ERN TRADITION,” the ad suggests.n”VISIT WITH YOUR FOLKS THISnSATURDAY.” “Visiting is a favoritenpastime in the South. Southernersnlove to talk.” Announcing cheapnweekend rates for in-state calls, it goesnon: “This Saturday, swap stories.nShare a secret. Visit with your folks.nIt’s a custom worth keeping.”nAmen to that, I say, but my man innMississippi spells out the irony; “Whonwould have dreamed that the phonencompany—corporate America, technologynitself—would become an institutionnkeeping alive the Southernnidentity?”nBut I don’t know—can the Southnsurvive this: The Charlotte Observernreports that households in OrangenCounty, North Carolina, home ofnyour servant and the University ofnNorth Carolina, are more likely tonsubscribe to the New Yorker thannhouseholds in New York City.nEverything ExcellentnLegal scholarship sometimes appearsnto be a contradiction in terms.nIf the Supreme Court follows electionnreturns, legal philosophers andnhistorians are even more subject tonideological currents and the tides ofnhistory. This propensity to propagandanmay at least partly explainnwhy so much earlier writing onnlegal issues now seems hopelesslynantiquated. The legal views of Bentham,nAustin, and Kelsen strike annintelligent reader as historical oddities,nand it is hard to believe that sonmuch intelligence and energynshould ever have been wasted onnthe Investiture controversy.nThere are, of course, exceptions.nBlackstone on the common law isnstill fascinating, and Maine’s AncientnLaw has never been surpassed,ndespite all the advances innour knowledge of Roman law. Likenhis contemporary Fitzjames Stephen,nMaine was a liberal Whignwho was increasingly drawn to conservativenpositions largely on thenstrength of his own research. In ournown times, Raoul Berger has un-nAnd I have it on good authority thatnthe mother-and-daughter countrynmusic singers Wynona and NaominJudd are actually named Christine andnDiane, respectively.n:}: * *nOf course the big news of the past yearnhas been the Jim and Tammy and Jerrynand Jimmy imbroglio, which gave risento a good deal of humor, most of itnunprintable in a respectable magazinenlike this one. It shouldn’t be surprisingnthat the best jokes, like their reverendnsubjects, came from our neck of thenwoods. To have sacrilege you first neednorthodoxy, and anticlericalism isnfound in priest-ridden societies, notnsecular ones. A certain irreverence—nor at least skepticism about institutionalnreligion—is a Southern tradition asnwell-established as evangelical Protestantismnitself In “Long-Haired CountrynBoy,” for example, Nashville’snCharlie Daniels makes it plain that hendoesn’t doubt the literal truth of thenREVISIONSndergone a similar process of conversion,nalthough not so much to conservativenpolitical positions as tonwhat used to be the conservativenview of the American Constitution.nIn Federalism: The Founders’ Designn(Norman and London: Universitynof Oklahoma Press), Bergernmounts a devastating attack on thenforces of judicial activism and loosenconstruction. Patiently sifting thenopinions of the Founding Fathers—nincluding Marshall—thenretired Yale law professor conclusivelyndemonstrates that the currentnintervention of the federal courtsnhas no warrant in the Constitution.nNeither the commerce clause nornthe “general welfare” provision ofnthe Constitution can be legitimatelynused as the basis for an activistnCourt, and—what is more—thenFounders explicitly declared to thencontrary. Upon a thorough reviewnof the evidence, Berger concludesnthat the states rights interpretationnof the Constitution is the only validnview and that there is no alternativento the highly unfashionable notionnof “dual sovereignty,” that is, thenrecognition that both the states andnnnBible, but he quite explicitly doubtsnthe bona fides of the TV preacher whon”Wants me to send a donation / ‘Causenhe’s worried about my soul.” And RaynStevens swears that his song “WouldnJesus Wear a Rolex on His TelevisionnShow?” was written by Chet Atkinsnbefore the PTL scandal broke.nCombine Southerners’ inheritedndistrust of prelacy with trickle-downnAquarianism from the 60’s, and younget some truly bizarre results—like thenlocal boogie-woogie man who billsnhimself as “the Reverend Billy C.nWirtz, High Prophet of Polyester, Directornof the First House of PolyesternWorship and Horizontal ThrobbingnTeenage Desire and Our First Lady ofnthe White Go-Go Boots WorldwidenLove Ministries, Inc.” Would anybodynfrom Scarsdale have the slightest ideanwhat that is all about?n^ ^ *nEvery time I start to wonder if thenSouth is blanding out, I run acrossnthe federal government are sovereignnin their separate spheres.nAs an aid to understanding thenevolution and seriousness of Berger’snthought, a new volume. SelectednWritings on the Constitutionnby Raoul Berger (Cumberland, VA:nJames River Press; $29.95) is particularlyntimely. This handsomelynproduced edition is the first book tonbe issued by the James River Press,nthe publishing arm of The Centernfor Judicial Studies presided over bynJames McClellan. For years thenCenter has been fighting the goodnfight for judicial restraint, and itsnentrance into the publishing businessncould not have been betterntimed—the year in which the Senatenof the United States celebratednthe destruction of the Constitutionnby lynching Judge Bork. Berger’snpapers are the best possible antidote,nnot only to the tyranny ofnHarvard law but also to the pseudophilosophizingnof professors likenRonald Dworkin, whose every booknand article is designed to consolidatenthe bureaucratic strangleholdnnow exercised on the Americannpeople. (TF)nDECEMBER 19871 51n