Polite Kid

March 2 this year will mark 175 years since Texans declared their independence from Mexico, and founded the Republic of Texas.
At the link, you can read the entire Declaration, and note its parallels to today's situation.
''When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.''
The declaration was written hastily, as the Lone Star Junction article indicates, because the Alamo was under siege at the time. The document is credited to a committee of writers, but it is generally thought that most of it came from the pen of George Childress.
I feel the need to call attention to the fact, mentioned in the Declaration just after the section I excerpted above, that the Anglo-American colonists were invited to settle in Texas. They did not 'invade' or 'steal' anything from Mexico, despite what people today claim or ignorantly believe. The writers of the Declaration note, too, that the colonists were promised the same degree of liberty they had enjoyed as American citizens, and they were promised they would live under a republican government. Of course these promises were not kept.
Towards the end, the writers say
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.
The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.''
I hope that today's generations, like our forefathers, recognize that self-preservation is indeed the first law of nature. Many today seem never to have thought about that most primal need.

Labels: American Heritage, American History, Self-Determination, Sovereignty, Texas History

...just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo! - Mark Twain
On the other hand, Twain also said "A gentleman is a man who can play the banjo, but doesn't."
Still, I am a partisan of banjo music; readers of this blog will know that I love old-time string-band music and its offspring, bluegrass.
So, over at Winston Smith's Blog, I was delighted to see that he has a post on building a fretless mountain banjo.
Now, I am not looking to build a banjo but I love to read about how craftsmen build these things. Back in simpler times when music was something that was often homemade, not something you bought in a store and consumed passively, people knew how to make instruments with which they made their music. It is good to know that it is not a forgotten art everywhere.
I think of the humble "banjer" as a quintessentially American instrument, and Winston Smith has some thoughts about its origin:
There's a myth that the banjo (the "gourd banjar") is a Negro invention, and it came to America with Negro slaves. The implication us that our beautiful Appalachian and Bluegrass music is the child of Africa. B******T! In the first place, instruments like the banjo - strings over a stretched hide - have been in China, non-Negroid Egypt, the Caucasus, Near Asia, and many other places for thousands of years. Negro Africans may have developed such an instrument (highly improbable), but they didn't "invent" it. In the second place, the banjo existed in regions of Appalachia long before our excellent mountain kin folk had ever laid eyes on a Negro. Thirdly, if Negros invented it, then why did they abandon it?''
Those are questions I've wondered about, and posed to other people as well, so it's good to see that I am not the only one asking.
Some people have asked me why it even matters to me who 'invented' the banjo. It matters to me not only because I love the banjo, but because I think the truth matters. In recent years, as I've written so often about on this blog, we've been subjected to an all-out campaign to rewrite history and to take credit away from our people, assigning it, rightly or wrongly, to others. Why? To build others' fragile self-esteem? To diminish our own confidence and pride in our people? To make the gullible think that America was always a multicultural society and a melting pot in which we are only one minor ingredient? I think it's all of the above, and if there are any other possible reasons I am open to considering them.
This source is typical in crediting Africans with influencing Appalachian music and with introducing the banjo -- and the writers get extra PC points for tying the instrument to Islamic origins as well:
ONE of the greatest influences on Appalachian music, as well as many popular American music styles, was that of the African-American. The slaves brought a distinct tradition of group singing of community songs of work and worship, usually lined out by one person with a call and response action from a group. A joyous celebration of life and free sexuality was coupled with improvisation as lyrics were constantly updated and changed to keep up the groups' interest. The percussion of the African music began to change the rhythms of Appalachian singing and dancing. The introduction of the banjo to the Southern Mountains after the Civil War in the 1860s further hastened this process. Originally from Arabia, and brought to western Africa by the spread of Islam, the banjo then ended up in America. Mostly denigrated as a 'slave instrument' until the popularity of the Minstrel Show, starting in the 1840s, the banjo syncopation or 'bom-diddle-diddy' produced a different clog-dance and song rhythm by the turn of the century.
[...]
The instrumental tradition of the Appalachians started as anglo-celtic dance tunes and eventually was reshaped by local needs, African rhythms, and changes in instrumentation.''
Winston Smith mentions that the banjo is associated with the old minstrel show tradition, and yet blacks, since the 1960s era, have disclaimed this tradition as being an offensive racial stereotype. I've also heard that such entertainment was something that many blacks feel their ancestors were ''forced'' to do by Massa, and that it was demeaning to them. I have noticed that there are very, very few blacks who play the banjo today. If it was 'their' instrument originally, it seems they've abandoned it.
It does seem, too, that there are no home-grown analogues to the banjo in Africa, no apparent antecedent that I'm familiar with, and I do know a little about world music. There are, however, many related instruments in the Western tradition, making it much more plausible that the banjo was a European-derived instrument, probably being developed to its present form in our country, among our people.
I think it's important for us to take credit for our own traditions. The politically corrected cultural history has just about taken away every American folk tradition from us and credited it to blacks -- traditions such as buck-dancing, flatfoot dancing, and later traditions such as rock 'n roll music.
Anyone who is familiar with the dance traditions of the British Isles recognizes that buck dancing and flatfoot dancing, as well as clogging and 'square dancing' are derived from traditions that came with our early English and Scots settlers.
If we're to believe the popular historians of today, we have no culture of our own; blacks had to teach us everything when they came here from Africa. And this idea fits with the current demeaning stereotype of Whites as being mere blank slates with no innate character or culture to speak of. This is particularly said, maliciously, about White Americans. So it's important for us to confidently claim our own traditions back again, and to refuse to let ourselves be stripped of our traditions, however humble they may be. They are part of us.
Read the rest of Winston Smith's post at the link.

