Growing up in mostly-rural North Carolina, most of my friends and especially their parents could go on a bit about their family backgrounds, about their familial histories. Most of my friends—like me—had great-grandfathers or great-great-grandfathers who had served in Confederate ranks back in 1861-1865. Pride in family and in our ancestors was taken for granted, a devout appreciation we all shared. Especially during the centennial commemorations of the early 1960s, most of us youngsters took an intense interest in all the various events, the re-enactments on a large scale and the ceremonies attending the anniversary. Our imaginations were filled with stories of heroism, sacrifice, honor, tragic defeat and attendant suffering, unrealized dreams, and legends and traditions passed down to us. Public schools back then actually encouraged this fascination and interest in history and the characters and personalities in it who seemed, almost like magic, to come alive once again. Indeed, it had been scarcely a decade since the last Confederate veteran had passed away in 1959! Many of us could recall that. And our parents? They had grown up surrounded by the ever-decreasing ranks of those valiant veterans, listening to first-hand accounts of the great and heartbreaking epic that was the War for Southern Independence. My grandfather on my mother’s side was Henry Johnson Perry. Granddad Perry was born in Raleigh in 1877 and lived until 1962. As a young boy I remember well him recounting to me standing hatless on old Fayetteville Street in North Carolina’s capital on May 30, 1893, a sixteen year old apprentice, dressed all in black, with thousands of other citizens reverently paying tribute to President Jefferson Davis, whose remains were carried by horse-drawn caisson from the railroad station to lie in state under the rotunda of the historic North Carolina State Capitol, en route to his final resting place in Richmond. Granddad’s father, Josiah Hunter Perry, an official with the old Raleigh & Gaston Railroad, had been forced in April 1865 by General Sherman to conduct him and his staff by rail over to Bennitt Station (now Durham) to receive the surrender of General Joseph Johnston. Waiting for the surrender to occur, he sat under a cherry tree and carved a “peace pipe,” a relic I still have and which continues to remind me of my history and my ancestor. Granddad’s grand-father, Robert, had served many years in the North Carolina legislature in the 1820s and had married the grand-daughter of Isaac Hunter, the founder of Raleigh. All that family—all that history—danced through my imagination sixty years ago; I could visualize it, I could see it in my mind’s eye. It was real, it was present…and despite the many years that have elapsed, it still is. Pride in one’s ancestry…pride in what the late Southern writer and historian Mel Bradford termed “remembering who we are”…was integral to defining what we valued and held dear in life. We were intimately related to our ancestors, they were part of us. Their blood coursed through our veins. Their memory was not that far removed. Their examples stood before us as models to emulate, a challenge for us to uphold their honor and their noble efforts to defend home, family, and the rights vouchsafed to them by their fathers and ancestors…who had cobbled together the older American confederation. In any nation, in any people or civilization worthy of the name, such an appreciation is natural, part of the national and cultural psyche. It is indeed quite normal for a people to recall its past, to celebrate its successes and heroes, to lament its defeats and hardships. These are part and parcel of what define and make us, as Bradford states, “who we are.” Deprive a people of its history, of its traditions, of its inherited culture, and you deprive it of essential ingredients of its very existence. It becomes a mass of rootless individuals, of automatons, subject to the latest whim or the most persistent and enticing siren voice of some powerful ideology or, in modern times, of George Orwell’s Big Brother and its extensive tentacles in and incestuous partnership with the communications industry, education, and the media. Fyodor Dostoyevsky has one of the three brothers in his novel The Brothers Karamazov declare, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” Stripping people of their faith, and then denuding them of the essential characteristics which define them is and has always been the work of Revolutions, whether of the Cromwellian attempt in the 17th century, the fanaticism of a Robespierre in France in the late 18th, or the genocide of the Marxists in Russia and China in the 20th. As now, in our day the lunatics who run our schools and colleges, dominate our entertainment, spout our daily news, and control our politics, whether it be the Democrats or the Republicans, do the same with unalloyed frenzy. They make the spectre of “Big Brother” look like a Sunday school teacher. My dissertation topic years back at the University of Navarra in Spain, Juan Vazquez de Mella, stated it this way: “Who has ever seen ‘the individual,’ if not defined by his family, his region, his profession, his language, his inheritance, his faith? Removed from these defining characteristics the individual is an abstraction, and a political system based on an abstraction must either end in despotism or revolution.” Since the 1980s and ‘90s, we have seen the almost unrestrained and rapacious growth of an eventually fatal cancer within our body politic. Denominated variously as “progressivism,” “neo-“ or “post-Marxism,” and more recently as “anti-racism” or “the movement for equity,” it draws its force intellectually from the concept of the Idea of Progress, that is, that history unfolds irresistibly in one direction—the “progressive” direction—which encompasses the ineluctable advance and triumph of essentially secular and globalist ideas. At base it is egalitarian, and even though it may profess respect for or even belief in God, its cumulative effects are to pervert, weaken and, finally, destroy the natural linkage between man and his Creator. For the progressivist, religion, particularly the Christian religion, becomes just one more obstacle to be tamed, neutralized, and lastly, employed in the advance to a universal secular utopia. It was not that traditional society was opposed to advances in science or economics; it was not. But such innovations were seen as a natural part of the flourishing of God’s Creation, not opposed to it or superseding it. The great stratagem of Marx and Lenin and their votaries was to expropriate “progress” and weaponize it: the proletariat, united, under the leadership of the self-anointed heads of the Revolution would lead the “oppressed” to victory, to that utopia where there was no want, no poverty, no sadness, where everyone was equal and happy. Throughout history different revolutions have shared these characteristics, have made these promises, and each time the result has been a terrible dystopian nightmare. The full attack in recent years on Southern traditions, identity, and iconography is but a symptom, an element of an all-out assault on Western Christian civilization, its culture, and belief. Prominent members of the official opposition “conservative movement”—a Rich Lowry at National Review, a Brian Kilmeade at Fox News, or a Ben Shapiro, and any number of others—attempt to compartmentalize the ongoing “culture war” by accepting, even applauding the eradication of any visible sign of Confederate and Southern history. But like temporizers in any revolution they fail to understand the futility of their positions, which only abet the appetite of the radicals. Whether a Kerensky and the Social Revolutionaries who helped usher in Lenin’s rise to power in Russia, or the Girondins who believed they could somehow harness the revolutionary fury in late 18th century France, moderation and attempts to placate the madness and hysteria of revolutionary zealots are doomed to disaster. Half-measures never work. There is a whimsical episode in the superb historical film, “Waterloo” (1970), which illustrates exactly the position of Establishment Conservatives and their “opposition” to the fanatical tsunami of violent revolution: an illiterate private in the Welsh Guards who has engaged in plunder and stolen a young pig, cautions the pig not to squeal, not to alert those around him of his plunder (a capital offense under military rules). “Be quiet,” he tells the pig, “and I’ll only eat half of you!” Confronted by shrill and seemingly overwhelming demands by a noisy nucleus of woke leftists, authorized conservatives and Republicans respond to the revolutionaries in the same manner: “Only kill us half-way, but please, oh please, don’t call us racists!” The recent attacks on Southern monuments and symbols, which are essentially an assault on Southern identity, cannot be dissociated from a broader offensive by our modern “progressivists” on Western civilization. To think otherwise is worse than wrongheaded, it is fatal. In the contemporary South the great success of the revolutionaries has been to atomize much of society, deprive large portions of it, especially the young, of those inherited traditions, those customs, those beliefs—those memories—which have given it substance and continuity, which have served as its shield and buckler. Instead of what Southern writer Richard Weaver called a communitarian “social bond individualism,” life centered around family and church, and indelibly defined by region and custom, progressivism breaks and severs those bonds, isolates individuals, and renders them subject to the social decay and dislocation which an omnipotent managerial state, in league with woke capitalism, utilizes to advance its vision of a future society. In the past I have urged the termination of the public school system—privatizing education and putting it back in the hands of the parents where it belongs. I have authored several pieces on the possibilities for secession, or, rather, the separation of various American states and counties (perhaps the best and most peaceful means to resolve the irreducible differences within the American citizenry, if it were possible). But more importantly, I have advocated a return, a rededication to those principles and that belief which once motivated and annealed our ancestors. That spirit, that wisdom, that inspiration is there, it is still there for those who seek it. Scraping away the ugly dross of political correctness and “wokeness” we can recover those memories, rekindle them, and draw from them strength. In his work, Requiem for A Nun (1951), Southern novelist William Faulkner says of his fellow Southerners that for them, “The past is never dead. It's not even past." One of the most remarkable poems of the 20th century is by the incomparable Southern Agrarian Donald Davidson. Titled “Lee in the Mountains,” it summons us once more to the battle lines and to eventual victory, if we have faith and an unshakeable commitment to our cause. For, in the end, God will not forsake us. We must be like Gideon’s small army and General Forrest’s “critter company.” Sense the confidence that springs from our Christian faith and which Davidson reminds us of: Young men, the God of your fathers is a just And merciful God Who in this blood once shed On your green altars measures out all days, And measures out the grace Whereby alone we live; And in His might He waits, Brooding within the certitude of time, To bring this lost forsaken valor And the fierce faith undying And the love quenchless To flower among the hills to which we cleave, To fruit upon the mountains whither we flee, Never forsaking, never denying His children and His children’s children forever Unto all generations of the faithful heart. This piece was previously published on MyCorner on August 13, 2021.
