I just want to say I am eternally grateful to Brion McClanahan, Don Livingston, Clyde Wilson, and the Abbeville Institute. My eyes have been opened and my mind has been fulfilled by the excellent resources and insight they have provided.
thanks for transmission i do get First Things Leo Strauss said "Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight. But here is the great trouble, the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger." Do you agree? What is your take on Heidegger? thanks
It can’t just be assumed that the agrarian tradition represents the South’s highest level of moral and cultural development. After all, the South that Weaver knew was partly the result of a military and political catastrophe. Did Weaver have any views on the Confederate industrial revolution and/or any other movements in the direction of modernization that were completely indigenous to the South? If so, did he ever recognize the POSSIBILITY of a fully modernized South being better able to defend itself culturally? I’m reminded here of that branch of physics that sees the totality/wholeness of any given thing as consisting of both observable characteristics and potential characteristics. There’s no way of knowing, for example, what Southern culture and identity would’ve looked like in a South where the Confederate industrial revolution had been completed. Regardless, the potential for such a society existed at the time. Had it actually come into being, it’s at least possible that it would’ve been more intellectually self-confident and more thoroughly culturally Southern than was the postbellum agrarian colony that Weaver misidentified as the truest expression of Southern identity. While Japan of the Meiji Restoration and the Confederate South had vastly different political cultures, both fully grasped that the failure to modernize would’ve left their respective cultures completely defenseless in the face of aggression from the modernized powers. They likely would’ve interpreted Weaver’s agrarianism as both poetry and a doctrine of self- inflicted enfeeblement.
@@ZephaniahL Southern history, culture, and identity have too many times been interpreted through lenses tinted by ideologies and rarefied theories. The last paragraph of my original post makes clear that the Confederate leadership and the Japanese leadership pursued modernization for reasons that had nothing to do with the realm of abstractions. Rather, they simply recognized that the countries with the most technologically advanced militaries, methods of production, etc. represented existential threats. Things like modernization theory and its critics aren’t really relevant to what I was talking about in the original post.
@@wpc9163 Nor did I have modernization theory in mind. I am instead thinking of the arrogance which the Agrarians and other Luddite-leaning groups and people correctly noted in the idea that technological advancement makes one more modern. And if one can study the history of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the dehumanization, isolation, compartmentalization of life, institutions like the modern western hospital, the place I would least like to die in the world, and conclude that we should all aspire to modernity through technology, then that person and I are fated to disagree. What concrete historical example of modernization allowing the retaining of traditions would you adduce? The Japanese have lost Shinto and all but lost any religion, their culture was greatly attenuated, and Fukuzawa did not succeed in preventing feminism from injecting its poison into the Japanese body politic. Japan was also pretty awful in its governing ideas and form of militarism for several decades. Not a model.
@@ZephaniahL “What concrete historical example of modernization allowing the retaining of traditions would you adduce?” This question has got absolutely nothing to do with anything that I said in the two previous posts. Please provide an exact quote if you disagree. Are you implying that it’s impossible for a culture to morally, artistically, and intellectually evolve beyond its traditions? If so, through what objective, incontestable process can this be shown to be true? Agrarianism has never conceded that the Confederacy was abandoning the antebellum (i.e., traditional) order for the sake of national survival. General Cleburne’s proposal for a gradually implemented universal Confederate emancipation included a warning of the loss of intellectual freedom and cultural dignity that would accompany a Northern victory. Many of his opponents were traditionalist ideologues who preferred the fulfillment of that terrible prophecy to any dilution of their holy isms. In other words, 19th-century Southern traditionalism was acting in direct and open opposition to reasonable proposals designed to protect Southern culture from abject humiliation and other forms of (cultural) degredation. Therefore, the idea that traditionalism is an inextricable part of cultural well-being and cultural survival is demonstrably false.
If man has an origin, then so does tradition. It seems to me that good traditions must be planted, not manufactured. Furthermore, traditions which promote good will only grow from the seeds of conformity to the Created Order and/or Divine Revelation.
Really interesting talk. However I wanted to kinda point out something about the comment on the South being the last non materialist western country. That simply isn't true because Mussolini's Italy (as well as other Third Positionist nations of that time period) were also staunchly opposed to a materialist worldview. It's one of, if not *the* main reason Mussolini was against Karl Marx. He instead professed idealism and passionate romanticism.This to him was the best way to counter the materialism of both liberal capitalism and Marxist Bolshevism.
