When I was a boy, scarcely out of the first grade, there was released a film—now a cult movie—titled “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956). Although my parents would let my sister and me go occasionally to the old Ambassador Theater or the Colony Theater in Raleigh, usually with friends or accompanied by either or both of them, that was one film which was strictly off limits—we could attend a Saturday Western double bill or maybe something like “Friendly Persuasion” (with Gary Cooper) or “The Ten Commandments,” but nothing eerily bizarre that might produce childhood nightmares. Besides, my sister and I were probably too young to get in, given the old Hollywood Code. Still, that movie was the subject of a lot of conversation. And much of it centered on the famous “pod people” at the center of the film’s plot: those extraterrestrial beings who were transported to earth as vegetable pods and who eventually took over the bodies of sleeping, unaware human beings, and possessed them, turning them essentially into robotic creatures who continued to look like real humans but weren’t. We had great fun pretending from time to time to be “pod people” back then. That imagery has vividly come to mind in recent days, indeed increasingly since the election 2016 and now even more so since November 3, 2020. With all the growing discussion of “two Americas,” of a country—our geographical entity—irreconcilably divided in which not only interests, values and beliefs radically and sharply differ, but inhabitants can no longer communicate, even though they supposedly speak the same language, that imagery of six decades ago becomes more a fulfilled prophecy than science fiction, even if only impressionistically. No; certainly I am not accusing the minions and followers of the Progressivist Left of being extraterrestrial interlopers. But I do suggest that the virus of a highly contagious (post-)Marxist venom in our culture has infected millions of our fellow citizens and exacted a tremendous toll—that it has been percolating for many decades in our institutions, oftentimes just below the surface—that its initial target was our educational system (and media)—and that its major accomplishment has been to persuade us to accept as undeniable, dogmatic truth, the idea of irreversible and steadily-advancing Progress which its self-appointed heralds and standard-bearers continuously proclaim and update as they see fit. You know the drill: just take, for instance, the institution of marriage. From being a holy sacrament, indissoluble, between one man and one woman, our society has “progressed” from that traditional Christian doctrine. First, it was secularized, then came easy and widespread divorce, now same sex marriage as a constitutional right, and beyond, why not polygamy—do not the laws forbidding it also deny “my human and constitutional rights”? There are countless other examples, but I submit they are usually advocated, and eventually accomplished, in the name of “equality” and “human rights,” but always subsumed under the Idea of Progress, that “society must move forward,” not just materially but intellectually. And that inevitably means Leftward. Anything or anyone who stands in its way must be thwarted, cancelled, and eventually forbidden to write and speak. In 2016 an upstart millionaire businessman named Donald J. Trump upset that applecart just a bit; not that he knew what he was actually doing, not really. But his instincts and his intuition were mostly right, and like millions of us out in what leftwing novelist Philip Roth once called “fly-over country,” that expanse of America between New York’s Upper East Side and Silicon Valley and San Francisco, Trump sensed that something was wrong in “our democracy,” that in the name of social justice and equality, this country had devolved into a stratified neo-plantation system in many ways more rigid and more inhuman than anything my ancestors in antebellum North Carolina ever envisaged—or would have ever countenanced. I doubt that “the Donald” had ever read James Burnham’s classics on the evolving dominance of what he termed the “managerial elite” or class over American life, and assuredly he hadn’t peeked into Samuel Francis’s texts developing the same topic (e.g., Leviathan and Its Enemies, etc.). Nor had most Americans. But the fact is that today—in “our democracy”—the country is basically divided more or less into three classes: -A highly selective and controlling managerial class, composed mostly of corporate tech millionaires (and their minions) from Silicon Valley, hedge funders on Wall Street, the academic and media elites, brainwashed Millennials and soccer moms, and Deep State political pawns and dependents buried deep in government; -A broad middle class that ends up footing the bill for the corporate class and enduring its divinely proclaimed ukases and rules of conduct that only seem to affect the “deplorables” and “chumps” who live in Middle America, never in those gated million-dollar estates in San Jose or luxurious penthouses in Manhattan; -And lastly, a growing dependent class, who are generally bought off by the beguiling promises of the managerial class and the goodies that are promised them. The past four years—the first term of President Trump—awakened among many hitherto mostly regular citizens an understanding that the old republic in which they had lived and raised their families was quickly slipping away. Trump, however imperfect he was, was seen as a kind of bull-in-the-china shop, someone who would force the agents of the Deep State and its machinations—and the role of the managerial elites in our lives—out into the light of day. For those of us in the hinterland this comprehension was not always that clear. Yet, among the Big Tech/Big Media/Big Academia apparatchiks and Deep State managerial class, they understood far better what was at stake: their masks had been partially ripped off, and what we began to behold were…modern “pod people,” in every way they looked like us, but now forced out into the open to protect their positions and authority, they were increasingly revealed as radically different, programmed, as it were, like “pod people” from outside our universe determined to control every aspect of our lives…and regain lost power. Often those of us who reject the Idea of Progress and the proposals of its fanatical votaries are labeled “racists” or misogynists, or defenders of “historic white supremacy”—facile epithets intended to shame and silence us. Since the November 3 election those of us who question its legitimacy, who have noted multiple, literally hundreds of examples of mass fraud and manipulation of the vote, are labeled “conspiracy nuts” running to-and-fro sporting tinfoil hats, spouting outlandish and bizarre theories. Yet those “theories” are not outlandish and bizarre if they are true. And the mounting evidence—and that is what it is, evidence—is more than convincing. Those who demand our submission—our obeisance—to their claim that this election is over, that there was little or no fraud and abuse, who refuse to even examine the evidence, are engaged in “gaslighting” and projection. They accuse us—as the neoconservative honcho Jonah Goldberg does consistently on Fox—of failing to acknowledge reality. Yet it is they, like G. K. Chesterton’s unfettered bird out of its natural nesting place, who have turned much of America into something outside the laws of God and of Nature. It is they who have created their own unreality, the swamp of lunacy which bids to overwhelm us. And that we cannot and will not permit to happen, even if we must for a time endure in modern catacombs. To quote the president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis: Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.
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Every once in a while a book is published which takes its place as critically significant and pivotal—which has an influence and reach far beyond other similar studies or writings—in how a culture and society see themselves, and how they see their past and also perhaps their future. For Southerners aware of their history and traditions or desirous of (re)discovering them, so it was in years past with Richard Weaver’s monumental study, The Southern Tradition at Bay (originally published in 1968). And before that the work of the Twelve Southern Regionalists, I’ll Take My Stand (1930), a book never out of print and still very influential today ninety years after its first publication. And one must add to these the various works and essays of the late Mel Bradford, perhaps the modern South’s most brilliant author and defender. Just this past November 3, 2020—election day, ironically—the newly-revised third edition of James Ronald Kennedy and Walter Donald Kennedy’s The South Was Right! was published. And that publication is a truly signal event. For it incorporates the insights and understanding of Southern history, specifically the justice and rightness of our ancestors in 1861-1865, and brings them forward to our own perilous times when it seems that everything Southern, everything we hold dear and we honor, the very living memory and inheritance of our ancestors…indeed, the very existence of Western Christian civilization on this continent, which found its most noble expression in the South of our ancestors…is under merciless, perhaps mortal assault. Since The South Was Right! was first published in 1991 and then published in a second edition in 1994, much history—far too much of it terribly negative—has fitfully passed us by and oftentimes seems to overwhelm us. The South Was Right! in this new edition from Shotwell Publishing is like a powerful shield and buckler which can offer us indispensable support not only in the defense of our Confederate heritage and our Southern civilization, but also provide us with ample ammunition to go forward on the offensive, to begin the arduous, difficult, but still possible effort of regaining our history, our culture and our birthright. The late Mel Bradford used the expression “remembering who we are” in several of his works. Indeed, his 1985 book of trenchant essays carries that title: Remembering Who We Are: Observations of A Southern Conservative. But for Bradford, as also for the Kennedy brothers, it is not just the imperative to awaken the memory and legacy of our ancestors and of their inheritance, but to fathom it in its fullness and to know that that inheritance, that culture, those beliefs and that faith are profoundly nourished by traditions and foundations that go back two millennia, that are real….And that despite their apparent eclipse by our contemporary society which despises them and seeks to abolish them, they still offer sustenance and illumination for us—if we let them. Certainly, such a return to, as the pro-Southern poet Robert Lee Frost once wrote, “the truths we keep coming back and back to” (cf. “The Black Cottage”), is fraught with extreme risks and severe danger in our day and time. We are called racists and neo-Confederates, or “white supremacists” and worse if we defend our heroes of 1861-1865. Our reputations are besmirched; we are doxxed by vicious radicals; even our livelihoods are threatened. Yet, in our heart-of-hearts we know with President Jefferson Davis, that “Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.” The Kennedy brothers understand, they fathom this, and they have set upon the path of both defending “who we are” and reclaiming our real history and existence as a people from those who would destroy and eradicate them. Here, in this volume, is a veritable goldmine of vital factual information and history grounded in a foundation of truth and faith which we all should digest and know. For once armed and strong in the Faith we may go forward and do battle as our ancestors once did on the fields on Manassas and Chancellorsville. We have only that choice—or, the ignominious and miserable disappearance from the annals of history. The Kennedys chart our course, and we should follow them. This piece originally appeared at MyCorner on November 28, 2020.
