We Want Dixie

“What, exactly, do you want?” 

Conservative liberals consider this a devastating response to skeptics of liberalism like Sohrab Ahmari. The charge is that we have no coherent vision to replace liberalism.

Here in the South, we know exactly why we dislike liberalism though and what it is that we are fighting to preserve and restore. We want the South to be Southern. We want to Make Dixie Great Again. We’re reacting against liberalism in much the same way that the body’s immune system is triggered and reacts against a foreign virus. Southerners have opposed the enroachments of liberalism for centuries and our generation’s response to its latest incursions and advances is no different.

Here are some of the most recent “curses of liberty” that have been introduced to the South:

• Forced Integration
• Mass immigration
• Multiculturalism
• Political correctness
• Expressive individualism
• Deracination
• Consumerism
• Modernism
• Miscegenation
• Transgenderism
• Gay marriage
• Abortion
• Divorce
• Free Love
• Pornography
• Christian Zionism
• Atheism

Southern conservatism is not Northern conservatism. It is not derived from reading Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman or Ayn Rand books. It is not based on classical liberalism. Instead, it is an organic tradition that is deeply rooted in our history and the traditional values of our people.

Southerners are social conservatives. As a people, we value order, cohesion and social stability. We also value liberty, but we do not value anarchy. Within Southern culture, there is a sense that there is a point at which liberty, tolerance and individualism can be taken too far which is when it becomes destructive to the social order and social stability. These changes are virtually always imposed on the South from outside the region. This is what produces backlashes against liberalism.

From the perspective of self righteous liberals, we are motivated by “hate.” Who could possibly dissent from the glorious progress of liberalism as it has spread its tentacles across the world since the Second World War poisoning, disrupting and destroying traditional cultures in its wake?

The favorite knee jerk response of liberalism to its dissidents is to screech about “white supremacy.” Everyone has been conditioned under liberalism to believe that “white supremacy” was the worst thing that ever happened in the world. The destruction that liberalism has unleashed around the world goes far beyond the South and far beyond the demise of white supremacy in the 1960s.

It wasn’t so long ago that Europeans had pride in their ancestors. There was a sense of continuity between generations. The present generation revered its ancestors and prepared the world for future generations. Communities used to be strong and cohesive. Religion used to be strong. Husbands were the head of their households. The vast majority of men and women got married and produced children. There was a strong sense of national identity. This used to seem so natural that it was taken for granted.

What has replaced that world thanks to liberalism? Imagine millions of lonely, isolated and atomized people living in large metropolitan areas. They have been deracinated, which is to say, stripped of their ethnic and cultural heritage. These liberated individuals don’t feel connected to the past, the future or to the people around them. They are not connected to the place in which they happen to reside. They have become hedonists and consumers who live in the pleasures of the moment. They are alienated, miserable and resentful. Many of them have become nihilists who see the world as meaningless. Their role models aren’t our traditional heroes, but degenerate celebrities. Their values don’t come from their church or their ancestors, but from the degenerate garbage pulsating through the mass media. These people spend a disproportionate amount of time on social media berating others for not latching on to the latest media fad or conforming their lives to the latest -ism or -phobia.

What do we want? We want the South to be the way it was a few generations ago, to restore the things that have been lost, to discredit and reverse the tide of liberalism and for our children to have something resembling a future. There are people all around the Western world who share these same healthy sentiments – organic nationalism should replace liberalism – as what has happened to the South is only one front in the larger struggle. We’re all reacting against the same disease.