Prattville Dragoons Camp 1524 Commander's Column for June 2019

One of the reasons suggested for the dissolution of the Union and the secession of the Southern states precipitating the War for Southern independence was that that the populace of the two sections of the United States were quite different from each other in terms of heritage, religion, politics, culture and surely, morality.  Many of those who immigrated to and colonized the Southern states were of Scotch Irish descent who knew only too well oppression from their homeland.  Southern churches were fundamentalist Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian congregations split from progressive Northern churches with pulpits dedicated to abolitionist rhetoric and included non-Christian denominations like Unitarian Universalist.  Perhaps most pointedly contrasting were the Northern Republicans espousing a strong centralized federal government industrial complex and the Democrats of the agricultural South who believed in self-sufficiency and state sovereignty.  These stark differences made cohabitation within the same geopolitical sphere and republic impossible to sustain. 

Contrast with today’s environment.  New York, left coast states and, Lincoln’s Illinois state and federal representatives openly espouse socialism and Marxist philosophies and platforms.   Massive trillion dollar environmental programs like the Green New Deal built on politicized science.  Mandated minimum wages which destroy entrepreneurship and innovation.  A welfare plantation providing for those who don’t wish to work destroying individual liberty and self-sufficiency.  First generation Muslim immigrants implementing Sharia law in an outright affront to and attack on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  A one world order with open borders diminishing American exceptionalism and the achievements of our European Christian culture in the formation of the greatest civilization in history.  The destruction of the nuclear family and the strength, stability and morality it imparts on our society in favor of an LGBQT rainbow coalition.  A disregard for the sanctity of human life enacting legislation allowing the murder of in utero babies and even infanticide of birthed children.  I perhaps have never been more of a Crimson Tide fan than when the university trustees this week removed from the law school the name of and returned a donation from an alumnus who called for a boycott of Alabama over the state’s passage of anti-abortion pro-life legislation. 

It should not be difficult to fathom the deep sectional divides in 1860 which resulted in the secession of the Southern states from the Union, far from the single issue of slavery.   The Democrats today wish to eliminate a key construct of the framers, the electoral college which was meant to balance the political power between the populace North and the rural states of the South, much as it is thankfully  effectually doing today.   No wonder when these same progressives embrace the label of Democrat Socialists and seek to weaken or reconstruct the Constitution thru judicial activism.  Instead of equal  opportunity in a vibrant capitalistic economic system with liberty for all they seek equal outcomes thru wealth redistribution in a close federally regulated Marxist system with dictates for all.   No wonder that in California and New York and Illinois, there have recently been serious proposals and efforts to divide the states from the liberal population centers to break the political power of these big government progressives.  Not difficult to imagine at all our ancestors reaching the breaking point and exercising the constitutional powers of state sovereignty to secede from a Union heading down the wrong path.