As of Friday, November 6, the votes are still being counted in at least six states. The large pro-Trump margins that seemed to prevail late election night have now disappeared as mail in votes, many of doubtful legality have begun to trickle in. Large Democratically-controlled cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta have miraculously produced tranches of almost completely Biden votes—legal Republican poll watchers have been excluded from observing the vote count—mail-in votes with unverified signatures of doubtful provenance have been counted. In short the safeguards that would guarantee a fair election have been egregiously ignored and violated. Philadelphia, heavily Democratic and where armed Black militia groups have been known to exert what they call “vigilance” over polling places, once again seems like “ground zero” in this year’s election. Whereas almost all counties in Pennsylvania were strongly supportive of the president, the local machine in urban Philadelphia was once again grinding out huge—and unbelievable—majorities for Joe Biden, almost like clockwork. Can a truly fair election be held when what is essentially a political mafia masquerading as a political party has a stranglehold not only on how votes are counted but, more importantly, which votes are counted—and when? Is this what has become of the American republic? President Trump may well lose this presidential election. But if he does, there will always be a lurking and burning question: Is this really what happened? Was not this election, in fact, stolen? I realize some may dislike my language, and even reading this very question may seem distasteful. How dare I raise such a specter, such a possibility in our great democracy? I have written before that American progressivists engage in a form of “gaslighting” and projection onto their opponents of the very actions they themselves are guilty of. For how many months now have we heard Representatives Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi and multiple talking heads at CNN, NBC and most all the media claim that Trump threatens “our democracy,” in particular the insanely bogus accusation that the Russians have corrupted our elections, if not the president himself ? Yet, it is exactly those political allies and minions of Pelosi and Schiff significantly on the state level who continue to seriously imperil what is left of the old American republic. It is they, using the COVID-19 panic and resulting shutdowns in a number of states, who implemented the most far-reaching and dangerous destruction of election security in our history, enabling the utter disaster we see unfolding before us. Despite all the suffocating fog of this election, despite the apparent vote manipulation and fraud, despite the use of the media as unpaid and scandalously dishonest allies—despite all this, and even with the potential toppling of the “man with the orange hair,” the progressivist Left has to be aware in those moments of private reflection that Donald Trump in a real sense may “triumph even from his political grave.” That is, the forces and the citizens that he has roused cannot be forced back into silence, pushed back into their previously quiet acquiescence. All across the United States the generally predicted “blue wave” that the near totality of pollsters told us would occur simply did not happen. On the contrary, in state after state, congressional district after district, the strongest advocates of the Trumpian populist message won election, even against huge odds and millions of campaign dollars from Silicon Valley billionaires, Wall Street hedge fund manipulators, entertainment magnates and the concerted efforts of the media. In North Carolina, Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham, running with a dishonest smirk on his face, railed against “big business, big banks and big pharma,” while actually receiving nearly 100 million dollars in campaign funds, mostly from the billionaires of Silicon Valley, Michael Bloomberg, and big hedge funders. Yet, despite the mobilization of thousands of zombie-brained Millennials and soccer-moms (whose voting patterns argue strenuously for the repeal of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution), it was that very working, tax paying middle class North Carolina citizenry, those voters whom Cunningham appealed to, who voted largely for incumbent Republican Senator Thom Tillis. Cunningham was, we were told, supposed to win. True, there was a scandal involving him and the wife of a military man. But we were informed by the media that he would win despite that. Tillis, you see, was the puppet of those shadowy moneyed types—and indeed, he does get some support from them. But what the voters figured out along the way was that Cunningham was far more indebted to dark money and the elites than Tillis. And it was, without doubt, the “Trump effect,” the rousing of the Tar Heel citizenry that proved critical in Tillis’ win. In my local precinct, in what is arguably a mixed suburban/rural area of Wake County, President Trump received nearly 60% of the vote (unofficial). In past elections Democrat and Republican vote totals have been roughly equivalent. Yet, this year—this election—seemingly the landscape has been transformed. This is what has happened all across North Carolina and in other states: Trump rolling up large margins in mostly rural areas but more significantly in those working class/blue collar regions where the Democratic Party once commanded unquestioned loyalty, while Democrats strengthened their control in major metropolitan centers. Most national Democrats and the media continue to slam Trump now that he is down, pronouncing his presidency dead: the “man with the orange hair” will finally be gone, they exult. Still, a few staunch Democrat columnists—perhaps not yet getting their cues from those national founts of thought control—have actually seen something, and at least for the moment stumbled across what may be occurring, what may be bubbling up in the remaining sensible and sane areas of the old republic. Veteran Democrat progressive Thomas Mills, who has damned the president from the beginning, wrote in his column (“Wow, Was I Wrong,” November 5): “Last night, I learned how little I understand North Carolina politics. For years, I thought I had a pretty good handle on my native state. Since 2016, though, most of my assumptions have been proven wrong. I never thought Democrats would have such bad night in this state. “Several of my assumptions about politics, and North Carolina politics in particular, no longer hold. It will take a while for me to better understand what happened, but I will certainly need to find new assumptions and data points. And I’ll have to stop believing the polls…. “Money matters less than pundits and consultants believe. Democrats had a staggering financial advantage and it clearly didn’t pay off in North Carolina. Republicans added seats in the state house and won most of the Council of State seats as well as the U.S. Senate race and the presidential contest despite healthy Democratic war chests.” Mills’ early sentiments were echoed by Gary Pearce, another long-time Democrat operative (“Democrats Overdo It,” November 5): “By the wee hours Wednesday morning, Democrats went into full finger-pointing, breast-beating mode as Trump swept the South and Republicans won big in North Carolina: President, U.S. Senate, legislature, Council of State and judicial races. They sounded ready to jump out the window.” Pearce continues, quoting another Democrat: “…‘I think in NC specifically, we are communicating to an electorate that doesn’t quite exist yet – the demographic blue wave that’s hitting our cities, but is probably still a decade or so away from fundamentally reshaping our politics – at the expense of rural and urban-adjacent counties, where we have effectively zero support anymore’.” Obviously, Mills and Pearce had not yet gotten the memo—but no doubt it is coming, and after the requisite soul searching, they will most likely be securely back mouthing the platitudes and template proclaimed on high by the Deep State apparatchiks who drool at the prospect of recapturing 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Let us assume that Biden will finally win…horribile dictu!…which, of course, is still quite debatable at this point (with legal contests looming). Some pundits (mostly on Fox) have sought to reassure us that Republicans will continue to control the US Senate and will have at least five to seven additional seats in the House of Representatives—potentially a break on a Biden presidency. Yet, doubts about just how strong and resistant this congressional “opposition,” this GOP establishment, will be to a President Biden are not at all unreasonable given the past inglorious history and cowardice of our Washington representatives. But beyond all this, what is becoming ever so clear and evident is that the nation we call the United States of America has now become de facto two countries with populations which not only disagree fundamentally with each other, but cannot communicate or talk with each other at all. They—we—speak entirely different languages, they—we—think in entirely different ways, and those differences are growing wider and more irreconcilable not less so. This election—2020—underlines and emphasizes that radical and unbridgeable divide. Throughout this year there has been increasing talk of some sort of nationwide separation, regional secession, as the only means to avoid continued, heightened and potentially violent conflict. Scholar Frank H. Buckley (at the George Mason University School of Law) has authored a fascinating book on the topic: American Secession: The Looming Threat of a National Breakup (Encounter Books). Although Buckley laments it, he begrudgingly admits that the nation we know as America cannot last, and that some sort of constitutional break-up might be a way out. The time for that serious discussion, and on a national level, has arrived. As Professor Donald Livingston writes in his review in Chronicles magazine (October 2020) of Buckley’s volume: “When two people are about to come to blows, it is best to separate them. Secession could do that for a deeply dysfunctional and hate-filled America.” This piece was originally published at Boyd Cathey's blogspot on Nov 6, 2020.