I would argue that 20th century Italy was a materialist civilization, but that Mussolini's movement was in part a reaction against it (similar could be said of the other European right-wing movements that gained some ground at the same time). Weaver acknowledged that Fascism had some analogies in the antebellum South in the last chapter of "The Southern Tradition At Bay", but also points out the spirit of irrationality present in the European movements of the Right, and certainly wouldn't have considered them non-materialist. The Italian Traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola, who lived in Fascist Italy and traveled extensively in the Third Reich, made similar criticisms. Although he was generally sympathetic to Fascism, its modernistic tendencies continuously troubled him (see, for example, his "Fascism Viewed From The Right" and "A Traditionalist Looks At Fascism").
👍👍👍 btw re 41:00 the South and Catholicism....remember 1)the ante-bellum South was NOT anti-Catholic prior to the post war invasion of Yankee fundamentalists 2) despite their reformed heritage, the South always celebrated Christmas and Easter....something the Yankee followers of Calvin and Cromwell even BANNED 3) President Davis carried a Rosary and corresponded with Pius IX Had the South won, there would have been portraits of PiusIX hanging over every Baptist hearth.
I actually hang up the rebel flag at my place as my giant middle finger to the federal government and my protestant flag as my giant middle finger to the roman catholic church.
@@Ricky_Evans1611, No offense, friend, but you 'actually' should study (a lot!!!) more about the ante-bellum South. Pius IX was the only European head of state to recognize Davis as 'President'. You sound like you might be a Yankee 'poser'. Am I right?😊
Consider also that General P.G.T. Beauregard and Stephen R. Mallory, the (Confederate) Secretary of the Navy, were Roman Catholics. The CSA also had a Jewish Secretary of State and a Jewish quartermaster general. I think Davis was an over-ranked, misplaced cavalry colonel. However, I give him credit for being above petty sectarian hatred. In any case, the CSA's constitution guarantees religious freedom.
I'm ✡️ and descendant of a Confederate soldier. Robert E Lee ordered that our religious practices were to be respected and President Davis appointed one to his cabinet... something unheard of at the time plus many other examples how we treated far better than by the European powers at the time
I just want to say I am eternally grateful to Brion McClanahan, Don Livingston, Clyde Wilson, and the Abbeville Institute. My eyes have been opened and my mind has been fulfilled by the excellent resources and insight they have provided.
Thank you for this
Amazing!
would have liked a little more on what is meant here by use of the word "limits"
For the record: George Wallace was shot in Maryland and not in Michigan as the lecturer stated. Good talk though. Thank you.
thanks for transmission i do get First Things Leo Strauss said "Only a great thinker could help us in our intellectual plight. But here is the great trouble, the only great thinker in our time is Heidegger." Do you agree? What is your take on Heidegger? thanks
👍
It can’t just be assumed that the agrarian tradition represents the South’s highest level of moral and cultural development. After all, the South that Weaver knew was partly the result of a military and political catastrophe.
Did Weaver have any views on the Confederate industrial revolution and/or any other movements in the direction of modernization that were completely indigenous to the South? If so, did he ever recognize the POSSIBILITY of a fully modernized South being better able to defend itself culturally?
I’m reminded here of that branch of physics that sees the totality/wholeness of any given thing as consisting of both observable characteristics and potential characteristics. There’s no way of knowing, for example, what Southern culture and identity would’ve looked like in a South where the Confederate industrial revolution had been completed. Regardless, the potential for such a society existed at the time. Had it actually come into being, it’s at least possible that it would’ve been more intellectually self-confident and more thoroughly culturally Southern than was the postbellum agrarian colony that Weaver misidentified as the truest expression of Southern identity.
While Japan of the Meiji Restoration and the Confederate South had vastly different political cultures, both fully grasped that the failure to modernize would’ve left their respective cultures completely defenseless in the face of aggression from the modernized powers. They likely would’ve interpreted Weaver’s agrarianism as both poetry and a doctrine of self- inflicted enfeeblement.
You talk as though there's a consensus as to what "modernizing" or "modernity" consist of. Far indeed from the case.
@@ZephaniahL Southern history, culture, and identity have too many times been interpreted through lenses tinted by ideologies and rarefied theories.
The last paragraph of my original post makes clear that the Confederate leadership and the Japanese leadership pursued modernization for reasons that had nothing to do with the realm of abstractions. Rather, they simply recognized that the countries with the most technologically advanced militaries, methods of production, etc. represented existential threats.
Things like modernization theory and its critics aren’t really relevant to what I was talking about in the original post.
