Southern History Series: George Fitzhugh on Religion and Philosophy

June 27, 2020 Hunter Wallace Alt-South, American South, Americanism, Culture, Liberalism, Philosophy, Religion, southern heritage, Southern History Series 13

After reading Colin Woodard’s new book Union and listening to the various interviews he is doing about the need for a national story to ground a revitalized vision of American civic nationalism, I decided to reread George Fitzhugh who disagreed with him on every point.

Fitzhugh has never been more relevant than in our present age:

“We have not a solitary example in all of history to countenance the theories of our ancestors, that a people may be moral, or that government can exist where religion is not in some form or degree recognized by law. What latitude shall be allowed to men in the exercise and practice of religion, is a question for the people to determine when the occasion requires it. It is best not to lay down abstract principles to guide us in advance. Of all the applications of philosophy none have failed so signally as when it has been tried in matters of government. Philosophy will blow up any government that is founded on it. Religion, on the other hand, will sustain the governments that rest upon it. The French build governments on a priori doctrines of philosophy which explode as fast as built. The English gradually and experimentally form institutions, watch their operation, and deduce general laws from those operations.

That kind of philosophy, which neither attempts to create nor account for, is admissible and useful. An extensive knowledge of the history of the various moral philosophies that have succeeded each other in the world, is useful, but only useful because it warns us to avoid all philosophy in the practical affairs of life. If we would have our people moral, and our institutions permanent, we should gradually repudiate our political abstractions and adopt religious truths in their stead.

It is an unpopular theme to deny human progress and human improvement. We flatter ourselves that we are more enlightened as well as more moral than the ancients, yet we imitate them in all save the mechanic arts. …

Divest us of our Christian morality, and leave us to our moral philosophy, and we might dread the comparison with any era of the past. We have but one moral code, and that a selfish one; the ancients always had two, one of which was elevated, self-denying and unselfish. …

Now explore all the secrets of human hearts, all the recesses of history, and it will be found that religion is as much a matter of consciousness and involuntary belief as free agency or self existence. It is a stubborn fact in human nature. Statesmen cannot ignore its existence, and must provide for its exercise and enjoyment, else their institutions will vanish like chaff before the wind.”

Religion has come flooding back.

We are witnessing the rollout of a new progressive state religion – wokeness or anti-whiteness in race and LGBTQ in culture – that is a total repudiation of White Christian America. This new faith is being institutionalized as all the monuments of the previous regime are being torn down.

The definition of “progress” is a perpetual social revolution that is guided toward the end of turning the old world upside down: the slaves become masters and the masters become slaves, blacks are exalted and Whites are debased, homosexuality is celebrated as the mainstream culture and Christianity is rolled back, ugliness becomes the new ideal of beauty, truth is despised and lies are enthroned, evil becomes good and good becomes evil, women become men and men become women, the criminal is glorified and the police officer is hated who kneels before them and surrenders his authority, and so on. It is a purely negative view of the world that is ultimately based on the rejection of God and Nature.

Liberalism itself is going through the same transition. Free speech is being rejected in favor of limiting hate speech. Reason is being rejected in favor of emotional hysteria. Debate is being rejected in favor of dogma and intimidation by mobs. Violence has become non-violence. Tolerance has become bigotry. Equality has become inequality. Freedom is becoming tyranny. Justice has become injustice. Individual rights is becoming racial duties. Moral neutrality has become moral certitude. Whatever this “successor ideology” to liberalism is called, it lacks every single one of its virtues.

This project of basing America on nothing more than liberal ideology has failed. It has betrayed itself and no longer accurately describes the world. Why should we be bound by it?

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

12 Comments

  2. It depends how you define “religion.” The very “religious” (?) U.S. is flying the very “religious” LGBTQ fllag over its embassy in Moscow…

    “while the Russian people vote on a number of Constitutional Amendments, which include one saying that marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman, and another one mentioning Russia’s faith in God (…) If the goal was to ridicule the USA and make it appear effeminate, clueless and deeply hostile to everything Russia stands for, it would have been a stunning success. But that was probably not the goal. Personally, I wholeheartedly welcome and fully support this initiative: Russia does need to be regularly reminded of what the USA and the AngloZionist Empire truly stand for and what ‘western values’ would do to Russia if adopted (…) I would hope that soon a majority of US Ambassadors be chosen amongst the ‘LGBT community.’ In Europe, there is now a fad of appointing women to the position of Minister of Defense. This is good, I also applaud this, but the USA needs to do better. I want a homosexual Secretary of Defense. This will really make the Russian people happy”:

    http://thesaker.is/us-ambassador-posts-a-message-to-the-russian-people/

    Note: It is illegal to display the LGBTQ flag in Russia.

