​The recent controversy over the Israeli incursion into the Gaza strip has also revealed some deep fissures within the Conservative Movement. For despite the massive support for the Israeli invasion from both establishment Democrats and Republicans, there have been cautionary voices raised on the Right, in particular, by significant journalists such as Tucker Carlson (via his popular podcast) and Candace Owens (in her dispute with Ben Shapiro over her use of the phrase “Christ is King,” deemed by Shapiro to be antisemitic).

To understand the essentials and issues involved it is necessary to understand the significant role and the complex history of the movement labeled “neoconservatism” as an intellectual determinant in contemporary America, with its roots in Marxism and in a secularized reimagining of Zionist-inflected universalism. And to do this we must return to its origins and the aggravated differences between developing ideological factions within Communism in Russia after the death in 1924 of Vladimir Lenin, and the resulting political struggle between the two major leaders who emerged, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky.

Trotsky, a secularized Jew, advanced a Marxist-Leninist position that would stress global proletarian revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation, and a form of universal mass (workers’) democracy to be accomplished by bloody revolution. Unlike the Stalinist position which posited the establishment of “socialism in one country” as a prerequisite for furthering the socialist cause elsewhere, Trotsky advanced the theory of “permanent global revolution” among the working class leading to a kind of eventual Parousia, a global paradise which would extirpate not only capitalism but all the inherited remnants of the historic and Christian past.

Differences within the branches of Marxism and Communism, between devotees of Trotsky’s approach and the more insular Stalinism, existed equally in the United States, despite the seeming unity on the Left in support of the war effort after the attack of Germany on the Soviet Union in 1941.  The friction never subsided.

The final breaking point for many of those Marxists who would within a few decades gain a foothold in the American conservative movement probably came with the rise of antisemitism under Stalin immediately before and after World War II in Russia (e.g., the infamous “doctors’ plot” and the Stalinist purges of Communist intelligentsia, some of whom were Jewish).  Horrified and disillusioned by what they considered to be the perversion of the socialist revolution, these “pilgrims from the Communist Left”—who were largely Jewish in origin—moved toward an explicit anti-Communism. Notable among them were Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, both of whom had sons who would figure prominently in the current neoconservative establishment.

These former Marxists soon began to be known as “neoconservatives,” a label which a number of them accepted readily, due to their position on the Cold War Communist threat. Kristol even authored two books, Reflections of a Neo-Conservative: Looking Back, Looking Forward (1983) and The Neo-Conservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-20o9 (2011), in which he proudly laid claim to that title. Yet, he also acknowledged his roots in the Trotskyite version of Communist ideology [See, for example, his essay, “Reflections of a Trotskyist,” included in Reflections of a Neo-Conservative, also printed in The New York Times Magazine, January 23, 1977].

Embraced by an older generation of conservatives, and invited to write for conservative publications, the neoconservatives soon began to occupy positions of leadership and importance. More significantly they altered positions which had been associated with the older conservative movement, often termed “paleoconservatism,” to mirror their own vision. For even though repelled by the effects of Soviet Communism, they nevertheless brought with them a world view drawn from the Left. And they brought with them relentless zeal for furthering their own form of globalism.

A remarkable admission of this genealogy came in 2007, in the pages of NationalReviewOnline. Here one finds the expression of sympathies clearly imported from the onetime far Left and presented in a onetime Old Right publication.  As explained by the contributor Stephen Schwartz:

“To my last breath, I will defend Trotsky who alone and pursued from country to country and finally laid low in his own blood in a hideously hot house in Mexico City, said no to Soviet coddling to Hitlerism, to the Moscow purges, and to the betrayal of the Spanish Republic, and who had the capacity to admit that he had been wrong about the imposition of a single-party state as well as about the fate of the Jewish people. To my last breath, and without apology. Let the neofascists and Stalinists in their second childhood make of it what they will.” 

By the late 1990s the neoconservatives had taken over most of the major conservative organs of opinion, journals, and think-tanks. They also, significantly, exercised tremendous influence politically in the Republican Party (and to some degree within the Democratic Party, at least during the presidency of Bill Clinton). Kristol carefully distinguished his doctrine from Old Right traditional conservatism. It was “forward-looking” and progressive in its attitude toward social issues like civil rights, rather than reactionary like the earlier conservatism. Its adherents rejoiced over the Civil Rights bills of the 1960s, unlike Buckley’s National Review at that time (which, of course, fell into line afterwards). Neoconservatives were also favorable to the efforts to legislate more equality for women and for other groups whom, they believed, had hitherto been kept from realizing the American Dream.

Rather than simply attacking state power or advocating a return to states’ rights and more local self-government, the new conservatives, according to Kristol, hoped to build on existing federal law. They believed that the promise of equality, which neoconservatives found in the Declaration of Independence, had to be promoted at home and abroad, and American conservatives, they preached, must lead the efforts to achieve global democracy, as opposed to the illogical and destructive efforts of the hard Left, or the reactionary stance of the Old Right.

Neoconservative rhetoric and initiatives did not go unopposed in the ranks of more traditional conservatives. Indeed, no less than the “father” of the conservative intellectual movement of the 1950s, Russell Kirk, publicly denounced the neoconservatives. Singling out the Jewish intellectual genealogy of major neoconservative writers, in an October 1988 speech at the Heritage Foundation, Kirk threw down the gauntlet. "Not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent neo-conservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States—a position they will have difficulty in maintaining as matters drift," Kirk declared. The Jewish author Midge Decter, wife of Norman Podhoretz and the director of the Committee for the Free World, called Kirk's remark "a bloody piece of anti-Semitism."

Kirk’s resistance, and the warnings of Paul Gottfried, Sam Francis, Patrick Buchanan and others of like mind emphasized the sharp differences between the Old Right and the ascending neoconservatives. Even more so than the attacks on Kirk, Patrick Buchanan became a target for neoconservative and Jewish attacks. Buchanan accused neoconservatives of stirring up Iraqi war fever at the instigation of the "Israeli foreign ministry." Writing in The Washington Times, Mona Charen, a former Reagan administration official, accused Buchanan of using "neoconservative" as a synonym for "Jew."

As those former Marxists made their progress rightward more than a half century ago, the linguistic template and ideas associated with “American exceptionalism” were refined by them to signify the universal superiority of their vision of the American experience, in many cases through the lens of political Zionism. For example, neoconservative favored political thinker Allan Bloom offers this in his The Closing of the American Mind: “And when we Americans speak seriously about politics we mean that our principles of freedom and equality and the rights based on them are rational and everywhere applicable.” Americans must engage in “an educational experiment undertaken to force those who do not accept these principles to do so.”

Although Bloom’s volume was published in 1987, do not the imperatives enunciated then find expression in the movement towards a “global reset” today?

Further, these recovering Marxists read their conception of a crusading American social democracy back into the American Founding. Gone were any admiring references to the great Southern constitutional thinker John C. Calhoun, so favored by Kirk in The Conservative Mind (1953); and significant authors like the Southerner Mel Bradford or the paleoconservative Paul Gottfried were summarily removed from the mastheads and editorial boards of journals of opinion now newly controlled by neoconservatives, their once-eagerly sought and highly respected essays now refused publication.

In reality, both the multicultural Left and the neoconservative Right share a basic commitment to certain ideas and expressions. Both use comparable phraseology—about “equality” and “democracy,” “human rights” and “freedom,” and the desirability of exporting and imposing “our democratic values,” whether in Ukraine or elsewhere. Despite this overlap, both the dominant Left and the neoconservative Right try to give differentiated meanings to the  doctrine of equality that the two sides share with equal enthusiasm.
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But all chimerical appearances aside, in their zealous support for imposing a secular globalism, their defense of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, and their advocacy of equal rights for women (now extended to same sex marriage and even transgenderism), the neoconservatives mirror the political stances of the Left. As such, insofar as they claim to represent conservatism or the Republican Party, their purported opposition to the leftward tsunami engulfing what is left of the American nation is mere window-dressing at best, and outright collaboration at worst, only enabling the deadly virus destroying our civilization.

I found this article of interest, so I am passing it on.  It symbolizes for me, in iconic fashion, another major reason that the millennia-old inherited society around us is collapsing, to be replaced by a monstruous, dystopian Gulag, a counter-reality where our tried-and-true verities are unceremoniously dumped onto the ash heap of history.

Just the other day I caught a portion of a public access broadcast of a Raleigh (NC) City Council meeting. Several dozen protesters were present and proceeded to testify...that is, rant and rave and threaten the council members if they did not, that very moment, pass a resolution condemning Israeli occupation of Gaza.

