What a fabulous idea! Give this man some credit, he sees the postmodern conservative point of my post was to say that there’s something–but not everything–good about the South. And surely he’s right to add that I’m the true heir of the authors of I’LL TAKE MY STAND. Not only that, his judicious comment is that America needs both the North and the South, the universal and the particular, the nation and the localities, and justice and love.
Thursday, July 9, 2009, 1:33 PM
Peter Lawler
July 9th, 2009 | 1:42 pm
Well, unless I’m not doing my technos properly and that’s always a possibility, when I click on “What” I get a broken link, and I do want to see who it is that agrees with Dr. L.
Heir to “I’ll Take My Stand,” my goodness!
July 9th, 2009 | 3:07 pm
Peter deserves no club until he learns to make a hyperlink that actually works. In fact, it is only ignorance of this very technique that has prevented me from starting my own club, one that I venture would be at once more Aristotelian and more postmodern than Peter’s. Or that is my aspiration.
July 9th, 2009 | 3:26 pm
Sorry. They mysteries of linking weren’t properly passed on to me. I will say, though, that my google CHROME automatically redirected me to the right site, saving me from my own folly.
July 9th, 2009 | 3:28 pm
It’s fixed now. I can learn…
July 10th, 2009 | 6:11 am
Wise readers of All Take My Stand knew to take their stand beyond some defense of the old order. The first edition of the Fugitive speaks of wishing to get beyond the Margaret Mitchell grievances of reconstruction–with its magnolia trees and Rhett Butler gentility. Allen Tate’s essay–in particular–is to be recommended.
RPW wrote an essay in this book which he tried to live down for the rest of his life. In my mind he lived down and up to it in the great essay called “Segregation” as well as the book called (in its un-PC title) “Who Speaks for the Negro.”
Nonetheless, RPW in I’ll Take My Stand suggested that separate lodgings for black and white was impractical at best, but ultimately unjust. Sounds silly nowadays. Donald Davidson allegedly thought the essay was too “sociological.” Here is Warren who has written some of the best and most honest poetry of an old man confronting old age and death than any poet I know burdened by an essay that was “liberal” in its day. For that matter, look at Warren’s first lines to A Place to Come To. It says it all.
All this sounds ridiculous and racist nowadays, but not really. So blacks and whites can equally stay at Ramada Inn. Nonetheless, blacks and whites are as far apart as they have ever been–even if all can lament the death of Michael Jackson.
WEB DuBois speaks of the ease with which his “slave” fathers could deal day to day with white “masters” on a regular basis. It may not have been friendship, but at least it was not walking on eggshells like today. One should not forget that DuBois speaks of a life beyond the color line and he mentions Shakespeare. I too wish to meet friends above that color line.
Race relations are crazy–I don’t even know why I try.
July 10th, 2009 | 6:27 am
Sorry–that was a Texan version of I’ll called “All.” Like All be home soon, and All stop drinking tomorrow.
July 10th, 2009 | 8:56 am
The lack of link-ability suggests greatness to me. None of my worthy and gifted bosses have been able to master the little details like the fax machine, the copier, the internet, etc.
July 10th, 2009 | 9:26 am
It’s true enough that we’re still walking on eggshells, but that doesn’t mean it would be good or even possible to somehow go back to the time when (we imagine) we all so easily knew our place. And there’s still greatness in the American ideal of getting above the color line in the spirit of true aristocrats, like Shakespeare or the early DuBois, at least.
July 10th, 2009 | 11:02 am
Since you brought it up…race that is. I live in an area of small towns. The races get along very well, there is in fact a great deal of miscegenation. Maybe twenty years ago it was a big deal but now-a-days…who cares. Here, at least, human beings acting like human beings have taken care of a social/cultural problem. Who says we need an elite or an oppressive federal regime to monitor our behavior?
Now in large cities where human existence can be, shall we say, disturbed, it may very well be a different story.
July 10th, 2009 | 5:13 pm
Bob, I’m very sympathetic to the view that the era of federal involvement when it comes to race is over. That’s not to say that it wasn’t necessary in the 60s.
July 10th, 2009 | 6:11 pm
Dr. L, I do hope you’re going to comment on Dr. D’s new post at FPR, and be sure to read the thread, too.
July 10th, 2009 | 11:23 pm
My thanks to Dr. Lawler for his very kind words and the link to the post. Apologies for the anonymity, some of us are in grad schools…
Been enjoying the Pomocon vs. FPR debate.
July 11th, 2009 | 9:07 am
Bob, Let me know what you’re talking about. What I saw was recycling old material and porchers patting each other on the back for their porchifications. I’m proud in the best tradition of Al Gore to have invented “stuck with virtue,” which is not the same thing as stuck with farming or stuck with an inevitable global collapse of “capitalism.” My response is to repeat what our philosopher-pope says above, I guess. But feel free to speak you’re mind.
July 11th, 2009 | 2:04 pm
Dr. L, if I’ve offended it was not my intent, and if so allow me to offer any apology necessary. My inquiry of one of America’s leading philosophers was to determine if you might offer a comment re: the blog in question, not to be snide, insulting, or in any way to act inappropriately.
July 12th, 2009 | 9:52 am
Bob,was just having fun. For a real response, see Ralph above. Pat’s riding. of Strauss’s three waves is too one-dimensional to be credible.Strauss is less antimodern and more anti-Christian than he suggests.
July 12th, 2009 | 5:21 pm
And Bob, Let me apologize for seeming abrupt and unmannerly. I’ve only had access to my trusty blackberry the last couple of days and have been stuck with the very unporchlike blackberry brevity. Ate lunch at Lyn-sis soul food in Denmark, SC, where my wife and I were the only ones not dress to the nines for church. Now we’re at the hyper-preppy or shaggy Boardwalk Inn on the Isle of Palm, which has incredible internet specials due to the economic downturn.
July 13th, 2009 | 6:32 am
Peter, I do envy your southern and gentlemanly life in beautiful and charming “Dixie,” even though there’s the occasional unpleasantness with “Yankee” technology.
I rather enjoy it on those rare occasions when your conversation approaches the level of ‘abrupt,’ though experiencing bad manners in this conversation would very much be like witnessing a tear in the fabric of the universe.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact