ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, January 1, 1996 TAG: 9601020135
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: HOLIDAY
COLUMN: George F. Will
SOURCE: GEORGE F. WILL
A CHAPTER of America's intellectual history came to a quiet close three weeks ago with the death at age 92 of Andrew Lytle at his cabin in Monteagle, Tenn. He was the last survivor of the 12 Southern writers - Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate were the best known - who in 1930 contributed essays to the book ``I'll Take My Stand.''
It was the manifesto of the Agrarian movement, a small but luminous band of intellectuals who initially were energized in part by resentment of Northern condescension toward the South after the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee, concerning the teaching of evolution. However, their larger theme was a Jeffersonian defense of the distinctiveness and dignity of the Southern culture of rural yeomanry, against urbanization and industrialization. A ``New South''? They wanted none of it.
A new chapter, or a postscript to the old one, is now being written by people such as Professor Clyde Wilson. Talk about your angry white male: Wilson is angry at John Quincy Adams, among many other people and things. Wilson knows how to nurse a grudge.
A historian at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C., and editor of the papers of the state's most famous son, John C. Calhoun, Wilson actually is too amiable to be characterized as constantly angry, but he is comprehensively disapproving of most of the modern world, which is why he is active in the Southern League. If you believe America is becoming too homogenized, that regional differences are being blurred and ancient passions are growing cold, the league should assuage your regrets.
Founded two years ago in emulation of the Lombard League, which seeks to preserve the traditions of northern Italy, the Southern League's more than 1,000 members seek ``the cultural, social, economic and political independence and well-being of the Southern people.'' Yes, independence.
You may think all that was settled 130 years ago in the living room of a farmhouse at Appomattox. Try to tell that to the sort of league members who refer to the Revolutionary War as ``the first war for independence.'' The second one was unavailing but some members are sharpening their swords, spoiling for a third. Others content themselves with delivering learned papers to league meetings, arguing, in Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric of ``self-determination of peoples,'' the right of secession. They insist that the North won the secession dispute because it had better factories, not better arguments.
The papers and symposia at league meetings (the most recent was attended by the great-great-grandniece of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate cavalry general), show that most league members subscribe not only to regional chauvinism but also to variants of conservatism. However, they deeply dislike capitalism's ethos of rationalism and what its dynamism does in dissolving organic communities based on local sentiments and traditional senses of place. Furthermore, some league members give aid and comfort to leftist ``multiculturalists'' when they say ``America is only a geographical expression.''
Actually, the logic of most league members, including Wilson, is that the ``Northernization'' of the South by economic and cultural forces has, alas, made America one nation. Wilson, who speaks with defiant disdain of ``the Deep North,'' probably wishes New England states had acted on secessionist threats voiced at their Hartford Convention in 1814. They would have taken with them the whole Adams family, which to Wilson symbolizes the North's cultural condescension and political imperialism toward the South.
The league's bimonthly newsletter, Southern Patriot, bristles with quirky agitation against ``Yankee hegemony.'' The term ``Copperhead'' survives in its pages as a term of endearment for Northern sympathizers. Readers are urged to loudly say ``divisible'' instead of ``indivisible'' when they ``absolutely must recite the `Pledge of Allegiance' to the flag of our Yankee conquerors.'' Mel Gibson's movie ``Braveheart'' is warmly recommended for its portrayal of 13th century Scottish nationalism. The disintegrations of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and the near disintegration of Canada, are celebrated.
Although there is in all this a certain sophomoric delight in shocking polite society, there also is an admirable seriousness about the intellectual pedigree of a particular cultural critique of American modernity. However, if you want to know just how lost the Lost Cause is, and how much the league needs a leavening sense of irony, note the newsletter's unembarrassed announcement that the league is on the Internet, and that league information can be obtained by email at NBForrestaol.com. Andrew Lytle, who in his 80s still practiced what he preached - simplicity and subsistence agriculture - would have had none of that.
- Washington Post Writers Group
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