Now, let it be said, that I tend to be sympathetic to those who urgently seek negotiations and a withdrawal of the IDF, which, no doubt is wrecking Gaza beyond recognition and causing immense human suffering. While I condemn the vicious Hamas attack on Israel, the only way—the only solution, so it seems to me—is for rational members of the parties involved to sit down and negotiate an internationally-guaranteed two-state solution. This would necessarily entail full Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza and on the West Bank (with the requisite departure of zealous Zionist “settlers” who have seized the better land there from Arab inhabitants).

But back to the protesters at the Raleigh City Council: Almost all of them were identifiably women (?), and they were some of the ugliest, foulest looking creatures I've ever seen—anywhere: Purple stringy hair, 300 lb. female monsters, bulging out in all the wrong places, downright nasty, their noses festooned with ringlets, their mouths spilling out threats and imprecations and demands. If anyone—any rational person, that is—were sympathetic to their position, just their presence there would have probably quashed that sentiment and discouraged a sympathetic response.

Yet, the council members—like most mind-in-the-cloud liberals—appeared staid and polite, intently listening, as the loathsome harpies seized the microphone during the comment session.

That set me to thinking: How did those women become such foul harridans? Certainly, they weren’t that way as toddlers or young girls. And my thoughts centered on two causes which I believe have gotten us to where we are today here in central North Carolina: First, our perverted educational system, abetted by the collapse of the nuclear family and the church, and, second, a massive in-migration to the Tar Heel State since Governor Luther Hodges back in the late 1950s had the idea of establishing what became known as the Research Triangle Park centered around the three major universities in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. This, in turn, began a six-decade process of attracting highly-paid technocrats, who brought with them their neoteric beliefs on everything from politics and morality to child rearing…. But very little of the Southern “rootedness” and “social bond” communitarianism (to use the late Richard Weaver’s term) that had characterized my neighbors when I was growing up.

Many of those women at the Raleigh City Council went through our educational system, and most likely had parents who forked over thousands of shekels to make certain their daughters got a "good education."  And, no doubt, that is a major part of the problem. For several decades we have permitted—in many cases, enabled—the total miseducation (I should call it as it is—indoctrination and cerebral infection) of our children by a corrupt public education system (which the GOP feeds almost as badly as the Dems). That miseducation is coming back to haunt us with a vengeance, culturally, politically, and religiously.

Mind you, the Raleigh City Council is now made up of an assortment of leftists and other n'er-do'wells of progressivism. The influx of population in recent decades, mostly techies from California and from “up North” attracted by our growing Carolina electronic industry, low taxes and hospitable business environment, has turned this area from a cordial, mannerly, old fashioned Southern region, into a foul copy of Silicon Valley. I now hate to venture into our state's capital city—it is not the town I remember as a boy.

Automobile traffic is ruthless and becoming impossible. Genuine courtesy, whether on the steadily-expanding and changing road grid, or in dealing with a new and aggressive commercial class, has all but disappeared. Chatting briefly with a cashier while standing in a check-out line gets you nasty looks, if not nasty comments “to hurry up” or “move on” from impatient shoppers.

Surrounding the city and chewing up thousands of acres of once serene farmland, new multi-storied apartments rise in fields that I recall used to cultivate tobacco and soybeans. It’s becoming almost impossible for small landowners and farmers to hold on to their property given real estate sharks circling round, paying inflated prices for their homesteads. How incongruous to be driving out my way, passing beautiful countryside, only to be struck suddenly by ugly high-rise apartments which now are replacing it. As Howard W. Smith (d. 1976), the late conservative Democrat who once represented formerly-conservative northern Virginia in Congress, commented, observing the new faceless, impersonal apartments erected in his district: “And to think, that people actually live in those ant-hills!”

As my late friend and mentor, Dr. Russell Kirk, once said: “It is hard to love the strip mall where the honeysuckle used to grow.”

Thirty-five years ago Raleigh elected a very conservative mayor, a protégé of the late Senator Jesse Helms. That would never happen today. Since then Raleigh and the county of Wake, in which I live, have seen a sea change—in demographics, in voting habits, in the destruction of old neighborhoods, in the once largely unspoiled environment, and in the kind of population—the people—who inhabit the area.

Whereas I grew up in a community which celebrated our traditions and revered the nuclear family, valued the role of the church, where divorce was a rarity, where abortion was practically unknown, and where public education was considered an extension of parental guidance (not some secret lab for “woke” teachers to push six year old boys to have sex mutilation operations, without the knowledge of their parents), that sense of community has largely disappeared.

Again, my thoughts returned to those foul witches with purple hair....They were an appropriate symbol, a primary illustration, of what the best laid plans of our unweary and grasping political and business leaders had produced…secular and barren modernism run rampant, in search of the almighty dollar, and if traditions or heritage or old fashioned courtesy and belief should stand in the way, then let them be damned.

So, when I stumbled across the following article by an "out" and "proud" lesbian, boasting that now some 30% of Gen Z women identify as LBGTQ....well, given the choices we have made, or have allowed to be made on our behalf over the past half century, is it really surprising?

Our national decline can be traced to a number of factors, including the infiltration and perversion of our educational and entertainment systems, massive immigration (and not just from overseas), the nefarious results of the “civil rights” bills of the 1960s, and, yes, the long-range effects of the 19th Amendment. Humanly speaking it may be impossible at this point to reverse it. Yet, we must continue to try. And may God help us!

As Christmas 2023 rapidly approaches I am put in mind of a short poem, “The Broad Winter,” written some seventy years ago by English poet, Jack Clemo. It may seem a bit odd to cite this work during the Christmas Season, but I will explain.
​
Here it is:

​Upon reading it you might ask: “Why would we wish to dwell on such dark things during the Christmas Season which is, after all, a time of inextinguishable and ineffable Joy? Why would we wish to read such a work that surveys the ruin and apostacy of our modern world?”

Read the last two lines again.

They remind us that Hope and the Promises of Salvation and Everlasting Life entered this world a little over 2,000 years ago. And those Promises and that Hope cannot be extinguished or defeated by the powers of Darkness, by Satan and his diverse minions of this world, no matter how strong and invincible they may appear, or how much damage they have done to two millennia of Christian civilization.

Thus it is that once more there are broad smiles on our faces, despite the travails and difficulties we encounter in our own lives, and despite the “faithless generations” that Clemo mentions in his poem.

The Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord is a day we celebrate, for it is a memorialization of that Event in history which is completely unimaginable in human terms and that forever changed human history.

The sin of Adam—Original Sin—affected all mankind and left descendants marked, indelibly stained by that original fault.  Adam’s sin was a form of disobedience, but a disobedience so grave and monumental against God’s Creation that only the Coming of the Messiah, the Second Person of the Trinity of the Godhead, could repair it. And the Son of God would be Incarnate in a woman who would be pure and herself immaculate, untouched by the inheritance of sinfulness (by the merits of her Son). Only such a pure womb would be fitting for the Incarnate God. And only the Incarnation into one of His creatures would serve the purpose of demonstrating that Our Blessed Saviour would come to us, not only as God, but also in the form of Man—this was fitting because it was to Mankind that He was sent.

For hundreds of years the People of Israel had awaited the coming of a Messiah to lead them, to liberate them and, if you will, to repair Adam’s Fall. But this vision—whether expressed in the revolts of the Maccabees or in later violent episodes like the revolt of Simon bar Kokhba against the Romans (132 A.D.)—implied not just satisfaction for sinful ways, but increasingly the establishment of an earthly and secular kingdom for and of the Hebrews.

And although Our Lord and Saviour indeed came first to the Jews, and offered them His reparative Grace and Salvation, it was by no means to be limited to them. Indeed, His message was universal (as it had been to Abraham). And those Hebrews who accepted the Messiah—and those Gentiles who also joined them--became the Church, the “New” Israel, receptor of God’s Grace and holder of His Promises and carrier of His Light unto all the world.

While a majority of old Israel rejected Our Lord, demanding His Crucifixion before Pilate, those who followed Him and believed in Him entered the New Covenant, a New Testament. It is in this sense that the Christian church inherited the promises of Israel and the Old Testament, and thus fulfilled those prophesies. And that fulfillment continues.

St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus [2:11-15] summarizes both the dazzling and miraculous wonder of Our Saviour’s Grace amongst us and its inexhaustible power to transform us: “The grace of God Our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and might cleanse to Himself a people acceptable, a pursuer of good works. These things speak and exhort: in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We—the Christian church, those chosen out of Grace who accept God’s gifts—are in a journey to that day when Our Lord will reign fully not only in Heaven but here on earth as well. That is why we worship Him as Christ the King, for He must rule not just in our hearts but over all Creation.

In the year 800 A.D. as Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in Aachen, Germany, the choirs intoned the antiphon: “Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!”—“Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!” These Imperial Acclamations indicated that Our Lord was recognized as both Lord and Master, in Heaven and on Earth, and that our mission was not just to be confirmed in the Faith, but to spread it to every corner of the globe, and—very importantly in our day and time—to defeat its powerful foes.

