Cannons’ roar, sweating soldiers tell of 1863 struggle; ideas still at war

A battle flag flutters over a group of re-enactors at the Battle of Tunnel Hill event Saturday.

This afternoon I attended a re-enactment of a battle at Tunnel Hill, Ga., with a son, 10, who sat in a three-legged stool at the edge of a blanket I’d laid in the grass. A red lunchpail stood between us, and we ate and drank. I darted off to take photos and to chat with people. Today’s events weren’t preparatory and chatty as they had been Friday with the homeschool groups. They were noisy and hustling. Cannon blasts split the air, sometimes pushing across the field white smoke rings.

It was a fine afternoon for changing the pace. I have been greatly pressed in past weeks by development of our Chattanooga website and talk show, and have run myself ragged preparing five two-hour shows a week and trying to write an essay here at least every other day.

Our work 1 1/2 years out

I’d like to thank you for your interest in this website, and in my work in radio. I believe the work of liberty and Christianity is to be understood as happening one person at a time. I have tried to press this conviction into my work on the radio, 1 to 3 p.m. weekdays at Copperhead 1240 AM. At the microphone in our Soddy-Daisy studio, I direct my show to a single listener. It’s never “listeners” or “the audience.” I am trying to identify with the listener and have a good effect one person at a time, because that’s how the Holy Spirit works.

In all likelihood I admit there is more than a single listener. In the new week the owner of the station, Sab Cupelli, hopes to arrange to have our programming on the FM band in Chattanooga. “Our whole ballgame changes with FM,” Mr. Cupelli says in a letter today to supporters. “We become a real player.” Our AM station with tower in Soddy-Daisy has a signal equal to 12 one-hundred watt light bulbs.

AM is limited in range. Its reputation is faded. Because of the vagaries of AM and limits of signal strength, my station is largely north county, meaning Hixson, Lee Highway and perhaps parts of North Shore. Actual delivery seems less than its federal license permits. FM will broadcast in the same legal footprint, to a much bigger and higher-end audience, it appears, one covering more neighborhoods and sectors than now is reached by our tower.

I have not been able to pay myself for operating Nooganomics.com, which I launched in March 2012. My radio show began in January, and I have been building relationships with listeners and advertisers. I’m blessed with a trickle of dollars, and the prospect for more. The ideas I argue for Noogacentrism, Christianity, local economy, self-government and free markets will give me an eventual return on my investment. As a minority owner in the station and friendly arrangements with Mr. Cupelli, I will be able to serve Chattanooga not just with helpful insights as writer and editor, but as a venue for advertising.

D’you like the new site?

This website remains a labor of love. It has you and a few other people who read it, and I remain disappointed at my share of readers. But Mr. Cupelli keeps reminding me about thinking in terms of numbers, statistics or surveys. I succeed as a writer and a radio host “one person at a time,” he says. A sure reader or a sure listener is worth serving. If I remember to think of that one listener, that one advertiser, and serve that person, I will not have to worry about money, he says. It’ll come. To my wife, Jeannette, who suggests I drop the website and focus on radio, I defend writing as a creative act that helps me rethink my intellectual and spiritual premises. The future is always shaped by religiously motivated minorities who read.

Do you like the website redesign? Still WordPress, but a theme from Woo, a South African outfit that it calls “platform agnostic,”making it readable on any device. Not sure I like the rotating main-story feature. I am tinkering with design, font sizes and other matters of appearance. I’ll be installing a PayPal button if you want to pay F$5 for a year’s subscription.

Living out local economy ideal

For your benefit I am living out the ideas I espouse. I am repatriating capital. I am investing locally. These are the sorts of economic decisions I propose for you, too. Disentangle yourself from national economy, favor the local. Be suspicious of the remote, favor the near. Hold high your doubts about the corporate, but favor the personal. Wince at the complex, appreciate the simple. Love your neighbor — buy local. In the short term, as I put family capital at risk, I am poorer. But I feel enriched personally, am living out a dream of being an independent journalist following my own ideas, and am confident my listener and my reader (you) will appreciate my efforts in this our mutual effort.

The re-enactors in Tunnel Hill sweated in their hot clothes, though the heat could’ve been worse. My son said it’s odd how there’s not much interest in re-enacting World War II, but a lot in re-enacting the war to prevent Southern independence. “Well,” I said, “that’s because the ideas the war was about remain in conflict; the issues have not been settled just because the Yankees won.” The sentiment among the re-enactors and the audience Saturday in Tunnel Hill was strongly for the South, as a final speaker expressed thanks and respect for President Jefferson Davis and asserted something like, “God save the South.”

The ideas I want to defend, with your help, are the stronger for the oppression they have endured. Local economy. Family. Christianity. Virtue. Free markets. Constitutional government. A decentralized social, economic and political order under the holy laws of God, the burden of which is light. Self-government. These ideas are sweet. They keep us young.

Thank you for your interest in Nooganomics.com and in me. I would be glad if you would tell your friends about this website and about my show, 1 to 3 p.m. weekdays at 1240 AM. I’d be grateful.

This couple is adorned with period clothes at the Battle of Tunnel Hill re-enactment.

The re-enactor, foreground, speaks with an accent of India, and carries a Henry rifle, not one that Confederate troops were issued. Though a Southerner by birth, I’ve had to learn to adopt a localist and Southern perspective.