0 Comments
I have a good friend who continually asks me what I think are the prospects for sensible, conservative—that is, normal—folks in these parlous times, what I think will happen to these United States, and particularly, what will happen to the South. In response to his questioning, I can’t give a satisfactory answer, at least one nicely tied-up and tidy like my friend wants. But one thing on which my friend and I agree: this weary and gravely ailing country we call the United States seems with accelerating velocity and intensity to be hurtling into some form of ignominious and painful expiration. The unbridgeable differences, the divisions, between segments of our population are now far too stark, far too bitter, far too advanced to be papered over by “the next election”—or, by the pipe-dreams that I hear some Republicans and Fox News pundits exude with enthusiasm: “We’ll win back Congress in 2022! And then things will get right again.” My response to that line of thinking is to remind such optimists that Republicans had control of Congress—and the presidency—for several years, and essentially, despite some line cracks in the Deep State behemoth due to Donald Trump, things continued to get worse, the Managerial government continued to grow in power, and did its best (with many Republicans in tow), eventually successfully, to eject the Trumpster from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Administrative elites control education, control immigration policy (with GOP collaboration), control our media and entertainment, and dominate most of the levels of our government; and their reach and control expand by the day. I believe that assertion is self-evident, but let me offer a few very recent headlines at random to buttress what I’m saying: Research Journal Publishes Article Calling ‘Whiteness’ a ‘Parasitic-Like Condition’ (June 10, 2021) White House ‘Domestic Extremism’ Report Puts Target on Democrats’ Political Opponents (June 17, 2021) The FBI’s Mafia-Style Justice: To Fight Crime, the FBI Sponsors 15 Crimes a Day (June 18, 2021) What this Professor just Called Proper Grammar is Absolutely Absurd (June 30, 2021) Yale Professor Wants Your Kid to See Sex at Pride Parades so they’re not ‘Homophobes’ (July 14, 2021) Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex (July 27, 2021) ‘Complicit’: Meet the 18 Republicans Who Sold Out on Radical Democrat ‘Infrastructure’ Plan Without Reading Bill (July 28, 2021) Biden Department of Justice Threatens to Sue to Lock In 2020 Election Chaos (July 29, 2021) And these stories and accounts can be multiplied by the hundreds, by the thousands, at every level of society. Tune in to “Tucker Carlson Tonight” almost any day (the only program I consistently watch on Fox News), and you’ll see what I mean. They are examples of a pervasive sickness which afflicts large portions of our culture. They are emblematic of profound problems and radically irreconcilable divisions among our population. We all may live in the same geographical entity, but we don’t speak the same language, we don’t share the same beliefs, we don’t think in the same way; one half of us wish to “cancel,” even suppress the other half of us, and to achieve that by any means possible, including violence. Is that any different from the few months in Eastern European countries right after World War II as Communist apparatchiks infiltrated and seized absolute control and authority? And all the while the official voices of opposition to this madness…the official conservative opposition and most national Republicans…seem like deer caught in the headlights. Irish poet William Butler Yeats’ words resound in my ears: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.” (“The Second Coming,” 1919) In the past when a Southern writer would suggest that some form of secession or separation was desirable, he would be met with ridicule: “The South will rise again? You’ve got to be kidding!” Now, 160 years after the War Between the States began, such talk of separation is no longer considered the domain of nostalgics or of the Unreconstructed. In recent years we have seen the Calexit movement advocating that left-leaning California leave the American union and assert its independence. A number of conservative counties in eastern Oregon and northern California have officially petitioned to leave those radicalized states and either join Idaho or perhaps form a new state. Academically, Professor Frank H. Buckley (George Mason University) has written a cautionary study on what he calls the “looming threat” of secession. Over the past few years I have written about some possible scenarios, situations that might actually come to pass. I’ve speculated about secession, or perhaps better expressed, some form of separation of portions of the country—and not just states—into more philosophically and culturally homogeneous entities. I’ve written about this several times, most notably in The Abbeville Institute (August 2, 2019, “Is It Time for America to Break Apart?” and also on August 19, 2019, “Is Political Separation in Our Future?”). Indeed, I also tackled the topic in The Unz Review (July 26, 2019), with the essay picked up by the widely-read LewRockwell.com site (July 29, 2019). I have suggested that some form of separation, including possibly large amounts of autonomy for counties within certain states might be the least painful, the least violent means of resolving our unsolvable divisions. Yet, does anyone believe that our centralized and centralizing federal government in Washington, with its tentacles now extending dictatorially into every aspect of our lives, would let this occur peacefully? Would not federal troops be dispatched by Washington that would make Abraham Lincoln’s suppression of the constitutional right to habeas corpus or Eisenhower’s intervention in Little Rock, Arkansas, look like child’s play? In the past one-hundred years, when civil society and its institutions around the world have broken down or Marxist revolutionaries have threatened to take control, it has been the armed forces that have traditionally stepped in to restore order and some semblance of (anti-Marxist) normalcy. Thus, General Augusto Pinochet led the Chilean army in a 1973 coup to topple the impending Communist take-over by President Salvador Allende and restore order in that country. And in July 1936 General Francisco Franco led a coalition of traditionalist Carlists, conservatives, and the Church to overthrow the violently anticlerical and Marxist Spanish republic (unfortunately, he did not follow through to establish a traditional monarchy after his coup). But in America today our armed forces, since at least the Obama years, have been coopted by the political left. Army top brass now echo the “woke-speak” of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accuses former President Trump of fomenting a “Reichstag moment” and compares him to Adolf Hitler, while assisting to implement mandatory Critical Race Theory programs in the armed forces. And Milley is far from being alone, as author Lt. Colonel Matthew Lohmeir has recently documented in his study, Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military. In any major civil conflict, very probably the armed forces would be an instrument of the Deep State. Where does that leave us? Are we indeed destined to live under a post- or neo-Marxist authoritarian dictatorship that would make the older Soviet Communists envious? My friend and internationally-recognized political theorist and historian, Paul Gottfried (editor of Chronicles magazine) has speculated on one possible scenario, one possibility that could occur. Revolutionary regimes that come to power often “devour their children,” that is, the various elements that seem to triumph have a falling out and begin to fight among themselves over direction and the spoils. Thus, it was in Republican Spain during the Civil War when the Communists suppressed the large Anarchist component (the FAI) in their revolutionary coalition, imprisoning and executing thousands of them. And who can forget the purges unleashed by Lenin and then by Stalin in the Soviet Union on those dissidents who had earlier supported the Revolution? Within the dominant Democratic Party and its supporters definable factions exist. Joe Biden attempts to placate them. But the question should be asked: How far will the Establishment Managerial Elite be prepared to go before it must deal with its more recalcitrant elements…or will those elements become dominant and force “woke” corporate America to fully give way and accept in reality as well as in theory their nostrums? Will there be violence on a large scale? And, following Dr. Gottfried’s model, would there be enough of us to pick up the pieces in such a conflict…and would we be prepared? When I studied in Spain my doctoral subject was the Spanish traditionalist Carlist philosopher and political leader, Juan Vazquez de Mella. During his lifetime in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, the traditionalist movement he represented and defended both in his writings and verbally in the Spanish parliament (the Cortes) had been essentially sidelined, defeated earlier in three brutal civil wars, wracked by internal division, and reduced to its strongholds in Navarra, parts of Aragon and Catalonia. Surveying the political landscape circa 1920 hardly anyone expressed optimism, practically-speaking, for its rebirth or revitalization. But Mella viewed events and history in a different manner. Over his long career he developed a theory of “catastrophism,” which, briefly, suggested that the liberal revolution of the late eighteenth century in thinking and the capitalist revolution of the nineteenth century in economics, would inevitably destroy the older, natural social order. These revolutions would lead inexorably to socialist and Marxist revolutions: to cataclysm, war, and human destruction on a vast and previously unknown scale. After which, those–the remnant—who had continued faithful, who had continued to maintain the Virtue of Hope and a belief in Providence, throughout, would finally triumph. Had it not been so with the early Christians, secreted away in catacombs and at times subject to fierce persecution? Yet, with perseverance and faith they had triumphed. I am put in mind of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem, “Ulysses,” when Odysseus summons his followers and exhorts them: Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. This was President Jefferson Davis’ confidence and hope, as it must assuredly be ours in this modern vale of despair: “Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.” As undoubtedly many of you know, both James “Ron” Kennedy and his brother, Walter “Donnie” Kennedy, are prolific writers and staunch defenders of (what is left of) Southern tradition and heritage. Among the titles of their books are, most notably: The South Was Right! (newly revised edition 2020), Punished With Poverty: The Suffering South, and Yankee Empire: Aggressive Abroad and Despotic at Home…all strongly recommended to Southerners interested in how their heritage and traditions have been subverted and devastated by the forces that dominate modern America…and how just possibly a revival of that heritage and those traditions might occur. But only—only—if Southerners begin to understand how we reached our present disastrous state of affairs. The task of understanding has been and is incredibly difficult. And it has much to do with the present politics of the former Confederate states and the fact that good intentions and normal reactions to adverse conditions can lead to bad results. How we got here, a comprehension of how we arrived at our present woeful situation, demands that we understand the lineaments of post-War Between the States history, in particular the choices our ancestors—and we—have made. After Appomattox and the other Confederate surrenders, the South, the former Confederate States, experienced first occupation, then Reconstruction. Eventually coming out from under those onerous impositions, in virtual poverty and shorn of