Labels: American Culture, American Heritage, Folk Arts, Folkways, Political Correctness, Traditional Music

Those who read this blog last year at this time may remember reading the following poem; I think it's worth repeating at Christmastime.
A new wind rises out of the hills
of America, and the song it
sings permeates the land.
It is a song of time and the moment.
It is a song of beginnings.
George Washington, the father of our country,
found a fount of new beginnings
when he knelt in prayer.
(Do we kneel today to ask for moments
that reveal some far horizon?)
Thomas Jefferson searched for an enduring
source of strength. And as he claimed
that source, it was a moment that became
for him a new beginning. "God who gave us
life gave us liberty," he said.
(Are we searching now for an enduring
source of strength?)
At Arlington, at every burying ground
where soldiers sleep, the wind is
but a whisper as it tells of memories.
Unnumbered crosses quietly proclaim that freedom
has been dearly bought to bring us
new beginnings.
(How do we honor those who gave
the gift of life?)
A new wind rises out of the hills
of America, and it sings of new beginnings.
We do not need new keys that open
to new worlds,
but old keys, making turns in
old familiar locks such as enduring
honesty, integrity, deep silences, and roots
of faith and hope and love.
Old keys, trusted and tried, that always open
to a world of new beginnings.
Oh, let a new wind rise
out of the hills of America---
now, at Christmas,
and as the old year turns.
- Melva Rorem