A few days ago I sent out to some friends a short piece, unsigned, on “gaslighting.” If you follow media pundits and online scribblers, you’ve probably heard or seen the term used in a political or social context and wondered exactly what it meant. Gaslighting, in that currently employed sense, can be defined as a form of psychological abuse aimed at controlling a person by altering perceived reality to the point where the person will doubt his own sanity. Essentially it involves mental manipulation “in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them cognitive dissonance and other changes, including low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and information, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s beliefs.” This usage apparently originates with the play, Gas Light (1938) and two succeeding classic movies from 1940 and 1944 (this latter film famously stars Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, and Joseph Cotten). The main character in the play (and in the films) literally attempts to drive his wife crazy by gradually dimming the gas-powered lights in their home. As she complains that the lights seem to be getting dimmer, her husband not only denies the fact, but convinces her that it is just her imagination…to the point where she begins to question her own sanity. In contemporary America “gaslighting” has become a praxis, a weapon of choice of the post-Marxist Progressivist Left: That is, repeatedly projecting on to their opponents the belief and sense that somehow they (we), because of our "unenlightened views" are racist, sexist, and "against progress and 'democratic values'." Nearly the entirety of the media, the entertainment industry, and many political leaders do this on a regular basis; it is inculcated into our children in practically all our schools.... And once we begin to believe that meme, we then retreat from real opposition, we may apologize for our perceived sins, and defensively we may compromise and give way, or just be silent. This praxis has been very successful in essentially neutering many voices of the supposed opposition to the madness that is eating away at our society. How many elected Republicans have given way to “gaslighting” for fear of being called “racists” or “white supremacists”? But not just their apologies or silence, and their running to hide “in the tall grass”: Some have convinced themselves of the rightness of Progressivist positions, even supporting them publicly. We only need cite the literally dozens of former Bush administration officials, staffers for John McCain (his wife is voting for Biden) and Mitt Romney, and Neoconservatives like Max Boot, Bill Kristol, and others who now openly support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Does this not indicate something deeply disquieting about these so-called "Establishment Conservatives"? That they are easily spooked by the constant barrage of Progressivist accusations is one thing…but more profoundly, does this not indicate their own lack of deeply-held conservative convictions? And these were the folks we were to support as our champions in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012? Whatever criticisms we might level at Donald Trump, and yes, certainly there are some, he has at least done one thing of immense value: he has torn the mask partially off those "Deep State" apparatchiks, made them surface publicly, revealing them as the condescending elitists, Managerial State globalists that they are. And that, despite all the negative things, in a sense compensates in some ways for many of the Donald's peccadillos.... It is those who righteously claim the Progressivist mantle who are the real madmen, lacking rationality, outside reality, and strangers to the inherent laws of nature and Divine Positive Laws of God. It is they who, like demons from the bowels of Hell, seek to convince us that we are "outside reality" and "unprogressive." And in this they engage in a form of transference, that is, projecting zealously onto their victims—onto the “deplorables” and those who dissent from their template—the insecurities and sense that our thinking and actions are somehow distorted, wrong, hurtful, and not normal…that we are crazy. In fact, it is they who are, to quote the great Christian English essayist G. K. Chesterton, the real “lunatics.” In his volume, The Poet and the Lunatics (1929), Chesterton discusses the concept of liberty, and in so doing defines it succinctly as “the power of a thing to be itself…We are limited by our brains and bodies; and if we break out, we cease to be ourselves, and, perhaps, to be anything. The lunatic is he who loses his way and cannot return….” Those who have rebelled against the order of Creation and nature, he adds, are “already outside the world of reason, raging with a desire to be outside of everything.” It is they who have in fact rejected reality. Thus, their frenzy and anxiety not so much to convince us, as to convince themselves of their rightness….for like all Children of the Night, down deep, gnawing at them is the dark, if faint but constant sensation that this is so. Against their constant barrage we need to affirm our rootedness in our God-given and created nature and in two-thousand years of Western tradition and civilization...while rejecting the Progressivists as crazed fanatical rebels against that Creation and its Author. They must be totally repudiated...no compromises or deals with them. Things may—and probably will—get worse, and our enemies appear to gain triumph. But in the end the Faith will conquer…if we let it. This post originally appeared on Boyd Cathey's blog on Oct. 13, 2020.Back a little over thirteen years ago (2007) as chairman of North Carolina’s annual Confederate Flag Day observances, I invited my friend Dr. Paul Gottfried to travel to the Tar Heel State to be the keynote speaker for our event at the historic 1840 State Capitol. His remarkable address was later reprinted in several journals, including the old and much-lamented Southern Partisan magazine. Recently, in surveying the hundreds of older files I’ve collected I noticed Paul’s address, and I re-read it. And I noticed how prescient and still-current it remains. In 2007 he observed events occurring and trends that were quickly developing, and in dramatic fashion he both saluted the dwindling number of Southerners who were actually defending their culture while also warning them about what was happening and about to happen. Since Dr. Gottfried’s Cassandra-like advertence to that audience of 150 brave souls in the State Capitol’s House of Representatives chamber that crisp March Saturday, things have gotten incredibly worse…to the point that there is now a real question as to whether anything, not just symbols and monuments, but anything in our Southern heritage will survive the present revolution and the utter and craven cowardice of the political (and cultural) elites who are supposedly on “our side.” Almost without exception those leaders have deserted the battlefield, even given way to the Enemies of our culture. These days lines from William Butler Yeats’ eschatologically-tinged poem written after the devastation of the First World War, “The Second Coming,” return to me constantly, emblematic of our current age: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Ironically, I know of no stronger defender of our Southern heritage and traditions and our rights historically, than my friend Paul Gottfried. Of Jewish Hungarian descent, educated at Yale (PhD), professor emeritus at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, author of around twenty superb books mostly on political theory, a polyglot whose work is actually better known and appreciated in Europe—he has continued the, at times, lonely task of defending the older Conservatism (which welcomed Southerners) that once enjoyed respectability and currency, but now has been overwhelmed and practically exiled by the pseudo-conservative, warmed-over globalist Neoconservatives, descendants of Marxist Leon Trotsky, who despise our Southern traditions and heritage. They much prefer embracing all the “civil rights” conquests of the far Left and zealously pushing American involvement in wars—almost anywhere—across the globe to establish what they call “liberal democracy.” Which of course, means the imposition of same sex marriage, transgenderism, destruction of older traditions and religious belief if these stand in the way of their plans: thus, for example, the late John McCain’s frenzied attack on Russia’s Vladimir Putin because Putin supports traditional marriage and because Russia has outlawed homosexual propaganda in Russian schools. Such positions are a no-no, unacceptable to our Neoconservative elites in the Republican Party or on Fox News. Older traditions which stand in the way of Neoconservative internationalism and egalitarianism must be attacked and displaced, and anyone defending them maligned and excluded from “the Conservative Movement.” Just recently the American embassy in Moscow ostentatiously flew the gay liberation flag to celebrate gay rights (Russia had just overwhelmingly passed constitutional amendments completely outlawing same sex marriage). President Putin’s comment (July 3) was to mock the silly American gesture: "Let them celebrate,” he responded to the stunt. “They've shown a certain something about the people who work there," he added with a wry smile. But the embassy’s action also illustrates something about current American culture and society, and the Neocon dominance even within the Trump administration, and it may help to explain why the Neoconservative virus which dominates the Conservative Movement and the GOP also despises the traditional South and its heritage. I pass on Professor Gottfried’s remarkable clarion call, his 2007 speech, which is still current and spot on, even more so in today’s revolutionary, anti-Southern and anti-Confederate atmosphere. Prophetic and hard, but necessary truth, if we would only listen and act. Why do they hate the South and its Symbols? By Paul GottfriedConfederate Flag Day, State Capitol, Raleigh, N.C. – March 3, 2007 Those Southern secessionists whose national flag we