most of the political influence that they had prior to the War, most Southerners, naturally, inclined toward the Democratic Party. Indeed, it had been the Democrats, including many in the North, who had either opposed the War on the South, or, at least, advocated more reasonable and, as it were, “softer” policies after the War’s conclusion. The Republican Party was seen, rightly so, as the party of conquest, of harsh Reconstruction policies, and anti-Southern bigotry. Not that it was in principle necessarily pro-black or favored expansive “civil rights” measures: only when directed at the conquered South were such actions merited, certainly not at home in their Northern bastions. The South, the states of the former Confederacy, thus became uniformly Democratic strongholds—“the Solid South.” And, growing up in rural North Carolina how many times did I hear my elders declare: “I’d vote for the town drunk if he ran on the Democratic ticket!” Voting straight party became second nature to Southerners; granddad had done so. Indeed, some of us had grandparents even born in the late nineteenth century who knew and heard from their parents about the barbarity and degradations that came after 1865. Thus, the Democratic Party became a kind of refuge for most Southerners. And Northern Democrats, at least for a goodly part of the century after Appomattox, welcomed them and allowed them to occupy positions of authority. Even under such social liberals as Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Southern solons in Congress—remember Senators Harry Byrd Sr., Josiah Bailey, Richard Russell, and others, who controlled the US Senate and Senate committees (and thus legislation)—and not to mention the various Southern Congressmen who dominated equally in the House of Representatives—held a considerable amount of power. Of course, both Northern Democrats and their Southern allies had to find compromise at times. Generally, the Northerners let the South alone in its local governing, as long as Southerners generally supported measures nationally that their brethren advanced. Along with this occasionally troublesome collaboration, Northern Democrats—and Northern folk in general—agreed to let the South celebrate its history and its heroes and its heritage. As Professor Clyde Wilson and others have described it, the years between the end of the nineteenth century and the election of Lyndon Johnson were a kind of “second era of good feeling” for the South. Southern honor, Southern heroism, Southern history and heritage were celebrated not just in the South, but everywhere in the nation. Summing up the view of most Americans of that period, President Eisenhower spoke admiringly of General Robert E. Lee, and he was in many ways expressing the general view of most Americans of the South back in 1960: “General Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was a poised and inspiring leader, true to the high trust reposed in him by millions of his fellow citizens; he was thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his faith in God. Taken altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history.” But not just on the lips of our national leaders, but in the public imagination, in the popular media, and in Hollywood, the South, and in particular Southerners in the War for Southern Independence, were treated largely with respect, if not outright admiration. Southerners had fought nobly and honorably, and were depicted as such in works of literature, by movie-makers, and by our political leaders. Hollywood gave us not only a cinematic treatment of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind,” but numerous other pro-Southern and Confederate-friendly films. Who of a certain age cannot recall such major Hollywood products as “Jesse James” (with Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda) and its sequel, “The Return of Frank James”? Or any of several epics starring Errol Flynn (“Santa Fe Trail” and “Rocky Mountain”) or several of the memorable John Ford-directed masterpieces: “Judge Priest,” “The Sun Shines Bright,” and “The Prisoner of Shark Island,” from 1936 (on the brutal and extra-legal imprisonment of Dr. Samuel Mudd after the Lincoln assassination)? And most actors in Western movies—John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Audie Murphy, and others—carried the theme of Southern honor and respect into that popular genre. In fact, in the classic Western I would suggest that there exists a sub-genre which I would call “the Southern Western,” essentially using the War and its aftermath as a plot basis for dozens of films…a trend that has continued in a small way into more recent times with the continued fascination with Jesse James and the Border conflicts (e.g., “The Long Riders,” 1980; “Ride With the Devil,” 1999; “American Outlaws,” 2001; and “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” 2007.) The great “Civil War Centennial” of 1961-1965, with its commemorations and celebrations, marked the end of the “bargain” between North and South, a final salute to the South as a noble adversary in “the late Unpleasantness.“ Dramatic changes in American culture and the way many Americans saw themselves in the 1960s and 1970s, would alter Southerners’ attachment to the old Democratic Party and perhaps just as significantly, radically transform the Northern branch of the party into something incompatible with the views of most Southern folk. But even as late as the 1960s John F. Kennedy had a successful “Southern Strategy” which enabled him to win election in 1960 (with Southern votes), despite his later alterations and the turn-around of President Lyndon Johnson. But in many ways that was the “last hurrah” for the “solid Democratic South.” The rise of Goldwater Republicanism, Kevin Phillips’ “Southern Strategy” (outlined most notably in his 1969 book, The Emerging Republican Majority), and the emergence of the avowedly conservative Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, signaled the final demise of the second era of good feeling. Phillips worked closely with President Richard Nixon, and outlined his plan to win the South (and Middle America) for a newly-christened “conservative” and victorious GOP. And by the ‘70s, and more like a tidal-wave in the 198os, conservative Southerners turned Franklin Roosevelt’s picture to the wall and became Republicans (at least in their voting habits). The solid Democratic South would continue to be “solid,” but not Democrat. Increasingly, in the years even before the election of George W. Bush in 2000, signs of unease and doubt arose among a few more thoughtful Southerners. Yes, the GOP paid initial lip-service to traditional values and commonly-held views which most Southerners shared. But in action many leaders of the Republican Party, including a new crop of home-grown Southern GOP politicos (think here of Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of the thoroughly “red” state of South Carolina), had traveled much further to the definable political and social Left, further than many Southern folk realized, even as many blindly followed along. “I’d vote for the town drunk if he ran on the…Republican…ticket!” And how many times do we hear: “I HAVE to vote for the GOP candidate, even if he is terrible, since the Democrat is even worse”?) It should have been apparent when Graham urged the removal of Confederate symbols from the South Carolina Capitol (“The flag had to come down. And thank God it has!”), or when he (and other Southern GOP leaders) essentially endorsed same sex marriage. But they are just the tip of the political iceberg, the chameleons who inveigle far too many Southern conservatives. Influenced profoundly by the feculent remnants of a zealous Trotskyite globalism and its radical commitment to an expanding concept of “civil rights” (same sex marriage, transgenderism, etc. are now increasingly acceptable among conservative elites), and by a constant diet of Neoconservative commentary spouted by Fox News, Newsmax, and so-called “conservative” talk radio, incorporating that template, in large part Southern Republicanism and establishment Southern “conservatives” have become largely indistinguishable from their Northern brethren. How many times each day do we hear representatives of what Old Right scholar Paul Gottfried calls “Con Inc.”—Establishment Conservatism—praise the legacy of radical Frederick Douglass or the “vision” of Communist-inspired Martin Luther King Jr.? Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Levin and Brian Kilmeade on Fox, Rich Lowry at National Review, Michael Anton and cohorts at the Claremont Institute, Larry Arnn at Hillsdale College—you take your pick: they all condemn the historic South, its traditions and heritage. They all accept a warmed-over and refashioned post-Marxist globalism and expansive view of “rights,” even if they also support Donald Trump. It’s a vision that has no room for Confederate symbols and monuments. It’s a vision that has led almost all Southern Republican solons in Congress to vote to do away with names of American military installations and forts if they bear the names of Confederate generals (or slaveholders). It is, in fact, a Neo-Reconstruction, this time led by our supposed defenders who came to power when the old Democrat Party went bad. But, as we now find, the Leopard has not changed its spots. Despite all the pious campaign promises for this and for that, despite the soothing words of assurance and the pledges to defend what is left of our traditions and heritage, slowly at first and now more rapidly, our reputed defenders have, when not poisoning progressively our minds and outlook, delivered us over to those very enemies, those very forces that seek our elimination and extermination. I never tire of quoting the great Southern writer, Robert Lewis Dabney’s superb description of “establishment conservatives,” written 140 years ago, but absolutely applicable today. Here is what he wrote: “This is a party [established conservativism] which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it he salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious, for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its ‘bark is worse than its bite,’ and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent rôle of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it ‘in wind,’ and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip." How true, how prescient, how totally and equally valid today in 2021! Until Southern folk conscious of their heritage and traditions comprehend what has and is occurring, until they—we—become far more discerning and willing to stand forth and demand an accounting, the same rot, the same inevitable hemorrhaging, the same putrefaction of the South we love, the South we remember, the South now rapidly slipping away, will continue. The efforts of such enterprises as The Abbeville Institute, Clyde Wilson’s Reckonin.com, journals such as Chronicles Magazine are laudable and to be strongly encouraged, but they are still far from being well known. Every Southerner, aware of who he is, “remembering who we are,” to use the late Mel Bradford’s phrase, should become a true missionary for a re-conversion of “our people” before that becomes an impossibility in the Behemoth State we now inhabit. The pro-Southern poet Robert Lee Frost, in his poem “The Black Cottage,” sums up both our hope and our task:
That must be our task, our role: to keep alive our heritage, our past, our memory, to rededicate ourselves “to the truths we keep coming back and back to,” before our Ancestors and before Almighty God. Author's note: I urge you to read Ron Kennedy’s latest commentary (link below), on the continuing treason of our elected leaders, Southern Republicans, who joined with Democrats to rid Statuary Hall in the US Capitol of all Confederates and “racists.” Until we rise up and denounce them, and defeat them, this will continue…and time is becoming our enemy: http://www.kennedytwins.com/articles/Responding%20to%20Southern%20Congressmen.pdf This piece was previously published on MyCorner on July 13, 2021.