Labels: American Heritage, Christmas, Poetry

Today, August 18, is the birthday of Virginia Dare, who was born in the Roanoke Colony, Virginia, in 1587.
To my great surprise, there is no mention of this today on her namesake website, VDare.com, although the archived articles are no doubt still there.
So, despite having no new VDare piece to which I can link, I will write about Virginia Dare and the 'Lost Colony' as I usually do on this day.
I suspect my regular readers are thoroughly familiar with the story of the Roanoke Colony, or the 'Lost Colony', and the story of little Virginia Dare, but in case there are some readers to whom this story is unfamiliar, I will say that Virginia Dare was the first English child born on this continent.
Virginia Dare's parents, Eleanor and Ananias Dare, were part of the second group of Roanoke colonists, most of the first group having abandoned the colony to return with Sir Francis Drake to England the year before the later colonists came. The colony governor, John White, was the father of Eleanor Dare.
White, who was something of an artist, had sketched the flora and fauna, as well as the Indians of Virginia.
I will quote here from the book 'Wild Shores: America's Beginnings' by Tee Loftin Snell:
On August 18, 1587, White's daughter Eleanor, wife of Ananias Dare, gave birth to a girl, named Virginia, "because," White wrote, "this childe was the first Christian borne in Virginia." A few days later, the colonists pressured the grandfather to return with the ships to England and personally bear to Sir Walter the news that Roanoke's people must have a supply ship immediately.
John White never saw Eleanor or his granddaughter again. As I gently handled his exquisite watercolors at the British Museum in London, I shuddered at the thought of the agonizing three years he spent trying to return to Roanoke.
No ships went there, for Queen Elizabeth, to save her country from vengeful Catholic Philip of Spain, had called all English vessels to her service.
[...]
"While the Armada crisis absorbed England's attention, Roanoke's settlers struggled with a life-or-death crisis too," Mrs. Fred Morrison remarked when I visited Roanoke Island, North Carolina. As we walked from the waterfront amphitheater past grassy ramparts outlining the original fort, Mrs. Morrison, producer of Roanoke's summertime musical drama, speculated about the settlers' fate. "Paul Green's play the Lost Colony suggests that the colonists -- Sampson, Butler, Gramme, Dare, we know the names of all the 'lost' people -- soon realized no ship would come in time to save them," Mrs. Morrison said. "So they left Roanoke."
"Possibly they floated their goods and building materials 60 miles south to Manteo's village on present-day Hatteras Island. Certainly the one word they left behind indicates that's what happened."
The word was "Croatoan," pronounced CROY-tuh-WAN by Indians. John White found it in 1590 having arranged for his own passage to America.
Arriving at Roanoke Island after dark on August 17, he and the sailors with him ''espied...ye light of a great fire thorow the woods...When we came right over against it, we...sounded a trumpet a Call, & afterwardes many familiar English tunes of Songs, and called to them friendly, but we had no answere..."
Next morning White and his companions found the fire as "sundry rotten trees burning." Nothing remained of the colony. The houses had been "taken downe" and moved away. On a gate post of "a high palisado of great trees...in fayre Capitall letters was grauen CROATOAN, without any crosse or signe of distress..."
White's captain turned the ship toward Croatoan Island, where, ironically, he had anchored for the night just before reaching the inlet for Roanoke. Weather "fouler and fouler" blew the ship away from the shore. John White watched the disappearing outline of the Outer Banks and beseeched the Almighty "to helpe & comfort his daughter and grandchild whom he believed still lived.
Did they? No one has indisputable evidence.
But the Lumbee Indians in present Robeson County, North Carolina, "have a strong tradition that the Roanoke colonists amalgamated with them," as historian Samuel Eliot Morrison says in The European Discovery of America. Some blue-eyed, fair-haired types, Elizabethan words, and surnames all "bear this out," he adds. The Lumbees, he notes, earlier known as Croatoan or Hatteras Indians, migrated inland about 1650. About 1660, the Reverend Morgan Jones wandered into their midst and to his surprise "conversed in English" with them.
But did all the Hatteras clans go inland? About 1700 John Lawson, exploring North Carolina's coast, wrote that ''gray-eyed'' Hatteras Indians said "several of their ancestors were White people, and could talk in a Book..."
And I heard these intriguing remarks from Sheriff Frank Calhoun, 67, at Manteo on Roanoke Island: "My grandfather, born in 1830, told me that in his Indian village he lived in one of several very old two-story houses of hand-hewn timbers and boards on the mainland across from Roanoke. His blond, blue-eyed mother, Malockie Paine, we believe, was descended from colonist Henry Paine."
As we read the recent news that White Americans will be a minority within a few decades (probably sooner), I have to wonder, as I have wondered in the past: a few hundred years hence, will there be any blond, blue-eyed people on this continent whose ancestry will be a subject of speculation? Or will we of today be tomorrow's 'Lost Colony'?
What happens in the next decade -- or less -- will likely decide our fate.
Update: I see that there is now a James Fulford piece on VDare.com, aptly called 'Virginia Dare -- White Minority!'.