And for this task, by the love of Christ and through our Faith in Him we have been given the invincible armament of Our Lord’s graces to support us and the gift of the supernatural Virtue of Hope, that whenever we are tempted to despair, pulls us back and redirects our vision. It is this solemn promise which Christmas reminds us of.
​
It is fascinating to note that in 1659 the Puritans in control of the Massachusetts Bay Colony actually banned Christmas and the festivities surrounding it which they considered, in their Iconoclastic and heretical way, to be an affront to God:

For those zealots, Christmas was a distraction, a pagan celebration that smacked of the feared Catholic and Anglican traditions. Too much celebration, too much joy took away from their practical and stern Gnosticism. Indeed, by so doing they actually cut themselves off completely from living Christian tradition and the inheritance of 1600 years of Christian faith.

As various distinguished historians and authors such as Perry Miller and Paul Conkin have detailed, the Puritans of Massachusetts begat in third and fourth generations a degenerative vision of humanity that maintained the same frenzied zealotry and framework of the original Yankee Puritans, but had evolved into philosophical Transcendentalism and religious Universalism, and later into such fanatical aberrations as Abolitionism, Women’s Suffrage, and various hysterical “civil rights” reform movements since then. Without the firm anchor and foundation of Sacred Tradition, “faith” became little more than a social philosophy advocating for insane change here on earth. For them “salvation” would be found in social reform and perpetual (and destructive) revolution.

And we have seen in our own time the continued expressions and the results of this philosophy. For today it is the descendants of those same Puritans, now vested in all the gross finery of radical Progressivist thought, who advance the latest causes for gender equality, same sex marriage, transgenderism…the same descendants and their allies who denounce anyone who challenges their new template on race as “racist”…and the same apparatchiks who with unleashed passion demand that the “new Gospel” of American-style secular democracy and equality be imposed on the rest of the globe. There lies salvation for them. It is, in reality, a sure path that leads directly to a hell on earth…and to Hell without the Redemption of Our Lord.

So, as we begin to celebrate the Feast of Christmas, by that very act we defy and denounce those Puritans and their progeny. Like Clemo’s poem, we cling to the Citadel of Faith and its forthright affirmation.

In the ancient liturgy for Christmas night is sung:

“Laetentur coeli et exultet terra ante faciem Domini, quoniam venit!” [Ps. 95: 11, 13]

“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad before the face of the Lord: because He cometh.”

Once more, then, I take this special opportunity to wish each of you and your families a most joyous and blessed Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord, 2023. May this Christmas Season be a source of Christ’s grace to you and confirm you in the unshakeable Armor of Faith and the Hope that only He can give.

​A blessed and joyous Christmas to you all and to your families! 

​When I first met Zippy he was a mature, chestnut-colored and very friendly male equine who had come to live with my neighbors. They had created an ample fenced-in, grassy pasture next to my property, plus a neat horse-shed where Zippy could both sleep or take safe refuge should the weather turn bad.

Earlier this year Zippy reached the admirable old age (for a horse) of thirty, and he had begun to show his years. But neither I nor any of my neighbors were prepared to see him leave us, for him to die. Yet, in recent weeks he had been beset by several severe conditions. Perhaps we should have suspected, perhaps we should have known.

A couple of weeks ago, the vets’ diagnosis of cancer seemed serious. But Zippy had survived earlier infections and illnesses, and somehow he had come through them okay.

But not this time; the cancer was far too advanced, the vets said. And Zippy was too old and too infirm, and in pain.

Thus it was that a couple of weeks ago my next door neighbor contacted veterinarians whose specialty is equine care and medicine. Their role was to inject Zippy with a serum which would stop his heart and end his life.

That afternoon was sunny; it was a temperate late September day. A number of neighbors, including several children who had known and loved Zippy gathered to comfort him and…say good-bye.

I had ventured over earlier in the day to say my farewells; I did not wish to be there when the vet had to put him down. Several other neighbors were there, too. I embraced his beautiful head and patted him, then planted a light kiss on his forehead. I looked into his eyes; he seemed to know that something was going on—so many human beings attending him. What indeed was happening, he must have thought.

At that time my neighbors were expecting the vets soon. But it was much later when they came, and at the very moment I opened my front door to walk my cocker spaniel Jasper after his supper, I cast a glance towards the adjoining pasture just in time to see the fatal injection and Zippy fall that one last time, his heart stilled, to the ground. It is and was a vision which remains with me as I close my eyes—it was a vision I wished to avoid, but could not.

My cocker Jasper somehow noticed it, also. You see, Jasper and Zippy had one of those special animal friendships that is unique in the animal kingdom. Ever since Zippy came to live with my neighbors, my cockers, both Robert before Jasper, and Jasper alone since 2018, have befriended him. Each morning and evening when I would walk Jasper, he would urgently pull my leash in the direction of Zippy’s corral. Then, he would scoot under the fence as Zippy galloped over excitedly, and the two would touch noses. It was one of those regular events which convinces you that God’s Creation is good and that animals do sense goodness in other creatures.

Seeing Zippy brought down by the injection I walked Jasper towards my neighbor’s fence. Jasper was whining as we went and pulling hard on his leash. I think he knew something was amiss.

One of my neighbors had dug a grave for Zippy in his familiar pasture, where his human companions plan to plant flowers and perhaps erect some type of memorial. That afternoon I couldn’t stop Jasper’s whining; he desperately wanted to approach the body of his dead friend, but I would not let him get that close.

Every morning since then, when I first take Jasper out for his accustomed jaunt, he heads directly for that pasture. Now, there is a small mound of freshly-turned dirt over the plot where Zippy is buried, but that doesn’t seem to deter Jasper. It’s as if he is looking for his friend in the last place where he saw him. And he accompanies his search usually with a muted whine: “Where is my friend? What has happened to him?”

I will admit that witnessing Jasper’s response has only heightened my own sadness. Zippy was part of my little rural neighborhood and had become a dear friend of my cocker spaniel. Certainly, horses usually only live between twenty-five and thirty years. And Zippy had lived a good, long life, appreciated and loved by us humans, as well as by at least one canine denizen.

Many years ago, when I was in my teens, my sister begged my parents for a horse. It seemed back then that many children desired horses as pets. After all we were raised when equine companions were prominent both in film and on television. I still remember Trigger (Roy Rogers’ stallion) and Champion (the graceful stead of Gene Autry), and who can forget “My Friend Flicka” or Silver, the extremely intelligent solid-white beauty who accompanied the “Lone Ranger” everywhere?

Those horses were almost human, or so it seemed to us. They knew what we were thinking and were always there if the human hero needed assistance that only his trusted mount might offer.

So, my father acquired a handsome pinto, named Patches. Like my neighbor, Dad built a small horse shed for him. And I can remember that one thing Patches would do is let one of our small cocker spaniels ride on his back (well, maybe with a little help from one of us children!). My sister has photographs, all taken about sixty years ago, which capture those memories.

As I bade farewell to Zippy and observed Jasper’s own special reaction, those thoughts of long-ago came back to me as in a reverie.

Back in 2019 I conducted a round-table discussion with two well-versed academics from England, and one from the United States (plus myself), on what happens to animals after death. It was a topic addressed by writer Dr. John Warwick Montgomery thirty years ago in 1993, and published in the New Oxford Review as “Fido in Heaven?” Our more recent symposium, titled “Do Dogs Go to Heaven?,” was later aired in the New English Review in April 2020. After ample back-and-forth and various objections addressed, we came to the conclusion that animal souls as they are not human do not enjoy the Beatific Vision promised to those who die in God’s graces. But as they are His creatures and are called by Him “good,” and they act according to their created natures (and are incapable of sin), that neither do their animal souls disappear into nothingness. Rather, even not experiencing the blindingly joyous vision of Beatitude, yet their animal souls are somehow present on some level glorifying the God who created them and surrounding the human companions for whom they provided such delight and comfort when on earth.

I like to think that is Zippy’s happy fate, just as it is for the several cocker spaniels who have allowed me to keep them company during their short lives and who have provided immeasurable and invaluable comfort, devotion and love to me over the years. They are and were, as I call them, God’s barking angels, just as Zippy was that elegant and handsome equine companion for my neighbors.

​We shall, I believe, feel their presence once again.

(The photograph above is of Zippy in happier days)

I append to this introduction a longish article by Professor Michel Chossudovsky, approximately 4,500 words in length. It is one of the most detailed "backstory" accounts of why and how the Ukraine conflict came about--detailing the nefarious actions and outrageous provocations of the Neoconservative-dominated US State Department, truly a "state-within-a-state," operating seemingly without any limits, constitutional or otherwise, with the object of imposing, either by force or by guile, American global hegemony on recalcitrant nations of the world.


