By Dr. James Kibler

Commentators ranging from the national networks to the chain newspaper the Columbia State, constantly repeat the adjectives “little” and “small” in describing South Carolina. Over and over again, we hear “South Carolina is little!” “South Carolina is small!” Anyone wise to the ways of the managerial elite should immediately ask why this is parroted so often. Of what are they trying to convince us, and why?

No doubt, their incessant hammering on “little” and “small” may be at least partly in reaction to South Carolina’s history. She once was no too small to stand alone. In December 1860, she successfully declared her independence and stood as a free and sovereign nation until joining the Confederacy in 1861.

The managerials who do their bit in keeping the increasingly disparate parts of the empire bound together are paranoid to the nth degree about South Carolina and her past. I know for a fact that many professional historians are. A free South Carolina is the centralist historian’s worst nightmare. One reason that she takes such a hard licking among the intellectual elite is that she once had the temerity to stand alone. In these people the fear is there, like a recurring trauma. “Little” South Carolina reversed the centralising trend in a devolutionary stand. The fear becomes panic when those of the centralist mindset recall that she did so very successfully before suffering an illegal invasion and the crimes of civilian holocaust of blood and fire. The anger at South Carolina at times even becomes frenzied and shrill. It is the duty of the managerials to keep South Carolina and others like her in line. That is their “patriotic” duty, their reason for being, and many have a vested interest. They get their salaries that way, for these ideologues do nothing for free.

South Carolinians, to one degree or another, have succumbed to this relentless onslaught, and are indeed kept in line. A colonial mindset of dependency and inadequacy has been ingrained as the result of the searing fires of invasion and conquest, now coupled with propaganda and national disdain. That is the psychological price of the South’s defeat in 1865, and it goes deeper than the fact that the victors write the history. South Carolina is still a national symbol and she must forever be put in her “little,” “small” place, there on her stool of eternal repentance. She is to be allowed no pride unless in supplying her blood and treasure in the empire’s wars. (When was the last time you saw the name of a soldier from New York or Massachusetts killed in the war on Iraq?)

The depth and pervasiveness of the fear haunting the national mind should only prove to intelligent South Carolinians how proud we should be and how potentially “dangerous” are any freedom-loving people, big or small. Except for the colonial mentality that views itself as little, inadequate, and dependent, South Carolina might see just how large she indeed is and how large her history looms. Is not what South Carolina has stood for the worst fear for anyone who loves and has a vested interest in the current Power State ?

Getting outside the colonial box reveals South Carolina isn't “tiny” at all. It would probably surprise the average Carolinian to learn that in the realm of sovereign nations world-wide, South Carolina could proudly and confidently take her place. Here are some pertinent comparisons of land size. At 32,008 square miles, South Carolina is roughly the size of Austria (32,378). She is larger than the Czech Republic (30,450), now experiencing a renaissance sine her freeing from the vast Soviet Empire. South Carolina is larger that Scotland (30,418) and has more fertile, habitable land besides. She is twice the size of Denmark (16,639) and the Netherlands (16,033). She is over twice the size of Switzerland (15,940). She is almost three times the size of Belgium (11,787) and four times the size of Wales (8,019). She is over four times the size of Israel (7.876). It would take Switzerland , Belgium , and Israel together to equal South Carolina 's land mass.

News reports on Israel monopolise today's airwaves. A land mass of one fourth South Carolina 's size takes a prominent position in the world's eyes. Never is Israel called “tiny,” “little,” or “small.” I expect for most reading this, it will come as a shock to find that Israel is indeed not larger than South Carolina, much less a quarter of South Carolina's size. When colonial mentality meets world reality, it is like ship and iceberg. When we find that South Carolina is twice the size of Switzerland and four times the size of Israel , attitude adjustments must be made.

It is not at all surprising that South Carolina successfully stood independent and sovereign in December 1860. It was her right when duly elected delegates met in legitimate convention and voted to do so without one dissenting vote. When one considers that three counties in South Carolina (Horry County at 1,154, Berkeley County at 1,110, and Aiken County at 1,000) are each larger than the independent nation of Luxembourg (999), then one sees just how “tiny” South Carolina ranks among the nations of the world. Those three counties alone would create a nation three times the size of Luxembourg . It would take only nine of South Carolina 's forty-nine counties to constitute a land mass the size of Israel .

South Carolinians should get free of the colonial box in which the managerials have conferred her for so long and see her size relative to the nations of the world. South Carolinians should challenge the managerials' descriptions “tiny,” “little,” and “small” with a less provincial attitude. Do not those same managerials scorn Southerners for being provincial, while striving to keep them so in this respect? Perhaps we should advise those managerials in press and academic classrooms to practise what they preach and look beyond their blinders at the great world. Perhaps we might tell them that they should themselves get outside the narrow American box, and quit keeping us South Carolinians in.

South Carolina isn't small after all. Only a small and severely limited ideology would attempt to rob a people of their pride. South Carolinians should also see her history in the broader context as well. The current American version of history is another box she needs to escape. Big imperial ideologies have been the curse of recent centuries. They have been shown to be gad, big ideas. They have been responsible for wars that have shed Amazons and Congoes of blood. The last century should be viewed as blood-dyed. Its color is scarlet red. If people around the globe had devolved power from the gargantuan nation-states instead of pushing to centralise more and more, as our modern managerials in the U.S. so desire, then the world today would have been spared much tragedy and be in better shape. South Carolina showed the way to devolution in 1860, and a cruel, imperial power-state prevented that forward thinking solution, as South Carolina 's innovative way fell to the old-fashioned, outdated concept of empire.

Time has proved the Northern view of centralising power to outmoded and destructive. “All we want is to be let alone,” President Jefferson Davis said in 1861. The Irish said the same for centuries until their successful bid from freedom from empire in 1921. Today Scotland has its own parliament in her march to independence. Lithuania , Poland , and the Czech Republic now breathe the air of freedom. Hawaii , Vermont , Alaska and other states have secession movements in the U.S. itself. Devolution is in the air.

In the larger context of world history, South Carolina now proves to have been forward looking in December 1860. Her enemies, resorting to violence to prevent her independence, were the truly backward ones. Of her role in history and for what she has stood historically, South Carolina should be justly proud. South Carolinians should never forget.

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