Who Has Caused the Problems of the South?

Who Has Caused the Problems of the South?
Thomas Allen

    Who is the blame for the plight of the South? Who has burdened the South with an ever growing, ever oppressive government? With increased taxation? With more and more regimentation? With less and less freedom? Is it the Communists, blacks, Jews, liberals, conservatives, international bankers, multinational corporations, Yankees, the old Southern ruling class, or some other sinister group? It is none of these. True, all of these groups contribute to the problem. They cultivate turmoil and take advantage of pernicious situations, but they are not the root cause of the plight of the South. If not these, then who is? The blame rests with the Southerners themselves.

    The Southerner has degenerated. He suffers from moral and spiritual decay. He has replaced his nobleness with envy and his honor with greed. He has traded his principles for pragmatic relativism and his self-esteem and self-reliance for false security. His virtues are waning.

    The motivating force in the lives of too many Southerners is envy. (Envy occurs when a person seeks to destroy that which he knows that he can never have or obtain.) Envy leads to the lust for equality and democracy (the rule by man instead of law). From this lust comes the acceptance and eventually the desire for socialism and miscegenation. (Socialism does not necessarily mean governmental ownership of the means of production. It does mean governmental control of the economy.)

    Envy has brought the progressive income tax and confiscating inheritance tax. It has brought a host of agricultural programs to restrict the best farmers. It has brought the bankrupt social security system and socialized medicine, Medicare and Medicaid. The rising crime rate and the light sentencing of criminals are, for the most part, a result of envy. At the local level, it has brought zoning laws. Because of envy, Southerners have exchanged their liberty for fictitious security of governmental care. The foundation of the welfare state is envy.

    Perhaps the most destructive child of envy is public education. Ostensibly to eliminate ignorance among the less fortunate, the real objective of public education is to make everyone equal. This means repressing the more intelligent and gifted. Since intelligence and talents are to a great extent genetically determined, the stupid and untalented can never be raised to high levels. However, the intelligent and talented can always be suppressed to a mediocrity.

    One of the deadlier effects of public education has been to suppress the knowledge of Southern history, race, religion, economics, and other subjects of importance to the South. When these subjects are taught, they are taught in a derogatory manner — perhaps because greed has led Southerners to allow their education to be controlled by those who are alien to the South. This lack of knowledge or tainted knowledge has led to the manipulation of Southerners. Because they do not have the correct knowledge of their history, Southerners have been deceived into believing that all Southerners were brutal slave masters and were (are) octoroons. This deception has been used to make them feel guilty about crimes that their ancestors supposedly committed although their ancestors never committed such crimes. Liberals, Communists, and others who desire omnipotent government, as well as blacks, have inculcated this guilt and manipulated it for their own advantage. They have imposed a multitude of oppressive “civil rights” laws on the South and have restricted or destroyed many of the freedoms of Southerners in social and economic affairs. Guilt has also led to sacrificing Southern lives and property for the cause of Zionism to atone for alleged crimes of Germany — crimes of which Southerners are completely innocent and crimes of the criminal whom Southerners help destroy. Because of their ignorance and desire for equality, Southerners have been wallowing in this guilt for more than three decades at the cost of their liberty.

    All of these evils and many more are born of envy and her daughters, equality and democracy.

    The other force destroying the South is greed — the desire for something for nothing. Too many Southerners have sold their souls for short-term gains and some spurious security.

    Instead of concentrating on developing industries within their own State from capital created within that State, Southerners prefer to import industries from other States and countries. Underlying this, is the desire to use and tax the capital of others — greed. (Being greedy for votes and power, politicians prefer importing one large industry which employs two hundred people to thirty small domestic industries which employ ten people each because the large plant is more visible.) But what the South has done is to place the control of its industries, resources, and workers at the mercy of aliens.

    Greed has led Southerners to join much of the rest of the world in mortgaging the future of their children for present gratification by acquiring more debt than they can ever repay. Much of the increasing numbers of divorces and abortions come from greed.

