In the words of John Shelton Reed, "Atlanta represents what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to .prevent."
Nonetheless, Severson has a point. One of the things that made the South “the South” were the manners, refinement, and civility impressed upon all of its citizens, black and white. Even if they were not consistently practiced, the ideal had a certain value in itself.
The South is the most distinctive of the American sub-nations and if every nation is a facet of God’s design, than surely Dixie has inherent worth. Literature, language, the military tradition, religion, and all the other aspects of the Southern culture are in some ways a reflection of the agrarian, traditionalist ideal reflected in the writing of Faulkner or the authors of I’ll Take My Stand.
However, the survival of any culture necessitates the value of certain ideals, customs, and loyalties above others, and so inherently contradicts the one world, egalitarian ideal of liberalism. Just as America is now nonsensically defined as a “nation of immigrants” so
Southern culture must be deconstructed and explained away into nothingness.
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