Along with studies by Professor Richard Sakwa (Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, 2015), Ben Abelow (How the West Brought War to Ukraine, 2022), a recent full issue of Harper’s (“Why Are We in Ukraine?” by Benjamin Schwartz and Christopher Layne, June 2023), and other investigative works by Professor John Mearsheimer and Scott Ritter, Chossudovsky’s essay should be required reading for members of the US Congress and anyone seriously concerned about the increasingly perilous conflict in eastern Europe.

As with earlier situations, e.g., the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, etc., this history is one of continual (and largely disastrous) hegemonic efforts of the Neocon foreign policy elites who have guided our foreign policy for decades, to continue to advance their vision of a leftist democratic world, replete with every moral and political barbarism now afflicting the USA and much Western Europe. Thus, the US's intense pressure on the pliant Ukrainian regime to institute transgenderism and full "homosexual equity," both on and off the battlefield.

In all seriousness, we should ask: Is not such infectiously evil activity forced on countries around the world a kind outright subservience to a form of Satanism?

Of particular interest is a transcript of the full February 2014 conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. That supposedly secret conversation was picked up accidentally by Estonian sources and then made public. IT HAS NEVER BEEN DENIED or refuted in any way...and it is revelatory in illustrating the imperious globalist vision regnant along the Potomac and in Bruxelles.

The article was apparently translated, but I have made some discrete edits so to make it more readable and fluent for English-speaking audiences. But I urge you to read it...and to reflect and consider the consequences of what I call "unending war for unobtainable peace," and in the process the destruction of billions of dollars of infrastructure, the cultural obliteration of entire countries, and the deaths of many thousands of civilians...indirectly traceable to the demonic policies of our Neocon elites.

Read on.

Introduction

This article addresses the implications of a controversial statement by NATO to the effect that the Ukraine War “didn’t start in 2022”, “The war started in 2014.” It’s a Bombshell: NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirmed (speaking on behalf of NATO) that the “war didn’t start in 2022”.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Jens Stoltenberg unequivocally confirmed that “the war started in 2014″. Jens Stoltenberg’s bold statement (which has barely been the object of media coverage) has opened up a Pandora’s Box, or best described “A Can of Worms” on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance. What he bears out is that the beginning of the Ukraine coincided with a U.S.-sponsored coup d’état, confirmed by Victoria’s Nuland‘s “F**k the EU” telephone conversation with U.S. Ambassador Pyatt in February 2014. (see below).

Part I of this article examines the legal implications of Stoltenberg’s statement on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance. Of crucial significance: Having stated that “the war started in 2014”, NATO can no longer claim that Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) of February 24, 2022 constitutes, from a legal standpoint, “an invasion”. Part I also addresses the issue of The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC).

Parti II focuses on Stoltenberg’s twisted statement that Article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty could be invoked as means to declare war against Russia. “Article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty – its collective defence clause,” declares that an attack on one member state is “to be an attack against all NATO members.” Article 5 is NATO’s doctrine of Collective Self-Defense. “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”.

In regard to the invocation of Article V in relation to Russia, a justification or fake “pretext” was mentioned by Stoltenberg in his interview with the Washington Post.

Were Article V to be invoked, this would inevitably precipitate the World into a WWIII scenario, consisting of a war whereby all 30 member states of the Atlantic Alliance, most of which are members of the European Union would be involved

1. The Legality of Russia’s “Special Military Operation”

Inasmuch as the war had commenced and has been ongoing since 2014 as confirmed by Stoltenberg, Russia’s Special Military Operation cannot be categorized as an “illegal invasion” (under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter). The latter states that members of the UN shall refrain: “from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.…”

Inasmuch as the war started in 2014, Art 2(4) applies to both the Kiev regime and well as US-NATO which was behind the February 2014 illegal coup d’état.

What this implies is that from a legal standpoint, US-NATO on behalf and in coordination with the Kiev regime had initiated a de facto undeclared war against Luhansk and Donesk. From a legal standpoint, this was not “An Act of War against Russia”. Led by US-NATO, this was an “Act of War against Ukraine and the People of Ukraine”.

As we recall President Putin had defined the Special Military Operation (SMO) in support of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The stated objective was to “demilitarise” and “denazify” Ukraine. Article 51 of the UN Charter which was referred to by President Putin in his February 24, 2022 speech confirms the following:

What Stoltenberg intimated in his interview with the WP (no doubt unwittingly) is that the Ukraine War was a US-NATO initiative, carried out in the immediate wake of the illegal US supported February 2014 EuroMaidan coup d’etat which was then conducive to the instatement of the regime in Kiev.

The New York Times described the EuroMaidan as “a flowering of democracy, a blow to authoritarianism and kleptocracy in the former Soviet space.” (After Initial Triumph, Ukraine’s Leaders Face Battle for Credibility, NYTimes.com, March 1, 2014, emphasis added)

The grim realities were otherwise. The forbidden truth was that US-NATO had engineered –through a carefully staged covert operation– the formation of a US-NATO proxy regime, which was conducive to the removal and brutal demise of the elected president Viktor Yanukovych.

The staged EuroMaidan Protest Movement initiated in November 2013 was led by the two Ukrainian Nazi parties, with Dmytro Yarosh, of the Right Sector (Pravy Sector) playing a key role as leader of the Brown Shirt Neo-Nazi paramilitary. He had called for disbanding the Party of the Regions and the Communist Party. The shootings of protesters by snipers were coordinated by Yarosh’s Brown Shirts and Andriy Parubiy leader of the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party.

Of significance there was a leaked telephone conversation (February 2014) between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union Commissioner Catherine Ashton, which confirmed that “the snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were hired by Ukrainian opposition leaders [NeoNazis]”.

Leaked Conversation: Urmas Paet and Catherine Ashton:

Estonia Foreign Minister Urmas Paet tells Catherine Ashton the following (excerpts):

As outlined above, Andriy Parubiy played a key role in the EuroMaidan massacre. Andriy Parubiy is the co-founder together with Oleh Tyahnybok of the Neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda). Parubiy was first appointed Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) by the Kiev regime. (Рада національної безпеки і оборони України), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. He subsequently (2015-2019) became Vice-Chair and Chair of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament) shifting into the realm of international diplomacy on behalf of the regime.

In the course of his career, Parubiy developed numerous contacts in North America and Europe, and with members of the European Parliament. He was invited to Washington on several occasions, meeting up (already in 2015) with Sen. John McCain (chair) of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was also invited to Ottawa, meeting up with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Parliament Hill in 2016.

Victoria Nuland, acting on behalf of the US State Department was directly involved in “suggesting” key appointments. While the Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok was not granted a cabinet position, members of the two neo-Nazi parties (namely Svoboda [Freedom Party] and The Right Sector [Pravy Sektor]) were granted key positions in the areas of Defense, National Security and Law Enforcement.

The Neo-Nazis also controlled the judicial process with the appointment of Oleh Makhnitsky of the Svoboda Party (on February 22, 2014) to the position of prosecutor-general. What kind of justice would prevail with a renowned Neo-Nazi in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine?

The controversial conversations between Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Pyatt are recorded below. (See audio and transcript below, YouTube version (below). (Leaked Online on February 4, 2014, Exact Date of Conversation Unconfirmed, Three weeks prior to the demise of President Yanukovych on February 21-22, 2014)
Transcript of Conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, on YouTube. Source of transcript: BBC.

**Warning: This transcript contains swearing**

There is ample evidence of collaboration between the Kiev regime and NATO member states, specifically in relation to the continuous flow of military aid as well the training and support provided to the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

NOTE: “In the aftermath of World War II, the National Socialist Party (the Nazi party) of Germany was considered a criminal organization and therefore banned. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946 likewise ruled that the Nazi Party was a criminal organization.”

Since 2014, Ukraine’s regime has been generously funded by several NATO member states. The Nazi Azov Battalion was from the outset integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard which is under the jurisdiction of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Azov battalion has (2015) been trained by the U.S. Canada and the UK. “The US contingent of instructors includes 290 specialists.…” Britain has dispatched 75 military personnel responsible for training “in command procedures and tactical intelligence”. (Los Angeles Times, April 20, 2015). The training program was coupled with the influx of military equipment under a program of so-called “non-lethal” military aid. In turn, the Azov battalion –which is the object of military aid, has also been involved in the conduct of Summer Nazi training Camps for children and adolescents. [See: Ukraine’s “Neo-Nazi Summer Camp”. Military Training for Young Children, Para-military Recruits By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, July 08, 2023]

The Azov battalion’s Summer Camps are supported by US military aid channelled to the Ukraine National Guard via the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The MIA coordinates the “anti-terrorism operation” (ATO) in Donbass.

