THE OLD REPUBLICrnArtur Schnabel . . . once said of Beethoven’s sonatas that “thisrnmnsic is greater than it can ever be played.” . . . The stories ofrnAmerican histor’ are better than they can ever be told.rn—from David Hackett Fischer, “Telling Storiesrnin the New Age,” March J 997rnIn mv childhood, most human creatures, as they set forth tornwork or plav, dance or love, touched hallowed ground, a pond,rnan everlasting spring, an old elm, a farm that generations hadrnknown and lived on and by. Children know these special sympathiesrnfor places, where they can hide and pretend. There canrnbe no greater delight in privacy than the tunnel made in balesrnof ha’, leading to a fragrant, hollowed-out, and usually itchingrnplace in a barn loft, which most little girls instinctively suspected.rnThis pretending is child’s best play, that ineluctable moment,rnjust cast of Eden, when eyes are still shining from the afterglowrnof the Garden, just before sight dims in the light of thern\ orld, and pretending trembles upon quickening knowledge.rn—from Andrew Lytic, “Myth in a Garden,” June 1987rnThomas Fleming (I) and John Howard (r) with IngersollrnPrize winners V.S. TSaipaul and Andrew Lytle.rnUnlike conscientious Englishmen or Northerners, when Celtsrnand Southerners said the}’ were being lazy, they were not reproachingrnthemselves, but merely describing their state of comfort.rnThey suffered no guilt when they spent their time pleasantlyrnhunting, fishing, dancing, drinking, gambling, fighting, orrnjust loafing and talking.rnThese are not the characteristics that make great empires,rnand no Celtic society- ever made one, but the Celtic Southernrnway has hvo redeeming virtues. Eirst, when outsiders supply therndiscipline and constancy, Celts are capable of might)’ achievements,rnas British histor)- has shown. Even under the unimaginativernrule of England, the Irish and the Welsh produced an almostrnendless number of poets and playwrights, actors andrnmusicians; and the Scots, for more than two centuries, kept thernUnited Kingdom supplied not only with its best fighting menrnbut also with its most brilliant philosophers, physicians, scientists,rnand engineers. The Celtic contribution in America hasrnbeen no less profound.rn—from Gradv McWhiney, “Geltic Heritage of the Old South,”rnMarch 1989rnExcept in the sense that America was settled in new geographicrnterritory, the United States is of course no younger than anyrnother countn,’ in the Western world. Its roots stretch deep intornthe distant past. The Eramers of the Constitution and thernAmerican people at large were imbued with classical and biblicalrnprejudices and habits that helped shape the work atrnPhiladelphia. Erom the point of view of what ensures Americanrnsocial and political order, the least significant part of thernConsfitution is the written document. Ear more important isrnthe unwritten consfitufion, all of those religious, moral, intellectual,rnand aesthefic habits and attitudes that are implied in thernwritten text. Without them the Constitution would not havernbeen conceived as it was, and without them it could not havernbeen successfully put into pracficc.rn—from Glaes G. Ryn, “Cultural Diversity and Unity,”rnJune J 995rnTHE OLD RIGHTrnOne of the most pernicious legacies of Hitler, Stalin, and Maornis that any political leader responsible for less than, say, three orrnfour million deaths is let off the hook. This hardly seems right,rnand it was not always so. In fact, there was a time when Americanrnconservatives took the lead in publicizing Allied, and especial)}’rnAmerican, atrocities against Cermans. High-level journalistsrnlike William Henry Chamberlin, in America’s SecondrnCrusade, and Ereda Utiey, in The High Cost of Vengeance, pilloriedrnthose who had committed what Utley called “our crimesrnagainst hiunanitv”—the men who directed the terror-bombingrnof the German cities, conspired in the expulsion of some 15rnmillion Germans from their ancestral lands in the east (in therncourse of which about hvo million died—sec de Zayas’s Nemesisrnat Potsdam), and plotted the “final solution of the Germanrnc|uestion” through the Morgenthau plan. Utiey even exposedrnthe sham “Dachau trials” of German soldiers and civilians inrnthe first }’ears of the Allied occupation, detailing the use ofrnmethods “worthy of the CPU, the Gestapo, and tiie SS” to extortrnconfessions. She insisted that the same ethical standardsrnhad to be applied to victors and vanquished alike. If not, thenrnwe were declaring that “Hitier was justified in his belief thatrn’might makes right.'” Both books were brought out by the laternHenry Regnen,’, tiie last of the Old Right greats, whose housernwas the bastion of post-World War II revisionism, publishingrnworks like Charies Callan Tansill’s classic. Back Door to War.rn—from Ralph Raico, “Nazif}’ing the Germans,” January 1997rnI William E.] Borah’s Old Guard Republican enemies consideredrnhim a dangerous radical, but his credo was more accurateK’rndescribed by Walter Eippmann in 1936 as “a lineal descendantrnfrom the eadiest American liberals, an individualist who opposesrnall concentration of power, political or economic, who isrnagainst private pri’ilege and private monopoly, against politicalrnbureaucracy and centralized government.” He kept a notebookrnJULY 2001/61rnrnrn