From time to time, folks who read my essays and articles and hear my speeches will send me a sincere private query that can properly be summed up as such: “Why do you hate America?”
My short answer is always pretty much this: “I don’t hate America. In fact, I love America. My home State of Alabama is part of America. Why would I hate America? But I do have great misgivings about our governing system and the people who are (and have long been) abusing it. And I would like to see Alabama and the rest of the South get out from under this corrupt system before it all sinks beneath the proverbial waves.”
But allow me to elaborate a bit. What these folks are calling “America” was a great experiment in liberty brought to fruition by our Founding Fathers over two-hundred years ago. We were given a republic, if we could keep it. However, not all influential Americans at the time were supportive of the experiment and the constitution that provided its foundation. Patrick Henry of Virginia was one of many Southern skeptics who warned his fellow countrymen of placing too much trust in Yankees. Mr. Jefferson and other fellow republicans (please notice the lower case “r”—they had nothing to do with the later Party of Lincoln) echoed the sentiment and warned that the States and their citizens must have protection from the perils of a consolidated national government, hence the Bill of Rights.
Well, the experiment of the late eighteenth century ended in 1860-61 when South Carolina and several other Deep South States thought it best to leave it and start another one of their own designs. But the new Republican (please notice the upper case “R”—they had nothing to do with the Jeffersonian republicans of an earlier era) Party administration of Abe Lincoln would have none of it; his threat to raise troops and force the wayward Southern sister States back into this voluntary union caused several other upper South States to join the CSA experiment. At the point, the “Union” army—which in reality was the U.S. Army (Southern men, don’t forget this when you consider enlisting)—invaded, and after four years of terrorizing the South with overwhelming force (including lots of European mercenaries and Socialists) they forced the South’s armies to surrender.
The old voluntary union given us by the Founding Fathers was no more by mid-1865. The dire warnings of Mr. Henry and others had indeed come to pass. Lincoln and the GOP had overturned the work of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and the defeated Southern States were forced back into the new, involuntary creation. Once rich and politically influential, the South, albeit a new and reconstructed version, was to be poor and politically disenfranchised for decades to come. As the Rev. Robert L. Dabney, a Presbyterian minister and officer under Stonewall Jackson, told the victorious Yankees (and I paraphrase): “You won. Now the responsibility for the nation’s future is in your hands alone. We of the South are poor and weak. We can be of no effect in this matter.”
Dabney probably knew the Yankees, in their great power axis from Washington to New York to Boston, would blow it. And he was right. The corruption we see today on the Potomac and Wall Street began right away with the Grant administration. Subsequently, we got an empire (the Yanks were just practicing on Dixie), a Federal Reserve system, an Income Tax, the 17th Amendment (which practically destroyed the 10th and States Rights), two World Wars, taken off the gold standard, a Great Depression, another invasion of the South through the civil rights movement (what we Southerners rightly call the Second Reconstruction), the moral rot of the 1960s, sunk up to the neck in the Middle East, three clueless Baby Boomer Presidents (Bill, George, and Barry), the USA Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security, a police/surveillance State, and now bankrupted by the Banksters and their political whores in Congress. And I’m supposed to cheer all this on by singing the National Anthem, saluting the Stars and Stripes, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance? No thanks, I’ll pass.
You see, the men I admire, from Henry and Jefferson through Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, knew that this American experiment, if it were to work, had to be an agreement held sacred among principled and virtuous men. And they knew the character of the Yankee (and I’m not talking about righteous Northern Copperheads who supported the South). And that bad character has not changed one iota since the Late Unpleasantness of 150 years ago. But in the bargain, many Southerners have thrown over the principles of their ancestors and have joined in the looting and pillaging. If you can’t beat the Yanks, then join them. I’ll pass on this, too, thank you very much.
The result of all this is that the U.S. government has become an organized criminal enterprise. Let that phrase sink in for a minute. If you still don’t believe it, then just pay attention for a little while; it’ll come to you.
Coming as I do from the old Southern traditionalist/conservative position of Henry, Jefferson, Calhoun, Taylor of Caroline, et al, I cannot and will not give my allegiance to a counterfeit. I will not confuse true patriotism with the chauvinistic nationalism that cheers “puttin’ a boot up the ass” of the enemy de jour of the American empire. I will not keep quiet while all that my ancestors sweated, bled, and died to give me as an inheritance is stolen away by an alien people with an alien ideology. I will not keep quiet while my motherland—Alabama and the South—can still be saved from the clutches of a predatory ruling elite. And as a Southern Patriot, I will fight every day of my life to save her as long as God gives me the strength and resources to do so.
And this is why I don’t hate America (at least the real America).