Civilian population (children) and civilian objects (schools, hospitals, residential areas) were the deliberate object of UAF and Azov Battalion attacks in blatant violation of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). In accordance with the LOAC, Moscow took the decision starting in February 2014 to come to the rescue of Donbass civilians including children. Visibly the president of the I.C.C. Piotr Hofmanski in accusing President Putin of “unlawful kidnapping of Ukrainian children” hasn’t the foggiest understanding of Article 48. of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). Is this an issue of incompetence? Or has Piotr Hofmanski been co-opted into endorsing crimes against humanity?

In derogation of The Law of Armed Conflict, US-NATO bears the responsibility for having endorsed the Neo-Nazi Azov battalion, which was involved in the conduct of atrocities against civilians.

Article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty constitutes NATO’s doctrine of Collective Self-Defense: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.…”
Article V was invoked in March 1999, based on a “fabricated pretext” to bomb and invade Yugoslavia. It was subsequently invoked on September 12, 2001 by the Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels as a justification to declare war on Afghanistan, on the grounds that an unnamed foreign power had attacked
America on September 11, 2001. In both cases (Yugoslavia and Afghanistan), “fabricated pretexts” were used to justify the invocation of Article V.

Stoltenberg’s reference to “undersea infrastructure” intimates that Russia was behind the sabotage of Nord Stream in September 2022, which had been ordered by President Biden with the acceptance of Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

What the above statements suggest is that the invocation of Article 5 as well as the use of “a pretext” to wage war on Russia are being discussed behind closed doors.

Stoltenberg claims that NATO is committed to supporting Ukraine while “preventing escalation” through “increased military presence” as well as confirming that “we are not part of the conflict”:

Contradictory statement: Is “Preventing Escalation” contemplated by Invoking Article 5?

Among NATO Member States, there are both “Allies” and “Enemies”

It is worth noting that in the course of the last two years, several of America’s European “allies” (NATO member states) whose corrupt politicians are supportive of the Ukraine war, have been the victims of de facto U.S. sponsored acts of economic warfare including the sabotage of Nord Stream.

The EU economy which has relied on cheap energy from Russia is in a shambles, marked by disruptions in the entire fabric of industrial production (manufacturing), transportation and commodity trade. Specifically this applies to actions against Germany, Italy and France, which have resulted in the destabilization of their national economies and the impoverishment of their population. The sabotage of Nord Stream was an U.S. Act of War against both Germany and the European Union. And Germany’s chancellor was fully aware that an act of sabotage against Nord Stream had been envisaged by the US, to the detriment of more than 400 million Europeans.

A string of corporate bankruptcies resulting in lay-offs and unemployment is unfolding across the European Union. Small and medium sized enterprises are slated to be wiped off the map:

In a bitter irony, many of the NATO member states (who are categorized as “allies” under the Atlantic Alliance’s Collective Defense Clause) are the “de facto enemies” of America, victims of U.S. economic warfare. The practice of so-called Collective Defense under Article 5 constitutes a process of mass recruitment by the 30 NATO member states, largely on behalf of Washington’s hegemonic agenda. It was applied twice in NATO’s history: in March 1999 against Yugoslavia and in October 2001 against Afghanistan.

It constitutes on the part of Washington not only a means to recruit soldiers on a massive scale, but also to ensure that NATO member states contribute financially to America’s hegemonic wars: In other words: “to do the fighting for us on our behalf” or “They will do the dirty work for us” (Dick Cheney).

This article has addressed the Unspoken Truth, which we have known all along, from the very outset: “The War Started in 2014”. This statement –which is now acknowledged by NATO– was the basis of my detailed analysis.

My conclusions are as follows:

The Atlantic Alliance has no legitimacy. It is a criminal entity which must be repealed.

US-NATO is responsible for extensive crimes committed against the People of Ukraine. What is required is a Worldwide campaign at all levels of society, with a view to eventually dismantling the Atlantic Alliance, while promoting an immediate cease fire and meaningful peace negotiations in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.

In a column published at my blog site and elsewhere this past June 24, “The Return of the ‘Great Disruptor’ – Donald Trump,” I offered reasons why I believed Donald Trump would not only garner the Republican nomination for president in 2024, but why much of the criticism directed against him and his candidacy, mostly from other GOP candidates and various “NeverTrumpers,” was largely ill-founded. I urged support for him because I believe he would be the necessary radical tonic needed to dislodge the managerial and administrative elites who now largely control the American nation, and thus begin a painful, but required process—a veritable counter- revolution—to salvage what is left of this country and just perhaps recover some of the guiding principles and beliefs that once informed the republic.

Two of the major objections to my arguments—certainly the most frequently repeated—I addressed briefly in that earlier column: First, that Trump cannot win the 2024 presidential election, that is, he is unelectable.

The reasoning goes that he would lose college-educated voters and, particularly, upper-middle class females, as well as independents, put off by his personal hijinks and legal woes. And without them, in the general election, he would lose to Joe Biden, despite Biden’s apparent weaknesses and the electoral shenanigans of the Democratic Party. So, the argument goes, the GOP needs to select another candidate, either a DeSantis, or a Mike Pence, or a Tim Scott, someone who doesn’t bring that baggage to the table and could win in 2024.

Second, and perhaps a more substantial criticism is that Trump’s record of appointments during his first term left much to be desired. Indeed, that a number of crucial appointees named by him to positions within his administration, including some high level policy advisers, actually undercut and sabotaged his announced programs and initiatives. In some cases, not just privately, but publicly they opposed an America First agenda. Nearly all of them can be classified as “neoconservatives” and globalists. The list of those malefactors is unfortunately fairly long, including such individuals as John Bolton, “Mad Dog” Mattis, Jared Kushner, Mike Pompeo, Elliott Abrams, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley, to name only a few in the upper echelon who occupied positions of authority and direction (and not counting lower-level administrative personnel). Certainly, most of those appointments were recommended by members of the Republican DC establishment and found sinecures due to President Trump’s initial desire to work with the GOP establishment and cement his surprisingly successful candidacy with party regulars.

That strategy of inclusion and party “unity” was a disaster to the Make America Great Again agenda, but, rather, produced various roadblocks and the uncompletion of Trump’s promised agenda. The question, then, for many on the Right this time round is: would a second Trump term resemble the first one, with an ambitious agenda compromised by a dubiously loyal staff?

Just recently two reports have appeared that answer in large part questions suscitated by these objections.

First, new extensive polling demonstrates that Donald Trump enjoys increased support from college-educated and suburban voters, polling better with those groups than Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis’s key argument was that he was “Trump without the bravado,” a calmer and less controversial—and thus more electable—version of the Donald. He could bring over college-educated voters and independents, voters who Trump scared away.

But a report published by The Washington Examiner (July 27, 2023), using June data from Echelon Insights

​The second report, first published by Bloomberg News (July 21) indicates that President Trump has taken significant steps to avoid the personnel issues and unfinished or undercut agenda items left incomplete from his first term. An analysis of his programmatic “Agenda47” plans reveal that he apparently has learned from the mistakes made during his first term, and he has now surrounded himself with solid, credentialed talent from the populist, MAGA Right.

The Bloomberg report, despite its hostile tone, deserves to be quoted at length:

Reading the Bloomberg report one can fully understand the abject terror, fear and horror of the Left and establishment Republican/conservative elites, as well as their determination to “get Trump” by any and all means—"lawfare,” election manipulation, use of the 14th Amendment to disqualify him as having engaged in sedition, rebellion, and treason…any method, any action, including very possibly outrageous imprisonment, and if President Trump should emerge as a real threat to Deep State dominance, could we see an attempted assassination?

It’s happened before.

After all the virulent, hysterical and unbridled hatred of the 45th president knows no bounds, and nothing is off the table. All the more reason to become informed and to be vitally involved in efforts to assure election integrity.

2024 may well be the year that determines if the American republic can survive, much less recover.

It is absolutely clear now to all but the most ideologically infected or close-minded automaton that the prosecution of President Donald Trump for various levels of malfeasance in regard to his handling of records seized by stormtrooper agents of Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is just the latest, and most egregious attempt to “get Donald Trump.” It comes after the implosion of the failed “Russia Hoax,” two utterly obscene impeachment efforts, a series of January 6 “show hearings” (which would make the East German Stasi or KGB envious!), and various harassment trials over purported sexual miscues (like the accusations against Justice Kavanaugh, financed by big Democratic Party billionaire Reid Hoffman).