Labels: American Heritage, American History, Colonies, Lost Colony

Sir Walter Scott's most-often quoted words may be these:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!'
He also wrote:
Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.''
I think those are true words.
Sir Walter Scott, novelist and poet, had a wide-ranging influence as may be gathered from the links gathered on this site.
He was especially revered in the American South, as Carl N. Degler in Out of Our Past tells us:
Where the ideas of the nineteenth century were congenial to southern antebellum values, they spread extravagantly. Though the novels of a romantic like Sir Walter Scott were popular in North and South alike, it was in the latter that he became a literary idol. Upon his death, Richmond newspapers were edged in black. Only in the South were knightly joustings held in full pseudo-mediaeval armor and regalia. It was from Scott's books that Southerners lifted the word ''southron,'' which they self-consciously applied to themselves. The romantic picture of the organic, status society of the Middle Ages, which Scott dwelt on in several of his novels, seemed to shore up southern and conservative ideas on society and slavery. Hence, south of the Ohio, Scott found a welcome place denied to contemporaries like Dickens and Shelley, who mixed their romanticism with urban, humanitarian, and irreligious beliefs largely foreign to the South."
This is interesting; I had not been aware of the extent to which Scott was revered in the old South, nor that he was not as highly regarded in the North.
As to the word 'southron', I am not convinced that Scott was THE source for this term nor the use thereof in the South. It is an archaic term for Southern, used mainly in Scotland as I understand, and it was used by J.R.R. Tolkien in his writings. I suppose Tolkien may have picked it up likewise from Scott, but he was not the ultimate originator of it. I use the word, as do others, because it specifically refers to the people, history, and way of life of the American South, unlike the general word 'Southern'which simply designates a direction or a geographical region.
The Walter Scott Digital Archive contains a treasure trove of information about him, and links to his works.
Update: Please see the wonderful tribute to Scott at Cambria Will Not Yield.

Labels: American Heritage, American History, Birthdays, English Literature, Scotland, Southron Heritage

I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving, with lots of good company and good food; I hope that you all may be surrounded by those you love.
In honor of Thanksgiving, I offer you a poem by Edgar Guest, and it may be a little on the corny side, but if we can't enjoy corny, sentimental, homespun poetry on Thanksgiving, when can we enjoy it? We live in a cynical age and a little corn will do us all good.
Thanksgiving
Edgar A. Guest
Gettin' together to smile an' rejoice,
An' eatin' an' laughin' with folks of your choice;
An' kissin' the girls an' declarin' that they
Are growin more beautiful day after day;
Chattin' an' braggin' a bit with the men,
Buildin' the old family circle again;
Livin' the wholesome an' old-fashioned cheer,
Just for awhile at the end of the year.
Greetings fly fast as we crowd through the door
And under the old roof we gather once more
Just as we did when the youngsters were small;
Mother's a little bit grayer, that's all.
Father's a little bit older, but still
Ready to romp an' to laugh with a will.
Here we are back at the table again
Tellin' our stories as women an men.
Bowed are our heads for a moment in prayer;
Oh, but we're grateful an' glad to be there.
Home from the east land an' home from the west,
Home with the folks that are dearest an' best.
Out of the sham of the cities afar
We've come for a time to be just what we are.
Here we can talk of ourselves an' be frank,
Forgettin' position an' station an' rank.
Give me the end of the year an' its fun
When most of the plannin' an' toilin' is done;
Bring all the wanderers home to the nest,
Let me sit down with the ones I love best,
Hear the old voices still ringin' with song,
See the old faces unblemished by wrong,
See the old table with all of its chairs
An I'll put soul in my Thanksgivin' prayers.
Happy Thanksgiving, all, and may God bless you.
Note: the illustration above is from a magazine cover by Wilbur G. Kurtz. The picture was 'Home for Thanksgiving', and it appeared on a 'Progressive Farmer' magazine cover in 1934.