are now celebrating have become identified not only with a lost cause but with a now publicly condemned one. Confederate flags have been removed from government and educational buildings throughout the South, while Confederate dignitaries whose names and statues once adorned monuments and boulevards are no longer deemed as fit for public mention. The ostensible reason for this obliteration or dishonoring of Southern history, save for those civil rights victories that came in the second half of the twentieth century, has been the announced rejection of a racist society, a development we are persistently urged to welcome. During the past two generations or so, the South, we have been taught, was a viciously insensitive region, and the Southern cause in 1861 was nothing so much as the attempt to perpetuate the degradation of blacks through a system based on racial slavery. We told now that we should therefore rejoice at the reconstructing of Southern society and culture in a way that excludes, and indeed extirpates from our minds, except as an incentive to further white atonement, the pre-civil rights past, also known as “the burden of Southern history.” This last, frequently encountered phrase is from the title of a famous study of the South by C. Vann Woodward, who in his time was a liberal-minded Southern historian. Arguments can be raised to refute or modify the received account of Southern history now taught in our public schools and spread by leftist and neoconservative journalists. One can point to the fact that a crushing federal tariff falling disproportionately on Southern states contributed to the sectional hostilities that led to the Southern bid for independence. One can also bring up the willingness of Southern leaders to free blacks and even to put them in grey uniforms, as the price of the freedom that Southerners were seeking from Northern control. And even if one deplores slavery, this commendable attitude, which was also shared by some Confederate leaders, does not justify the federal invasion of the South, with all of its attendant killing and depredation. That invasion took place, moreover, in violation of a right to secede, with which several states, including Virginia, had entered the Union. A comparison is drawn nowadays between two supposedly equivalent evils, the Old South and Nazi Germany. This comparison has entered the oratory of the NAACP and the Black Caucus; it has also has appeared with increasing frequency in social histories that have come from the American historical profession since the Second World War. A bizarre variation on this comparison, and one frequently heard from the American political Left, is between the Holocaust and Southern slavery. First brought up by the historian Stanley Elkins (when I was still an undergraduate), this seemingly unstoppable obscenity is resurrected whenever black politicians demand reparations. Not surprisingly, those who claim that the Holocaust was unique and that comparing it to any other mass murders, particularly those committed by the Communists, is an impermissible outrage have never to my knowledge protested the likening of American slavery or segregation to the ghastliness of Auschwitz. The benign acceptance of this comparison by would-be Holocaust-custodians has more to do with leftist political alliances than it does with any genuine reaction to Nazi atrocities. At the very least, reason would require us to acknowledge that Southern slave-owners were vitally concerned about preserving their human chattel, even if they sometimes failed to show them due Christian charity and concern. Unlike the Nazis, these slave-owners were not out to exterminate a race of people; nor did Southern theologians and political leaders deny the humanity of those who served them, a point that historians Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese have demonstrated at some length. But all of this has been by way of introduction to the gist of my remarks. What interests me as a sympathetic outsider looking at your culturally rich region, goes back to an agonized utterance made by someone at the end of William Faulkner’s magnificent literary achievement, The Sound and the Fury. The character, Quentin, who has journeyed from Mississippi to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study at Harvard, and who will eventually take his life, tries to convince himself that “No, I don’t hate the South.” This question is no longer a source of tortured embarrassment, but part of a multicultural catechism that requires an immediate affirmative answer. That is to say, every sound-thinking (bien-pensant) respondent is supposed to hate the “real” South, as opposed to warm-weather resorts that cater to retirees and in contrast to places commemorating Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King. The South, as the location of the Lost Cause and of Confederate war monuments, is one that we are taught to put out of our minds. It is something that a sensitive society should endeavor to get beyond—and to suppress. Looking at this anti-Southernness, in whose filter displaying a Confederate battle flag, particularly in the South, has been turned into a hate crime, one may wish to consider the oddness of such an attitude. Why should those associated with a defeated cause, and one whose combatants were long admired as heroic even by the victorious side, become moral pariahs for their descendants? Is there anything startlingly new about our knowledge of Southern history since the early 1950s, when my public school teachers in Connecticut spoke with respect about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which would account for the present condemnation of the same figures? A few years ago, following my viewing of “Gods and Generals,” a movie that deals with the personality and military career of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, I was struck by the widespread attacks on the movie director, Ron Maxwell. Apparently this celebrated director had failed to use his art to expose “Southern racism.” In fact there was nothing in the movie that suggests any sympathy for human bondage. In one memorable scene, for example, Jackson’s black manservant raises a question in the presence of his master, about whether it is proper to hold a fellow-Christian as a slave. The devout Presbyterian Jackson, who ponders this question, has no answer for his manservant, with whom he has just been praying. How any of this constitutes a defense of slavery is for me incomprehensible, but it does confirm my impression that there is something peculiarly twisted about the current repugnance for the Old South-- and indeed for any South except for the one reconstructed by federal bureaucrats in the last fifty years. On visits to Montgomery, Alabama, I have noticed two local histories, which, like straight lines, never intercept, but nonetheless confront each other on public plaques. One is associated with the birthplace of the Confederacy; and the other with the political activities of Martin Luther King and the distinctly leftist Southern Poverty Law Center. The headquarters of the SPLC, this watchdog of Political Correctness, stands obliquely down the street below the state capitol. It may have been a pipe dream that the two historical narratives, divided by culture as well as race, could be either bridged or allowed to function simultaneously. What has happened is entirely different. One of the two competing narratives, the one about the South as a bigoted backwater until the triumph of revolutionary forces aided by the federal government changed it, has not only triumphed but has been used to drive out its rival narrative. It might have been a happier outcome if Southern whites and Southern blacks could have agreed on a single narrative that would not demean either race. The second best outcome would have been if both had retained their accounts of the Southern past, as separate non-intersecting ones that nonetheless remained equally appropriate for different groups. The worst outcome, however, is the one that we now have. It is one in which the descendants of the defeated are taught to vilify or treat dismissively their ancestors, so that they can demonstrate their broadmindedness and remorse about past racism. As a result of this inflicted attitude one is no longer allowed to speak about the South as an historical region without focusing on its real or alleged sins. But this has not always been the official situation. Certainly this was not the case, even in the North, from the years after Reconstruction up until the second half of the twentieth century, when even veterans of the Union army praised their former foes. It was also not always the case even afterwards, as Shelby Foote’s treatment of the losing side in his work on the Civil War, a classic that has gone through multiple printings, would indicate. The venting of hate and contempt on the South, as found in such predictably unfriendly authors as Eric Foner and James McPherson, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It underscores the fact that the Old South has been defeated twice—and the second time at the level of historical memory even more disastrously than in a shooting war that it lost in the 1860s. The American white South has fallen victim to the “politics of guilt,” a dreary subject, albeit one on which I have written widely. The Yankee victors of the 1860s, who overwhelmed the Southerners by virtue of their numbers and superior industrial power, did considerable wartime damage. They also subsequently occupied the land of those whom they had vanquished militarily, but then did something that was equally important. They went home, and permitted their devastated opponents to rebuild without an occupying army. What I mean to say is that the first occupation was morally and psychologically less destructive than the ever deepening humiliation that is going on now. The first victors were mostly Yankee Protestants, who in some ways were similar to those they had invaded and occupied. Once the passions of fratricidal war had cooled, these Yankees were able to view their former enemies as kindred spirits. Although they were establishing a bourgeois commercial