Since Trump’s shocking and unsuspected election to the American nation’s highest office, virtual panic has taken hold not just of the Left, but also conspicuously of the establishment Republican elites, supposedly on the Right. For decades these elites, both the managerial Left and the establishment conservatives, have considered their sinecures and positions of power over the rest of us to be untouchable, and their authority theirs by right. They have formed a kind of self-perpetuating oligarchy, an exclusive Uniparty, and simple citizens, no matter whom they may be, have no right to question its right to control our lives, not just politically, but increasingly via the incestuous partnership with national and international finance corporatism (including the electronic media giants).

One only gets access or elevation to this new elite by making the proper obeisance, mouthing the “correct” messages, appealing to the “correct” financiers and corporate managers, and effectively accepting a certain template and a resultant narrative. There are, of course, some variations which are permitted: one can be a Republican or claim to be a “conservative,” and utter from time-to-time the banal and increasingly stale talking points which are supposed to indicate that a candidate is a “conservative,” or a “constitutionalist,” or “favors lower taxes.” Such affirmations usually occur during fevered election campaigns and are meant to assure and soothe restive voters that candidate X really does represent constituent wishes and will fulfill campaign promises once in office.

Of course, after election, the charade is over for nearly all those candidates, as they slide seamlessly into the embrace of the DC Swamp and begin to “suckle at the teats” of the managerial state. Few there are who dare oppose this immense cabal, for it has the power not just to exile dissenters but effectively silence them. Thus, we have the current example of a Marjorie Taylor Greene who is treated as something of a “wingnut,” mostly shunned by Republican elites.

This brings us ineluctably to the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016, and the near-hysterical, laser-like, and abiding hatred of him. For it is understanding that hatred and those efforts to “get Trump” that in so many ways explain what is occurring in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election: the unceasing efforts using the courts, employing the media, using bare-knuckle politics, to discredit and defeat him, and possibly to imprison him, to stop him by any and all means….

And that is the major reason that Trump should be supported for 2024. Not because of his failings (about which more a little later), but because he represents existentially a real and present—identified—threat to the dominance of the managerial oligarchy which essentially controls our nation. And he does this almost uniquely, far more than any other candidate in the Republican stable (most of whom are considered “manageable” by the Establishment). The unhinged Left (i.e., almost the entirety of the Democratic Party) and Never Trump/Establishment elements of the GOP understand this threat more profoundly than even many of Donald Trump’s nominal supporters, and it literally scares the hell out of them.

I have argued before in several essays that I was not sure to what extent President Trump fully understood his role in what has become, in my view, an epochal and perhaps final battle for the future of the American nation. In 2016 I suggested that his positions came from his intuitions and his instincts, and weren’t really formed “political” or “ideological” perspectives. They just seemed logical to him as a businessman as he viewed the Swamp from the outside. And that also would in part explain reasons why, when he became the GOP candidate and then president, he listened to Republican apparatchiks and attempted in his own way to bring about unity of the party, something traditionally that party candidates did. That effort, as we can state, was probably the most unsuccessful and destructive aspect in his first term, for many of his counsellors and appointments (e.g., Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, “Mad Dog” Mattis, Nikki Haley, et al) did their damnedest to undercut and stifle his announced positions and programs. And perhaps his own initial political naivete’ compounded matters, as well.

Yet despite some frustrated initiatives, some uncompleted programs, and frequent internal administration sabotage, Trump achieved something that no president in a century had accomplished: he forced the fangs of the fearsome managerial state out into public view for the first time.

Back in 2016 I first argued that Donald Trump’s role was akin to a “bull-in-china-shop,” to break the taboos of the Left and the managerial elites, and, at best, to force the maniacal establishment to lower its mask which for decades had occulted its actual intentions and its progressive infection of our society’s historic institutions with a virulent and fatal venom. That infection had been percolating for years, it had near total control of our educational and academic institutions, it largely dominated our entertainment industry, it controlled most of our media, and it had forced an iron-clad template on our politics…that is, until Trump came upon the scene.

As he spoke mostly off-script during the 2016 campaign, he gave voice to the fundamental views of regular citizens, that broad swathe of folks which Hilary Clinton called “deplorable,” and who now are denominated “MAGA.” Those rumblings, those views, previously had been mostly unexpressed on a national level; most citizens lacked a real means to do so. The few earlier major figures challenging the status quo, the progressivist Leftist “long march” through our institutions, had been sidelined, silenced, or exiled from the public square.

But as Trump spoke, he rattled cages, challenged establishment bromides, and questioned the progressivist template, whether he fully understood that or not. No matter that some of his rhetoric never made it into real programs or was stymied from within. The really significant factor was that he said it fearlessly from a national bully pulpit, that he made it acceptable to be a real opponent of the ongoing progressivist Leftist transformation, and that his presence unleashed an actual counter-revolution of sorts which, despite heightened persecution and concerted “cancelling,” continues. In that sense, Trump opened a Pandora’s Box which, since his election, the DC Uniparty has been unable to close, despite its frantic and heavy-handed stepped-up efforts.

Thus we come to the lead-up to the election of 2024 and the continued frenetic and unleashed efforts to stop Trump, not just by the fanatical Left but also by the self-satisfied Republican establishment. But unlike in 2016 or even 2020, that reaction is far more poisonous, widespread, and ingrained in the institutions of our society. And it has marshalled legions of Never-Trumpers and those who have convinced themselves of oft-repeated refrains that: “Trump can’t win,” or “Trump will bring down other Republican candidates,” or “Trump is a moral reprobate and will lose the women’s vote.”

None of these accusations is actually true; nevertheless, they have taken hold even of some sincere persons on the Right. Any summary of polls over the past few months indicates that in addition to running away with the Republican nomination by huge margins, Trump can beat Biden in the general election. A RealClearPolitics average of all presidential polls (June 20, 2023) has Trump slightly ahead of Biden in an eventual face-off. He has a lead among independents (Economist/YouGov, June 9, 2023) and leads DeSantis among Republican women (Washington Examiner). More than that, an honest examination of the 2022 election reveals that Trump-supported candidates, contrary to the illusory claims bandied so widely about, were victorious in 236 contests out of 274 where he made endorsements, according to a Bloomberg News compilation (November 15, 2022)—more than a 6 to 1 margin of wins. He was not a drag on Republican candidates; rather, election mechanics and widespread rigging in key states played a far more significant role in a few high-profile GOP defeats. Those defeats cannot be laid at the feet of Donald Trump.

These arguments against Trump, then, collapse.

Other critics maintain that: “Trump has made promises he hasn’t kept,” or “Trump appointed and listened to bad advisors.” Even the staunchest Trump supporter can acknowledge that, even with the many positive things the Donald accomplished in his first term (e.g., especially three critical Supreme Court Justices), his selection of advisors and, at times, appointments, undercut much of his announced 2016 agenda. Yet, closely monitoring his campaign in 2023 and examining his Agenda47 items, he seems to have learned from mistakes made in 2017-2021.

The essential point is that Donald Trump is the one candidate the managerial Deep State really fears, and the reason for that is that he is the Great Disruptor, he endangers their hegemony and their seemingly unstoppable advance to globalist domination. In reality, his abiding support has little to do with whether he would advocate lowering taxes, or reducing foreign entanglements, or even completing a border wall—these are all very important, of course. But the often-unspoken reason that Trump supporters are so committed is that they know intuitively he is the wrecking-ball that is so sorely needed along the banks of the Potomac these days…as well as in Bruxelles and Davos. And with wrecking-balls, at times the process is messy and untidy.

No one else elicits more abject fear and loathing from our enemies than Donald Trump; no one else can bring on the necessary and probably final confrontation with the progressivist forces of the Leftist managerial state. The MAGA folks understand that the sooner this final confrontation occurs, the better are their chances of success. Other, more establishment-oriented candidates who propose a return to “normalcy,” only prolong our national agony while essentially allowing the rot to continue.
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That is unacceptable and a recipe for the certain disappearance of the American nation as we have known it.

​On Sunday, June 11, 2023, my dear friend and a man who is rightly called “the Dean of Southern Historians,” Dr. Clyde N. Wilson, will celebrate his 82nd birthday. For some fruitful fifty-five of those years he has been at the forefront of efforts to make the history of his native region better known, and, as events and severe challenges to that history have happened at a dizzying pace, he has stood, like one of his admired historical figures, General Thomas J. Jackson, “as a stonewall” resisting the increasing insanity and madness of our age.
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His various books, including the published multi-volume complete works of Southern statesman John C. Calhoun (University of South Carolina), books of essays, edited volumes, annotated bibliographies, and hundreds of articles give testimony to a tireless, indefatigable champion, intent on both mining and revealing the richness of Southern history and also resolutely defending it against powerful and virulent enemies, both nationally and amongst us. Unlike far too many of his fellow Southerners, Dr. Wilson has understood that the geographical region we call “the South” has had an important role not just in the 350 year existence of the land we call “America,” but in a very real sense in maintaining that Western Christian heritage inherited from original settlers, to the point of going to war to defend that precious patrimony.

