other peoples are lesser
beings than we, and that it is our sacred duty to make
all of them be just like us – whether they want to or
not. Therefore, following this so-called logic,
imperialism and its associated foreign military
interventions, are the next natural steps in the
progression. Consequently, the u. s. regime has been
‘exporting democracy’ to the benighted, foreign masses
by bombast, bombs, and bullets for well over a century.
This attitude is neatly encapsulated in a scene from the
Vietnam War movie, Full Metal Jacket. A very New
England sounding Colonel chews out an enlisted man
during the Tet Offensive, telling him, among other
things, that, ‘We are here to help the Vietnamese,
because inside every gook, there’s an American trying to
get out!’
And all of the preceding leads me to
my final point. Too many of we Southrons, because of our
proud martial tradition, our having been placed upon the
stools of everlasting repentance for our ‘rebellious’
ancestors of the 1860’s, our brainwashing in the
government schools, and our consequent desire to prove
what ‘loyal Americans’ we are, have forsaken our healthy
and true patriotism for marxist, yankee nationalism. Too
many of us have turned our backs on our kin, our kind,
our beloved Southern homeland, and our principles of
liberty and self-government. Our Southern sons and
daughters are not fighting for the cause of freedom and
rights here at home, or for the liberation of the
oppressed abroad, so much as they are fighting and
dieing for the greed and power of the central bankers
and international corporations who own and control the
u. s. regime and direct its policies. This makes them no
more than hirelings – paid mercenaries – in the imperial
forces of our conquerors, and all of the spin and
propaganda of the regime to the contrary can not change
this truth. We have become what we once despised and
abjured.
But for a Christian people, hope springs
eternal. We can throw off the mentality and the regime
of our yankee conquerors. All that is required is the
individual and collective will of the Southern People to
return to the principles of their ancestors, to return
to a true and healthy Southern patriotism. Let us not
follow the example of our Scot and Irish forebears under
their British occupiers. We Southrons must no longer be
willing to go to far away places, and to fight and die
for everyone else’s liberty and independence but our
own. Friends don’t let friends join the yankee army. The
only people’s liberty for whom we Southrons should fight
is ours! May God grant us a name and place among the
nations of the earth – and soon!
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Mark A Thomey is the SNC
Vice-Chairman
Also See:
What is
States’ Rights? Part 2 |