The Federalist online magazine has a problem. It’s a condition that characterizes and infects almost the entirety of the present national conservative media. This hit home for me on May 31, in an essay by Leslie McAdoo Gordon. Founded in 2013 by Ben Domenech, thefederalist.com it is not connected to The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, which is composed of conservatives and libertarians dedicated to reforming the current legal order. I read thefederalist.com webzine almost every day, and occasionally it is the source for items of value and good information. But Gordon’s ill-informed attack on Confederate iconography was not one of them. Peddled as a defense of retaining “Antietam” as the name of an American naval vessel, she begins her piece: “There is a move these days to revisit our monuments and the names we choose to publicly honor. This movement is good and just. It is a sign of our mature democracy that we can choose to stop honoring things that do not reflect our American ideals and celebrate those that do,” including rejecting anything related to the Confederacy. Honoring and celebrating the history and symbols of the old South, once a common occurrence in the pages of the conservative quarterly Modern Age or in National Review, are now verboten, beyond the pale. General Robert E. Lee, praised by President Eisenhower in 1960 as “one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation...noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history,” is now exiled from the conservative pantheon, as is anything memorializing or commemorating Confederate heroes and iconography. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Colonel John “the Gray Ghost” Mosby, General Nathan Bedford Forrest—are now canceled, their monuments ingloriously pulled down, and their exploits stricken from textbooks, or worse, treated like depredations of Nazi fanatics. Like most established conservative media organizations, thefederalist.com appears to be part of what Paul Gottfried calls “ConInc.,” that is, the stagnated national conservative bureaucracy, centered in Washington DC, dominated by Neoconservatives, and more concerned about not rocking the boat too much so as not to be attacked by the frenzied Left as “racist” or protecting “white supremacy”—or perhaps being taken off the A-List of invitees to posh DC social events and soirees. Perhaps the worst thing is to be a traditional or paleo- conservative type, most especially a representative of Southern traditionalism like the late Mel Bradford (who was unceremoniously dropped from National Review and whose nomination to head the National Endowment for the Humanities was torpedoed by the Neoconservatives) or Dr. Clyde Wilson (the world’s greatest authority on John C. Calhoun). Now, whether hurled at us every night by Fox News, like bilge spewed from a broken drainage pipe, or screaming at us from the scurrilous pens of a Victor David Hanson, Rich Lowry, or Brian Kilmeade, our new icons to whom we must pay obsequious homage are Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Frederick Douglass. I would argue strenuously that none of these personalities was a real conservative; indeed, I would suggest that they were revolutionaries who assisted in corrupting our original Constitution, which the Federalist Society professes to defend. An older generation of conservatives—a Russell Kirk, a Stephen Tonsor, a Peter Stanlis—understood this. Gordon’s essay of Memorial Day shows up in thefederalist.com’s daily assortment of essays where she is eager to present what she asserts is the “correct” interpretation of what battles like Antietam (AKA “Sharpsburg”) and Gettysburg were all about, what they mean. They “seared into the nation’s consciousness the immense human sacrifice her people were offering on the altars of union and universal freedom. Make no mistake, these Union soldiers died ‘to make men free’.” And then quoting from the ballad, “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” she ends with a flourish: “The people of the Union in the 1860s knew well what Antietam stood for”: to free the slaves. That proposition is false and demonstrates Gordon’s basic ignorance of both American history and Lincoln’s enunciated war goals. From the very beginning of the war he saw the conflict as a battle over the interpretation of the Constitution and states’ rights. He stated this forthrightly to Horace Greeley, of The New York Tribune, on August 22, 1861, only a few months before the “Emancipation Proclamation”: “If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union” As is abundantly clear from the press of the period, a large majority of Northerners would not have supported a “war to free the slaves.” Lincoln knew that. The “Emancipation Proclamation” of January 1, 1863 only extended to states of the Confederacy not controlled by Federal arms. Thus, where it was intended to apply it could not free not a single slave, but it did not apply to the several Border slave states where it could have freed the slaves. It was, as Lincoln indirectly confirms, a propaganda measure, intended to buoy up sagging support for the war both internationally and among more abolition-minded citizens. In more recent times especially the Neoconservatives and followers of academic Harry Jaffa have latched onto Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” (November 19, 1863), attempting essentially to amend by sleight-of-hand our understanding of the original Constitution and inserting a clause from the Declaration of Independence, via Lincoln, to the effect that “(f)our score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In other words, 1776 was the real founding of the United States and that five little words define us, our history, and our goals as a people. It was a radical assertion greeted even at the time by many in the Northern press as “a perversion of history so flagrant that the extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful.” It remains so today. Leslie Gordon apparently accepts this fraudulent view of history. Ironically, in so doing, she like other Neocons who assert equality as America’s founding principle, places herself over with the progressivist vision of the country. For they also maintain that egalitarianism is the American “proposition,” the difference being that while establishment conservatives like Gordon believe we have substantially achieved the desired equality uttered in poetic terms in 1776 by what is basically a propaganda document stating American grievances against King George and the reasons for separation, the progressive Left sees equality as an always elusive goal, requiring continual government action to insure what is called “equity.” The words recently written by David P. Goldman about such “conservatism” ring ever so true: “their ideology is a sort of right-wing Marxism,” with an origin philosophically in the not-so-distant past on the Trotskyite Left. And a movement based on what is essentially the same foundation as its supposed opposition is hobbled and fatally flawed from the beginning. It will always succumb to the greater logic and conviction of its progressivist enemies who will always out-promise and out-argue its votaries. Such a movement has little room for defenders of a Lee or Calhoun and those who rejected the idea of a “proposition nation” and understood that the United States was not founded on an idea, but on the concrete reality of families who brought their traditions and beliefs with them to a new land, created a new country, and made it their own. This piece was originally published at MyCorner.com on June 3, 2021.