I think it was when I was in grad school at the University of Virginia in the early 1970s that I first came across articles and essays by Clyde Wilson. I was already reading National Review and the quarterly, Modern Age (long before they went over to Neoconservative/NeoReconstructionism). Wilson, along with writers like Mel Bradford and Russell Kirk, for whom I served as assistant the year after securing my MA in history, wrote fairly regularly for what was called “conservative media.” Southerners were welcomed by such publications back then. Indeed, Kirk dedicated an entire issue of Modern Age (which he founded) to Southern conservatism (Fall 1958). Older Southern writers, essayists, and poets associated with the Southern “Agrarians,” men of stature like Donald Davidson, Andrew Lytle, and Cleanth Brooks, continued their labors in their twilight years.

When I returned to the United States after earning a doctorate at the University of Navarra, in Spain, and teaching for a while in Argentina in 1981, I began to reacquaint myself with writers and the culture of my homeland. Soon I was contributing essays to the Southern Partisan magazine and renewing my friendships with Mel Bradford and Russell Kirk.

Then, in 1990 I came across a book which made a profound and lasting impression on me: Carolina Cavalier: The Life and Mind of James Johnston Pettigrew (University of Georgia, 1990), by Clyde N. Wilson. In fact, the volume was an edited version of his Ph.D. dissertation presented at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1971. At that time UNC was hospitable to more conservative and traditional scholarship; not only Professor Wilson, but also former Chronicles editor Thomas Fleming, and my former co-worker at the North Carolina State Archives, Wilson Angley, all finished their graduate degrees there.

Pettigrew, a noted Confederate general who fell at Falling Waters during the retreat from Gettysburg, like Wilson and myself was a North Carolinian. Like most Southern boys who came of age during the “Civil War Centennial” (1961-1965) and a Tar Heel born and bred, I had some idea of Pettigrew’s exploits during the War. But I was unprepared for the wealth of detail which Wilson revealed. For indeed James Johnston Pettigrew was a man larger than life who, if he had lived, might have become one of the nation’s finest essayists and writers.  In Carolina Cavalier Wilson discusses at length Pettigrew’s “travel book,” Notes on Spain and the Spaniards (1861), which like English author Hilaire Belloc’s The Path to Rome, is far more than a simple travelogue. Like Belloc forty years later, Pettigrew possessed the ability to translate his observations into meaningful and eloquently descriptive paragraphs which in a profound sense soar above the printed page and in an impressionistic way speak of the continuity and grandeur of our Western culture. His understanding of Spanish traditions and religion have seldom, if ever, been matched by any American. And from a certain perspective, is there not in his exquisitely expressed, philosophical understanding and descriptions of Spanish society a veiled, analogous comparison to his own Southland?

A few years after acquiring a copy of Carolina Cavalier I was able to bring Clyde Wilson back to North Carolina. We had begun to correspond, and since I was chairman of North Carolina’s Annual Confederate Flag Day observances, I invited him to come to Raleigh and offer remarks in the old Senate chamber of the historic 1840 State Capitol. He was one of the distinguished guests of note we had over the years, including Don Livingston, Sam Francis, Paul Gottfried, and North Carolina Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake, Jr.  And shortly afterwards, Pettigrew’s volume which had been out-of-print for well over a century, was brought out in a facsimile edition by the University of South Carolina Press (2010), with a new introduction by Wilson.

Another significant work which Dr. Wilson produced was The Essential Calhoun: Selections from Writings, Speeches, and Letters (2017), with an introduction by Russell Kirk, a valuable primer for students of the great South Carolinian who have been perhaps deterred by the daunting task of searching through the edited twenty-eight volumes!

Additional works include his several polemical volumes in “The Wilson Files”; his four books in the “Southern Reader’s Guide” series; From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition; Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture, and several significant published symposiums which he has edited. Dr. Wilson has also been the M. E. Bradford Distinguished Chair at the Abbeville Institute, which specializes in the online publication of Southern writers and holding seminars on Southern themes. And he is the guiding spirit behind Shotwell Publishing in Columbia, South Carolina, offering an outlet for Southern authors and their manuscripts.

During his thirty-two years as professor of history at the University of South Carolina, Dr. Wilson taught a wide variety of courses in history and directed sixteen doctoral dissertations. His legacy of scholarship and love for the history of his native region, thus, is carried on by those—and other—students who were privileged to study under him.  And by many thousands more who have read his books or attended his conferences, or been so fortunate as to call him a friend.

Would that in the midst of today’s vicious offensive against everything traditionally Southern there were more teachers and giants like Clyde Wilson.

There is a memorable passage in Donald Davidson’s magnificent poem, “Lee in the Mountains,” which in a way sums up Clyde Wilson’s resilience and heroically staunch defense of his beloved Southland:

Then, let us wish Clyde Wilson a most happy and blessed 82nd birthday, and ad multos annos! May your critical labors go on and continue to inspire us!

This piece was published at My Corner on June 8, 2023.

Some years ago (summer 1974) when I was completing a doctorate in history and political science in Europe, I made a journey south from Rome to the Italian city of Naples. Earlier, before traveling to Europe on a Richard Weaver Fellowship, I had managed to read two engrossing volumes on the Bourbon monarchy of the Kingdom of Naples by Sir Harold Acton. The old Kingdom of Naples (or of “Two Sicilies,” as it was formally called) had been conquered by the freebooter Giuseppe Garibaldi and his “Red Shirts,” in cooperation with the northern, liberal Italian Kingdom of Piedmont Savoy, in the early months of 1861.

That resolutely traditionalist country, basically all of southern Italy and Sicily, fascinated me. The Neapolitan kingdom was perhaps the most anti-liberal, traditionalist nation in all of Europe prior to it disappearance by conquest into the new centralized Italian state. Its capital, Naples, was an international center of culture and brilliance; musicians, composers, writers, and artists from all round Europe congregated there. All of that would end after Italian occupation. And southern Italy, “Due Sicilia,” would descend into an extended era of poverty, subjugation, and eventual neglect, much like that inflicted on the states of the Confederacy after the War Between the States.

But what was more intriguing for me was to learn that after the surrender of King Francis II and his small Neapolitan army at the fortress of Gaeta in late February 1861 (after an heroic four month siege), several thousand army regulars of the Royal Neapolitan Army clandestinely boarded ships, evaded a British cordon, and managed to sail for New Orleans to volunteer for the newly-formed Confederate Army. The first ships arrived from Naples with 884 former members of the army of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies to take up arms for the Confederacy in early 1861. That number of Neapolitan volunteers soon rose to approximately 2000.

Initially, they were enlisted in several Louisiana Confederate units, including the 10th Louisiana Infantry and eventually other regiments, including a European Brigade which counted traditionalist Catholic volunteers from Spain (mostly royalist Carlists, who arrived by way of Mexico), France (French Legitimists, supporters of the old French Bourbon monarchy), Ireland, and a few from Austria. There were Protestant volunteers, as well, with soldiers coming from England and German lands.

The Neapolitan volunteers fought at most of the major actions in the Trans-Mississippi. When the war ended, some returned to Italy, but others remained in the Southland, where their descendants continue to reside.

From Harold Acton I knew that the small Italian walled commune of Civitella del Tronto, atop a mountain in the Abruzzo region of central Italy, had been the last bastion of resistance to the northern Italian liberals, yielding finally on March 20, 1861. There in that remote mountain town is a museum (Museo delle Armi e Mappe antiche) dedicated to the history of armaments and the military of old Italy. And among its exhibits is a memorable one dedicated to the veterans who fought both for the long-gone Kingdom of Naples and also for the Southern Confederacy. A large Battle Flag is displayed (I assume it is still there) honoring those men, along with other items and relics. Both the Royal Neapolitan standard and the Battle Flag are customarily flown outside on occasion.

​It was indeed one location I had to visit.

And it raised a question—why did those conservative, mostly Catholic traditionalists leave their home countries and come to the newly-created Confederate States of America and offer their services? What did they see in our new nation that convinced them to make such a sacrifice on behalf of a country not their own?

In reading European contemporary newspapers, correspondence, and journals from the period it became apparent to me that those men, that “band of brothers,” understood instinctively that the Cause of the South was an international cause, one which stood forthrightly against a headlong plunge into modernism, opposed to the worldwide ravages of revolution, liberal democracy and the eventual destruction of age-old customs and beliefs. The South they saw as a hierarchical society based in the real and absolute inequalities of Nature. The South stood against the encroachments of unrestricted capitalism and the philosophical underpinnings that supported that reality. The leaders of the South, albeit mostly Protestant, were descendants of the Cavaliers, and thus represented the best and noblest Americans, to be emulated and admired, as opposed to the Yankee scions of the New England Puritans.

