M.E. Bradford' s Constitutional Theory: A Southern Conservative's Affirmation of The Rule of Law

by Marshall DeRosa

M.E. Bradford

A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution. (La Salle, IL: Sherwood Sugden & Company Publishers, 1979). Cited in the text as Guide.

Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1985). Cited in the text as Remembering.

A Worthy Company: The Dramatic Story of the Men Who Founded Our Country. (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988).

The Reactionary Imperative: Essays Literary & Political. (Peru, IL: Sherwood Sugden & Company Publishers, 1990). Cited in the text as Reactionary.

Against The Barbarians and Other Reflections on Familiar Themes. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1992). Cited in the text as Barbarians.

Original Intentions On The Making Of The United States Constitution. (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1993). Cited in the text as Intentions.

M.E. Bradford's constitutional theory is firmly grounded in the original intent of the Framers. His scholarly links to original intent are twofold; original intent is the only way to legitimately apply the U.S. Constitution to contemporary politics and it is better than any alternative at procuring good government.

The Southern Critics: An Anthology

by Julie Robison

THE SOUTHERN CRITICS: AN ANTHOLOGY
Edited by Glenn C. Arbery, ISI Books

A Southern critic by any other name would be an Agrarian or Fugitive. Four of the writers featured in this book defended their way of life against modernity 80 years ago at Vanderbilt University in “I’ll Take My Stand.” The others given voice here are literary critics, writers of fiction, poets and teachers. They never apologize for the South but shelter and uphold the best of their heritage.

The first section of the book is called “In Dixieland” and has four essays. The first, “Introduction: A Statement of Principles,” by John Crowe Ransom, is the only chapter from “I’ll Take My Stand.” Industrialization, Ransom argues, does not just take its toll on business but on “practices such as manners, conversation, hospitality, sympathy, family life, [and] romantic love.”

Agrarianism and Cultural Renewal

by Lee Cheek

Among the contributions to I'll Take My Stand, Allen Tate's "Remarks on the Southern Religion" is usually interpreted as the most acerbic, immoderate, and unusual essay in the collection. All too often the essay is read as an apologia for violence or an eccentric defense of tradition. In fact, Tate--like his fellow Agrarians--was seeking to remind his readers of the religious and political society that was once the South. More importantly, Tate's essay is a plea for a recovery of what has been lost: a humane social order.

Nourished by daily labors in the fields, it was the properly ordered agrarian community that produced a more stable and wholesome environment for families and workers than industrialism could offer. According to Tate, an agrarian environment encouraged a life more conducive to religious and ethical living as well. In regard to farming, the experience of tilling the soil and harvesting crops embodied a sense of self-sacrifice and an attachment to a shared community. Farming was by its very nature a communal, rather than a solitary act. The primary aesthetic and spiritual needs of humankind were best fulfilled by the structure and corporate nature of an agrarian society. Tate's close friend and fellow Agrarian, Andrew Lytle, convincingly reaffirmed this sentiment years later: "Agriculture is a limited term. A better one is farming. It is inclusive. Unlike any other occupation, farming is, or should be, a way of life."

Genuine cultural renewal could not take place without appreciating the agrarian worldview--grounded in a connection to the soil and love for the Creator that was increasingly less palpable to Tate's generation, and at the end of 20th century even the memory of such an existence is quickly fading.

The root of the problem for Tate was simple: The significance of New England, and more specifically the Massachusetts Bay settlement and subsequent religious and political developments in American life had crowded out the agrarian alternative from public discourse. For the Agrarians, the "American" political, religious and social experience, as well as the resulting vision for politics, was usually attributed to Puritan New England. The late Sydney Ahlstrom argued that the "Puritan Ethic" of legalistic moral strictures, and a doctrine of labor as serving and pleasing God, became the American ethic. And in the hands of the Puritan divines the "ethic" became incorporated into their understanding of politics, nourishing New England religious and political thought and influencing the Founding generation by providing a way of understanding the unique nature of the American political experience.

Do the Southern Agrarians and Distributists Still Count?

As I'm thinking about the various influences on Kirk (and, hence, the post-WWII American Right), I started thinking about the Southern Agrarians as well as the English Distributists.

There are many who write for this blog who know far more about these groups than I do. But, from what I can tell, this American version of these groups is either totally forgotten or dismissed as some kind of nostalgic Neo-Cons (confederates, that is).

I had the privilege of spending the weekend--several weekends ago, now--with Allan Carlson at an Earhart Conference. One of the things I noted (as a hypothesis) to him was that a libertarian would probably feel more comfortable with the English Distributists than with the Southern Agrarians. While both opposed centralization, the Distributists believed that one accomplished this best by abolishing corporate laws, while the Southern Agrarians were perfectly willing to use a positive law to protect local interests. Allan seemed to agree with this--but I'm very interested in what the readers of TIC think of this.

I've also had the privilege of reading lots of Flannery O'Connor this summer.

How important are the Southern Agrarians? Do they still have things to tell us, eight decades later?

An Idyllic English Countryside?
Winston, of course, holds been very positive view toward the Distributists.  Hilaire Belloc is usually regarded as the beginning/the inspiration for modern agrarianism. Though, of course, it was always latent in romantic poetry, thought, and literature.   Belloc published his Servile State in 1912. At that time, of course, many considered him a total radical.  Later, he contributed to the Agrarian follow up to I’ll Take My Stand, WHO OWNS AMERICA (1936). For Belloc, modern means industrial.

This modern/industrial man “seems to have three characteristics:

First, he has lost the old doctrinal position on transcendental things . . . .

Second, as a consequence of this he has lost his economic freedom, or indeed, the very conception of it.

Third, there has been produced in him, by loss of economic freedom, coupled with the loss of the old religious doctrines, an interior conception of himself which molds all of his actions.”

Not it should be clear to anyone who will think lucidly and coldly upon the direction in which all this must move that it is moving toward the re-establishment of slavery. Industrial capitalism, as we now have it, the control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange (and the control of the modes, therefore, by which production, distribution, and exchange are conducted) by a few, must mean the many are compelled to work for the profit of the few. [Belloc, “The Modern Man”, in WHO OWNS AMERICA?, 438]