The empire of our good friend Clyde Wilson is spreading. Not only does it encompass Shotwell Publishing
but it now includes Reckonin, a Southern political website developed by his daughter, which just put up a revised and expanded version of my off-the-cuff piece, "What is To Be Done?"
Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina
Dr. Fleming,
Thank you for providing the link. I will add that site to my list of daily reads.
As an aside, I will miss Burt Reynolds. He might not have been the best actor, but he was my favorite actor. When asked why he made so many movies set in the South, he replied: “Because I think the South has a lot of stories to tell.”
Dr Wilson’s Shotwell Publishing is, I think, doing yeoman work at providing an alternative publishing outlet for decent writers shut off from the mainstream due to the Stalinist proclivities of the dominant media. I’ve bought a number of good books from them, and would especially recommend a short story collection by Randall Ivey called “New England Romance,” which, despite the title, all takes place in the Upcountry of South Carolina (very underrated and charming part of the South). Best of all, they have been publishing collections of Dr Wilson’s essays. Nice to have these in book form.
James D, I’ve got to say, Burt managed to have a career, and he couldn’t miss for a while in the 70s. That was a good time for the South, or at least a time when it was safe and even somewhat cool to identify with the South, what with some genuinely decent Southern rock from the Allman Bros. and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Burt Reynolds dominating the box office with The Longest Yard, Deliverance, and Smokey. I guess in those days, you might even have seen a Battle Flag at a Jimmy Carter rally. I think the backlash to Carter probably got the ball rolling in the other direction, after which the Conservative Movement mostly wanted to suppress any real Southern influences. Sadly, just then, Reagan welcomed the neocons into the fold, and they helped to mainstream, among other things, Lincoln idolatry as a pillar of conservatism, so called.
It’s become more and more lethal to be an openly unreconstructed Southerner these days, and Dr Wilson may be the most heroic one I can think of.
“It’s become more and more lethal to be an openly unreconstructed Southerner these days, and Dr Wilson may be the most heroic one I can think of.”
I have never met Clyde Wilson but seem to know him somewhat from the things he says the subjects he likes to write about as well as comments his friends have made about him along with small but always cordial correspondence he was always patient enough to provide to very elementary questions I have had for him.
It’s a shame bumanly speaking but also a divine mercy to him, that he has not been honored more for the authentic patriot and historian he truly is. But since the quality of honor bestowed on another depends upon the character of those bestowing it, I am happy to know that God alone knows the tears and suffering he has endured to become the man he is.