regime, one that differed from the prevalent Southern way of life, the winning side had also recruited farmers and those whose culture did not diverge significantly from that of those who had fought on the Southern side. In a certain sense Socrates’ observation about Greeks once applied to Americans as well. While they could fight brutally with each other, they were still brothers, and so some form of “reconciliation” was eventually possible for the former enemies. And both North and South came up with a narrative about their past differences which bestowed honor to the heroes on both sides. This was possible with the Yankee Unionists, who wished to draw Southerners back into their community, even after a terrible war had been fought to keep the Southerners in a Union that they had tried to leave. But the second civil war seeks the utter humiliation of those who are seen as opponents of a society that is still being imposed. The Southern traditionalists from this perspective are particularly obnoxious inasmuch as they are a full two-steps behind the project in question. Those who insist on these changes are no longer Victorian capitalists or Methodist and Congregationalist villagers from the North. They are post-bourgeois social engineers and despisers of Western civilization, a stage of development that these revolutionaries identify with discrimination and exclusion. In Southern traditionalists they see those who are still celebrating a pre-bourgeois, agrarian, and communally structured world. That world appealed to hierarchy, place, and family, and its members displayed no special interest in reaching out to alien cultures. Such ideals and attitudes and the landed, manorial society out of which they came point back to a nineteenth-century conservative configuration. For our post-bourgeois leftist intelligentsia, this point of reference and model of behavior cannot be allowed to persist. It clashes with feminism and the current civil rights movement, and hinders the acceptance of a multicultural ambience. The fact that people like yourselves are still around and still honoring the national flag of nineteenth-century landed warriors from the American South might have the effect, or so it is thought, of making others equally insensitive. Even worse, those who engage in these celebratory rites do not express the now fashionable “guilt” about members of their race and tribe. Those being remembered had owned slaves, and they would have denied women, whom in any case they treated as inherently different from men, equal access to jobs. Needless to say, non-Westerners are not required to dwell on similar improprieties among their ancestors or contemporaries, and so they may celebrate their collective pasts without disclaimers or reservations. The hairshirt to be worn only fits Western bodies, and in particular impenitent Southern ones. It is against this background that one might try to understand the loathing that the political, journalistic, and educational establishment reserves for the unreconstructed white inhabitants of the South. You seem to bother that establishment to a degree that Louis Farrakhan and those unmistakable anti-white racists, who are often found in our elite universities, could never hope to equal. You exemplify what the late Sam Francis called the “chief victimizers” in our victimologically revamped society, an experimental society that fits well with our increasingly rootless country. But your enemies are also the enemies of historic Western civilization, or of the West that existed in centuries past. You may take pride in those whom you honor as your linear ancestors but equally in the anger of those who would begrudge you the right to honor them. What your critics find inexcusable is that you are celebrating your people’s past, which was a profoundly conservative one based on family and community, and those who created and defended it. For your conspicuous indiscretions, I salute you; and I trust that generations to come will take note of your willingness to defy the spirit of what is both a cowardly and tyrannical age. This article was previously published by Boyd Cathey on July 25, 2020.
Often as I work at my computer I keep on the Sirius FM Classical Music Service, “Symphony Hall,” with an occasional switch-over to a Bluegrass channel. Both, I believe, reflect at their finest superior elements of our Western cultural tradition with deep popular roots in our civilization, in the songs and compositions of people—our ancestors—which are inspired by their faith, their heroes, their tragedies and triumphs, events in their cumulative history.
Sometimes at night I try to catch a classic film on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) or on my preferred Encore Westerns Channel. Not so much on Encore Westerns, at least not yet, but TCM has begun bracketing certain politically-incorrect classics with “woke” commentary, usually by black and/or gay film critics. Some films, once shown on network television, will probably never see the light of day again. They are far too reactionary, mired in a time long ago, unable to be salvaged even by the most superficially talented social justice progressive movie maven. Over recent years, certainly since the end of World War II and more aggressively since the momentous civil rights years of the 1960s, there has been a progressive and widespread effort to both “deconstruct” our cultural tradition and alter its expression, with a specific emphasis on the influence of women and minorities who, we are told, have been underrepresented. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Of course, women and minorities, especially racial minorities, have played a distinctive and important role in our artistic heritage and traditions. And there have been some significant and worthy contributions made by them. But always to be understood in perspective and in the context of two millennia of Western culture, with its roots in, to quote the late philosopher Eric Voegelin, “Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome,” and the predominate role of notable men who were uniformly white. But increasingly cultural elites in literature, music, art, and film have attempted to treat the essential characteristics and aspects of our culture, those emanations and glories of our heritage by radically re-interpreting them, recasting them completely, and they have done so by excluding, even censoring or banning certain works long held to be of great value and grandeur. Indeed, a long festering anti-Western and anti-Christian animus, always present but for decades percolating just beneath the surface, now aims to reign supreme and totally dominate. Woe to anyone who would oppose it; to do so means you are a “racist” and partake of “white supremacy.” And once that death knell is sounded, once that fatal sentence is pronounced by some poorly educated “woke” lunatic on Twitter or in some corporate board room, well, there is nothing to do but subserviently crawl on all fours, beg forgiveness for everything your ancestors may have done, essentially for being white. Especially since the death of George Floyd, a drug addict and convicted felon now apparently up for sainthood (by both Democrats AND too many Republicans), the madness we’ve witnessed in the actions of our political class now is also translated with a renewed vigour into the arts, into education, into religion, into sports, into practically everything that makes life interesting, varied and rewarding. Ominously, the goal lines are advancing rapidly in all of those areas, as we see each day recounted by brain-dead Marxist apparatchiks on television. Outright censorship and banning are becoming the rule…and it seems that those who should be stoutly opposing them are giving in readily to the lunacy. Consider that such “conservatives” as US Senators James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) now propose replacing Columbus Day as a national holiday with Juneteenth to celebrate the manumission of the last slaves in 1865. Tell me, please, what is the difference between these pusillanimous fake conservatives and those “woke” social justice warriors out in the streets who actually pull down monuments to Christopher Columbus? At least the rioters are honest about their designs. Lankford and Johnson think they can “compromise” their way around what is going on. Their lack of conviction, their cowardice, is revealed for all to see. And in the end the mob will not spare them, either. Recently, Paul C. Graham, author of the book Confederaphobia (Shotwell Publishing, Columbia, South Carolina), received notice from Amazon.com that they planned to stop marketing his volume. Here is part of Amazon’s message to Graham (June 23, 2020): “Greetings from Kindle Direct Publishing. I have received feedback from our technical team. They advised that your book has been identified as confederate flag merchandise [sic!]