Why a Rowdy Revival?
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1. Because Biblical Revelation is historically and spiritually true. 2. Only a law-order which holds to the primacy of God's law can bring forth true freedom, true justice and a godly life.
Traditional American country music is rooted in the continuity of Anglo-Saxon and Scots-Irish country or folk music from Britain, of course incorporating other influences over the early periods of American history. It has always had an eye towards its Christian heritage. And by nature it is the cultural product of a conservative Agrarian society. A culture of self-sufficiency that values faith, family, freedom and the local and independent rural community.​
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Secular Humanism or utopian progressivism, as blindly accepted by popular culture, is bankrupt at its core and overtly at odds with the very categories of Faith, Family, Freedom and Free Market Localism.
In a Rowdy-Outlaw spirit we stand as rebels and remind a culture that embraces subjectivism and urbanization of the message of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in application of Biblical truth, we seek to revive the American heritage of Family and Freedom that has thus far withstood various forms of collectivist socialism and the emptiness and irrationality of an atheistic/secularistic worldview.
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Russell Kirk wrote:
“And Burke [The father of modern conservatism], could he see our century, never would concede that a consumption-society, so near to suicide, is the end for which Providence has prepared man. If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so that we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.”
― Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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Some thoughts on the Traditional Conservative understanding of: Faith, Family, Freedom, Federalism, and Free Market Localism:
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FAITH​​
(The biblical meaning of faith is not subjective, but it rather eludes to the recognition of ontological reality or Truth. Apart from Theism the Secular Humanist or Atheistic Materialist has no real basis for, or categories of: functional order, intelligence, life, consciousness, reason and logic, purpose or meaning, and of course no ground for morality or justice. Man lives in God's world weather he likes it or not, and apart from God, His attributes, as noted above, would only exist as subjective impulses and fancies that were merely products of bio-chemical accidents - time and chance.)
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“Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”
– “Charles II,” Twelve Types - G.K. Chesterton
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“Once abolish God, and the government becomes the God.”
– “Very Christian Democracy,” Christendom in Dublin - G.K. Chesterton
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“Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.”
– “Wells and the World State,” What I Saw in America - G.K. Chesterton
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- Hilaire Belloc, 1937, The Crisis Of Civilization
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"Either order in the cosmos is real, or all is chaos. If we are adrift in chaos, then the fragile egalitarian doctrines and emancipating programs of the revolutionary reformers have no significance; for in a vortex of chaos, only force and appetite signify." - Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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- Russell Kirk, “The Prescience of Tocqueville,” University of Toronto Quarterly 22 (1953)
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"The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the spirit and character – with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding, and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest." - Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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"Some 'separation' zealots would expunge any vestige of religious observance in public schools. Many of the same anti-religious fanatics would like to wipe out of existence all church-related schools, by regulation or taxation, so that universal ignorance of the life of spirit should prevail."
- Russell Kirk, 1986, The Assault on religion: commentaries on the decline of religious liberty
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"Rightly defined, secular humanism — or humanism, or secularism, or whatever name you may wish to use — is…a vicious enemy. Here again balance is important by means of careful definition. The word humanism is not to be confused with humanitarianism, nor with the word humanities. But humanism is the defiant denial of the God who is there, with Man defiantly set up in the place of God as the measure of all things. For if the final reality is only material or energy which has existed forever and has its present form only by chance, then there is no one but finite man to set purely relative values and a purely relativistic base for law and government."
Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1984), 105.
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"Humanism haÈ™ no final way of saying certain things are right and other things are wrong. For a humanist, the final thing which exists — that is, the impersonal universe — is neutral and silent about right and wrong, cruelty and non-cruelty. Humanism has no way to provide absolutes. Thus, as a consistent result of humanism’s position, humanism in private morals and political life is left with that which is arbitrary."
Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1976), 128.
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- Francis Schaeffer; 1982, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian view of the west
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"Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth - Truth about all of reality."
- Francis Schaefer; 1981, A Christian Manifesto
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FAMILY
(The Family is a God instituted part of the Natural Order of Creation. It is the fundamental human social order, and is as such the basis of civilization. It is agreements among family groups and structures that form larger society. The Progressive Socialist always recognizes the influence and authority of the family as the largest obstacle to Statist power and authority in the civil sphere.)
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"The triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it."​​ - G. K. Chesterton, 1920, The Superstition of Divorce
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G. K. Chesterton; The Everlasting Man, Part 1 chapter 7, 1925.