Many of the foreign volunteers had already fought in struggles against liberalism in their own countries, and, as in the cases of Naples and Spain, had been on the losing side. This was the case with my Spanish friend, the Baron de Montevilla, whose ancestor fought both in Spain in the Carlist Wars, and later for the Confederacy. When an acquaintance asked his ancestor, “How can you justify fighting for two lost causes?,” he replied: “A lost cause is never really lost if the fight is for what is true and what is right.” (see “Paladins of Christian Civilization: The Universality of the Confederate Cause,” Confederate Veteran, September/October 2017 )

That very favorable view of the Confederacy and its leaders, if certainly debatable, was exemplified in the foreign conservative press by its glowing portraits of men such as Robert E. Lee, Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard, Matthew Fontaine Maury, and Jeb Stuart, but also of such figures as the brilliant writer General James Johnston Pettigrew (whose volume Notes on Spain and the Spaniards is undoubtedly one of the finest and most philosophical “travel journals” that any American has written (and deserves to be more widely-known), “Stonewall” Jackson’s chaplain, Robert Lewis Dabney (whose writings are equally impressive), and various others.
The similarities between the defeated and prostrate South, and the defeated and downtrodden former Neapolitan kingdom are, in some ways, remarkable—not just in the losing wars forced upon them, but in the survival of memory and a continuing devotion to heritage.

Just as defenders of Confederate heritage, in organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Order of the Confederate Rose, are devoted to honoring their ancestors and defending the Cause for which they, in many cases, gave their lives, some southern Italians, descendants of those defenders at Gaeta and Civitella del Tronto, likewise seek to keep the memory and traditions of their forefathers alive. And in recent years, in active organizations such as the Associazione Culturale Neo-Borbonica (ACNB), they do exactly that all across the former territories of the ancient Kingdom of Naples.

Several years ago the ACNB issued a manifesto, a statement not only of principles but a summary of history. As you read the translation below (which I have tweaked just a bit), perhaps you will notice the dramatic analogies between the history of our Southland and of the Neapolitan lands, and why the cause of neither is yet extinguished.

"On the cold afternoon of December 27, 1894, in the town of Arco, province of Trento, Francesco II of Bourbon, the last king of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (Naples), died. The Bourbon dynasty no longer governed Southern Italy after a reign of 126 years. One hundred years after the death of King Francesco, no one remembers the Bourbons except as a negative symbol of the past. Never has history been so unkind and maliciously falsified as it has been with this king and with this dynasty. 126 years of prestige and of glory, of art and culture, of theatres and factories, of laws and achievements, of public works and archeological excavations, of order, of security, of riches, and of generosity have---all has been erased from our collective memory.

"The Piedmontese from the North, with the self-interested complicity of the English and the French, invaded the peaceful Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which extended from Latium [Rome] to Sicily over all of Southern Italy. Francesco II, at 24 years age, found himself fighting an unexpected and undesired war against his "Italian brothers"…. the Neapolitan army fought valiantly alongside its king and its heroic queen, Maria Sofia, who was barely nineteen. It surrendered after 93 days of siege at the fortress of Gaeta, at dawn on February 14, 1861. Thousands of heroic citizens of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies died on the battlefield. In the same way, subsequently during the decade of the 1860s, thousands of men, women, and children perished in a reconstruction campaign against Southerners - they were called "bandits" or "brigands", but they were, in fact, the last soldiers and defenders of a history, a tradition, and a culture that seemed to die with them forever.

"But what were conditions before this fatal unification of Italy? Certainly, everything was not perfect, but it is worth noting that Naples was the capital of a kingdom born seven centuries earlier. Together with London, Paris and Vienna, Naples was an essential point of reference with regards to both political and cultural affairs in Italy and in Europe….

"It is a fact that Piedmont carried away 80 million ducats cash from our banks (more than $ 1,000,000,000). It is a fact that we had more than 5,000 factories (among the great nations in the world). It is a fact that the streets of our beautiful cities were full of tourists that came from every part of the world. It is a fact that the Piedmontese made us pay more than twice the level of taxes we paid before unification. After unification, due to widespread hunger, more than five million emigrants left their families and homes and would never again see their native land. In the streets of our cities, we no longer saw tourists. Our factories were soon closed and still today we buy, eat, drink, wear, and use only products that come from Northern Italy. One cannot say today that Southern Italians live well; the average income of a Northern Italian is twice that of a Southerner; the ten poorest cities in Italy are all in the South. With unemployment, poor services, government crises, untenable immigration from Africa, and the collapse of a flawed political system, a rosy future for our children is highly unlikely. From the elementary school texts to those used by college students, we hear a tale much different than the truth. In 150 years, they have made us ashamed of being Southerners. They have said that our dialects were "vulgar", that our traditions were uncivilized, that being a "Southerner" or a "Bourbon" meant being backward, nostalgic, ignorant, or uncivilized. We have begun, as Tacitus wrote two thousand years ago, to "admire their way of life, of dress or of speech, forgetting our own and thinking that theirs was civilization when it was only a ploy to dominate us."

"Until 1860, the citizens of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies were respected and esteemed in all the world because they were citizens of an ancient and prestigious kingdom…. We were respected and esteemed because we were subjects of a king that belonged to the Bourbon dynasty - an ancient dynasty but one capable of governing with wisdom and love. Upon all of this came the unbearable weight of the destruction of our historical consciousness, of our culture, of our traditions, and of our identity - the pain of the destruction of our white flags with gold fleurs-de-lis, our national anthem, and of all the symbols that were respected by the ancient and glorious Neapolitan nation. The Bourbons showed all the pride and dignity of being Southerners until the very end, when, on the earthworks of Gaeta, they behaved as heroes and fought night and day beneath the violent and incessant bombardment of the Piedmontese invaders. They wanted to defend, right until the end, 126 years of glorious and splendid history - 126 years of Bourbon civilization.

"Francesco II left Naples amidst tears and embraces to avoid a massacre of his people - a people he knew so well, whose language was his own. Many people got rich with the unification of Italy, but not the Bourbons. Francesco II - little Francesco or "Franceschiello" as he was affectionately called - left his kingdom not taking with him one dime of money. The Italian government never gave back that which belonged to his family, and even today has never done so. Francesco II never returned to Naples. He died at age 58 in a hotel room in Arco di Trento [then part of Austria] comforted only by his great faith in God and by a profoundly Christian sense of acceptance, but without ever forgetting, even in the last days of his life, the country of his father and of his grandfather - his own native land. Only since 1984 does he lie next to his wife and his tiny daughter Maria Cristina in the Bourbon chapel of the Church of Santa Chiara in Naples. Few are those who remember him - he who was guilty only of having been on our side, among the defeated.

"Why then be a Bourbon today? Because the time has finally come to understand who we were and who we can be. The time has come to begin to uncover our lost roots and to give to our children the roots they never knew - to give to them a sense of pride in being Southern Italian. To be a Bourbon means to understand history. To be a Neo-Bourbon means to have understood history with the desire and drive to construct a revived history on the base of the old for all the people of Southern Italy. Certainly the Bourbon period was not the "Golden Age," and one cannot say we would have entered into a "Golden Age" if the Bourbons had continued to reign. But no one can deny that, during that cold winter of 161 years ago, the people of Southern Italy ceased to be a People. 161 years ago, Southern Italy ceased to be a nation. The historical memory and consciousness…began to be extinguished on the battlements of Gaeta.

"Some may call us "nostalgic", but how can one not be when one walks through the streets of our run-down and degraded cities or passes before our ancient buildings, churches, and monuments, now lost or forgotten? Yes, we are nostalgic and proud of being such, but our looking back serves a purpose. Now, more than ever, it is necessary to understand what are the real causes of our current problems in Southern Italy and how we can find the road toward a better future. The system and the ideology that have governed our politics and our culture for a century and a half have demonstrated that they are based on a deliberate lie. Southern politicians and intellectuals over the last century, closed off in isolation from the world around them, soiled the memory of the House of Bourbon of the Two Sicilies, but also demonstrated their incapability of representing or loving their own South.

"Honesty, dignity, loyalty, courage, religious faith, wisdom, respect for history, love of art, affection for the land and the people of the Two Sicilies - these were the fundamental characteristics of all the Bourbon kings of Naples. Fortified by these examples and by these symbols we can and must liberate ourselves from the systems and ideologies that are already collapsing into ruins and which are responsible for having destroyed the past and the present of an entire people and of putting their future in jeopardy.

"Let us recover our historical memory - recover our pride in being Southerners - and walk together on the long road towards the salvation of our ancient nation and of our ancient dignity." (ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE NEO-BORBONICA  http://www.neoborbonici.it/portal/ )