This essay was published in Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after I’ll Take My Stand, edited by Clyde Wilson, 1981.
When the Southern Agrarians took their stand, they did it stoutly, on two feet. Some emphasized the “Southern,” others the “Agrarian,” but fifty years ago it seemed that the two loyalties, to the South and to rural life, could (indeed, pretty well had to) go together.
Today that juxtaposition is less self-evidently sensible. If ever a society can be said to have repudiated agrarianism, the South, to all appearances, has done so. Two-thirds of all Southerners now are “urban” by Census Bureau standards; of the rural one-third, only a fraction are employed in agriculture; and of those a good many are proprietors or hands in “agribusiness”—an expression that some of the Agrarians blessedly did not live to encounter.
More @ The Abbeville Institute
We still dream of agrarian life. We still hunt, fish, garden.
ReplyDeleteAnd we respect such occupation.
I dislike how GMOs are grown now. I would never grow those.
As a retirement fund, some grow trees. I was looking at one species that requires 80 years to mature. In 80 yrs I'll be in the ground, so it wouldn't be funding my retirement but a later generation's.
We're filling up with too many people to not gravitate to more efficient "agribusiness". It's a shame we can't all live in Charleston to work for the economy of scale, then farm the rest of the state. The justification for growth is always economy-of-scale; but if we develop the entire state, there'll be nothing left to hunt and farm.
I like green zone restrictions (prevent urban sprawl). They require government involvement, and they're not socialist. Good use of government.
Great post and I agree. We can at least dream. :)
DeleteIn the UK, the BNP used to mention green zones. They have less land than we have, so private property is seen differently.
DeleteAn open mind would be needed should a state ever secede in the US. In the US, we tend to assume we know all things political, that libertarianism answers everything, that government is always bad.
But I strive to find ways where government is useful and even necessary, such as the green zones.
That's not to say that green zones would be necessary for a pleasant state. But I think they're a good idea that should be considered. I like remembering potentially good ideas to have them such that they could be considered. That way, if problems arise, we'll know what alternatives we have. We'll then be ready to adapt as needed, trying one potentially good idea, then another, learning from the experiences.
The primary problem I think Anglos in the world have is the excessive individualism and reason and our pride in these things and our conviction that the only alternative is socialism. But that's mostly unrelated to this topic here. I view society as an organism, not as composed of individuals with natural rights. But I believe that organism is best served via a high degree of freedom. It's reaching a similar conclusion but via a different path than America's tradition took.
Just leave me alone. I know, a novel thought. :)
DeleteUPDATE!! Something is wrong with this picture. No injuries
ReplyDeletein this prank:
http://www.ajc.com/news/local/judge-orders-stiff-sentences-for-two-douglasville-hate-crime/pHWEb5zXxdVqGBGxGNtorI/
Brock, guessing you recall this incident.
Insane. Thanks. https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2017/02/judge-orders-stiff-sentences-for-two-in.html#
Delete