  3. The repudiation of “White Christian America” has very much to do with the hypocrisy (some of it flagrant, but much hidden) of the self-described practitioners. As Paul said of the Jews: “It is BECAUSE OF YOU that the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.” The problem with Christianity is the “Christians,” and especially their leaders, the hired priests, who are in it for money, popularity, security and power. Christians are separated from the hypocritical chaff, and the truth of Christianity (because it IS the truth) appears in times of persecution when there is NO money, power, popularity or security to be obtained.

  4. Excellent post Hunter!
    I just downloaded George Fitzhugh’s book from Amazon: $1.99 Thanks!

    By the way, I do believe that there is one major flaw in this liberal “utopia” that they are constructing: Money, the economy.

    Any major shocks and disruption to the system, beyond what we have already experienced, will place the US in danger of reverting back to a pre-industrial agrarian society. I doubt seriously that most Negros or the SJWs with the pink and purple hair and nose rings are prepared to hunt, fish, and plow fields.

    Unemployment rates of 40 to 50% cannot sustain a tax base to pay for all the black sec-8 housing in Baltimore, Detroit, Philly, Atlanta, Chicago, etc. How does one, in the new Utopia to come, persuade young bright white entrepreneurs to start a business when taxes have increased 10X due to reparations to Africans and expanded sec-8 units being built?

    To invest one’s time, money, and effort into a nation, one must believe in that nation. Does anyone still believe in America anymore?

    • @Geir…

      I do still believe in America, but, not any of the post 1945 brands.

      In my view, America began to decline at Appomattox, and, though our Confederate ancestors put off that decline 75 years, by their victory in The Wars of Reconstruction, it was doomed from that point.

      3 key things have doomed America, Dear Geir –

      #1. Y’all, Northerners, changed, exchanging God for Liberalism.

      #2. Jewry has accumulated tremendous power and used it to mitigate Gentiles.

      #3. Southerners have been shifty and cowardly over the past 3 generations.

      At the heart of the loss of your country lies these 3 things. Everything else arises from that.

      Be well!

  5. @Mr. Biden…

    “I know these times are dark, but I firmly believe that our best days still lie ahead. If we come together as one America, there’s nothing that we can’t accomplish.”

    Let me assure you, Sir, that hell will freeze over before we come together as one America around whatever ideas you happen to have going on in your noodle this week..

    You may be solid and good in your family life, Sir that I grant you – but, in your national life as a politician, you are a dangerously vapid & corrupt demagogue who would allow any destruction to go on in this nation, IF you thought it in your interest.

    • Agreed.

      People like Biden and Trump talk like its 1942 again. The only reason Americans went along with the war, the draft, the rationing, the curfews, the internment of Japanese, etc. is because were were 90% white and Christians, and we believed the US government when they told us something.

      Could you picture today, in 2020, trying to impose the restrictions of 1942 on this “diverse” population?

      • @Geir…

        Thank you for your reply.

        It will have to be sorted out with rifles.

        I am sorry to say it, sorry to think it, because I am a people person, but ,it’s either rifles or living like a 3rd class citizen in our own country.

        The Good Lord calls upon us to be humble in our dealings with others, but, I do not confuse humility with allowing disrespectful and venomous folks to walk on my children for their whole lives.

  7. As for the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, the State Department has long been run by communists. McCarthy warned the American people and his reward was for the American people to ignorantly and cowardly side with their enemies. Americans don’t have the stomach for mere unpleasantries and we expect them to fight fully-determined revolutionaries?

    The real revolution will surface when the food supply freezes up and/or the financial system goes bye-bye. The former won’t create the latter but the latter will destroy the former and everything else with it. When you see the signs, it will already be too late.

  8. While you “all” are studying Confederate philosophy and religion, the pandemic bioweapon unleashed on China is exploding in our faces, and most of you, and the U.S. government, DO NOT CARE. Dr. Gupta says that he can’t believe we are in this position (the U.S. is the worst in the world) but I can believe it, in fact it’s logically so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KzbPOnKJvI

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