Grim's Hall

SMI:

I've been making fun of people who have been wringing their hands over a movement whose members they've decided to call "neo-Confederates." Just what might one be? Well, usually they're citing the Daughters of the Confederacy, which they astonishingly describe as "white supremicist." As far as I know from having grown up in Georgia, the DAC mostly holds tea parties and fancy-dress balls. I've never been to one, so maybe they discuss vicious things over their tea--but it's real hard to imagine them instituting a revolution.

So today I read about the Southern Military Institute on Southern Appeal. I can't help but notice two things right away: first, that their flag contains one of the Confederate National flags; and second, that the motto of SMI will be Deo Vindice. That motto, which means "God is our Defender," has been used once before, on the Great Seal of the Confederate States of America.

Now, I don't think the DAC or the Sons of Confederate Veterans actually advocate a new (that is, neo) Confederacy. SMI doesn't either, as far as I can tell. Interestingly, though, it says it will be training officers for "the National Guard of the Southern States, to help prepare young men to assume roles as officers in the Army and Air National Guard. Not the USMC? If not, why not, unless it is because your first loyalty is not to the Federal government? But then, why should your first loyalty be to the Feds? Jefferson's wasn't. I have to admit I have a love and affection for Georgia that I can't say I feel for anyplace else. Yet I also enlisted in the USMC straight out of high school, precisely out of patriotism and love of America, not just Georgia. I find it very odd that SMI isn't going to be preparing men to fight in the Marines, or even the US Army.

SMI is definitely pro-Confederacy:

SMI will sponsor programs that advance the knowledge and awareness of Southern history and culture including the honouring of Confederate Memorial Day and New Market Day, which celebrates the valor of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market, Virginia on the 15th of May, 1864.

I have a sense that a lot of this is a reaction to the political correctness of recent years. The Confederate flag-waving, the repeated invocation of "Judeo-Christian values," and so forth are plainly a ceremonial giving of the finger to the PC line that the Confederacy has to be viewed as an unmitigated evil; that descendants of Confederates should be ashamed of their heritage; that programs that are too physically tough for women to participate in them fully must be banned; that Christian faith must be practiced out of sight. We're hearing from SMI the voice of plain outrage over all of these challenges to the things that their founders hold dear, and to the destruction of two Southern institutions: VMI, and the Citadel.

Outrage is never pretty. I hope they get over it fast. It sounds like they will otherwise have an excellent program, one that will be both traditional and also, now, unique in America:

The concept of the American citizen soldier is as old as our nation itself. Likewise, an education in a military setting is a time proven approach to educating young men for positions of great responsibility. SMI fully supports these concepts. For those who desire an association with a formal military organization, SMI will work closely with the National Guard of the Southern states to help prepare young men to assume roles as officers in the Army and Air National Guard.

Southern traditions that have been tarnished and almost lost will live again at SMI. The concept of an officer and a Southern gentleman will be the standard, not the exception. Honesty, integrity, courtesy, and respect for all men and women regardless of race, position, or economic standing will be taught and required.

Well, hell, on those points these lads and I are positive allies. Too, I understand their outrage on the way the South is treated by the rest of the country. When a substantial percentage of the population considers the Confederates to have been "traitors," we can say that there has been a total failure of education in America as to the evolution of the Constitution and the history of our country.

But this is where I dissent with SMI. America is our country too. However improperly we've been treated, the fact is that the Yankees have been good for us. That's hard to admit to yourself, I know, but it's true. Slavery was evil. It had to go. Yes, Reconstruction was brutal and unconstitutional, yes the South was beggared for four generations, yes the South was treated as a colony of the North for seventy years. In spite of that, we are better off today because of our continuing relationship with the Yankee. We are better off simply because we are morally clean now: both Slavery and Jim Crow have been broken, and brotherhood between all Southerners is now possible and, increasingly, a fact of life. We must admit that we lacked the internal will to effect those changes.

It is also true that we have been good for the Yankees. The fact that America is not mired in European Union socialism is almost entirely due to the fact that the Solid South has kept us from being dragged into the abyss. The fact that our country has a military that is ready and able to defend her in her hour of need is disproportionately due to Southerners. America needs us. We are what keeps her true to her founding principles, as much as she remains true to them. If America is going to lead the world to freedom, she needs us to remind her what Freedom was supposed to mean.

It has never been a comfortable relationship, Southerner to Yankee. It has, however, been good for both of us. It's past time to recognize that.