An Introduction To A New Contributor.

Written By Ryan McCubbin

Greetings and salutations dear reader. It is an honor and a privilege to have my work published here at Virginia Gentry. By way of introduction, my name is Ryan McCubbin. I work in a professional capacity in Northeast Texas. I am a husband of 30+ years to my wife, a father of three, and a lifelong Southern Baptist. It may be obvious even now that I am neither a literary scholar nor an academic, but instead, I am an advocate of sorts in my spare time, a speaker, provocateur, and amateur rhetorician. While I have invested time and resources in grassroots politics over the last few years, my great passion is working for the protection and preservation of my people’s culture and building new institutions capable of such things.

Before I begin, I think it is helpful for us to acknowledge that while it is a noble tradition among self-conscious Southerners to honor the past, the aim of my work here will not be to light a candle in remembrance of a time and place that once was and will never be again... to pine for a world that has passed. All true Southerners are saddled with a real sense of nostalgia that is soulful, heartfelt, weighty, and ever-present. We are drawn to the past because the past was a time of bravery and courage, nobility and heroism, where men of valor rode out against great odds, to meet their fate and we identify with these heroes, our heroes, and name them among the great men of history. We are also compelled to reminisce about the civilization that was lost.. a people marked by order, beauty, and integrity where truth could be spoken without consequence. A civilization free of the inescapable, soul-sucking liberalism that hangs in the air all around us. It was a true high culture where greatness was pursued, whose older forms and fleeting shadows haunt us to this day. This is all good and beautiful, but not my purpose.

Having spent some personal time in Southern circles, heritage societies, and activist groups, I will most confidently confess that we spend too much time looking in our rearview mirror. It is important to remember the past and honor the deeds and traditions of our forebearers, but the remembrance we carry for our past, this backward-looking gaze, shouldn’t prohibit us from clearly seeing the world around us, nor should it stop us from looking at what lies ahead. We Southerners also waste an enormous amount of time playing historical and political hypothetical games. We often hear “Imagine if Stonewall hadn’t been shot!” or “In a Free Dixie..!” These exercises are fun and provide a momentary respite from the dreariness of reality. However amusing these mental escapes may be, our present reality demands sobriety. We have more pressing matters, matters that pertain to the here and now, matters that pertain to the living and not to the dead. None of us can go back to Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863. We have today to pay the dues owed to our posterity, and perhaps tomorrow.

If the Lord permits, I hope to slowly walk through some of the great works of our Southern fathers that expound upon Southern identity, culture, and tradition with the readers of Virginia Gentry to seine insight, lessons, and application from these works. I also hope to extend our understanding of what the Southern Tradition is in light of the last 75 years, to connect the intellectual to the practical, and in doing so, achieve a synthesis between our past, and our present, and lay out a roadmap for our future.

Until then, Deo Vindice.

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If you are interested in getting more familiar with Mr. McCubbin, you can find him on X here.

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