Southern History Series: George Fitzhugh on The Morals of Free Society

June 30, 2020 Hunter Wallace Alt-South, American South, Culture, Dixie, History, Liberalism, Race Relations, southern heritage, Southern History Series 10

I’m continuing to read and reflect on George Fitzhugh’s Sociology for the South, Or, The Failure of Free Society this afternoon.

“Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” is the motto and watchword of Frenchmen when they turn out to murder each other wholesale. They are an epigramatic people, and have a happy way of condensing into a phrase or maxim, a whole code of philosophy. The same idea had been floating in men’s minds every since the Reformation.

“What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”

Be on the lookout for the stupid slogans that simplify complex issues. Liberals have always expressed themselves in such a way.

Not sure what the meaning of this could be.

“It had borne, too, everywhere the same fruits. The seventy years war in Germany and further off in time and distance than the French Revolution, but were quite as prolific of murder, rape and rapine, as those amiable events themselves. They were the first exhibitions on a large scale, of the new philosophy of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the Vespers of St. Bartholemew, were small events compared to the days of the Guillotine; but nevertheless, they were highly respectable and intense expressions of that fraternity which nascent liberty was begetting.”

Some activism from the mostly peaceful protest outside of Jeff Bezos’s house in Washington, DC. It hasn’t exactly escalated to the level of The Terror yet, but clearly the idea is floating around the mob.

“The Gunpowder Plot, too, but for the unlucky contre temps, would have resulted in a very strong expression of the affectionate brotherly interest which men feel for one another’s well being, both in this world and the world to come. Shortly thereafter, when liberty openly reared her standard, and Cromwell burnt houses, and Sir Thomas Lunsford ate babies, men began to believe that the world was really blessed with the millennial advent of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Charles and Jeffries put a stop to it for a while: yet toward the latter part of his reign, Charles wisely resolved to give a holyday, and indulge his people with a bloody carnival. The little Titus Oates affair that followed, showed that men’s affections for each other had not at all abated, and were ready to exhibit themselves in the most passionate manner, whenever the restraints of government were removed.”

Behold, the brotherly love on display in CHAZ/CHOP:

“Our Pilgrim Fathers being denied the opportunity of practicing to its full extent the divine precept – “Love thy neighbor as thyself” – removed to America, and here proved to the world that they had not degenerated since the unctuous days of Knox and of Cromwell. Many tokens of their zeal and affection were soon seen pendant from the elms of New England; and with a delicious discrimination, that affected selected the ugliest and oldest of the weaker sex, on whom to lavish its embraces.

Has the world “supped full with horrors,” or a mere caprice of fashion brought about new modes of manifesting attachment? Frenchmen kiss and hug, Americans shakes hands, and Englishmen scowl and bow – yet they all mean the same thing – ’tis fashion rules the hour. So it may be that cheating and starving our fellow beings is now the rage, instead of shooting and burning them. Those three hundred thousand starved in Ireland, show clearly enough that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity have lost none of their energy, however much they have quieted their manners. “Nil admirari” is the perfection of good breeding in England, and a real gentleman would sooner cheat in a horse trade than express sympathy for the millions who are pining with hunger and nakedness in the fields and factories and mines of old England.”

Classical liberalism couldn’t help but bring about its own demise by immiserating the public and concentrating wealth in the hands of a capitalist oligarchy. Neoliberalism has brought us to a similar point especially in the wake of the virus with the bailouts and job losses.

“Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” culminated when the Goddess of Reason usurped the seat and sceptre of Deity, and sent forth her high priests, Danton, Marat, St. Just and Robespierre, “to deal damnation round the land!” The demonstration was then complete. Man without government, without order, without subordination, without religion, without slavery in its every form, from the prison house, the straight jacket, the army, the navy, serfdom, up to the slavery of mere subjection to law, without all those constraints which his peculiar wants and capacities required, was the cruellest and wildest beast of the field.”

The total breakdown of order in the name of liberty and equality unleashed nothing but death, war, misery, savagery, brutality and destruction. The experiment proved that man is not born good only to be corrupted by society. The radicals also lost their heads as their fanaticism spiraled.

“It proved that a state of nature was not a state of liberty, for a state of liberty is a state of exterminating warfare. It proved that neither religion nor morality could exist without enough of a government to enforce the permanence of duty one each member of society.