Labels: American Customs, American Heritage, Holidays, Poetry

It seems to me that I recently wrote a post on this subject, but it never seems to go away.
Upfront, I will say that this is my definitive statement on the subject. If it is raised in the future, I will just refer readers to this post, rather than saying it all again.
Yet again, I am being challenged as to why I focus on Anglo-American or WASP roots on this blog.
The implication is generally that I am excluding others, and failing to foster general American unity by focusing on one group, even if that group is the founding stock and the creative force behind the Republic that was established here in 1776.
The argument is made that Americans are all mixed, deracinated people who identify only as Americans, and that to identify with any particular ethnicity is to be divisive.
To what extent that is true, I don't know. I know that the 'generic American' identity is embraced by many people of mixed European ancestry, and I know that in many areas people are rather hopelessly mixed so as to identify with no particular ethnicity. That's a problem.
Is it possible to identify as just American when everybody else, especially minorities, have a strong ethnic identity?
Do I have to bring up yet again that many people outside the U.S. sneer at us because we are 'a people of no race or identity'? That is a common view of us in Europe. To expect Europeans to acknowledge us as cousins or even distant kin is often to be disappointed and rebuffed, as they hold us in low regard in many cases, and consider us mongrels, compared to themselves. Yes, there are Europeans who are more welcoming of us, but there are also many who regard us with a blend of scorn and condescension -- because we are a mixed people of no fixed origin.
The word 'American' once meant something. I was quite happy to call myself just American for many years, although I have had a strong Southron identity too. But over the years, the American 'brand' has been cheapened and made meaningless for many people because we are told that the many alien peoples residing here, who speak not a word of English in most cases, are ''new Americans''. Being an American is just a geographical condition, just an address, which tells nothing about who a person is. Remember those 'Ad Council' spots that ran on TV after 9/11, with many foreign people saying 'I am an American'? That's what 'American' has come to mean: anybody who is occupying some spot on American territory.
If America consists of an idea or a proposition, what then are Americans? Just anybody who says they believe in 'freedom' or 'equality'? Is it just a matter of pledging allegiance to a flag or a political system, as many Republicans would have it?
People need more than that. People need roots. They need a sense of kinship and belonging, a sense of who they are in a biological sense, where their actual ancestors came from, how they lived, what they accomplished. They need a sense of their place in history and in the human family.
I put it to you that Americans who feel themselves to be of no particular race or ethnicity, identifying only with a flag or a geopolitical entity, are a people prone to be deracinated, to lack an anchor, to lack confidence. Deracinated and confused people are ripe to be colonized and subjugated, as is happening now.
Such a people, I believe, are also more prone to miscegenation, to want to lose their weak 'identity' by interbreeding or intermarrying with any exotic group of people with an aggressive sense of ethnicity and race, hence you have young people becoming 'wiggers', talking Ebonics, or intermarrying with Hispanics and raising their children as Hispanic. Hardly ever do intermarriages result in the transmission of any kind of White identity. I can think of many cases, and all of them result in Whites becoming renegades to their own race, and 'going native', along with their children.
I firmly believe that we are in a time of re-tribalization. The world will become more ethnically divided, with smaller groups asserting, or re-asserting, their tribal or clan identities. If 'America' in its present form falls apart, which many have predicted will happen, what, then, will be left of an 'American' identity?
People may choose to align with some kind of regional identity. The South has a strong regional identity, or has had, until the recent immigrant influx, along with an earlier migration of Yankees during the Reagan era.
And as to the South, the fact that it had, before the recent Latino invasion, received relatively few immigrants meant that the people of the South were far more homogeneous than those in most of the Northern states. The Northern cities in particular had received most of the Ellis Island immigrants, and the heartland North had many Northern European immigrants (German, Scandinavian, some Dutch) who later formed the sort of generic White European core group.
However, the South had experienced less demographic change than the North. Southron Whites were fairly cohesive, perhaps partly in reaction to the presence of many blacks, and because of the history involving the War Between the States and Reconstruction.
Most of the old-stock Southron people were of British Isles descent. Many colonial stock Southron people identified as Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Saxon. It was understood among most people that there was no racial division between those two groups of people; the Angl0-Normans were generally thought of by Southrons as being the more aristocratic strain, although now there is a negative image of Normans as being some sort of foreign interlopers, with whom few want to claim a connection -- much the same as with the WASP identity in America, ironically.
My particular family line is mostly Anglo-Norman, with some Huguenot French and Ulster Scots roots, but by far, mostly Anglo-Norman. In this, I think my family tree is quite typical of old-stock Southron families. The idea that all areas of these United States are equally mixed in terms of descent is erroneous. The South preserved its original makeup for considerably longer than the North.
The much-criticized New England WASP colonial stock was actually 'ethnically cleansed', to a great extent, from New England as the Ellis Island immigrants fanned out across the East Coast. Many of my Yankee family members went West, settling the vast wilderness that awaited. Some stopped in the Midwest, settling there, others went far West, as far as they could go. The idea that there is some powerful yet strangely invisible 'WASP elite' in New England is persistent but lacking in basis. The old WASP colonial stock moved West, for the most part, preferring not to live in an overpopulated Northeastern megalopolis as the immigrants kept arriving.
A commenter asked why I had alternately referenced and criticized 'Albion's Seed' by David Hackett Fisher. It is an interesting book with much good information, but I find fault with it because I think it has fostered an oversimplified view of Southern ethnicity. Fisher I think has done a great deal, along with writer Grady McWhiney, to popularize the unproven notion of the South as being mostly Scots-Irish. The Scots-Irish, it is claimed, gave the 'warrior spirit' to the South. And were the Anglo-Normans not likewise formidable warriors?
This kind of thing, this unwillingness to credit Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman people with any accomplishment or talent (other than 'oppressing' the victim groups of the world) is one of the things which prompts me to champion the Anglo-Saxon heritage of America. It's only fair to give credit where due.
And for some reason, perhaps because of media portrayals (Braveheart, for example) the Scots are seen as a glamorous, tough, admirable people, while the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman is seen as sneaky, cold, ruthless, and vicious. That pattern is repeated time and again in movies and novels. The same kind of stereotype of the English was seen in another Gibson movie, The Patriot. That movie, like others, takes liberties with history.
