The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought
By J.B. Aitken - Posted at The Nature of Permanent Things : Murphy, Paul. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought . University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Southern Agrarianism was an identity in search of a history. Perhaps like the family in a Faulkner story, it was a glorious tragedy, with the emphasis on the tragedy. I discovered the Agrarians twenty years ago and began an on-again, off-again relationship with them. As much as I wanted to be an Agrarian, it was not realistic to move to the farm, which was probably a good thing since I know little about farming. But there was something to the Agrarian vision that rightly compelled me to them. Defining what that something was, on the other hand, was no easy task. Whatever definition one gives on this point probably colors his definition of conservatism in general. So it did for Paul Murphy. On one level this is a survey of several key Agrarian thinkers: Andrew Tate, Donald Davidso...
