Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen is responsible for my renewed interest in the Vikings and Anglo-Saxon England.

I watched his video on the meaning of runes while traveling to Missouri for Christmas. The YouTube algorithm recommended the History Time channel which has sent me down this rabbit hole for the last week now. I actually have a lot of books on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age England, but I haven’t engaged with the subject since around 2008.

I agree with Bjorn’s definition of freedom. It is not a “natural state” of man. Most people in this world are not fit to govern themselves or others. The foundation of freedom is intelligence, moral virtue, self sufficiency and folk tradition, not universal abstractions. The English were already the freest people in Western Europe before the Enlightenment hopelessly confused the subject by trying to justify a free society on the basis of speculative naturalistic theories like the State of Nature. Americans were already free under the colonial charters, the British Constitution and their own traditions. All groups do not have the same underlying psychology.

If Southerners completely jettisoned liberalism tomorrow, we would still be a relatively free society because we are Celtic and Germanic. The natural limits of freedom would come back without the libertarian garbage, excesses would be curbed and we would have a healthier culture.