    Liberals, multinational corporations, international bankers, and many others have cultivated and preyed on greed to satisfy their own greed. Greed has brought federally insured bank deposits, the export-import bank, and a number of other programs to protect investors from the risks of their investments. At the State level, it has brought a host of licensing bureaus. In the name of protecting consumers, numerous professions are licensed to reduce competition and thereby raise the cost of the licensed service. Greed is the foundation of many environmental laws. Millions of acres are set aside as a subsidized playground for the middle class.

    Perhaps the deadliest beast of this greed has been revenue sharing programs. Liberals, socialists, and other assorted statists bribe State and local governments with free and easy money. The greed of Southern governmental officials leads them into this trap. Once hooked on the “free” money of the U. S, government, the South is inflicted by the tyrannical controls of the U.S. government. As long as the greed of Southerners prevent them from giving up the illusory free gifts that revenue sharing brings, the extortion scheme will work The South will continue to be controlled by the U.S. government and those who control the U.S. government — international bankers, multinational corporations, labor union bosses, liberal academicians, and other interests of Yankeedom.

    The rot in the South comes mainly from envy and greed. These two evils manifest themselves in many forms. Their rise points not only to the degeneration of the common man of the South but also to the leaders of the South.

    In the long-run people generally get the type of government that they want and deserve, especially in a democracy. (This is true even in totalitarian countries like Russia.) Leaders tend to reflect the attitudes and morals of the people that they govern. As Southerners have lost their principles and virtues, so have their leaders. But because of their position, leaders must carry a larger share of the blame than the common man. Leaders have the duty of leading their people away from moral and spiritual decay. In this respect Southern leaders, as a whole, have utterly failed. They have traded their principles, if they ever had any, for pragmatic relativism. They are guided by envy and greed. They lead by envy and greed.

    Southerners need not turn to conservatives to lead them from their decline. Conservatives are either reactionaries with little vision, or they have a vested interest in preserving the present corrupt institutions. Nor need Southerners turn to Nazis and fascists, for they, like Communist and democratic socialists, need and want an all-powerful government; their philosophy is that of envy. Populists should also be avoided since they too are preachers of envy. Of coarse the Republican and especially the Democratic parties offer no solution, for they are part of the problem. (One of the few political organizations to which Southerners can turn is the Southern National Party. [Editor’s note: The Southern National Party disbanded in 1999.])

    There is another group of leaders who have failed the South even more than the political leaders. These are the religious leaders. Instead of preaching salvation, individual responsibility, respect for life and property, etc., too many of them concentrate on “social issues.” They preach unscriptural ideas like equality and altruism. They worship democracy and socialism and the envy and greed that accompany them. Instead of looking to Christ as the Savior of man, they look to the government. They accept, if not outright encourage, the sins of homosexuality, miscegenation, and abortion. They encourage their people to surrender the minds of their children to the secular humanists of public education. Too many of the churches of the South have been wholly corrupted. (Fortunately, there are some churches in the South that have not been corrupted. If the South is to be saved, it will be because of these churches.)

    Is there hope for the South? Yes. The reversal of this process will require the spiritual revival of the common nan and the leaders of the South. It will require Southerners to turn from envy and greed. It will require Southerners to return to their lost principles. It will require a return to honor, integrity, purity, fidelity, humility, and other such virtues. It will require giving up the false security offered by government welfare programs and relying on oneself once again. It will require regaining self-respect. It will require replacing the pragmatic-relativistic leaders of the “New South,” such as Governor Hunt of North Carolina, with moral principled Christian leaders, such as Senator Helms of North Carolina (who is ridiculed as the reactionary leader of the “New Right,” but who is in reality among the avant-garde of the South). Most important of all, it will require God’s help, for without His succor the change cannot occur.

    Once Southerners have regained their lost principles and virtues, how can they best retain them? Isolation from these who are corrupted by envy and greed. This can best be achieved through a free and independent confederation of free and independent Southern States.

Copyright © 1984 by Thomas Coley Allen.