@@wpc9163 Nor did I have modernization theory in mind. I am instead thinking of the arrogance which the Agrarians and other Luddite-leaning groups and people correctly noted in the idea that technological advancement makes one more modern. And if one can study the history of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the dehumanization, isolation, compartmentalization of life, institutions like the modern western hospital, the place I would least like to die in the world, and conclude that we should all aspire to modernity through technology, then that person and I are fated to disagree. What concrete historical example of modernization allowing the retaining of traditions would you adduce? The Japanese have lost Shinto and all but lost any religion, their culture was greatly attenuated, and Fukuzawa did not succeed in preventing feminism from injecting its poison into the Japanese body politic. Japan was also pretty awful in its governing ideas and form of militarism for several decades. Not a model.
@@ZephaniahL “What concrete historical example of modernization allowing the retaining of traditions would you adduce?”
This question has got absolutely nothing to do with anything that I said in the two previous posts. Please provide an exact quote if you disagree.
Are you implying that it’s impossible for a culture to morally, artistically, and intellectually evolve beyond its traditions? If so, through what objective, incontestable process can this be shown to be true?
Agrarianism has never conceded that the Confederacy was abandoning the antebellum (i.e., traditional) order for the sake of national survival.
General Cleburne’s proposal for a gradually implemented universal Confederate emancipation included a warning of the loss of intellectual freedom and cultural dignity that would accompany a Northern victory. Many of his opponents were traditionalist ideologues who preferred the fulfillment of that terrible prophecy to any dilution of their holy isms. In other words, 19th-century Southern traditionalism was acting in direct and open opposition to reasonable proposals designed to protect Southern culture from abject humiliation and other forms of (cultural) degredation. Therefore, the idea that traditionalism is an inextricable part of cultural well-being and cultural survival is demonstrably false.
@@wpc9163 Deducing from your prickly and unpleasant manner, you probably have tenure somewhere. Only the awful are rewarded with such these days.
If man has an origin, then so does tradition. It seems to me that good traditions must be planted, not manufactured. Furthermore, traditions which promote good will only grow from the seeds of conformity to the Created Order and/or Divine Revelation.
Really interesting talk. However I wanted to kinda point out something about the comment on the South being the last non materialist western country. That simply isn't true because Mussolini's Italy (as well as other Third Positionist nations of that time period) were also staunchly opposed to a materialist worldview. It's one of, if not *the* main reason Mussolini was against Karl Marx. He instead professed idealism and passionate romanticism.This to him was the best way to counter the materialism of both liberal capitalism and Marxist Bolshevism.
I would argue that 20th century Italy was a materialist civilization, but that Mussolini's movement was in part a reaction against it (similar could be said of the other European right-wing movements that gained some ground at the same time). Weaver acknowledged that Fascism had some analogies in the antebellum South in the last chapter of "The Southern Tradition At Bay", but also points out the spirit of irrationality present in the European movements of the Right, and certainly wouldn't have considered them non-materialist. The Italian Traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola, who lived in Fascist Italy and traveled extensively in the Third Reich, made similar criticisms. Although he was generally sympathetic to Fascism, its modernistic tendencies continuously troubled him (see, for example, his "Fascism Viewed From The Right" and "A Traditionalist Looks At Fascism").
👍👍👍 btw re 41:00 the South and Catholicism....remember
1)the ante-bellum South was NOT anti-Catholic prior to the post war invasion of Yankee fundamentalists
2) despite their reformed heritage, the South always celebrated Christmas and Easter....something the Yankee followers of Calvin and Cromwell even BANNED
3) President Davis carried a Rosary and corresponded with Pius IX
Had the South won, there would have been portraits of PiusIX hanging over every Baptist hearth.
That is a horrifying thought. Roman Catholicism is the largest false religion the world has ever known, alongside Islam.
I actually hang up the rebel flag at my place as my giant middle finger to the federal government and my protestant flag as my giant middle finger to the roman catholic church.
@@Ricky_Evans1611,
No offense, friend, but you 'actually' should study (a lot!!!) more about the ante-bellum South. Pius IX was the only European head of state to recognize Davis as 'President'.
You sound like you might be a Yankee 'poser'. Am I right?😊
Consider also that General P.G.T. Beauregard and Stephen R. Mallory, the (Confederate) Secretary of the Navy, were Roman Catholics. The CSA also had a Jewish Secretary of State and a Jewish quartermaster general.
I think Davis was an over-ranked, misplaced cavalry colonel. However, I give him credit for being above petty sectarian hatred. In any case, the CSA's constitution guarantees religious freedom.
I'm ✡️ and descendant of a Confederate soldier. Robert E Lee ordered that our religious practices were to be respected and President Davis appointed one to his cabinet... something unheard of at the time plus many other examples how we treated far better than by the European powers at the time
Bookmark 39:23