Tag: Abbeville Institute

Lazy Sunday XXII: Reading

The Portly Politico54 Comments

Summer is drawing to a close, and with it free time for reading.  One of my enduring frustrations as a student was the lack of time to read what I enjoyed (even though my English and history courses in high school and college often presented me the opportunity to read many excellent works).

As an adult, the situation has improved only marginally, as work often eats up most of my time, both during the day and at night.  As a blogger and politics junkie, I also tend to read vast quantities of quick news stories and opinion pieces, while neglecting longer-form works that would be more satisfying.

Reading short articles on the Internet is like scarfing down a box of Cheez-Its:  it’s enjoyable in the moment, but it just raises my blood pressure and leaves me unfilled: an unhealthy indulgence in large quantities.  A good book, or even a well-crafted short story, is like a steak dinner:  filling, satisfying, and sustaining.

I’ve released two reading lists, in 2016 and 2019 (the full 2019 list is a SubscribeStar exclusive), but I thought this Sunday I’d feature some recent posts on books, short stories, and pieces I’ve enjoyed:

  • “McClay & Sheaffer on American History” – This piece examines a new American history textbook from Wilfred McClay, who once mailed me a copy of the Italian novel The Leopard after I wrote to him (he’d written about the book for a conservative publication).  My girlfriend’s father actually owns a copy of this book, and I had an opportunity to flip through its glossy pages while in New Jersey.  My post offers up an analysis of the state of American history education.
  • “Summer Reading: The Story of Yankee Whaling” – I was still in the process of reading The Story of Yankee Whaling, a fascinating account of America’s whaling heyday aimed at younger readers, when I wrote this post.  It was a charming—and hugely informative—book, which gave me access to an entire forgotten industry and its role in American history.  The book dealt with its subjects sympathetically and unapologetically; there is no hand-wringing about whether or not it was right to kill whales for their blubbery oil.  Instead, it simply detailed—and what thrilling detail!—the tough lives of whalers, and the gory particulars of their bloody, necessary trade.
  • “Reblog: Conan the Southerner?” – This post dealt with an interesting piece from the Abbeville Institute, a Southern history website with a strong Jeffersonian streak.  The original post details the influence of rural Texas and its mores upon the creation of the Conan the Barbarian character.  Strength, honor, integrity, hard work—these are the hard-won morals of the titular barbarian king, and they are deeply rooted in the Southern tradition.
  • “Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Mother Hive’” – my History of Conservative Thought class read this chilling short story one morning as an icebreaker.  It’s about the insidious infiltration of a dangerous foreign element into a proud but aging beehive.  The infiltrator—a wax-moth—fills the heads of the young bees with abstract claims of a utopian society, all-the-while laying its eggs and creating great strains on the hive.  Fewer healthy bees are born, much less willing to work to support the colony, so more and more work is shouldered by a diminishing number of healthy workers.  It all ends in a fiery blaze, with hope for the future, as a young Princess and her loyal retinue escape to rebuild.  Written in 1908, the story sounds like it describes the modern West today—a terrifying warning that, I fear, we have not heeded.

So, there you have it.  A little extra summertime reading for you before the academic year resumes.  Teachers at my school report back in the morning, and students are in the following week.  Yikes!  Where did the summer go?

Enjoy your Sunday,

TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Friday Night Recommendation: The Abbeville Institute

The Portly Politico10 Comments

The Internet is a vast place, with a niche for everything.  It’s interesting to consider how much import users put into their own little online worlds—they know everything about what makes their little corner of the web tick, or click—but, if you’re outside of that niche, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist.  It’s like planets filled with intelligent life that cannot perceive or know one another, except when one spunky interstellar craft stumbles upon a distant world.

Regardless, this phenomenon certainly exists online, which explains, in part, why some Americans know everything wicked the progressive Left is unleashing upon our world, while others are blissfully unaware of their impending dooms.  One website that is doing yeomen’s work on our side is the Abbeville Institute.

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Reblog: Conan the Southerner?

The Portly Politico5 Comments

I’m heading back from a glorious week in New Jersey today to return to my beloved South Carolina.  It was serendipitous, then, that I read this piece from the Abbeville Institute, “Conan the Southerner?”

I recently stumbled upon the Abbeville Institute while doing some research on John Randolph of Roanoke for my History of Conservative Thought course.  It’s an institute dedicated to Southern history, and to presenting a more nuanced interpretation of the antebellum South.  Their blog features some dense, interesting bits of Southern history (I’m reading through a long-ish essay on “The South Carolina Federalists” that has taught me a great deal more about my State’s history in the period of the Early Republic), and champions constitutionalism, limited government, and a traditional way of life.

The Conan piece is an excellent—and fun—analysis of the Conan the Barbarian series of low-fantasy pulp novels, focusing on Conan creator Robert E. Howard and his Jacksonian roots in Texas.  The post’s author, Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Joel T. Leggett, argues that Howard’s Conan is a modern example of American mythology, one with distinctively Southern roots.

The essay is also useful as it offers a clear definition of Jacksonian principles, via historian Walter Russell Meade.  As we continue to attempt to define “populism” in the midst of Trumpian nationalism, I always relish a concise definition of the principles of the godfather of American populism, Andrew Jackson.

Meade, per Leggett, defines these principles as “self-reliance, equality, individualism, financial adventurism, and courage.”  Leggett then proceeds to demonstrate how the character of Conan embodies these qualities, and that Howard was chiefly concerned with promoting individual liberty.

That part of the essay is, for me, the most useful and enjoyable.  The qualities are certainly deeply American—and deeply Southern.  The “equality” is not the banal egalitarianism of our present age, which seeks to level off everything and everyone into conformist blandness, but the old equality of opportunity, in which every man can forge his destiny.

Tied with that is the notion of “financial adventurism.”  Leggett notes that Meade argued that “Jacksonians view money and wealth as a means to finance a lifestyle of self-definition.  The value of wealth is to enable you to be you, to live life to its fullest.”  This notion of financing “a lifestyle of self-definition” accords with my own long-term financial goals.  It also seems to be the direction that “free” speech is headed:  to exercise this right truly, one must have financial independence from social justice scolds.

And this, for Leggett, seems to be the core of Conan’s Southern Jacksonianism:  a desire for individual liberty, for a man to be able to live his life on his own terms.  Howard might have wrapped that ideal in a burly barbarian warrior-king who rose to rule a kingdom due to his own prowess, but it’s one every American should aspire towards.  In this way, Leggett makes a compelling case for Conan the Barbarian as a valuable piece of American mythology.