NOVAE MILITIAE

Think about it.  The Old South was the medieval "pole" of the American experiment (the other one more informed by the rationalism of the Enlightenment).  It was an agrarian culture.  It was a equestrian culture.  (The Confederate cavalry apparently outperformed the Federal cavalry by several orders of magnitude.)  It was communitarian in a medieval sort of way, but at the same time individualistic in a Catholic anarchist sort of way.

The Confederacy was the culture of the gentleman.  It was a culture that believed Christianity should be the moral and legal backdrop of societal mores and law.   Though it was devoted to a certain sort of nationalism, it refused to allow nationalism (like the Christian empire refused to allow imperialism) to swallow up localism. 

It was a culture of the small arm, and unfamiliar with the concept of total war.  It was the Yankees who introduced that concept into American military art, and perfected it with deadly precision, as evidenced by the two world wars and nuclear holocausts in Asia that followed.  It was a culture of the underdog, a culture that fought like lions but did not prevail, akin to its predecessors who fought the wars of the Crusades.

It's symbology was Christian, as was the symbology of the Christian Crusades.  The Confederate Battle Flag and Navy Jack were based on the Cross of St. Andrew.  The Anglican bishop Leonidas Polk took the Cross of St. George as his battle flag.  Other Confederate battle flags adopted the cross and their central symbol, all of which is indicative of the fact that the Confederates saw their cause as a Christian one.  (See R.E. Bonner's intriguing book Colors and Blood: Flag Passions of the Confederate South, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7391.html )

I  argue in my blogs that Christan culture, though beaten down, will ultimately prevail.  And I believe the South, though likewise beaten down (as were their crusading predecessors), will prevail with it.   As a paleoconservative and a son of the South, whose ancestors fought for liberty both against the armed forces of King George and those of Abraham Lincoln, I view the Confederate banners as my natural knightly insignia.  

http://www.southernevents.org/Essay_on_Weaver.htm