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While Richard M. Weaver is best known for the classic Ideas Have Consequences, the foundation of his career was this study of his native South. Calling the Southern tradition "the last non-materialist civilization in the Western world," he traced its roots to feudalism, chivalry, religiosity, and aristocratic conventions. The Old South, he concluded, "may indeed be a hall hung with splendid tapestries in which no one would care to live; but from them we can learn something of how to live." Weaver’s exploration of the ideals and ideas of the Southern tradition as expressed in the military histories, autobiographies, diaries, and novels of the era following the Civil War—especially those written by the men and women on the losing side—is offered to a new generation of readers for whom that tradition has fallen into disrepute and who can scarcely imagine a life rooted in nature, the soil, and a powerful sense of honor. The Southern Tradition at Bay is, as Jeffrey Hart noted, the work of a man who admired what "is admirable indeed, and that is the foundation of wisdom and indeed sanity."
As much a work of political and moral philosophy as one of history, The Southern Tradition offers an in-depth look at the tenets and attitudes of the Southern-conservative worldview. Opening a powerful new perspective on today's politics, Eugene D. Genovese traces a distinct type of conservatism to its sources in Southern tradition.
A foundational text of the modern conservative movement, this 1948 philosophical treatise argues the decline of Western civilization and offers a remedy. Originally published in 1948, at the height of post–World War II optimism and confidence in collective security, Ideas Have Consequences uses “words hard as cannonballs” to present an unsparing diagnosis of the ills of the modern age. Widely read and debated at the time of its first publication, the book is now seen as one of the foundational texts of the modern conservative movement. In its pages, Richard M. Weaver argues that the decline of Western civilization resulted from the rising acceptance of relativism over absolute reality. In spite of increased knowledge, this retreat from the realist intellectual tradition has weakened the Western capacity to reason, with catastrophic consequences for social order and individual rights. But Weaver also offers a realistic remedy. These difficulties are the product not of necessity, but of intelligent choice. And, today, as decades ago, the remedy lies in the renewed acceptance of absolute reality and the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences. This expanded edition of the classic work contains a foreword by New Criterion editor Roger Kimball that offers insight into the rich intellectual and historical contexts of Weaver and his work and an afterword by Ted J. Smith III that relates the remarkable story of the book’s writing and publication. Praise for Ideas Have Consequences “A profound diagnosis of the sickness of our culture.” —Reinhold Niebuhr “Brilliantly written, daring, and radical. . . . It will shock, and philosophical shock is the beginning of wisdom.” —Paul Tillich “This deeply prophetic book not only launched the renaissance of philosophical conservatism in this country, but in the process gave us an armory of insights into the diseases besetting the national community that is as timely today as when it first appeared. [This] is one of the few authentic classics in the American political tradition.” —Robert Nisbet
Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963) was one of the leading figures in the post-World War II development of an intellectual, self-conscious conservatism. His thought and his appreciation of liberty were rooted in his understanding of Southern history. He believed that Southern values of religion, work ethic, and family could provide a defense against the totalitarian nihilism of fascist and communist statism. This collection of fourteen essays demonstrates George Core's point that "few writers of the South rival Richard Weaver in comprehensiveness of vision and depth of thought."
Young accomplishes this by using Weaver's own writings on scholarship and by discussing his most representative and significant essays and books - Ideas Have Consequences, Language Is Sermonic, and others. Young also interviews the people who were closest to Weaver: Russell Kirk; Cleanth Brooks; Clifford Amyx, an artist and intellectual; his sister Polly Weaver Beaton; and Professor Wilma R. Ebbitt, a colleague and friend during Weaver's years at the University of Chicago. Although many have associated Weaver with the Vanderbilt Agrarians and have stereotyped him as a conservative, this work makes plain that Weaver cannot be seen simply and wholly in this light. Many of the stands Weaver took, such as opposing the registration of Communists during the McCarthy era, set him apart from the conservative mainstream and made people of many different political persuasions respect his ideas.
This work chronicles six generations of the Hardy family, who purchased a South Carolina plantation in 1786 and farmed it for two centuries. The book also examines the natural history of the plantation and how it became one of the most valuable farms in the South.
First published in 1930, the essays in this manifesto constitute one of the outstanding cultural documents in the history of the South. In it, twelve southerners-Donald Davidson, John Gould Fletcher, Henry Blue Kline, Lyle H. Lanier, Stark Young, Allen Tate, Andrew Nelson Lytle, Herman Clarence Nixon, Frank Lawrence Owsley, John Crowe Ransom, John Donald Wade, and Robert Penn Warren-defended individualism against the trend of baseless conformity in an increasingly mechanized and dehumanized society.
First published in 1949, Frank Lawrence Owsley’s Plain Folk of the Old South refuted the popular myth that the antebellum South contained only three classes—planters, poor whites, and slaves. Owsley draws on a wide range of source materials—firsthand accounts such as diaries and the published observations of travelers and journalists; church records; and county records, including wills, deeds, tax lists, and grand-jury reports—to accurately reconstruct the prewar South’s large and significant “yeoman farmer” middle class. He follows the history of this group, beginning with their migration from the Atlantic states into the frontier South, charts their property holdings and economic standing, and tells of the rich texture of their lives: the singing schools and corn shuckings, their courtship rituals and revival meetings, barn raisings and logrollings, and contests of marksmanship and horsemanship such as “snuffing the candle,” “driving the nail,” and the “gander pull.” A new introduction by John B. Boles explains why this book remains the starting point today for the study of society in the Old South.