Seventy-six years ago, on May 8, 1945, at 2301 hours, Central European Time, World War II in Europe officially ended. Although the war would continue in the Pacific Theatre for several more months, May 8 marked the dramatic end of what was certainly the most horrific and disastrous land war in history. European culture was changed irrevocably. A civilization which had survived the devastation and depopulation of the Thirty Years War, the horrors of the French Revolution and Napoleon, and then the calamity of the Great War of 1914-1918, now witnessed a kind of final collapse, a coup de grace by which its politics, its history, its traditions, its very mode of viewing the world were undone. Those millennial traditions and inherited beliefs, that time-honored culture, that understanding of how societies function and properly exist so identified with Europe—what remained of that, after the catastrophe of the First World War—was now overwhelmed, subsumed into a new reality dominated by competing blocs: the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its Communist satraps. Both spoke often and loudly of democracy and equality; both projected global visions for the world. Their definitions were, of course, different. But both had the cumulative effect of exiling older terminologies and language, and, in practice how Europe and the rest of the world should be organized and governed, and what principles and beliefs should be held dear. In their conquered zones the Soviets, of course, did their best for the next forty-plus years to extinguish long-standing religious belief and a Western and Christian culture that dated back at least to Charlemagne’s coronation in Rome on Christmas Day, 800 A.D. But in an ironic way, Communist oppression only covered over that legacy and those inherited traditions and faith. The persecution did not extinguish that heritage; it survived intact, often just below the surface, to emerge fully vibrant in such countries as Hungary, Poland, and Russia after the fall of Communism in 1989-1991. And in some fascinating ways what the break-up and disappearance of the Soviet system revealed was that its totalitarian rule had served as kind of prophylaxis which not only kept its “captive nations” superficially docile, but also protected them against the more radical and life-altering vision of a Pax Americana from the West. This last statement deserves explanation. The Marshall Plan and American insistence on disauthorizing older more conservative and traditional elements in Western Europe—during the same period as the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe—had profound cultural and educational effects. Whereas Soviet domination was unable to uproot an older religious faith and culture in its areas of hegemony—and, in reality, those forces were to play a significant role in its eventual overthrow—in countries like Germany, France, and Italy the transformation imposed by the United States was more profound and pervasive, and the resistance to change far less resilient. Essentially, American global policy placed nebulous values of equality and liberal democracy ahead of allegiance to country, or, rather, insisted that allegiance to country was coterminous with acceptance of American style democracy and equality as absolutes. Of course, the rationale for this was an initially legitimate and real opposition to world Communism—our American “ideology” against theirs, our ideals against the Red menace. But in its post-war role America became the “exceptional nation,” and soon assumed the duty to go round the world and impose those ideas and that vision of democracy and equality on other, unenlightened or recalcitrant countries. To use the words of Neoconservative author Allan Bloom (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 thus engaged in “an educational experiment undertaken to force those who do not accept these principles to do so.” (Quoted in Paul Gottfried, War and Democracy, 2012, p. 110) In so doing our policy-makers, given free run for decades, not only attempted to impose a kind of global “world faith” which would subvert regional identities and national traditions abroad, but also strengthened and cemented the growth of what James Burnham and Sam Francis would call “the managerial state” at home. It was the fulfillment of the prophetic words of General Robert E. Lee after the War for Southern Independence and the resultant radical bowdlerization of the United States Constitution: the America cobbled together in 1787 would henceforth be set upon a path “aggressive abroad and despotic at home.” If World War II signaled the final eclipse of the British Empire—a decline actually begun through the exhaustion and destruction of the Great War—it also signaled the advent of the American colossus. And despite a spirited challenge from world Communism, it was the American side which would finally emerge triumphant. But the seeds of our decline were already present and germinating; indeed, they had been there since those fateful days in 1865. There is little said by Abraham Lincoln with which I can agree. But I do concur with the words he spoke in Springfield, June 16, 1858: “A nation divided against itself, cannot stand.” And so, just as the unsuspected election of Donald Trump in 2016 indicated rising and serious doubts about American universalism in the world, if ever so slightly, it also uncovered giant fissures and raw divisions between populations not only incapable of speaking to or understanding each other, but in fact, incapable of finding agreement over basic definitions of what is good and true. Expressions such as “systemic racism,” “sexism,” “white supremacy,” and “police brutality” have been deployed as verbal cluster bombs used to disable, cancel, and ultimately vanquish all opposition to the rapidly advancing liquidation of those remnants of Western civilization and culture which somehow escaped the post-war dissolution. May 8, 1945, and the Potsdam Agreement later that August, while representing the end of mankind’s worst land war and the (brief) triumph of a Pax Americana, foretold the eventual triumph of progressivist neo-Marxism and the demise of the “American Century.” The Framers of the American Constitution in 1787 were not granted a divine guarantee that the confederation they cobbled together would last forever. It was, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “a republic if you can keep it.” That republic has not been maintained. The time for dissolution and separation is at hand. Abraham Lincoln has become, for most mainline conservatives, an icon, and, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., no opportunity is lost—it seems—on Fox News or in the establishment “conservative press,” to stress just how much conservatively-minded Americans owe to these two canonized martyrs. Any demurer, any dissent or disagreement, brings forth condemnations of the complainant as a “racist” or “reactionary,” or worse, maybe some Southern redneck hick who hides his old Klan robe but keeps it at the ready. During the past fifty or so years the old Southern Democratic Party has virtually disappeared, died out, as millions of conservative Southerners, many motivated by their sincere religious faith and resistance to radical and unnatural change, migrated to the Republican Party. The GOP, beginning in the Nixon years, employed what was called a “Southern strategy,” largely elaborated by consultant Kevin Phillips and spelled out most clearly in his volume, The Emerging Republican Majority (1969). GOP spokesmen learned to speak a language and offer symbols that millions of Southerner found attractive, even compelling. Not only that, but early on the election of former-Democrat Jesse Helms as a Republican US senator from North Carolina (1972), with his huge following of “Jessecrats”—mostly Democrats or soon-to-be former Democrats—and the conversion of political leaders like South Carolina’s Senator Strom Thurmond, turned what had been a trickle into a kind of stampede into the ranks of what had hitherto been seen as the discredited vehicle of the Reconstruction. But this new home, this refuge from the increasingly liberal, left-leaning modern Democratic Party, would not be for Southerners a recreation of the type of familial, regional and traditional conservatism which they had been accustomed to. Increasingly as the 1980s and 1990s progressed, the older traditional Southern conservatism, with its enduring devotion to its Confederate heritage and its illustrious catalogue of admirable statesmen and heroes, first became downgraded, then finally largely despised by both a national conservative movement and national Republican Party dominated by ideologues who were self-denominated “neoconservatives.” These former Leftists—in the main ex-Trotskyite Marxists who migrated into the conservative movement and the GOP—with their mastery of communications and conservative media, and their unswerving zeal which arguably was a carry-over from their days advocating for a kind of Trotskyite universalism, soon vanquished the older, much more inviting and older conservatism. Where once the “conservative movement”—as exemplified by a Dr. Russell Kirk—welcomed traditionalist Southerners; and where once the national Republican Party accepted a Senator Helms and or Senator Thurmond and conferred on them positions of authority; now with the zealous neoconservatives seizing control of both the movement and the party, older icons—whether a Robert E. Lee (so praised once by President Eisenhower) or a John C. Calhoun (given status as one of America’s great conservative minds by Kirk) were shown the door, even condemned as “racists,” often paralleling accusations made by those on the further Left. New heroes and models were erected, and in the place of a Lee or Calhoun, Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., were pronounced as the conservative and Republican models for Americans…and for Southerners. Indeed, arguably the specter of Lincoln had never been far from Republican mythology. But at first, as Southern traditionalists streamed into the GOP, it seemed that there might be some co-existence with the party of Calhoun and his descendants. But it was not to be. At venues such as the formerly-conservative magazine of record, National Review, brilliant Southerners like Mel Bradford were shown the door and unceremoniously removed as contributors. Gone were the days when founding editor of the Modern Age quarterly, Russell Kirk, could dedicate an entire issue to the South and an appreciation of Southern traditions (cf. Modern Age, Fall 1958 issue). Indeed, National Review led the Never Trump charge in 2016, suspecting darkly that the MAGA movement was a not-so-subtle attempt of unreconstructed Southerners and (largely marginalized) Old Rightists to regain control of what Paul Gottfried has called “Con Inc.”