Just returned from two days in Chattanooga, attending the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the League of the South. Had the opportunity to renew friendships with men and women from a number of Southern States. Also made friends with some like-minded Northerners. And had the joy of meeting new Tennessean friends from as far from Solitude as Johnson City and as close as Murfreesboro.

During one stint at the speaker’s lectern, our League President Dr. J. Michael Hill commented about his experience with some people want to know what they get for “joining” the League. His response? …“you get to work.” The old adage could just as easily be repeated, “Freedom isn’t free.”

In Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver related the following,

During the early part of the second World War there came to light the story of a farmer from the back country of Oklahoma – one of the yet unspoiled – who, upon hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor, departed with his wife to the West Coast to work in the shipyards. His wife found employment as a waitress and supported the two. Unable to read, the new worker did not understand the meaning of the little slip of paper handed him once a week. It was not until he had accumulated over a thousand dollars in checks that he found out that he was being paid to save his country. He had assumed that when the country is in danger, everyone helps out, and helping out means giving.

As the Columbian Empire continues to crumble, it will become increasingly hostile to individual liberty. All empires act that way. Justice will become even more rare than it is now.

Our hope for survival depends on two things – our Christian faith, and our involvement in community. By community, I mean those people who live on your street (or road), those you work with, those you worship with, and those you play with who care enough to work with you in survival. In Weaver’s story, the Oklahoman assumed that everyone was part of his community, but he was wrong.

Communities are more easily formed while the yoke of the Empire’s oppression is easy to bear. So let us now be diligent in forming the associations and alliances which will be our personal community.

With faith and community, we will have a Free Tennessee.

From Solitude,
David O Jones