Sadly, we are learning this lesson today.

“But political economy is the necessary result of Free Society – it is the only moral code which it can inculcate – and yet all its precepts are at war with morality. But for Christianity, Free Society would be a wilderness of crime; and Christianity has not fair play and a proper field of action, where government has failed to institute the peace-begetting and protective influence of domestic slavery. It is one of the necessary parts of government, without which men becomes enemies instead of brethren. There is no love between equals, and the divine precept, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” is thundered vainly in the ears of men straining for the same object.

The maxim, “every man for himself,” embraces the whole moral code of Free Society; and Miss Bremer, and all the other philanthropists in the world, with their thousand schemes and institutions, will never be able to neutralize the immoral and death dealing tendency of that maxim, and of the antagonism and social war it generates.”

Indeed, it has been interesting to watch Colin Woodard’s vision of a revitalized vision of American civic nationalism playing itself out in the absence of White Christian America which is now too weak to stabilize the system. We’ve never tried liberalism without a White racial majority or Christianity before although we are rapidly approaching that point. The assumption of our elites has long been that the system could do without those things and that liberalism can get along by itself on the basis of its own self evident abstract propositions.

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10 Comments

  2. “”…..Be on the lookout for the stupid slogans that simplify complex issues. Liberals have always expressed themselves in such a way…..””

    This is one reason why they winning.

    “”…This is why I warn that “fascism” as used by antifa does not mean what you think. It’s a label applied to ALL opponents & even their own……””

    This is the second reason why they winning.

    Talking sophisticated BS and accepting treason is not path to victory. This is one short point how to screw a cucks. When you can win with arguments, why anybody need guns or army ?

    This is also reason, why our side must whitewash Mr.Hitler. Until “Nazis” remain ultimate evil, then someone fighting with “Nazis” is getting away with everything.

    In the WW II, 75 million people died, including 6 million Jews were gassed. I agree with everything Antifa does, because 2 shot dead or even 2 million killed is still less than 6 million or 75 million. This is how average Normie thinks.

  3. The “golden,” “conservative” age of feudalism and Papal hegemony was not any less wicked than the “liberal” age of monarchy and “republican” oligarchy that followed. “The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9

    “The poor you shall always have with you,” Jesus said, which means we must never cease efforts to share with one another (from each according to his ability, to each according to their need), raise the fallen, care for the sick, and strive for peace in this violent, unjust world.

  4. The Venetian “republic.” Now there’s a CONSERVATIVE republic for you, not a bit “revolutionary,” that lasted for over a thousand years, dominated much of Europe and projected its power into central Asia as far as China.

  5. The seventy years war in Germany and further off in time and distance than the French Revolution, but were quite as prolific of murder, rape and rapine, as those amiable events themselves. They were the first exhibitions on a large scale, of the new philosophy of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

    There was no “seventy years war”. The Thirty Years War in Germany was primarily a religious war.

  6. There are many good points in avoiding ‘liberalism’, but some of the Fitzhugh critique is too strong

    He’s certainly excellent about the dangers of -isms and fantatics and being insensitive to the complexities of human psychology and society, and the need to not toss aside all roots and tradition

    But, certain things about revolutions have made the world a permanently better place. The European societies that totally eliminated poverty for all legal residents for some decades, a quasi-paradise up till recently, is something that seems evolved from the continental revolutionary heritage

    Which has a particular additional result, that the law is less oppressive in continental europe in general: Much less lawsuit harassment, much less jailing, and much less crime esp. before the recent migrant waves.

    In a very concrete example, the French Revolution and Napoleon, marked the beginning of the end of the use of torture in Europe as an allowed judicial technique

    Setting aside the tens of thousands killed in France during the 1790s, the virtue of the guillotine is that it gave to all the condemned, what was formerly the aristocrat’s quick merciful death … whereas Anglo countries continued to kill people in slow, awful ways

    It seems little known now, but hanging can take up to an hour to kill the victim at the end of the rope. With a long drop that breaks the neck – not reliable – the victim is put into a merciful coma, but death is still almost always by strangulation.

  9. i downloaded fitzhugh’s sociology following your article, and he made some interesting and valid points – unfortunately his extreme jew loving made me want to vomit, so i had to stop – on the positive side, it showed me how it came about that we are in the mess we are, when such a clear and original thinker was wholly taken in by the jews

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