—both the modern conservative movement and the national Republican Party. That battle continues, and it continues not just politically since the election back in 2016 of Donald Trump (who probably didn’t realize the full import of his initial success). For it is at base a contest of fundamental ideas about what is a country—what is our country—and the role and position of the American South in (and outside) of that geographical entity we call the United States. For the most part, the neoconservatives still control “Con Inc.” Every night on Fox News or Newsmax one is likely to see a Nikki Haley, Jonah Goldberg or Victor Davis Hanson (he who praised Sherman’s blitzkrieg through South Carolina as exemplary and a “good thing for South Carolinians—they deserved it!”). Save for occasional minutes on the Tucker Carlson Tonight program, a continual drumbeat for “equality” as the central principle—the essential element in what is termed “American exceptionalism”—is heralded as undebatable. Globalism—a key tenet of neoconservative (and Trotskyite) thought—marinates conservative news coverage. And, of course, Lincoln and King have been turned into plaster, canonized “conservative” saints, untouchable, undefilable. Monuments to Confederate heroes, indeed, symbols of most anything honoring Southern tradition are shunned and now condemned…perhaps not as hysterically or “woke” as by the demonic denizens of the far Left, but certainly the targets are the same. The words recently written by David P. Goldman ring, in retrospect, ever so true: Now under Biden the neoconservatives, partially sidelined under Trump, are back. And “their ideology is a sort of right-wing Marxism,” which definitely has no room whatsoever for defenders of a Lee or Calhoun and those who reject the idea of a “proposition nation,” those in opposition to across the board domestic and global equality and imposed universal democracy. To paraphrase the Kennedy brothers, Ronald and Donald, who in turn quote General Lee, this is the legacy of Lincoln: a country "aggressive abroad and despotic at home," now conjoined with the evangelical zeal of the neocons. There are few print magazines left that boldly and intelligently oppose the dominant neoconservative vision of America and the world with its increasingly explicit rejection of a Kirkian Old Right conservatism that once-welcomed defenders of Southern heritage and tradition. The most significant is Chronicles magazine. In the April/May issue, the magazine took pains to answer some questions of newer readers regarding the differences between traditional conservatism and the newer ersatz neocon version, which although at times appearing to defend what Kirk once called “the verities,” is in reality exactly how Goldman described it: a warmed over, right wing re-incarnation of Trotskyite globalism, anti-Communist—yes, but inimical to the older traditions and inherited beliefs of both Southerners and other Americans, concerning not just the nature of these United States, but about the very founding and creation of it. The editors at Chronicles, in response to several letters inquiring about these differences, which, I would suggest, are fundamental to our understanding of our history as well as our current politics, have offered a somewhat detailed answer. And that answer also admirably offers a critique of Lincoln and his disastrous legacy in both America and in the world. With the permission of the Chronicles editors (Paul Gottfried and Ed Welsch), I offer their full explanation and response. I believe it is an excellent summation of what defines so-called “Con Inc.” is today, the stark cleavages that separate members of the Old Right and traditional Southern conservatives from the dominant neocon globalists, and the dastardly role of Father Abraham in unleashing successive devastation on America and eventually the world. That same issue, April/May, includes a superb analysis by the Abbeville Institute’s Dr. Brion McClanahan of both the “1619 Project” and the “1776 Commission” counter-project (initiated unfortunately under Trump). Both emit from the same fetid swamp that assures us that America is founded on a “proposition”: the principle of universal equality. The editors end their response with a gloss from Bruce Frohnen, summing up the late Wilmoore Kendall and George Carey (in Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition, 1971): “…any principle is a dangerous thing for any tradition to take as its common, collective goal. Traditions, societies, peoples, are not dedicated to principles. Ideologies are dedicated to principles. And ideologies are the motive force for armies and for campaigns to punish heretics and enforce a uniformity of life that spells death for human variety and living tradition." The critical analysis of Lincoln and his inheritance is something all Southerners should read. This piece was previously published on MyCorner on April 27, 2021.
Our “conservative” punditry go forth daily in what seems increasingly to be an already lost battle against the agenda of the left and its progressivist minions in and outside the Biden administration. That agenda enjoys overwhelming support in hysterically “woke” academia and counts on unwavering backing from cheerleaders and mouthpieces in the establishment media, entertainment, and the sports industry. Increasingly, corporate America—major international conglomerates and the all-but-invincible tech monopolies—use their power to staunch and disauthorise and ban any dissent. And when corporate America speaks, so-called “conservative opposition” to what is happening tends to melt away in retreat. Real jail time or at a minimum police harassment may await anyone accused of “misusing” (e.g., disagreeing with the Left), even in the most discrete manner, platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. That has already happened in California to Ryan Wentz who mildly criticized Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter. Watching just a few minutes of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” will disabuse any curious viewer of the belief that somehow this nation, at least as we have known it, is not spiraling rapidly towards extinction. We are told that the only hope we have is to continue to support the current Republican Party establishment and its array of spokesmen who show up periodically on Fox News or Newsmax. But those so-called forces of opposition have been in constant and ignominious retreat for decades, indeed I would argue for more than a century. Explanations for this “conservative rout” (to use a phrase once used by the late Dr. Russell Kirk) vary. To listen to a Dinesh D’Souza or Brian Kilmeade on Fox, a Dennis Prager, or to the Neoconservative followers of the late Dr. Leo Strauss, all we must do to recapture the initiative—the high ground—is get our message out there to the hungry minds of 20-somethings, to those besotted by the poison administered by academia and by the dominant American culture, who are eager to hear the truth. The problem is that by and large the intellectual weapons presented for recovery are like the muzzle-loading muskets with limited ammunition distributed to the forlorn British auxiliary regiments at the Battle of Isandlwana (January 1879)—the single greatest defeat for the British Army at the hands of a native (Zulu) army: they are almost useless against the arms of the Left. (Recall the superb 1979 film, “Zulu Dawn,” with Peter O’Toole.) Without a clear understanding of the American Founding, of American history and the intentions of those in the late 18th century who cobbled together the confederation of independent former colonies which would become the United States of America—without that comprehension—efforts to fend off, much less defeat, the seemingly unstoppable progressivist phalanxes will flounder and result in further disaster. Indeed, the nostrums offered by establishment conservativism and its acolytes in the Republican Party end up only enabling and codifying the advances and success of radicalism. What was radical ten years ago—and at that time opposed by the conservative opposition—now becomes solidly conservative and acceptable. Thus, same sex marriage, once stoutly opposed by “mainstream conservatives,” is now part and parcel of the conservative ideological arsenal. Here in North Carolina as late as 2012, for example, Tar Heel voters rejected same sex marriage overwhelmingly, 61% to 39% (as did other states where it had become an issue). Many conservatives denounced it at the time…but only a few years later after the infamous 2015 Obergefell Supreme Court decision (by a 5 to 4 vote), most rushed to embrace it. And now all over Fox News the commentariat is overflowing with representatives involved in same sex arrangements, which are now considered “normative,” an extension—a “civil rights” penumbra, if you will—somehow derived mysteriously from the Constitution. And same sex marriage is not the only instance where what my friend Paul Gottfried calls “Conservatism Inc.” has engaged in enabling progressivism to continue advancing the goalposts of what are called “equal rights.” More recently, Charlie Kirk and other luminaries in the ostensibly “conservative” youth movement, Turning Point USA, and representatives of Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, embraced transgenderism and “drag queen” culture, or as BigLeaguePolitics reported in an expose’ on October 30, 2019, “yucked it up” and posed for photographs with its epigones. No doubt the next conquest will be the normalization of polyamory, which the Wikipedia defines as “the practice of…intimate relationships with more than one partner, with the informed consent of all partners involved.” The Wiki continues: “Polyamory has come to be an umbrella term for various forms of non-monogamous, multi-partner relationships, or non-exclusive sexual or romantic relationships.” In other words, polygamy without the no-longer-needed window-dressing—the charade—of formalized marriage. Federally-supported NPR featured a laudatory segment on it back in March. And lurking in the wings—and heralded in recent news—are efforts to implement programs standardizing the manipulation of gender--gender “re-assignment” surgery and the use of puberty blockers—for children as young as eight or nine. You see, every eight year old has the right to determine what gender he or she wishes to be, nature be damned. Although criticized now by some conservative personalities (e.g., Tucker Carlson), how long before this, too, will be considered an essential principle in the mainstream conservative quiver of arrows...and we behold young sixteen year conservatives parading on Fox proudly, and thankful that surgery saved them from sexual dysphoria when they were only eight? Again, I am put in mind of the justly prophetic words of the great Southern post-War Between the States divine, Robert Lewis Dabney, who fiercely opposed women’s suffrage as contrary to both nature and Holy Writ. Dabney’s arguments go beyond the suffrage issue, however, for he recognized then the inherent weakness within the conservatism that came out of the defeat of the Southern Confederacy...and is still very much with us. Here he writes in 1871 (The Southern Magazine): “It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? The defeat of the Confederacy was, in a very real sense, the triumph of what was and is an essentially egalitarian view of the American founding, which declared that the American nation was founded on an “idea,” or rather a “proposition,” and that proposition is that “all men are created equal.” That principle as the foundation and promise of America is false and based on a faulty and ahistorical view and reading of the Declaration of Independence as the fundamental document of our history. As Professor Barry Alan Shain of Colgate University has demonstrated convincingly in his encyclopedic study, The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context: American State Papers, Proclamations, and Letters from the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2014), that is not at all what the Founders meant when they debated and then employed those words in the Declaration. But it was the vision that, with “Father Abraham” Lincoln, triumphed in trajectory in 1865. And it is the vision that informs the modern Conservative Movement….and fatally debilitates the so-called opposition to the rampant radicalism we are drowning in. That vision informed the “Advisory 1776 Commission,” named by President Donald Trump to supposedly counter the historical fabrications of the much ballyhooed “1619 Project,” whose findings are now being frantically incorporated into every level of the American educational system. In essence, it is the same vision, with a few modifications, advanced by the 1619 progressivists. This piece was previously published on MyCorner on April 10, 2021.