J. Michael Hill
Killen, Alabama
16 November 2011
For more information, call the League at (800) 888-3163 or contact us via email.
My short answer is always pretty much this: “I don’t hate America. In fact, I love America. My home State of Alabama is part of America. Why would I hate America? But I do have great misgivings about our governing system and the people who are (and have long been) abusing it. And I would like to see Alabama and the rest of the South get out from under this corrupt system before it all sinks beneath the proverbial waves.”
But allow me to elaborate a bit. What these folks are calling “America” was a great experiment in liberty brought to fruition by our Founding Fathers over two-hundred years ago. We were given a republic, if we could keep it. However, not all influential Americans at the time were supportive of the experiment and the constitution that provided its foundation. Patrick Henry of Virginia was one of many Southern skeptics who warned his fellow countrymen of placing too much trust in Yankees. Mr. Jefferson and other fellow republicans (please notice the lower case “r”—they had nothing to do with the later Party of Lincoln) echoed the sentiment and warned that the States and their citizens must have protection from the perils of a consolidated national government, hence the Bill of Rights.
Well, the experiment of the late eighteenth century ended in 1860-61 when South Carolina and several other Deep South States thought it best to leave it and start another one of their own designs. But the new Republican (please notice the upper case “R”—they had nothing to do with the Jeffersonian republicans of an earlier era) Party administration of Abe Lincoln would have none of it; his threat to raise troops and force the wayward Southern sister States back into this voluntary union caused several other upper South States to join the CSA experiment. At the point, the “Union” army—which in reality was the U.S. Army (Southern men, don’t forget this when you consider enlisting)—invaded, and after four years of terrorizing the South with overwhelming force (including lots of European mercenaries and Socialists) they forced the South’s armies to surrender.
The old voluntary union given us by the Founding Fathers was no more by mid-1865. The dire warnings of Mr. Henry and others had indeed come to pass. Lincoln and the GOP had overturned the work of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and the defeated Southern States were forced back into the new, involuntary creation. Once rich and politically influential, the South, albeit a new and reconstructed version, was to be poor and politically disenfranchised for decades to come. As the Rev. Robert L. Dabney, a Presbyterian minister and officer under Stonewall Jackson, told the victorious Yankees (and I paraphrase): “You won. Now the responsibility for the nation’s future is in your hands alone. We of the South are poor and weak. We can be of no effect in this matter.”
Dabney probably knew the Yankees, in their great power axis from Washington to New York to Boston, would blow it. And he was right. The corruption we see today on the Potomac and Wall Street began right away with the Grant administration. Subsequently, we got an empire (the Yanks were just practicing on Dixie), a Federal Reserve system, an Income Tax, the 17th Amendment (which practically destroyed the 10th and States Rights), two World Wars, taken off the gold standard, a Great Depression, another invasion of the South through the civil rights movement (what we Southerners rightly call the Second Reconstruction), the moral rot of the 1960s, sunk up to the neck in the Middle East, three clueless Baby Boomer Presidents (Bill, George, and Barry), the USA Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security, a police/surveillance State, and now bankrupted by the Banksters and their political whores in Congress. And I’m supposed to cheer all this on by singing the National Anthem, saluting the Stars and Stripes, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance? No thanks, I’ll pass.
You see, the men I admire, from Henry and Jefferson through Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, knew that this American experiment, if it were to work, had to be an agreement held sacred among principled and virtuous men. And they knew the character of the Yankee (and I’m not talking about righteous Northern Copperheads who supported the South). And that bad character has not changed one iota since the Late Unpleasantness of 150 years ago. But in the bargain, many Southerners have thrown over the principles of their ancestors and have joined in the looting and pillaging. If you can’t beat the Yanks, then join them. I’ll pass on this, too, thank you very much.
The result of all this is that the U.S. government has become an organized criminal enterprise. Let that phrase sink in for a minute. If you still don’t believe it, then just pay attention for a little while; it’ll come to you.
Coming as I do from the old Southern traditionalist/conservative position of Henry, Jefferson, Calhoun, Taylor of Caroline, et al, I cannot and will not give my allegiance to a counterfeit. I will not confuse true patriotism with the chauvinistic nationalism that cheers “puttin’ a boot up the ass” of the enemy de jour of the American empire. I will not keep quiet while all that my ancestors sweated, bled, and died to give me as an inheritance is stolen away by an alien people with an alien ideology. I will not keep quiet while my motherland—Alabama and the South—can still be saved from the clutches of a predatory ruling elite. And as a Southern Patriot, I will fight every day of my life to save her as long as God gives me the strength and resources to do so.
And this is why I don’t hate America (at least the real America).
J. Michael Hill
Killen, Alabama
16 November 2011
For more information, call the League at (800) 888-3163 or contact us via email.
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