For the record, quite a few of my ancestors lived in the area of Carolina where the story took place, and they were in the thick of the revolution. Some of my ancestors died fighting the British, but I don't accept the stereotype of the British as being evil and cold-blooded -- and foppish, as well.
It's no wonder that few Americans want to identify with any British ancestry they may have; who wants to be connected to the bad guys, the perpetual villains? We see similar stereotyping in recent PC movies in which White Americans are the villains: remember 'Dances With Wolves', with its ugly stereotypes of dirty, bloodthirsty American cavalrymen? The only good Whites were the renegade Whites who went native.
This kind of propaganda has led to Americans being so reticent to defend themselves in the face of relentless attacks by all and sundry. We are a demoralized people who have been schooled to think we have no defense to offer for ourselves and our ancestors; they were bad people who oppressed and plundered the poor weak peoples of the earth, and we are equally bad, because we have a unique kind of original sin called 'innate racism.'
It's 'racism', supposedly, for us even to feel an identification with our White kin group. All other groups can be aggressive in their identity, while we alone can only safely call ourselves ''Americans'', and even that is now considered hateful and 'nativist.' Latin American interlopers in our country tell us that they are just as 'American' as we are. Some liberal educators propose we call ourselves 'United Statesians' so as not to wrongly appropriate the label American, which belongs to everybody from the North Pole to Cape Horn.
Where to, America? Our identity is too exclusive, and it doesn't really belong just to us -- just as America 'belongs to everybody' as many immigrants brazenly claim.
And our European cousins tell us, as one European commenter haughtily told me on this blog, we are neither a race nor a people. We are nonentities. We are ciphers. It's no wonder many of us are eager to lose ourselves in some exotic new culture or identity.
Where to, in this re-tribalizing world, where ancestry and race will become more important in deciding where we stand? Those Americans who think they can sit it out by declaring that they are 'world citizens' or cosmopolitan planetary citizens, are mistaken. They will have to pick a side, and even if they decline to, they will be assigned a side in the conflict, based on their skin color.
Yes, I agree that White people should unite and feel kinship. We are a dwindling proportion of the world's peoples, and some predict our demise, one way or another. Were it not for my religious faith, I think I would predict that European-descended peoples would be blended away in a few generations. However I believe there is a reason why 'peoples, nations, kindreds, and tongues' were created, and it is not in the Divine plan for the Tower of Babel to succeed this time, or ever. The hubristic plan to create one mingled race will not succeed. That's just my personal faith, and I cannot prove it. I believe we, our kin group, will continue, but we are under siege as apparently our rulers want to eliminate all inequalities, including and especially innate racial inequalities.
I am all for uniting with all ethnic groups in the European family. However I cannot unilaterally make that unity happen. I don't have that kind of influence or power.
There are a great many people whose ethnic grievances against Anglo-Saxons make them hostile towards anyone who claims descent from that group. Just check out any message board where Irish, Ulster Irish, or English people congregate. There is an incredible amount of bitterness over the Irish 'troubles' and remote historical events. Irish-Americans in many cases who have never been to Ireland hold grudges and curse the English. That has got to stop if there is to be any unity.
If I am hard on the ethnic 'Ellis Island' descendants, it is because all too often they tend to be open-borders sentimentalists who identify with immigrants more than Americans. and in many instances they hold grudges towards old-stock Americans (which as I've said includes more than just English.)
If they are willing to stop accusing America I am willing to accept them as brothers. The animosity does not start with me; my animus toward grudge-bearers is defensive, not offensive.
So, do I, and this blog, have enough influence to 'unite' Americans or White people generally? This is not one of those mega-blogs which gets thousands and thousands of hits, and which wields considerable influence. What I write here is unlikely to 'divide' Americans (who are already quite divided, thank you) nor to unite Americans. I am just one isolated voice, and I don't particularly wish to be anything else. I write what I write for the few; you, the readers, decide if you are one of the few I write for. If my words speak to you, then this blog is for you. If my words antagonize you and irritate you, perhaps you are looking for something I don't provide.
This blog is my individual attempt to cry out against what I see happening to this country, and to my people, and as I seem to have to repeat often, 'my people' are all of you who identify with old America, and who hold dear what I hold dear, all of you who wish to defend the 'land where our fathers died.' I am a partisan of the South. because I feel that it embodies the real, original America best of all, and potentially may represent a resurgent 'America.'
Does that alienate my Northern readers? It should not. Because I prefer the South, having lived in both North and South, that does not mean I have animosity towards those of you from the North. So likewise because I write about the Anglo-American culture and heritage, which is neglected and despised by many people, that does not ''exclude'' those of you who have little commonality with that. I find this idea that particularism is somehow hostility towards others to be a curious, and rather liberal idea. It's the essence of political correctness, actually, this idea that we are to 'include' everybody and water everything down so as not to offend or 'leave anybody out.'
The nature of the world is that people group together in various ways, all of which include some and exclude others. That is also the essence of love: love excludes most, and prefers one, or the few, above the many.
Just because I love my particular heritage does not mean that I hate others' heritage.
I do find it hard to understand why my expression of my particular affinities is considered offensive. by anyone, unless it rubs salt in wounds based on past perceived resentments.
I write this blog partly for myself, because I feel compelled to write what is in my heart. This is one person's blog, not an attempt to speak to the whole world. This world, and even this country, is much too big and too complicated and too divided for me to be able to 'speak to' everyone or appeal to everyone. No doubt I offend some, but I cannot alter my message or my preferences because they 'turn away' some people. I cannot tailor my message to everyone.
Few people speak up for old-stock Anglo-Americans. Yet if this country ever succeeds in re-establishing any kind of unity, it will have to rally around a common heritage, and in old America, that common identity was the Anglo-based one. What else, pray tell, can we rally around? Like it or not, the Founding Fathers were Englishmen. English and male.
If any ethnicity or heritage deserves to be preserved as a cement which holds us together, the Anglo-Saxons heritage is the obvious choice. It served us well for many generations.
However, it looks as though a balkanized America is in the cards, with regions dominated by different peoples, but we will all have to decide to unite or separate. It is up to the other ethnicities, including the 'just Americans,' to decide with whom they will stand.