For some time now I have had a passion for classic films, in particular those films that portray sympathetically and with historical accuracy the Southland, and, more particularly, events of the War Between the States. I can remember going to the old Village Theater in Raleigh and, with my parents, seeing a re-screening of “Gone With the Wind.” And around that same time—about 1956—we also were able to view “Song of the South” before it was essentially banned by Disney—an early example of hysterical “wokeism” before being “woke” was the chic thing to be. (Note: Back on July 21, 2019, I listed in this column, later picked up by the Abbeville Institute, a Web site that offered fine, pristine DVD copies of “Song of the South,” but I warned then that the “cancel culture” totalitarians would most likely get around to purging it; as I searched for that sIte today, it had disappeared, been banned, just like I predicted.) I share my passion for Southern film with my long-time friend Dr. Clyde Wilson, editor of the Papers of John C. Calhoun and the dean of Southern historians, now retired from the University of South Carolina. Just recently (February 28) Clyde published a brief column, a movie review, at The Abbeville Institute. It was a short negative critique of the film, “The Burning of Atlanta.” Although I try to catch most movies with a Southern theme, and write about them if they interest me, I had not seem that one…and after Dr. Wilson’s commentary, I don’t plan to. But in his review he mentioned another film that had somehow escaped my attention, despite the fact that he had written about it very favorably at least twice, back in 2014 and 2017, on the Abbeville site. It is “Firetrail,” originally released back in 2007 and still available on DVD. Although the original well-over two hour version (two DVDs) is still available (more on that in a moment), there is also a more recent, heavily cut issue that comes in at only 82 minutes; stay away from that heavily-butchered one, as Dr. Wilson advises. But the original, uncut version demands attention and a recommendation, not only for those Southerners interested in the ravages that General Sherman inflicted on South Carolina and North Carolina (as opposed to the vicious anti-Confederate ahistorical ignorance of supposed movie pundits like Fox News favorite Victor Davis Hanson), but for its entirely believable story of true romance, devotion to duty, exciting derring-do, and bearing up under the intense suffering of “total war” inflicted on civilians by Sherman’s host of barbarians. “Firetrail” takes us from the first entry of Sherman into South Carolina—and Sherman’s bummers and amoral scavengers—below Orangeburg, South Carolina, up through the burning and devastation of Columbia, then on to Fayetteville, North Carolina, and a well-mounted recreation of the Battle of Bentonville. Based on a fine historical novel by Southern novelist Lydia Hawke (aka, Lydia Filzen) who has also authored several other war-themed works, “Firetrail” was directed by Christopher Forbes. He managed to enlist various re-enactment units, create a model of Columbia set to the torch by Yankees, and perhaps most importantly, to cast some essentially non-professionals as his actors who actually make the storyline come alive. True, they are amateurs compared to, say, a Robert Duvall or a Stephen Lang in “Gods and Generals.” And “Firetrail” lacked the millions of dollars lavished on Ron Maxwell’s grand production—don’t expect another “Gone With the Wind.” But nevertheless as I watched the entire presentation I could not help but get involved and be mesmerized: these are real people, with real stories and lives made terribly precarious by the brutalization of war. I wanted to follow them, I wanted them to make it through successfully. Jim Hilton assumes the role of the film’s hero, the dashing Captain Blake Winberry, of the 5th South Carolina Cavalry. His bride-to-be is Judith Rogers, as played by Lin Lafitte. At the beginning we learn that Rogers is a desperate refugee from the burning of Atlanta hoping to make her way to Fayetteville where an aunt resides. Her husband has been killed, and she is essentially by herself in dangerous country. In the first scene she dramatically holds off three Yankee bummers just as Captain Winberry appears to offer his support. For him—and then for her—it's almost love at first sight. Winberry insists that she accompany him to his family’s home in Columbia; his father is a doctor, and there she meets the rest of the cast of characters, including Blake’s zestfully delightful sister Lexi (Nicole Dye) who would like nothing better than to go out and fight Yankees, and his former sweetheart Sally Dubois (Tomme Hilton), who seems only interested in marrying for better social status (something that Blake doesn’t seem to have)—she ends up later squiring off with the notorious womanizer General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick! The action never ceases. As the Yanks move irresistibly northward into North Carolina, Blake insists that Judith leave the war zone, and they separate only to be reunited towards the end of the film as Blake lies wounded and nearly killed by a Northern soldier. As I stated earlier, I could not stop watching it. Despite its length—it took all of an afternoon, and I have not had the time to watch the bonus material yet—and despite the lack of Hollywood polish, this film touched me as I think it will touch any Southerner who honors his heritage and understands the sufferings and sacrifice of his ancestors. The complete film—the two DVD set—is available and is the one to get. It is professionally and commercially done and handsomely produced and packaged, not a “private” edition in any way. It can be easily obtained from Lydia Filzen (the author of the novel uses the pen name “Lydia Hawke”—she’s also a member of the UDC), either by check or via PayPal transfer made out to Mrs. Filzen. The price is $20.00, which includes postage and shipping for the two-DVD set. Her Web site contains many additional details: http://www.lydiahawke.us/ I urge you to investigate it. She can be reached at the following email address: lydiafilzen@comcast.net. For mailed orders with check her mailing address is: Lydia Filzen, 13 Robin Road, Orange Park, Florida 32073. In our age of “cancel culture” when even Dr. Seuss and familiar cartoon characters can be outright banned and essentially made non-existent for us and our children…when ruthless totalitarians, whether pitiless barbarians in the dominant culture or spineless cretin-like “conservatives” and Republicans who give in to them, prowl about like the “rough beast” St. Peter the Apostle warns us of (I Peter 5:8), “seeking whom he may devour,” then we must continue and treasure such works as “Firetrail.” It reminds us of the reality of our past, for in that memory of our past is also the seed of rebirth of our Hope for the future...and the justice of God. This piece was originally published on MyCorner on March 9, 2021.
