Clyde Wilson's Defending Dixie covers such diverse topics as the reclamation of Southern history, the War for Southern Independence, the South Carolina battle flag imbroglio, an examination of blacks in Southern history, and an analysis of the beloved Agrarians, including a stirring tribute to America’s leading conservative philosopher, Russell Kirk.
Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture
By Clyde N. Wilson
Published by the Foundation for American Education (Columbia, South Carolina), 2006
Hdbk, 370 pgs., bibliographical references
ISBN: 0-9623842-2-44
BUT WHAT IS WHIGGERY?
A LEVELING, RANCOROUS, RATIONAL SORT OF MIND
THAT NEVER LOOKED OUT OF THE EYE OF A SAINT
OR OUT OF A DRUNKARD’S EYE.
— from The Seven Sages, by W.B. Yeats
The learned Professor Eric Voegelin in his essay, "Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!", wrote, “One of the typical phenomenon of the twentieth century is the event of spiritually energetic people breaking out of the dominant intellectual group in order to find that reality that has been lost.”
Voegelin’s identification of this group of intellectuals willing to challenge the distortions inherent in modernity explain why the West, in general, and the United States, in particular, has yet to succumb to the continuing philosophical derailment endemic in Western culture. It is good, I think, when we are able to identify one of those who replenish the “reservoirs of reality” because in reading their corpus we are able to acquire the knowledge, both intellectually and spiritually, to strengthen our own resolve. One intellectual whose work is defined by this spiritual breakout is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Clyde N. Wilson. His new book, Defending Dixie, is an eclectic collection of essays and book reviews.
Wilson eschews the contemporary academic template in that he has spent a great deal of time acquiring a vast comparative knowledge extending far beyond history, a knowledge essential to those who seek to obtain an understanding of the immensely complex structure of reality and man’s place therein. He is a scholar whose highly acclaimed, 28-volume edition of The Papers of John C. Calhoun, rank him with historians such as Lord Acton and Christopher Dawson, and his Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew is an outstanding example of American biography. But it is in his essays and reviews where he reveals an exegetical art expressed in clear and concise prose that details both the “symbolization and objective record” inherent in a true rendering of American history and political science.
In the first essay of the book, "American Historians and Their History," Wilson differentiates contemporary American history in terms of the extinguishment of a legitimate history by post-modern efforts in “destruction and reconstruction,” what the author refers to as “refounding.” Here Wilson explicates “refounding” as “. . . the actual destruction or suppression of old views, and their replacements by others newly manufactured for social purposes rather than as a consequence of knowledge.” And, he provides as an example its effects on our “inherited” interpretation of the American Revolution and the transformation of the Constitution from a document limiting the powers of the central state to one, following the Civil War, of championing the virtues of abstract and absurd individual rights.
The continuing effort to obfuscate and derail history is modernity’s most potent tool at modifying society. “To the extent,” Dr. Wilson writes, “that we accept a distorted record we divorce ourselves from the possibility of truly participating in early American history, of grasping our tradition in its fullness. If we are not allowed to understand what American history once was, but only what it now must be, we have introduced a distortion into our relationship with our past that will render inadequate our attempts to identify with it.”
The author defines a second “refounding” that is occurring now. While the first “refounding,” following the War Between the States, destroyed the political power of the Southern planter class and replaced it with Yankee mercantilists and industrialists, this new event adumbrates the domination of the American bourgeoisie by state-supported multiculturalism — the great leveling – which I believe derives from neo-Marxism, and the “reformulation of the meaning of America and therefore of what American history includes.”
Wilson has no problems with an historical rendering of ethnic minorities that works to synthesize the total historical record, but he is opposed to the idea that “the central theme of American history is the mixing of these groups.” The author argues that minority history is worthy of our attention and study, while his concern is with the intellectual dishonesty that inevitably results in a “distorted and contrived past” when the purpose for such history devolves into an effort to garner political power. This “new history” is simply worthless propaganda, being the product of political machinations and government subsidies. “It is,” Wilson writes, “a product of the state and not culture.”
Defending Dixie offers the discerning reader nine sections filled with essays and book reviews that cover such diverse topics as the reclamation of Southern history, the War for Southern Independence, the South Carolina battle flag imbroglio, a review of State Rights which includes a delightful defense of his fellow historian and Lincoln scholar, Thomas DiLorenzo, an examination of blacks in Southern history, a collection of criticisms of “Yankees,” an appraisal of Southern literary figures, including a poignant essay on the recently deceased William Styron, an analysis of the beloved Agrarians, their critics and defenders, including a stirring tribute to America’s leading conservative philosopher, Russell Kirk, and an anthology of essays and book reviews in defense of the American South.
Dr. Wilson provides a sweeping exegesis of the pernicious effects of modernity upon his beloved South: a close examination of the philosophical derailment that has disoriented all Americans for quite sometime. He is no neo-Confederate but rather a scholar who truly appreciates the genius of the Constitution and the old, long extirpated republic it established. He honors and defends, with panache and eloquence, his Confederate ancestors who rose up in arms to repel the Yankee invader and suffered not only defeat but also the oppression of the conquerors and a vilification that has lasted to this day.
Wilson is fully aware that modernity seeks to destroy the meta-narrative and replace it with a misanthropic nihilism, a philosophical “groundlessness” devoid of the traditions, aesthetics, and morality that provided sufficient succor to Western man to withstand external and internal heresies for centuries. He is the captain of a small but erudite band of brothers (and sisters) who have taught the old history to eager students, many of whom have chosen to join the resistance.
It is, I think, always best to let Dr. Wilson speak for himself. In his essay, "What to Say About Dixie," he provides a concise credenda:
There are two kinds of Americans. There are those who want to be left alone to pursue their destiny, restrained only by tradition and religion; and those whose identity revolves around compelling others to submit to their own manufactured vision of the good society.
Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, scholar and teacher, is one of those intellectuals who has broken out of the dominant and deviant intellectual group and succeeded in finding the reality that has been lost. His book, Defending Dixie, is an eloquent defense of the virtues of the old republic.
Defending Dixie is available on Amazon.com.
robertcheeks@core.com
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