On Thursday night I was reading this post by Robert Stacy McCain, in which he gave a stirring defense of his Southern heritage against a despicable group of leftist jackals who, per usual, love to run down the ancestry of those who don't inhabit their insular, rarefied echelons.
Therein, quoting a blog post of his from back in 2009, McCain wrote:
I have frequently described the widespread prejudice against the South as boreal supremacy, the belief that everything about the North is superior to everything about the South. Such prejudice against the South is so common that some people don’t even notice it, but I do, and I resent the hell out of it.
Confronted with the assumption of Northern superiority, some Southerners will react by attempting to ape Northern ways and adopt characteristically Northern attitudes, and start “putting on airs,” as Alabama folks would say. . . .
When I think of my own ancestors — hard-working people who toiled from dawn to sundown on the red clay hills of Alabama — I am quite naturally filled with pride. The suggestion that I should be ashamed of my ancestors is an insult I deeply resent.
In the comments, I responded thusly:
No man should be required to spit on the graves of his ancestors. And I cordially invite anyone who suggests that I do so to get well and truly stuffed.
Blunt, to be sure, but an apt summary of what I think of those who demand that I renounce my heritage and birthright in favor of an ephemeral transnational progressivism. Indeed, that is what many of the Northerners to whom McCain refers truly are: transnational progressives, or "Tranzis" as popularized by the weblog Samizdata and the writer Tom Kratman. Tranzis hate the very notion of tradition, the practice of venerating one's ancestors, of showing pride in one's nation. Their only loyalty is to a homogenized vision of the global community, a vision of a world where the parochial nationalisms of old have been swept away in favor of a limitless, enlightened global progressive state. It is, in short, the vision of such men as Karl Marx, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Mao Zedong.
It is an ideal which I despise with every fiber of my being.
In response to my comment above, McCain wrote this accurate observation:
Indeed. I’ve long observed that nothing so bespeaks low character as the habit of routinely speaking ill of one’s parents.
You see this atrocious habit — a mixture of impudence and self-pity — quite commonly among spoiled, selfish youth. And the kind of person who derogates his own family is unwittingly indicting himself. Either (a) they’re as bad as he says they are, in which case, the apple doesn’t usually fall far from the tree, or else (b) he’s cruelly slandering them.
Either way, he’s a bad person whose companionship ought to be avoided as much as possible.
Yes, those who run down their parents and families are implicitly untrustworthy, and crashing bores to boot. Characteristics often shared by many a progressive.
Another commenter, Joe, added:
Now that is well said. We should honor our ancestors.
Frankly I am rather beyond regionalism, however, because so many of us move so often it does not mean that much anymore. I love traveling because I keep finding amazing places every time I do so. If we are really lucky, we find a community where everything clicks and we can raise our families.
Joe makes a good point, for increasingly the divide these days seems to be less along regional lines and more along ideological ones, as evidenced by leftist disdain for the Tea Party movement.
Roxeanne De Luca, though, questioned whether some Northerners be asked to do some grave-spitting of their own in the future:
The way that people in the North look down on their Southern counterparts is nauseating, as is the way that they are utterly apathetic to the suffering that happens someplace outside of a major metropolitan area. The same people who want to throw billions of dollars at every inner-city crack whore would rather disembowel themselves before giving any of their precious government funds to a coal miner’s kids in rural Appalachia. They sneer at Southerners for being racist, but miss the irony that they are doing so from communities that are 99% white.
On a side note, one only wonders if, generations from now, Northerners will be expected to spit on their ancestor’s graves for their fervent support of child-murder – support that went not just to legalisation in their own states, but outright prohibitions on allowing the South to protect human life.
Another good point to consider, I believe.
Finally, McCain himself concluded by sharing this fascinating comparison of Winston Churchill and Robert E. Lee:
Winston Churchill was an ardent admirer of Robert E. Lee, and I think it was because both were men who sought to redeem a family name tarnished by misfortune.
Lee’s father, Light-Horse Harry, had ruined his fortune through reckless business endeavors and involvement in political controversy, which seems to have inspired Lee at an early age to strive for an honorable reputation. Churchill’s father Randolph had also suffered disastrous embarrassment in politics and, as a result, Winston was keenly desirous of recovering for the Churchills the ancient glory of their famed ancestor, Marlborough. I think Churchill took inspiration from Lee in that regard and, of course, succeeded magnificently.
Indeed, the fate of Richard Henry "Lighthorse Harry" Lee is a sad one. I recently came across a vivid account of it in the conclusion to
Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse by Lawrence E. Babits and Joshua B. Howard. Lighthorse Harry Lee was a veteran of the bitter defeat at Guilford Courthouse. Afterward, following the American Revolution's ultimate success, Lee carved out a successful political career for himself, but after leaving the House of Representatives in 1801, his fortunes declined. Lee went bankrupt and was sentenced to debtors prison in 1807 and was released in 1810. Two years later, on a business trip in Baltimore, Lee was attacked by an enraged mob of Democratic-Republican party supporters after having tried to save a friend of his from their wrath. According to Babits and Howard:
The ruffians beat Lee senseless, inflicting serious injuries to his internal organs and head. The wounds to his face severely limited his speech, and Lee, disfigured, discredited, and despondent, fled to the West Indies. While returning to the United States in 1818, he was shipwrecked off the Georgia coast. He appeared, physically demolished and thoroughly drunk, on the doorstep of [Nathanael] Greene's summer home, Dungeness. He died there, age sixty-two, in the care of his former commander's daughter on 25 March, ten days after the thirty-seventh anniversary of Guilford Courthouse.
I have little doubt that Lighthorse Harry's miserable fate made an indelible impression upon his then 11-year-old son Robert. But Robert E. Lee worked diligently to restore his family name, and did so successfully. We should all be moved to honor our forebears so.
This coming Sunday, however, I will be honoring a milestone of my own - my 35th birthday. It's been an interesting but fruitful year since my last one. I hope my good fortune continues, and I hope to be blogging more often soon. But in the meantime, the demands of my "real world" life must be met.
Until next time...