Labels: American Heritage, Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Saxon Heritage, Balkanization, Divisiveness, Ethnic Division, Ethnic Identity, Ethnic Solidarity, Regional Differences, Secession, South

On a previous Thanksgiving, I posted a link to this article , A Hymn's Long Journey Home, which tells the story of the song ''We Gather Together to Ask the Lord's Blessing.'' Realizing some of you have read it before, I post it because it's an interesting little story which tells us something about the early history of our country, as illustrated by a hymn.
Those of you who are old enough to have gone to school in the 'old America,', before the name of God was banished from our schools, probably remember the hymn, or in fact sang it in school. I know I did.
We gather together to ask the Lord�s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.
Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, were at our side, all glory be Thine!
We all do extol Thee, Thou Leader triumphant,
And pray that Thou still our Defender will be.
Let Thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!''
The linked article tells us about the Dutch origins of this hymn, and about how early Dutch colonists (among whom were some of my ancestors, and probably those of some of my readers as well) brought this hymn with them from Holland. Read about the history behind it at the link.
Although our country has an overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon character deriving from the early English colonists in New England and Virginia, it's appropriate to remember our all-but-forgotten Dutch roots and this hymn is one reminder of that.
And the words of the hymn seem to be appropriate to our present situation in troubled 21st century America.

Labels: American Heritage, American History, Christianity, Colonies, Dutch