. Amazon policy prohibits the listing or sale of confederate flag merchandise. For more information, please see our seller help pages…. We've unpublished this title and placed a publishing hold. Thank you for reaching out to KDP. If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to get back into contact with us. Regards, Haashim S., Kindle Direct Publishing.” Amazon forbids and will not sell anything that promotes what it says involves Confederate flag merchandise. You see, for Amazon’s highly educated technical staff a “book” is actually “Confederate flag merchandise.” Not only that, but the list of banned and forbidden items grows even as I write these words. Anything deemed to be racist, Confederate, misogynist, “Nazi” and so on by Amazon’s “technical team” will be eventually proscribed, and you won’t be able to get it from the world’s major seller of merchandise. The ramifications of this massive assault reach into every sphere of our culture, including notably film. Consider Gone With the Wind, the Civil War epic considered a classic of American cinema, that has been pulled by HBO Max (until maybe at some future date a politically correct version can be confected). As The Hollywood Reporter puts it: “The move comes as media companies reappraise content in light of nationwide protests over police brutality and systemic racism after the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by Minnesota police…Long considered controversial for its depiction of Black people and its positive view of slavery, Gone With the Wind faced renewed scrutiny…. “ I know what you are thinking: Americans just won’t tolerate that and won’t let this happen. But you are wrong, deadly wrong: it IS happening all around us, such that the patrimony we leave to our children and grandchildren will be immeasurably poorer and barren, only a remote memory, and after we pass from the scene, not even that. This is one of the aspects of the culture war we find ourselves in. Indeed, Pat Buchanan back in 1992 spoke of it in what were then considered stark and divisive terms. But what he said back then was only a mild forecast of what has occurred since 1992: that conflict “is about who we are. It is about what we believe. It is about what we stand for as Americans. There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” It is not just those public symbols, those statues and monuments which are coming down, it is practically everything that differentiates and distinguishes our culture, our inheritance, the very essence and emanation of who we are and what we hold dear, our art, music, literature, our very soul as a people, that is at stake. If we fail in this battle, in this culture war—and it IS a war—our civilization is finished, it is over, consigned to the dust bin of history—a goal so earnestly desired and pushed by the militant mobs of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and associated groups. There is absolutely no room for compromise a la Lankford and Ron Johnson. For compromise leads to surrender, and surrender leads to extinction. The Russian people suffered under seven decades of Communism, to emerge from the catacombs in the early 1990s with a reborn and vigorous religious faith and devotion to their pre-Soviet traditions. My question for us all is this: are we prepared to do likewise until that day that God ordains when His justice and triumph arrive? Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina comes across as a nice man, well-mannered, calm, the kind of man you would want as a neighbor and, yes, as a friend. He seems unthreatening in how he speaks, always with a very slight but perceptible eastern North Carolina accent. In short, he radiates a down home “you can trust me” charm. Except for one thing: it’s all a façade, false, a mask hiding a far darker side of his character. His likable demeanor disguises an individual—North Carolina’s chief executive officer—who has been largely responsible for giving the green light to looting, mob violence, and the blatant destruction of symbols and artifacts of our history. His praxis is not one of openly or vocally inciting the riots and violence; no, that would be too obvious and likely to produce a backlash. Rather, through his actions—and failure to act—he has purposefully enabled those riots and that violence. He has used the initially ostensibly peaceful demonstrations as means to achieve his purposes, purposes which he has had all along. Whether he acts (or fails to act) out of conviction, or through the advice of his small extremist “woke” social justice warrior constituency, the result is the same. North Carolina’s elected chief defender and protector of our laws and Constitution has become its chief violator, if only in a remote sense and without his guilty fingerprints. Over the past week or so a mob of rioters and looters rampaged through Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital city. Stores were looted, graffiti were sprayed on monuments, and lawlessness reigned. But you see Raleigh has a “woke” leftist mayor Mary Ann Baldwin, and like so many other mayors in leftist-controlled cities across the nation, her response was to let the mob do its business under the theory: “let them destroy property, that’s acceptable, but we don’t want to ‘hurt’ the rioters physically.” In other words, the capital police stood down as the rioters rampaged through the city…and millions of dollars of private property were destroyed, an outrage against the very raison d’etre of our law enforcement, the reason they exist, which is not only to protect individuals but also private and public property. And is it not legitimate to say, like other leftist mayors, that Baldwin has a certain real sympathy for the goals and objectives of the rioters? But even worse came over the long weekend from Friday, June 19 to Sunday, June 21, 2020. The mob had taken aim at the historical monuments on Capitol Square. They had already defaced them, but now their object—clearly stated on Twitter and Instagram for anyone to read, including our elected leaders and law enforcement, both state and municipal—was to topple them and to begin with the three iconic Confederate monuments on the Capitol grounds: the statue of Pvt. Henry Wyatt—the first Confederate soldier killed in the War Between the States, the monument honoring the women and children of the Confederacy, and lastly, the giant and artistically distinctive Confederate obelisk facing Hillsborough Street. At first on Friday night they managed to bring down two lesser statues perched aside the tall Confederate monument. The police did nothing, in fact, stood down with the complicity of Mayor Baldwin and the governor. Then came the Wyatt and Women of the Confederacy monuments. At first state capital police resisted…but then, they too were told to stand down. And at that point Governor Cooper, in one of those moments that assuredly required some pre-planning on his part, intervened and issued an order: all Confederate monuments, he decreed, would be taken down because they were “dangers to public safety.” It was a logical succession, something that could be presented to the public as the culmination of a rational process, to “protect” the raging rioters who might somehow “hurt” themselves if they continued to attempt to destroy state property! (After all when the mob felled a monument recently in Portsmouth, Virginia, it actually landed on one of the rioters. We can’t have that happening!) But in so doing, in enabling the rioters to ultimately succeed in their rampaging fury, Cooper flagrantly violated the laws of the state of North Carolina. He invited the mob to destroy public property without the slightest hindrance, he encouraged them. And thus he fulfilled their deepest desires. And he did so in spite of—in open violation of—the Heritage Protection Act [Monuments Protection Act] of 2015 [G.S. § 100-2.1] which specifically enjoined and forbade the removal of North Carolina’s historic monuments by any level of government authority. Indeed, Cooper through his Department of Administration had attempted previously, in the summer of 2018, to have those three Confederate monuments at the State Capitol removed, under the very narrow exceptions allowed by the Monuments Law. As required by that statute, he had gone before the North Carolina Historical Commission (empowered in law to rule on such cases) using the very same reasoning that he was to use about “public safety” on June 19-21, 2020. But back on August 22, 2018, the Historical Commission, composed of noted attorneys and historians, several named by Cooper himself, had denied his appeal by a vote of 9 to 2, in effect declaring that the law’s use of the term “public safety” as an exception had nothing to do at all with supposed danger to demonstrators (as Cooper claimed), but meant internal and structural weaknesses or decay within the monuments themselves. External threats to the monuments and whatever harm that might come from those threats were not included as a reason or exception for removing a monument. Those threats to public safety must be dealt with by law enforcement—by the required protection of public property by our constituted constabulary. Thus, what Cooper did was not only a violation of the Monuments Protection Law, but also a violation of the specific and exact legal ruling of his own North Carolina Historical Commission. Denied his request in August 2018, he manipulated and used the current riots on the State Capitol Square—telling the police to stand down so that violence could occur—to achieve his ultimate goal: removal of the monuments in the most underhanded manner, while indicating to everyone (in particular, to his most fanatical and “woke” followers) that he was taking this action for the sake of “public safety” and “against racism” that those monuments to once-living and breathing men, women and children—citizens of North Carolina—supposedly represent. Confirmation of this underhanded praxis comes from various high-placed sources, both in law enforcement and in government. And not only that, for Cooper has essentially informed smaller municipalities around the state that should riots occur in their communities, should the mob visit them, he will not allow the North Carolina National Guard to assist them to protect their communities or their history…if a noisy bunch of Antifa/Black Lives Matter thugs try to take down YOUR monuments, basically the governor is telling the citizens of the Tar Heel State: “You are on your own. My tiny radical extremist constituency rules, and I will allow—permit—even encourage—them to destroy artifacts of our history and culture.” Public opinion, which in every poll is two-thirds against removing those monuments, be damned. Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest, who will oppose Cooper is this falls’ election, has spoken out in condemnation of what is happening and what Cooper is enabling (June 20, 2020): "North Carolinians should be shocked by the utter lawlessness that occurred in downtown Raleigh once again last night, this time on the State Capitol grounds. While Gov. Cooper shifted blame when our cities were looted and buildings were damaged, he has no excuses this time. Last night’s destruction occurred on state property, right next to his office. It is clear that Gov. Cooper is either incapable of upholding law and order, or worse, encouraging this behavior. The essence of a free society is the rule of law. When our elected leaders turn a blind eye to chaos, destruction, and disorder, society begins to unravel." It is important that Forest get this message out, via his campaign appearances and via media (TV ads). It is a winning message if he will use it, and he must be strongly encouraged to do so. All the while the revolution advances—in Oregon and California it is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Francis Scott Key, their monuments toppled. Columbus is now down in various cities. Even the slightest verbal demurrer online is banned as “racist.” You cannot dissent from the new narrative and agenda. And too many of those on our side run for the tall grass, fearful of being called racist. When the mob comes for the statues of George Washington on North Carolina’s State Capitol grounds—when the effort is to topple monuments to Charles B. Aycock and Zebulon Vance, or to displace North Carolina’s monument to its three presidents (Jackson, Polk, and Johnson), what will Cooper do? By his own irrepressible logic he must give in; there is no other course now that he has implicitly (if not explicitly) thrown his lot in with the new Taliban fanatical destroyers. They desire the total and complete erasing of our heritage and culture. Cooper has invited them in, encouraged them, and thinks he used them. But in fact they have used him, and they will bring him down into the very feculent sewer of anarchic devastation that they create and zealously push. He deserves nothing better. “Lies! And damn Lies!” That’s what we have been drenched with for the past week or two: lie after lie, bald-faced lies, insane and patently false assertions put forth by almost the entirety of the media, assented to and propounded by nearly all our politicians (including most deer-in-the headlight “I-don’t-want-to-be-called-racist” Republicans and establishment conservatives), and now taken as dogmatic, undeniable truth that makes the claims of Infallibility by the Supreme Pontiff look like idle speculation. “Never let a crisis go to waste,” once famously said former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel. And certainly not this one which can be trotted out to accomplish a whole host of things—advance the radical left/social justice revolution (that increasingly dominates the Democratic Party) while furthering the template of the ineradicable “first sin” of America: “systemic racism.” And, more, that can be employed to maybe, just maybe, bring down President Trump, and more importantly, bring down what he supposedly represents. Now everyone from most of the talking heads over on Fox News, the Martha MacCallums, the Brian Kilmeades, the Marc Thiessens (who recently said that the riots in DC were preventing his daughter from demonstrating peacefully against racism!), to the more exalted types on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, and in The New York Time and Washington Post, has been herded onto the reservation and you can’t get off of it without being labelled and formally damned ex cathedra as a racist or defending “white privilege.” And the list of “racist” offenses—even the most innocent and rational comments which would have never drawn the slightest demurrer two weeks ago—has grown and continues to grow exponentially, day by day, it seems. Following the Dylann Roof episode in 2105, recall it was those offending Confederate monuments: symbols of slavery and racism, squawked the social justice warriors that had to come down in the name of “equality and justice.” And their cry was echoed by the “conservative establishment” in the pages of the once-conservative National Review (e.g., Rich Lowry) and on Fox News (e.g., Victor Davis Hanson and Brian Kilmeade). Just get rid of those “monuments to slavery” and everything would be okay, we were told. We warned that destroying the symbols of our heritage was only one more step in a concerted program to disavow and dismantle our Western civilization. Removing the symbols had far more profound meaning. We were right. Now it’s the fierce frontal attacks on police and law enforcement, one more step in the ongoing revolution. Oppose defunding or abolishing police forces? Why, you’re obviously a bigot and a racist. Just consider the president of the Minneapolis, Minnesota, city council, Lisa Bender. When asked what would happen if there were no police force and someone called 9-1-1 to report an emergency and violence, she responded that asking such a question most likely implied white privilege. After all, she reiterated, fumbling with her answer, “…community trust in this existing [police] department is so low that there is an urgent need for change now…we need to dismantle this department.” Or consider what happened in upscale Cary, North Carolina, filled with rich transplanted Yankees who’ve come South to escape the high taxes and mess they made up North. They brought that mess and mentality with them. Facing fierce demonstrations in that city of 80,000, the police knelt down in obeisance bowing to the mob and proceeded in ritual fashion to wash the feet of twelve of them, a Holy Thursday mockery if there ever was one. But, then, with no backing from authority, with utter cowardice from the city fathers—who fear in their bones being called “racist”—is it any wonder that law enforcement reflects that same pusillanimous behavior? While what happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis was a tragic occurrence, what has ensued has been a virtual canonization of a man who, by all accounts, was an habitual criminal, something of a drug addict, with a long record of criminal charges. But in the frenzy to proclaim Floyd’s sainthood—the untouchable “new martyr” of a radical civil rights movement mired and based in falsehood and lies about equality—just about everyone has signed on to a fake narrative: a simple case of perhaps an excessive police action (although there has been no trial and the evidence and motivations are in dispute), but no one is allowed to dissent or raise questions, even very reasonable ones. Thus Texas Governor Greg Abbott—a “conservative” Republican—who joined the disgraceful huckster Reverend Al Sharpton in Floyd’s funeral exequies, spent time with Floyd’s family declaring that they would hopefully be a “centerpiece of helping America bridge our racial divide & ensure equality, justice & fairness in America….” But, if you read the response to Abbott’s Twitter message you will also see a response from someone who knows George Floyd’s criminal record: “[Governor Abbott] did you spend any time with the family of the pregnant woman he [Floyd] held a gun to for drugs and money?” And it took a black woman, Candace Owens, on June 4, 2020, to blow the whistle on Floyd and his dark and seamy criminal past, and to do it fearlessly while almost all white conservatives and Republicans shivered in fear in the tall grass or hoped to somehow convince the farther Left social justice mob that they, too, were fighting even more strenuously against racism in memory of the sainted George Floyd. Owen’s eighteen minute podcast was still up on Youtube the last I looked, including the account of how Floyd pointed a gun at a woman’s unborn fetus and threatened to kill them both. Here is the access link. It’s a riveting commentary. But who knows if the zealous and fanatical “woke” censors won’t take it down and ban it? (It had over six million views as of June 13, 2020.) Notice, also, in particular her precise and correct use of statistics, official government stats which even appeared in The Washington Post, which give the lie—another big one—to the rampant view that somehow the police have engaged in a “war” against blacks, in particular black males. That charge, propagated in every news outlet, from CNN to my local leftwing garbage dispenser, WRAL-TV, is now established truth: you cannot question it, you can only accept it and accede to the new religious cult that makes the frenzied Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre seem like child’s play. But there is very little evidence to support the assertion of never-ending racist attacks by police on innocent blacks—just ten cases documented for 2019. On June 5, Dr. Heather MacDonald, author of the book The War on Cops, appeared on Fox to discuss the narrative that there is a huge wave of police murdering unarmed black people, stating: “The irony is it is The Washington Post's own database [which] collects the statistics…[that documents] a police officer is 18 and a half times more likely to be murdered by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be murdered by a cop, or killed by a cop.” All of this, of course, is not really important to pro-demonstrators Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, and General “Mad Dog” Mattis…or to ambitious anti-Southern Nikki Haley (AKA, Nimrata Randhawa), who would just love to replace Donald Trump at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue supported by a “delivered” GOP, saved from all those uncouth “deplorables” and once more back in the manicured, secure hands of the Republican/conservatives elites. So, they harshly condemn “systemic racism” or march like Romney with the “peaceful rioters” in Washington DC. Like all compromisers and cowards historically, the Romneys and others of his ilk think they can temporize and “engage” with the radicals. But the radicals have sheer and unbounded conviction on their side, while Romney is little more than a cipher for intellectual and moral decrepitude and cowardice, an embarrassing example of those who will—as all others of such praxis in history—perish just the same at the hands of the revolutionaries, despite their craven surrender. The words of Irish poet William Butler Yeats (in his poem, “The Second Coming”) come once more to mind, words written shortly after the end of the Great War, the horribly destructive conflagration of 1914-1918:
I am not at all sanguine about our prospects, about the future of the American republic. There can be NO compromise with pure evil, with the forces which openly deny Natural and Divine Positive Law, which destroy our civilization and now parade fiercely in the streets in opposition to everything held dear in Christian and Western tradition.
