Southern Agrarianism in the 21st Century: A Fresh Critique of Modernity

Abstract

In 1930, twelve members of the academic community at Vanderbilt University published a book entitled, I’ll Take My Stand. The Vanderbilt Agrarians, as they came to be known, offered an intellectual foundation for understanding the complexities of an industrial society. Not only did they examine the limits imposed upon liberty and freedom by unchecked industrialism, but they also described a just social and political system characterized by harmony and balance. The strength of agrarianism is in its appeal to First Things: to political simplicity, to social harmony, to the natural cycles of the market, and to the proper end results toward which just political and social systems should aspire. By proper end results it is meant no less than the traditions of political liberty, equality before the law, and respect for individual rights put forth by John Locke and Adam Smith which were the founding principles (along with Christianity and the Greek city-states) of Western Civilization.