Defending Southern Heritage
a Foundation of American Liberty 

Last year the Southern National Congress (SNC) launched a new communications feature as part of our mandate to provide an honest and effective voice for the Southern States and People. We called this weekly newsletter “We Hold These Truths.” Like thousands of recent visitors to our website, perhaps you’re new to the SNC and haven’t seen our commentary. We had to suspend for a time while we prepared for the Second Congress last fall, handled the many follow-up demands, and then rested from our labours through the holiday season. But now we’re back. All that has happened in the interim persuades me that the voice of the South is needed more than ever. Today we resume publishing -- every Monday, we hope, except for holidays. Our purpose is to offer you a traditionally Southern approach to understanding events and trends that will affect you, our fellow Southerners, for good or for ill. We offer a point of view you simply won’t get from the mainstream media or standard Internet fare.

I hope you recognize where the name of our commentary comes from. But in case you can’t pin it down, here’s a clue:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Yes, it’s the key text from the Declaration of Independence, drafted by a great American and a Southerner, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. As we re-launch our newsletter, we proclaim that we still hold the great truths on which American liberty and independence were once based. I say “once” because it should be clear to anyone not mired in a fatal self-delusion that our freedom and well-being are threatened as never before in our history – and by our own government. Washington, DC, and sorry to say, most State capitals as well, couldn’t care less about your concerns. To them you’re simply sheep for the shearing, mere units of production to be plundered to feed their greed and lust for power.

 Like our forefathers in 1776, we face the tragedy of our own government turning against us, treating us first as subjects rather than citizens, then as enemies, and finally as prey. We Southerners have been among the most loyal and patriotic Americans, but that loyalty has been grossly abused by the increasing folly, corruption, and lawlessness of our leaders, elected and appointed, who have forfeited any moral authority to govern. An authentic Southern voice is suppressed by official acts and a hostile culture. Our elected representatives no longer serve the people but have prostituted themselves to the big corporations and the banking cartel. Our government has degenerated into nothing more than a vast form of organized crime. It hasn’t been a true constitutional republic for many decades. But now it’s no loner even a democracy or rule by the people. It’s what the ancient Greeks called a kakistocracy, which is rule by the worst people. If you’re brave enough to face facts honestly, you have to acknowledge that we now live under a system that’s irretrievably corrupt and broken. Its internal means of self-correction no longer exist. Gangster government can’t be salvaged, only replaced. We’re in the same predicament the Founders were in 1776 when Jefferson wrote the stirring words above.

If you love liberty and justice, what are your choices besides grieving for what has been lost, or acquiescing to the growing tyranny? We in the SNC believe you do have another choice – using a force with enormous potential that all of us possess. It’s scarcely recognized by many who could wield it yet fail to do so, but it’s a social and political force feared by dictators and despots from time immemorial. It’s your refusal; or more precisely, withdrawing your consent from a corrupt Federal government.

The SNC is a vehicle for withdrawing consent. At the same time, we aspire to make it an institution to which we can transfer our allegiance. This is the principle behind the SNC, as it was with the First Continental Congress of 1774, our historical model. Our mission is to create a representative assembly of citizens of the Southern States,* a means to express our grievances and interests in a way no longer possible in today’s corrupt political process. Our goal is to serve as a forum where all pro-South organisations and individuals can work for our liberty and welfare.

By our presence, we demonstrate that you’re not helpless and that the situation is not hopeless. And the SNC will listen, not just talk. We want to know what you think, and I hope you’ll consider contributing to “We Hold These Truths.” The columns don’t have to be long; a page or two will do fine. You may have valuable insights on the crisis of American liberty, on limited government, Southern identity, States' rights and State sovereignty, or even on secession, which many Americans, not just Southerners, are beginning to see as the only solution to Empire. If so, and if you write clearly and persuasively, let me hear from you

Many of the country’s key founding principles came from the South. Our men of that day bowed not before kings, but only before a Sovereign God and His eternal laws that apply to the whole sphere of human existence, including civil government and economics. On this foundation rested their fierce devotion to individual dignity and liberty. To secure that liberty, they formed a small government under just laws, subject to checks and balances, and confining the role of the central state strictly to delegated and enumerated powers. Government was not to be the master but the servant of the people, subject to their will expressed through their respective States. These distinctly Southern principles were the bedrock of the Constitution of 1789. They are the basic truths that the SNC seeks to restore in a time when the Constitution is all but dead, and when the Federal Government is engaged in “…a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evincing a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism.”

I invite you to join us in this great cause, this great adventure. Help us make the SNC into a structure that can “stand in the gap,” an instrumentality that can be used in many ways – in any way that becomes necessary -- to defend our freedom, our property, and our very lives against the criminals who run the central state.

I also invite you to visit our website and read the resolutions passed by the First Congress in December 2008 and the Second Congress in September 2009. I hope you’ll sign the Southern National Covenant and encourage your friends and neighbours to sign it. This historic document stands proudly alongside other great manifestoes in our forefathers’ long fight for freedom and against tyranny, from Magna Carta in 1215 to the present. You’ll be excited by the power and the promise of the Covenant, as well as by our other resolutions. If your heart is with the South, when you read them you’ll be convinced that our stand is not in vain, but will succeed as in other times when brave men and women, trusting in the Author of all liberty, dedicated themselves to the triumph of freedom, justice, and human dignity.

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Thomas Moore is Chairman of the SNC.