Our prospects look grim. Yet, we hold fast to our God-given and inherited convictions. As President Jefferson Davis said eight years after the end of the War for Southern Independence: “Truth crushed to earth is truth still and like a seed will rise again.” Increasingly, I try to avoid news-binging, watching assiduously all the compiled, feculent bilge that passes for news reporting these days, those authorized “stories” fed to us like tasteless, industrial-strength pablum to non-rational infants, or more, to non compos mentis inmates of the giant asylum which is what our country is quickly becoming. Viewing just a few minutes of Fox’s coverage of the reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this past week, I was struck by the essential sameness of what could have been seen—and was, in fact, seen—over on MSNBC or even CNN. First, the cries and jeremiads about “racism”: Will we ever overcome that “problem” which seems to be endemic in our history, in our character, the broadcasters exclaimed in virtual unison? Then, the hand-wringing about the destruction of property, the “wrong way to express revulsion at Floyd’s death,” again said by almost all the pundits, although a few of the more exalted social justice types at CNN expressed degrees of sympathy for the rioters (after all they were just exhibiting their “justified rage”). Just as for CNN and MSNBC, Fox has its own agenda, which goes like this: “racism” exists; it violates the “Ideal of America” and the American Founding wherein to quote the Declaration of Independence (and they fatally misunderstand its meaning), “all men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”; the Democrats have historically opposed “equality” and “equal rights” for minorities (cf. the ignorant musings of Dinesh D’Souza); and, so, only Republicans and “conservatives” can actually realize that Ideal of Equality. Yet, that whole conversation is tragically misconceived, based on an almost complete misunderstanding of human nature, American history, and the very founding of the old American republic. Our Founders and Framers loathed egalitarianism. They knew—and foresaw—the ravages and destruction it would cause if ever imposed or enacted into laws of the republic. Equality does not exist in nature, does not exist under Natural Law, and attempts to legislate it are bound not only to fail, but cause tremendous and perhaps fatal consequences to the society where it is imposed. It has been the objective of restless revolutionaries for centuries to get people to reject Nature and to reject the God-given order that must exist if a stable and moral society exist. Simply because my neighbor has more property and possessions than I, does not mean that I have the “right” to go seize them at my pleasure. I have only the “right,” indeed, the obligation to work hard and use my intelligence, and, as St. Matthew tells us in the Parable of the Talents, to achieve to the fullest what pertains to me (and not to anyone else but me). In so doing, I accomplish what God has allowed me in this life, and which should not and must not be compared invidiously to the achievements of anyone else. The great accomplishment of the history of revolutionary madness, whether of the Cromwellian variety, of the French Revolution, of the Soviets, or, indeed, of our modern social justice “insaniacs,” has been to convince vast numbers of our population that orders in society, the inherent natural inequality is somehow wrong, or as we hear now on all networks and from almost all pundits, “racist.” Yet, that natural inequality in no way inhibits a man’s essential and real, God-given dignity (again, re-read the Parable of the Talents). What happened in the streets of Minneapolis (and elsewhere) after a single (and rare) example of one policeman’s use of excessive force was not a sign of the reaction against “institutional racism” lurking just beneath the surface, but of an intellectually corrupted population, infected by generations of egalitarian venom, being told constantly by our cultural and political elites that they are victims. And, also, in a very real sense an invitation to rebel against the laws of Nature and of God. Can any society, any social order survive in this template? Is civil life and comity possible when large portions of that society reject its very bases and foundations? Ilana Mercer in her excellent nationally-syndicated column of May 28, 2020, writes “…courtesy of its globalist elites, America is no longer a society, much less a serious one…And America, it's fair to say, is no longer a people in any meaningful way; it is a Walmart with missiles, where [we direct] fusillades at one another.” I have written previously about the potential, even probable break-up of the creaky old American nation. What has happened on the streets of major American cities in recent days has far less to do with an imagined “institutional racism” than with the fact that there is no longer anything, other than perhaps geography, that binds us all together. A (decreasing) portion of our citizenry still believes in the old traditions and standards, and in that Natural Law that produced our fragile experiment in constitutional republicanism; but a large (and growing) portion rejects that inheritance and has joined in the immemorial rebellion against God and Nature. Between the two there can be no peace. In such a conflict one side must win, the other lose…either that, or they must separate. No nation can continue this way for long, no nation can avoid the essential questions and the ironclad laws of Nature itself. Ironic, isn't it? Abe Lincoln pushed the United States into a war to suppress the South in the name of Union, but what he really did was set into motion the conditions for the massive disturbances and disunion—now spiraling out of control—which cannot be stopped. Secession, anyone? It came in the form of a letter; I could read from the return address who it was from. But the handwriting, so distinctive, was not his, and immediately I thought, was this news sad news, maybe of his death? After all I knew he was well into his 80s. And when I opened the long envelope, there was the program for the memorial service and a short personal note from his wife, Barbara: my dear friend, former history professor, and actual first “mentor,” Eugene Earnhardt had passed away on February 4 of this year after battles with several insuperable illnesses, a few days shy of his 86th birthday. Shocked—although I suppose I shouldn’t have been—I immediately telephoned Barbara who lives in a retirement cluster near Asheville. And we had a moving, emotional conversation that lasted for about an hour. You see Gene Earnhardt was my first history professor in my freshman year for undergraduate studies at Pfeiffer University, and he was pivotal in how I would lead the rest of my life and the choices I would make. Not just that but he was an incredibly talented writer and writing stylist, for whom the written word was special: he could not abide what he called “purple prose,” pomposity, or literary laziness…or silly political correctness. I recall the first paper I wrote for him—I still have it somewhere stored away. It was a discussion of the old conservative movement of the 1950s, including writers and thinkers like Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter, and a few others. When I got my paper back, I got an A-, but the whole thing was marked up, bloodied in red, with comments like: “too many words to say what you mean,” “poorly phrased,” and “this paragraph should come later.” In conferences with Gene, he painstakingly gave me pointers on how better to express myself in writing, how better to make things flow and make better sense. All that was really fundamental for a young 18 year old college freshman, and I like to think that it was his dedication to his art, to teaching and instruction, that was responsible. But I know now, after fifty years of friendship after those undergrad days, that it was also because he saw something in me worth cultivating and alimenting and assisting…and because of a natural bond of friendship and respect that began back then and continued on for five more decades. But Gene was pivotal in another way, even more important and critical for me. For back in my senior year of high school I had become acquainted with the works of conservative scholar, Dr. Russell Kirk, and for Christmas 1965 I asked my parents for a selection of books by him, including his seminal, The Conservative Mind. I was enthralled and much taken by “the Sage of Mecosta” Michigan (as he was known), by his elaborate detailing and defense of a usable Anglo-American past, of our Anglo-American heritage and constitutional traditions, which he termed “conservative.” Not only that, he seemed to comprehend and express eloquently the thinking of that tradition and its major figures, beginning with Edmund Burke and continuing on through men such as John Randolph, John C. Calhoun, Benjamin Disraeli, Robert H. Taft, and T. S. Eliot, among others. So when I got to Pfeiffer and in one of my first meetings with Gene Earnhardt, I mentioned Kirk. And, amazingly, he replied: “A few years ago I sailed across the Atlantic to England, and he was on board, and we became friends.” Then, he suggested to abet my enthusiasm that I should write Kirk directly, which is exactly what I did that Fall in a long and rambling letter. I then more or less forget that…that is, until I received a response, postmarked Mecosta, Michigan, and from Dr. Kirk. I recall a phrase from that letter to this day. He wrote that Richard Nixon had requested to see him, and that “he has never listened much to what I have to say, and I doubt he will this time, either.” You can imagine my sensation. That letter began a conversation—a correspondence—that lasted almost until Russell Kirk’s death in April 1994. But not just by mail: my senior year at Pfeiffer I was in charge of the visiting speakers program (can anyone imagine that now!?), and I was able to bring him down to the college for several days, including a speech and a round-table. Later, he invited me to be his personal assistant during the year 1971-1972, opening up undreamed of opportunities and introducing me to individuals who would exercise additional and significant influence in my formation and life. After Pfeiffer I was off to the University of Virginia, awarded a Thomas Jefferson Fellowship to study under the late Jefferson biographer, Merrill Peterson. And, again, it was Gene Earnhardt who assisted me critically in preparing for that step. I took his American intellectual history course and a course in historiography, both of which were important as I went from a small college to a large university. Without his guidance, his advice, and his friendship, I doubt I would have done that or made those career changes. And after grad school our friendship continued. Occasionally, I would stop by the little town of New London where Gene and Barbara lived and spend a night and rekindle our discussions and profound friendship. Sometimes when Gene and Barbara would come to the Raleigh area to visit Gene’s brother, we would have lunch together. In every meeting, it was like old and good friends joining together once again. But I was always the student, and he always the teacher. Finally, about four or five months ago I telephoned Gene to see how he was doing. By then he and Barbara had settled into a retirement community. He had, I knew, some health issues. But I simply wanted to express to him, again, my continuous and unceasing appreciation and thanks for all he had done for me, the direction he had imparted, the patient and sage advice, and, perhaps now most of all, the deep and abiding friendship, the kind of bond and love that comes from God Himself and in which we also learn the best parts of our humanity. I tried to express this, these thoughts, to Barbara when we talked; I am not sure that I was able…words are not always easily found in these situations. But somehow I think she knows. And my dear friend and first “mentor,” Eugene Earnhardt, now at rest and at peace in the fellowship of Our Lord, knows. Old friend, teacher, exemplar, guide—thank you! Rest in peace. |
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
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