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“The masters of modern plutocracy know what they are about. They are making no mistake; they can be cleared of the slander of inconsistency. A very profound and precise instinct has let them to single out the human household as the chief obstacle to their inhuman progress. Without the family we are helpless before the State, which in our modern case is the Servile State." - The Superstition of Divorce 1920 - G.K. Chesterton
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“Now when we pass from loyalty to the nation to loyalty to the family, there can be no doubt about the first and plainest difference. The difference is that the family is a thing far more free. The vow is a voluntary loyalty; and the marriage vow is marked among ordinary oaths of allegiance by the fact that the allegiance is also a choice. The man is not only a citizen of the city, but also the founder and builder of the city. He is not only a soldier serving the colours, but he has himself artistically selected and combined the colours." The Superstition of Divorce 1920 - G.K. Chesterton
“Whereas feudalism received the loyalty of families, the lords of the new servile state will receive only the loyalty of individuals; that is, of lonely men and even of lost children.” The Superstition of Divorce 1920 - G.K. Chesterton
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"Under the old social philosophy which had governed the Middle Ages, temporal, and therefore all economic, activities were referred to an eternal standard. The production of wealth, it distribution and exchange were regulated with a view to securing the Christian life of Christian men. In two points especially was this felt: First in securing the independence of the family, which can only be done by the wide distribution of property, in others words the prevention of the growth of a proletariat [wage slaves without property]; secondly, in the close connection between wealth and public function."
- Hilaire Belloc, 1912, The Servile State​
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"Rousseau and his disciples [i.e. Secular Humanist Progressives of various kinds] were resolved to force men to be free; in most of the world, they triumphed; men are set free from family, church, town, class, guild; yet they wear, instead, the chains of the state, and they expire of ennui or stifling lone lines."
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 1953, p.488, Regnery Publishing
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"For conservatives, the family is not merely a unit in the census, to be subsidized out of national funds on the principle of “spend and spend, elect and elect.” The thinking conservative knows that the family is the source of all social order and the guardian of love among human beings. The only alternative to the family is the universal orphanage. Therefore public policy, when the family is in question, ought to be undertaken with extreme care. For it is possible to work great harm to the family by measures which allegedly are designed to assist families: it is quite possible to kill through pretend kindness. “We learn to love the little platoon we belong to in society,” Edmund Burke said two centuries ago. The family, as Burke put it, is “the germ of our public affections.” We move from kin to kind: that is, beginning with love of family, we learn to love our community, our state, our nation.
By this term “family,” conservatives mean something more than a household composed of man, wife, and children. Properly apprehended, “family” signifies many generations and connections. It extends backward to ancestors and forward to posterity. Indeed, a true family may be called a community of souls, comprehending not simply direct ancestors and descendants, but also a host of kin joined by their blood—or, in modern phrases, by genetic inheritance and by common obligations. A true nation is a family vastly extended." - Russell Kirk; essay: Conservatives and the Family, 1984
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"For when the state aspires to accomplish much more than its ancient and indispensable function of restraining human appetites and passions, great confusion commonly results...Once upon a time, the conservative knows, the family provided much besides affection and a common domicile. It was the means for defense against sturdy beggars and masterless men, for education and training of the young, for maintaining the old and infirm, for securing material sustenance. Nowadays the family has not wholly ceased to fulfill these other functions, but the scope of these activities has been reduced—not always to the advantage of the person and the republic. Should the family forfeit much of its remaining domain, or be deprived of its remaining functions, the sum of human happiness would be hideously diminished." - Russell Kirk; essay: Conservatives and the Family, 1984
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"For if the family disintegrates... The state becomes all in all: only in its most rudimentary and deprived aspect is the family tolerated. Children become the wards of the state, reared for the state’s purposes; marriage survives simply to reduce the consequences of promiscuity. Mere production and consumption, under direction of the state apparatus, become the exclusive ends of human striving. Such a prospective extinction of the family is not fanciful merely. It has been the deliberate policy of the Communist regimes in China and Cambodia—though already the masters of Beijing have found it necessary to make concessions. It was the design of the Bolshevik ideologues of the Russian Revolution, although the vestiges of Christian belief and custom among the Russian people have impeded the fulfillment of this aspiration. And we would be foolish to ignore a strong drift in what we call “the West” toward the supplanting of the family by the Universal Orphanage." - Russell Kirk; essay: Conservatives and the Family, 1984
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FREEDOM
​(Mankind cannot be free from the conditions of the laws of nature, or the moral law of God. But within the framework of responsibility the free man is at liberty to pursue self-governance, self-defense, self-sufficiency and enterprise within the constraints of God's moral order. The means of self-sufficiency and enterprise (i.e. private property) is a natural right of mankind. This is the classical understanding of the balance of Law and Liberty as understood by traditional Christian Nations (Western Civilization) and as developed in England's Common Law and written order (Magna Charta 1215; English Petition of Rights 1628; English Bill of Rights 1689, etc.) and so inherited and reaffirmed in the American system of Constitutional Law.)
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"There was far more courage to the square mile in the Middle Ages, when no king had a standing army, but every man had a bow or sword."