Most Saturdays I drive in to the nearby town to do my weekly grocery shopping at the local Food Lion. As I go in I sometimes tune my radio to the local NPR station and catch a bit of the programming. It’s about the only time I listen to public radio—as a general rule I can only take NPR in bits and small doses. Its programs tend to be outrageously “woke” and condescending to those of us out in the hinterland, anyone mired in a traditional lifestyle who might have voted for Donald Trump and who doesn’t share the latest hip views spouted by the featured guests. This past Saturday as I listened to “Wait! Wait! Don’t Tell Me,” which advertises itself as a quiz program, the panelists began with an especially noxious and vicious attack not just on Trump, but also on anyone and everyone who possibly supported him. It wasn’t just the normal invective which I have come to expect from America’s taxpayer-supported public radio system; it conveyed a certain and real venom and dripping hatred that surpassed all previous times I had heard the program. You would think that with the Donald now outside of government, and now impeached twice with even leading Republicans (e.g., Mitch McConnell) solemnly and dourly condemning him as if we needed somehow to reconvene the Nuremburg Trials, that the invective would lessen. But no; it was even worse this Saturday, on steroids, as it were. It betrayed, I think, just how nervous and fearful our elites in entertainment, the media, politics, and in corporate America still are, not just of Trump, but of what was arguably his major accomplishment while at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Although not successful in some of his promised reforms, he actually, perhaps unwittingly, tore the mask off of the “deep state” managerial elite establishment which has increasingly exerted almost inexorable control over every aspect of our lives. Their grimacing and barbaric faces were revealed, their foul activities and crass manipulation of nearly everything exposed as never before. That was an unforgivable sin, and as such only a stake through the heart of the man responsible would suffice, and, likewise, that stake must also be driven into the hearts of all those who partake in what one CNN pundit called “the Trump cult.” Thus the calls from prominent Democrats and media personalities for something resembling a “ministry of truth” or massive “re-education” programs (i.e., modern Gulags?) for those who dissent from the new “reality” proclaimed—and enforced—by our elites. Have those folks not read Orwell? Or, maybe they did…? It would be easy to dismiss such calls as outliers or isolated demands, but they are uttered in all seriousness by significant and powerful voices on the Left. And the Harris-Biden administration, ever sensitive to the demands of its progressivist wing, now evokes the language of “equity,” which carries the ideologically-armed language of “racism” and “white privilege” much farther than anything envisaged even a few years ago, as my friend Dr. Paul Gottfried pointed out recently (January 26) in his essay “Multiracial Whiteness Is the Latest Leftist Branding Iron,” at American Greatness. Whites are now informed that they are guilty of the sin of “white supremacy” and racism until they prove their innocence. Indeed, being white may mean that one can never really prove his innocence, that the sin may be ineradicable. Thus those multiple examples of white “woke” academics—mostly women—who have tried to actually change their race and pretend that they were black (e.g., Rachel Dolezal), and thus escape the horrible onus of whiteness. This feverish anti-white hysteria pervades our educational institutions with a vengeance. Nothing is sacred, nothing is off limits. Already we know that standard English is a “white construct” and therefore must be abandoned. Teachers can no longer grade a student for what once was considered bad or faulty English or grammar. We are told that the works of William Shakespeare are shot through with racist imagery and must be purged if employed in the classroom, if not banned outright. In England there are calls to purge Winston Churchill’s name from institutions and monuments—he was both a colonialist and a racist. Two recent instances of this frenzied cultural barbarism—and eventual cultural genocide—should come as no surprise, but I must admit that I was not ready for them. First, a new mathematics guide sent out to teachers in Oregon by the state Department of Education declares that traditional math, you know the kind that states unequivocally that “2 plus 2 = 4,” projects a form of white supremacy. Titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,” the 82-page instructional guide lists the ways that this is perpetrated in the classroom: “White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions….Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics….” The guide offers a year-long framework for “deconstructing racism in mathematics,” and calls for “visibilizing [sic] the toxic characteristics of white supremacy culture with respect to math.” Examples of this racist toxicity “include asking students to show their work, focusing on getting the right answer, tracking student success, and grading students.” No longer should a teacher ask a student to show his work—no longer is an answer to be considered “right” or “wrong,” as such responses only reinforce “paternalism” and the “worship of the written word,” more signs of the oppressive white culture. Well, math was never my best subject in school—I wish those guidelines had been around fifty years ago when I was taking algebra! I might have gotten an “A” instead of “C’s”—Oh, wait, under that system there would be no grades. Darn it! The second example has to be read and reread carefully to be believed. It seems that loving your dog, protecting him and allowing him to sleep inside is an act of white privilege and racism. According to Katja Guenther, Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside (where else?), in her new book The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals: “…allowing dogs to sleep inside is a privilege reserved for the white and wealthy and that policies against keeping dogs chained up in backyards are intended to oppress people of color by imposing ‘middle-class norms of animal keeping in which companion animals are considered family and treated accordingly,’ which ignore the fact that people of color ‘are themselves trapped in poverty, may have few options for legitimate income generation and possibly rely on their dogs for … status’. Additionally, the good professor argues that laws against canine mistreatment discriminate against “anyone in the US other than white, middle class and upper-class individuals.” Take that! dog lovers everywhere! And I can do Professor Guenther one better: not only does my cocker spaniel, Jasper, sleep inside—a clear indication that I am guilty of white privilege—but since reading that report I have noticed that little Jasper, who is white, also projects all the tell-tale signs of white supremacy; he insists on being the boss over all the neighborhood dogs (especially those of a darker hue) and has a patriarchal attitude towards them. Most egregiously, he only eats prepared Cesar Prime Rib and Filet Mignon, and barks ferociously if I don't provide it for him at the appointed dinner hour. I must be at his beck-and-call at all times, or face unwanted and undesirable deposits in my hallway! Alas, perhaps some "woke" researcher should do a government-financed study on "Canine racism"? And what about cats? I would think they are even more stained by privilege and racism. Where all this madness and insanity ends—most of it supported by taxpayers and government largesse—I won’t hazard a guess. But I will admit that I exult in my blatant canine paternalism and, as the saying goes, if this be racism, I damn well will make the most of it! This piece was previously published on MyCorner on February 17, 2021.
There has been abundant and over-the-top discussion about the events of this past week and the so-called “insurrection” of Trump supporters—the Deplorables—at the United States Capitol on January 6. Since that day the major news media—the media establishment, including notoriously Fox News—have kept up a constant and ranting drumbeat, with dire images of “sedition” and “treason,” and the absolute and (for them) undebatable demand to “suppress” and “cancel” anyone who disagrees with their views. Not just of Deplorables with a higher public profile, but ANY person who might in the slightest way demur or dissent from their template. The persecution now reaches down to regular folk who have been denounced because they are Trump supporters. Already there is news that literally hundreds of men and women have been terminated, fired from their jobs if their employers find out about their dissident views...not just attending a pro-Trump event. Just the other day North Carolina’s Attorney General (and suitably “woke” Leftie) Josh Stein publicly demanded that Tar Heel citizens denounce their neighbors if those folks might have attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. And your children? They should denounce their parents, says Stein. Remind you of the old Soviet Union? This may be worse: the advent of a new, more severe “totalitarian democracy.” Josh Stein is, ironically, North Carolina’s chief legal enforcer…. Already there is an FBI investigation occurring of a Fort Bragg [it still bears that name but not for much longer!] officer who as a private person helped a group of regular Moore County NC people to attend the January 6 rally. None of them invaded the Capitol—none of them. But that doesn’t matter: hold them up for media scorn, blacken their reputations, maybe even inveigle them in bogus legal charges; in other words, silence them and stomp them down so that they never again question Big Brother. The airline stewards union demands that any Trump supporter be barred from flying, and they may well get their wish. So if you were one of the several hundred thousand folks who went to Washington last week, even as a peaceful and respectful participant, if some “woke” person knows that and squeals, Bam! You’re apt to be kicked off a flight or not permitted to board. The coordinated and nearly universal cabal of Big Tech now asserts not only a total ban of hundreds of conservative groups AND individuals, but collaborates with the incoming Biden team, just as they collaborated with the Democratic National Committee to help steal the November election. Their minions will populate the incoming administration, and soon you will not be able to tell the difference. As in Orwell’s Animal Farm, the dominant pigs will become indistinguishable from the humans…and Big Tech and Big Government will effectively merge and control our lives. Dozens of major banks and corporations now ritualistically “cancel” anyone who raises even the slightest question about what happened last November. Howls for blood go out for Senator Josh Hawley who stoutly defended the president and made a reasonable case that widespread election fraud existed last year. He must be expelled from the US Senate; his home and family have been threatened by real violent demonstrators. No problem about that, say the media. You see, no one with a public profile can now openly state that there are “questions” about November 3. It is verboten to even meekly raise the issue. And if you do, then your wife and children may be terrorized with impunity by those “mostly peaceful” Antifa types. Television personality, Black Live Matter enthusiast, and intellectual nullity, Joy Reid, dredges up the tried-and-true canard: the Trump rally was actually a manifestation of “white privilege” and historic “white supremacy.” Millions of Democrats AND Republicans agree. We simply must be stamped out…now! National Washington Post columnist and media pundit Eugene Robinson—with much acclaim from the agents of Big Brother—declares that “Trump supporters are a cult and need to be forcibly ‘deprogrammed’.” Sent to re-education camps? Aren’t our children in public schools already there? So now our enemies, in the name of “defending our democracy” suggest we be sent to the Gulag? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s experiences will be like a vacation compared to what may await us. Joe Biden rails against Trump and all his supporters, blasting them as “followers of Nazi Joseph Goebbels [he can’t even correctly pronounce the name] and the Big Lie.” And this is the man who is supposed “to unite” America? His dementia surfaces nearly every time he opens his mouth. Can President Kamala Harris, waiting in the wings, be far away? Welcome to the inevitable result of “our democracy”: the Globo-Socialist Republic of America. We were warned and we did not heed those warnings. Those wise men, like Southerner Robert Lewis Dabney, were as Cassandra at Troy: “predestined to prophesy truth and never to be believed until too late.” This piece was previously published on My Corner on Janary 13, 2021.
|
AuthorBoyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in intellectual history from the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years he served as State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. He has published in French, Spanish, and English, on historical subjects as well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical organizations. Archives
December 2023
|