SOUTHERN NATIONAL CONGRESS COMMITTEE LAUNCHES “YEAR OF THE SOUTH” CAMPAIGN TO CREATE A SOUTHERN NATIONAL CONGRESS
ALEXANDRIA, VA; February 6 — The Southern National Congress Committee has announced a “Year of the South” campaign to establish a Southern National Congress (SNC). Thomas Moore, Chairman of the SNC Committee, observed, “Southerners will celebrate two significant anniversaries this year, the bicentennial of the birth of Robert E. Lee and the quadrennial anniversary of the first English colony in North America, at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. 2007 is not just ‘the Year of Lee;’ it is ‘the Year of the South.’”
Moore noted, “Commemorations planned for 2007 will remind Southerners of our incomparable legacy of liberty, courage, fortitude, and honour. It should thus be the year in which the South recovers a sense of itself and repudiates the attacks on our history, heritage, and heroes like Robert E. Lee. Otherwise our very identity and survival as a people are at risk. America’s ruling elites have betrayed the South at every turn. We may have an illusory vote in a corrupt political system, but we have no real voice in an increasingly hostile culture. Southerners must begin to take responsibility for our condition — ourselves, alone. This means finding our collective voice to express our interests, our grievances, and our solutions. This is why we need a Southern National Congress.”
The SNC Committee was formed in 2005 to organize, convene, and support the Southern National Congress, which the Committee hopes will hold its first session in early 2008, at a site yet to be determined. Meeting thereafter on a regular basis, the Congress will be a representative assembly of citizens of the Southern States, providing an alternative, legitimate forum to advance Southern interests in a way made impossible by today’s political process and the major political parties.
The following States will have voting delegations: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. Maryland and Oklahoma will have “observer” (non-voting) status, as will the “Southern Diaspora;” that is, Southern-born participants living outside the South. In the initial Congress, each State will have one vote in a unicameral body. However, once convened, the Congress will assume sovereignty over its own acts and decisions and may move to a proportional vote based on State population.
Any citizen of these States 18 years of age and of good moral character; that is, with no conviction of a mal in se crime (murder, arson, rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, etc.) may participate in his State’s SNC Committee and seek to become a Delegate. Each State is responsible for organizing its delegation, with the support of the SNC Committee.
SNC Committee Executive Council member and noted historian Dr. Clyde Wilson said, “The SNC Committee came together around the proposition that we Southerners are a separate and distinct people, rooted in kinship and place, with a common culture and history. In other words, we are a nation. We respect the rights of other national and ethnic communities to self-preservation and self-determination, and we demand the same for ourselves. But we Southerners won’t restore our rights unless we assert them.”
Dr. Wilson, the country’s leading authority on John C. Calhoun, noted, “The SNC Committee is reclaiming the political legacy of great Southerners like Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and John C. Calhoun. That legacy is individual liberty and a small central government of checks and balances, limited to its enumerated powers; and which is the creation, the servant, and the agent of the sovereign people acting through their respective States. But these principles enacted in the Constitution of 1789 have been irretrievably violated. The Federal Government today is engaged in ‘a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evincing a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism,’ to borrow the words of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.”
The SNC Committee believes the courts and especially Congress have not provided the necessary checks on the growth of the centralized state and the threats to our liberty and prosperity. Thomas Moore said, “Congress no longer represents the people’s interests; it represents the interests of the highest bidder, the big corporations and money power. Through oppression, greed, corruption, incompetence, and imperial folly, the central state is forfeiting its moral authority. The result is increasingly harsh measures against the people as the Regime senses its loss of control.”
Moore continued, “Our great hero Robert E. Lee foresaw these outcomes. In his 1867 letter to England’s Lord Acton, Lee expressed his fear that the death of the old federated Republic of 1789 and the triumph of the centralized state in the War Between the States, meant that America would become, in his words, ‘aggressive abroad and despotic at home.’ A corrupt empire, in other words.”
Ray McBerry, member of the SNC Committee Executive Council, recent candidate for Governor of Georgia, and President of DixieBroadcasting said, “While the SNC is a response to the growing problems of the American empire, it hopes to be more than that. We want it to become the means by which Southerners regain control of their own destiny. The pathway to that goal is to create a forum in which we Southerners can voice our interests. But this forum must have moral authority and legitimacy; and that means it must reflect the wishes and concerns of the Southern people. That realization led us to include, as part of the SNC campaign, a ‘Year of the South’ Survey. Each month the SNC website will post a survey on a critical issue affecting the interests of the Southern people. The findings will then be shared on the website, and will also be used to inform the actual Congress when it meets, to make sure it actually addresses the real concerns of the Southern people.”
In essence, the SNC website will serve as a virtual forum for the airing of issues concerning the welfare of the South and its people in advance of the actual Congress until it convenes. The SNC Committee thus welcomes well-written, discerning articles from responsible individuals on timely issues, while reserving the right to decide what is posted on the site. Articles can be submitted to the SNC Director of Communications, communications@southernnationalcongress.org.
Southerners interested in participating in the SNC through their State’s SNC Committee should log on to www.southernnationalcongress.org for more information, or contact the SNC Director of Communications, communications@southernnationalcongress.org.