- G.K. Chesterton; 1905, Heretics, chapter 3 (referring to limited government and the Freedom to bear Arms)
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“And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of order is to give room for good things to run wild.” - G.K. Chesterton; 1908, Orthodoxy
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“Without [an ultimate transcendent] authority there is no liberty. Freedom is doomed to destruction at every turn, unless there is a recognized right to freedom. And if there are rights, there is an authority to which we appeal for them.”
– G.K.’s Weekly, April 28, 1928 - G.K. Chesterton
“Liberty is traditional and conservative; it remembers its legends and its heroes. But tyranny is always young and seemingly innocent, and asks us to forget the past.” - G.K. Chesterton
“Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king.”
–“The Story of the Family,” The Superstition of Divorce - G.K. Chesterton
“The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Ten Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted: precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden [this point reveals that Biblical Law is actually libertarian in character - and could be described as: Theonomic Libertarian Conservatism. R. J. Rushdoony wrote: "Biblical law is the closest thing to a radical libertarianism that can be had."]."
– Illustrated London News, Jan. 3, 1920 - G.K. Chesterton
“Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.”
– “The Field of Blood,” Alarms and Discursions - G.K. Chesterton
“Loyalty is the heart of the commonwealth; but liberty is its lungs. You find out the necessity of liberty as you find out the necessity of air — by not having enough of it and gasping.” - G.K. Chesterton
“The man of the true religious tradition understands two things: liberty and obedience. The first means knowing what you really want. The second means knowing what you really trust.”
– G.K.’s Weekly, Aug. 18, 1928 - G.K. Chesterton
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- Hilaire Belloc, 1937, The Crisis of Civilization
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- Hilaire Belloc, 1937, The Crisis of Civilization, pg. 110
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- Hilaire Belloc, 1937, The Crisis of Civilization, pg. 116
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"In the midst of all these innumerable forms of a common protest and universal ill-ease there has grown up one definite body of doctrine whose adherents are called Communists and who desired the total subversion of what had been, hitherto unquestioned among civilized European men, the general doctrines of property and individual freedom."
- Hilaire Belloc, 1912, The Servile State
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“ We must realize that the Reformation world view leads in the direction of government freedom. But the humanist world view with inevitable certainty leads in the direction of statism. This is so because humanists, having no god, must put something at the center, and it is inevitably society, government, or the state. ”
- Francis Schaefer; 1981, A Christin Manifesto
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“The true natural rights of men, then, are equal justice, security of labor and property, the amenities of civilized institutions, and the benefits of orderly society.”
- Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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"The conservative thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless."
- Russell Kirk, 1993, The Politics of Prudence
FEDERALISM
(Federalism -balanced powers- has less to do with the exact form of government – e.g. constitutional monarchy, Representative Republic, or Democracy – and more to do with limited government under the Law, and the separation of powers of the governing authorities, with the emphasis of local governance and decentralized power along side the inviable right of private property. The United States inherited a Federalist model from Britain in many respects, and also admired the Swiss Confederation, the Netherlands, and the small Italian reublican city states or Duchy’s along with other localized and confederated ntional allegiances of older eras of European history. The key to political Federalism, is as much local control of government as possible, limitations on the power of government and checks and blances between the authorized powers).
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“Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government.”
- G.K. Chesterton; 1922, Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State
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“It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.”
– Illustrated London News, Aug. 17, 1918 - G.K. Chesterton
“All government is an ugly necessity.”
– “The Meaning of Merry England,” A Short History of England - G.K. Chesterton
“It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on.”
– “Patriotism and Sport,” All Things Considered - G.K. Chesterton
“[No society can survive the socialist] fallacy that there is an absolutely unlimited number of inspired officials and an absolutely unlimited amount of money to pay them.”
– The Debate with Bertrand Russell, BBC Magazine, Nov. 27, 1935 - G.K. Chesterton
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"A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty."
- Russell Kirk, 1993, The Politics of Prudence
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"The aim of any good constitution is to achieve in society a high degree of political harmony, so that order and justice and freedom may be maintained."
- Russell Kirk, 1990, The Conservative Constitution​​​
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“In America, the Federal Constitution has endured as the most sagacious conservative document in political history”
- Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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“I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. . . . Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.”
–C. S. Lewis, Present Concerns
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
- C. S. Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” in God in the Dock
“We are all at this moment helping to decide whether humanity shall retain all that has hitherto made humanity worth preserving, or whether we must slide down into the sub-humanity imagined by Mr Aldous Huxley and George Orwell and partially realised in Hitler’s Germany. For the extermination of the Jews really would have been ‘useful’ if the racial theories had been correct; there is no foretelling what may come to seem, or even to be, ‘useful’, and ‘necessity’ was always ‘the tyrant’s plea’.”
- C.S. Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” in God in the Dock
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“I believe in political equality. But there are two opposite reasons for being a democrat. You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. That I believe to be the true ground of democracy. I do not believe that God created an egalitarian world. . . . [S]ince we have sin, we have found, as Lord Acton says, that ‘all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ The only remedy has been to take away the powers and substitute a legal fiction of equality. . . . Theocracy has been rightly abolished not because it is bad that priests should govern ignorant laymen, but because priests are wicked men like the rest of us.” - C. S. Lewis, “Membership,” in The Weight of Glory
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“Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerers have been; how gloriously different are the saints. But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak.” –C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
- Francis Schaefer; 1981, A Christian Manifesto
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- Francis Schaefer; 1981, A Christian Manifesto
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FREE MARKET LOCALISM
(As opposed to corporatism or “monopolistic crony capitalism”, the traditional free market idea has advocated, for individuals and families, the liberty to work and trade. Centralized control of trade has always been the enemy of the individual entrepreneuer as well as his property. This was believed by Adam Smith as well as the majority of the founding fathers of the United States. “Capitalism” is a Marxist term, and Socialists like Hitler and Mousellini wished to commandeer corporate combinations of Big Business as an arm of the socialist totalitarian State. Chesterton saw this and when he uses the word capitalism he has progressive corporatism in mind. When the modern progressives of the 20th century would act as though there was a battle between crony-capitalism of this kind and Statist Socialism– Chesterton would note: “Everybody said the great modern war was between Capitalism and Socialism. We said there was no war; for it was only between Centralization and Centralization.” (G.K.’s Weekly, Sept. 28, 1929) Like the localism of Federalism, the marketplace should be controlled and governed at the local level as much as possible. Central control of the market eliminates the opportunities and liberties of individuals to truly compete. Big Business centralization also becomes a threat to the private property of citizens in free countries. In fact, Corporate combinations of large size are a threat to all aspects of a truly Free Market system. Chesterton, like Thomas Jefferson, favored an Agrarian or rural culture where individuals and families had a large level of self-sufficiency and independence, where property rights were inviable and the market was governed at the local community level.)
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“What’s worthwhile to point out, first and last, is that Socialism is a tyranny; that it is inevitably, even avowedly and almost justifiably, a tyranny. It’s the pretense that government can prevent all injustice by being directly responsible for practically anything that happens.” - G.K. Chesterton; Illustrated London News on October 10, 1925
“You can’t have the family farm without the family.”
- G.K. Chesterton, 1925, Tales of the Long Bow
“Making the landlord and the tenant the same person has certain advantages, as that the tenant pays no rent, while the landlord does a little work.”
– “Hudge and Gudge,” What’s Wrong with the World - G.K. Chesterton
“Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve looking after other people’s property.”
– Commonwealth, Oct. 12, 1932 - G.K. Chesterton
“Big Business [corporatism] and State Socialism are very much alike, especially Big Business.”
– G.K.’s Weekly, April 10, 1926 - G.K. Chesterton
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"The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself." - Hilaire Belloc, 1912, The Servile State
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- Hilaire Belloc, 1937, The Crisis Of Civilization
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"When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated"
- Hilaire Belloc; 1912, The Servile State
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"Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform [of the progressive] which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State." - Hilaire Belloc, 1931, Essays of a Catholic, p.167
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"It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated."
- Hilaire Belloc, 1948, An Essay on the Restoration of Property, p.35​
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“Agriculture's principles are not identical with those of trade, and the rights of the proprietor are balanced by his duties. The final causes of agriculture are identical with the final causes of the state. Two negative ends of the state exist: its own safety, and the protection of person and property. Three positive ends stand beside these: to make the means of subsistence more easy to each individual; to secure to each of its members the hope of bettering his condition or that of his children; and the development of those faculties which are essential to his humanity, that is, to the rational and moral being. Knowing these ends, we must reform our courses, recast our measures, and make ourselves a better people.”
- Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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"The principle of real leadership ignored, the immortal objects of society forgotten, practical conservatism degenerated into mere laudation of private enterprise, economic policy almost wholly surrendered to special interests."
- Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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"To complete the rout of traditionalists, in America an impression began to arise that the new industrial and acquisitive interests are the conservative interest, that conservatism is simply a political argument in defense of large accumulations of private property, that expansion, centralization, and accumulation are the tenets of conservatives. From this confusion, from the popular belief that Hamilton was the founder of American conservatism, the forces of tradition in the United States never have fully escaped."
- Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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"To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose."
- Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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- Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot
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"The decay of old aristocratic prejudices against greedy speculation, the undermining of orthodox Christian faith (which forbids avarice)... the debauching of agriculture to a gross money-getting concern: these particular aspects of a vast and voracious concentration upon profits are so many illustrations of our sinning confusion of values." - Russell Kirk, 1953, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot