Years ago, wise scientists established that the optimum carrying capacity for the U.S. was a 200,000,000 population. The population is now 380,000,000, the increase almost entirely due to immigration. The larger population is certain to bring a lower standard of living. It is already happening.
Republicans are doing what they always do. Reverting to their old mode of empty respectability. I am receiving every other day expensive colour flyers telling me that Trump can’t win the Presidential election and a vote for him will be a certain guarantee for Biden’s re-election. “We need a new leader.” They say zero about who would be a better candidate or what his platform would be. It is just like Jeb Bush’s advertising in 2016. We were told that he was a tough man that would solve our problems. Nothing about how he was to do this. Just trust the candidate of the respectable party. This is not politics---it is simply calculated marketing. The Republican leadership has not caught on that the grassroots has changed. Or maybe they know it but still think their old trick will work another time and keep them in power and profit. They neither know nor care about what might really be done to save the country. They can only spout pre-fabricated platitudes and ignore every real problem that besets our ailing society. Think about how strange (and revealing) this is. We have a party leadership whose only platform is tearing down their most popular leader. The election of the new Speaker of the House is evidence of the same thing. This fellow said at the time it happened that George Floyd had been murdered. He had seen it on television. What more evidence is needed that he is a shallow, opportunistic man, like most Republican Congresspersons. He was simply saying what the party marketers, anxious to get on the popular side of the Floyd incident, told him to say. Even worse, this fellow seems to belong to one of the more ignorant branches of evangelism, which means he has no knowledge of history and no respect for the Constitution or American tradition. Contrary to Lispy Graham, I am not aware of having any brothers and sisters in Israel. RIC. Russia, Iran, China. Three countries that our vain and shallow rulers are provoking and the media are working to turn us against - not too hard because Americans in general know nearly nothing about the rest of the world and the little that they know is wrong. All three of these countries have been developing well economically at a rate far greater than the U.S., despite American sanctions and sabotage. All of them have lifted a great part of their population out of traditional poverty into middle-class status. Generally, their people are satisfied with their regimes and their leaders. Two of them have militaries that honest experts say that the U.S. might not be able to go up against. They all know that American leadership is decadent and weak. Compare that to the way we are now.
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Russia, which suffered decades of atheist dictatorship, is trying hard to become once more a Christian country. The U.S., once a Christian country, is trying hard to get rid of Christianity. Since classical times it has been observed that good rulers exhibit four virtues---wisdom, prudence, justice, and courage. How is that working out for our rulers these days? Most of them would not even know what you were talking about if you told them this. Congresspersons no longer represent their people except in petty ways. They represent their party and the government establishment because that is the best way to preserve their prestige, power, and pelf. John Taylor of Caroline told us long ago that a rich government is not the same thing as a happy people. The wonderful martyred Daria Dugin wrote that politics, economics, psychology, and religion must always be considered together---they are inseparable. Our rulers and press are adept at harping on separate issues. But Joe Biden’s failures are all related to the same diseased psychology. By separating out economics, social questions, foreign affairs etc. politicians and media are able to keep the people diverted. The only real political question is---the health of the commonwealth. Red State Americans understand this instinctively if not consciously. We sense and feel that things are not as they should be---that our rulers lack legitimacy and any real concern for us. That is beyond specific issues. That is what the young fellow was singing in “Rich Men North of Richmond.” That is why people cheer for Donald Trump: he seems to get it, at least somewhat. One high (appointed) government muckety-muck recently declared that Americans have a duty to support the Ukraine. I am pretty familiar with the Constitution and I don’t remember that being authorised. Where exactly do these people get the right to tell me what my moral duty is? I had no chance to vote for or against them. It would be a little more convincing if their commands to others cost them personally in blood or treasure. How are we now? A great many Americans can’t detect Satan gloating over the medical mutilation of children. What did Nancy Reagan ever do to deserve a commemorative postage stamp? Isn’t it a bit strange that so many Protestant clergy are slavishly devoted to a foreign country that is neither American nor Christian? Why does every single European new television series always have a favourably portrayed black person in the first five minutes? And an interracial love affair, often rather implausible, by the second episode? According to official U.S. policy, Confederates were fighting to preserve slavery. Therefore everything representing memory of the Confederacy has to be exorcised. This is a childish lie. In order to establish that the Confederacy was fighting to preserve slavery you have to postulate that the North was fighting to abolish slavery. Confederates were fighting against a vicious invasion that threatened to abolish the self-government that their forefathers had won just a generation or two before. Northerners were fighting for conquest of people and resources. A couple of phone booths could contain all the Northern soldiers who thought they were risking their lives for the good of black people. In fact, slavery was not the foremost consideration in the mind of either side. A regime that is expunging many of the noblest parts of its history on the basis of a lie is not a good regime. The assumption that slavery is the explanation for the bloodiest and most destructive war in our history comes from the same impulse that creates the 1619 Project atrocity. The lie puts black people at the center of American history, and that is not true. The story of America is much bigger and more positive. American history is the story of the conquest of a continental wilderness, establishment of free institutions, and a prosperity that was once (although no longer) the envy of the world. African American history is a sidebar to that great story which could have happened without them. The rule of Joe Biden is starting to look like a character in a comic farce, although a dangerous one. I have been trying for years to think what Hillary Clinton reminds me of. It has finally come to me. She is a snobbish sorority sister who likes to boss people around. That is all she has ever been. Mainstream Republicans have not learned anything. They are incapable of change because so far their phony act has brought them power, perks, and pelf. They have posed as the conservative alternative while giving no thought to doing anything if they win.
They have not grasped why Donald Trump laid low a whole dozen of their groomed empty suit preferences. They are now presenting for President another dozen of the exact same type. I am getting their slick propaganda regularly now. It has one theme---attacking Donald Trump. The message is Trump will lose the election to Biden. We cannot allow that to happen! There is not the least word about what program or policy is to be followed or what marvelous candidate is to replace him. This has been the standard play of mainstream Republicans for several decades now. We must rally around and defeat the evil Democrats. What exactly they are to do when they win is never discussed. This is not politics---it is advertising. You have to give it to the leftists. Many of them actually believe what they say. This is never true of Republicans. They get talking points from the party headquarters for the campaigns advertising their candidacy. Then they pose and posture for the (hostile) press. From its very inception almost two centuries ago, the Republican party has been the single greatest obstacle to genuine government of, by, and for the people. At my age one begins to wonder about what you did well and where you went wrong in a long life. Accomplishments: I have never been to Atlantic City, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, or Las Vegas. I have had to endure Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle only once. On the downside, I have been to New York and Washington way too many times, though always at the call of duty. And I have seen a good deal of England, Scotland, France, Spain, and Italy - the last in the company of the lovely and gifted webmistress of Reckonin. I have never been to a “professional” (i.e., commercial) sporting event. I have never been to a rock concert. However, I did get to see Brother Dave Gardner and Hank Williams Jr. live. On the latter occasion I was so naïve that somebody had to explain to me what that funny scent in the air was. And I’ll add Joan Baez, for whatever it’s worth. I have been privileged to know some outstanding people who have enriched me immeasurably. I mention only those who are no longer with us: Mel Bradford, Tom Landess, Russell Kirk, Murray Rothbard, Joel Williamson, Eugene Genovese, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Matt Bruccolli, Jim Meriwether. I can’t claim any friendship, but at least I have had in-person conversation with George Garrett, Cleanth Brooks, and Pat Buchanan. I have been very fortunate indeed. Let’s not discuss where I went wrong. It was originally said that the state heritage preservation act did not apply to the Calhoun monument because it was designed to protect only soldiers' monuments. A new suit has been launched against the vandals of the Columbia city government to include Calhoun in the protected persons. Clyde Wilson, along with others submitted a sworn statement to support the suit: COMES NOW, Clyde Wilson, first duly sworn, who deposes and states as follows: I was awarded the Ph.D by the University of North Carolina in 1971. I was a member of the faculty of the History Department of the University of South Carolina-Columba for 34 years, retiring as Distinguished Professor. Among other activities I was the primary editor of The Papers of John C. Calhoun, a documentary editing and publication project which ran from the 1950s to 2005, when I published the 28th and final volume. These 28 volumes included the letters, speeches, and writings of Calhoun as completely as possible. In the 1950s the National Historical Publications and Records Commission recommended documentary publication projects for select early American leaders---Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Clay, Webster, and John C. Calhoun. The University of South Carolina undertook the project for Calhoun and continued to support the project to its end, as did the NHPRC. The South Carolina Department of Archives and History also provided support. Scholarly reviewers wrote of the quality and importance of The Papers of John C. Calhoun. In 1959 a U.S. Congressional committee chaired by future President John F. Kennedy named Calhoun as one of the 5 most important Senators in American history. Kennedy included a complimentary comment on Calhoun in his book, Profiles in Courage (1956). In 1951 the Pulitzer Prize for Biography was awarded to Margaret Coit’s sympathetic book, John C. Calhoun: American Portrait. In a long-term and international perspective, Calhoun’s importance in history is great. He is the most important person ever produced by South Carolina. He held most of the high offices of the federal government, legislative and administrative, for 40 years, 1811—1850. Beyond this, Calhoun is one of the very few political leaders who has been recognized as one of the most important political philosophers in U.S. history. His “A Disquisition on Government” is still studied and praised worldwide today. British, Italian, and Japanese scholars have written about him, among others. Even if we discount all else, Calhoun’s role in American military history justifies a memorial. In regard to both war and peacetime defense his role was very important and one must say almost heroic. He first came to public attention protesting against the U.S. government’s lack of response to highhanded British interference with American ships, stopping them on the high seas and seizing sailors into their own Navy. Response was necessary both for national honor and defense of our citizens. This stand caused his neighbors to send him to the U.S. House of Representatives in his twenties. In his first speech in the House, against the opponents of action, he was called “one of those masters spirits who stamp their image on the age in which they live.” He drafted the declaration of war for the House. For Calhoun his responsibility was only beginning. In legislation and debate he played a foremost role during the war. He was called “the young Hercules who carried the war on his shoulders.” The most important aspect of Calhoun’s role in the military is his eight year service as Secretary of War from age 35 to 42. The War Department was the largest and most far-flung part of the government. It ended the war in organizational and financial chaos, inefficiency, and the need to reduce it to peacetime size. President Monroe had offered the position to several prominent men who turned it down. It required a lot of hard work with little likelihood to enhance prestige. But Calhoun, feeling a responsibility for the effects of the war and for national defense, took on what was regarded as an impossible and thankless job. His service as Secretary of War (covered in volumes 2—9 of The Papers of John C. Calhoun) is generally regarded as the most outstanding of any man in earlier American history. There is no question that he built a force that greatly aided the victories of the U.S. army in the Mexican War and the Civil War. Calhoun reorganized Army administration into a system of bureaus---commissary, quartermaster, ordnance, engineers, medical, and others, placed the ablest officers in charge and required accountability from them. This system was copied in Europe. He planned and saw built the system of Atlantic and Gulf coastal defenses that remained important up to at least World War I. The prestige and importance of West Point dates from this period. Calhoun raised entrance requirements and put the best officers in charge. The institution not only provided military skill and knowledge but was long the best college in the U.S. for engineering and administrative training. Calhoun’s goal in these reforms was to provide a small peacetime army that was quickly expandable in case of need. Able officers and organization could mobilize the eager American volunteers who would appear to support a just cause. Most West Point men served a few years in the army and then went into private engineering and industry, a great help to building up the country. His service of Secretary of War was so outstanding that both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, who agreed on nothing else, accepted Calhoun as Vice President in 1824. In 1844 President Tyler appointed Calhoun Secretary of State. During one year he negotiated a peaceful settlement of the contentious Oregon Territory issues, establishing the U.S./Canadian boundary where it has remained. He also undertook negotiations that would guarantee that Texas would join the Union as a State. On the Mexican War Calhoun’s mature statesmanship provides perhaps much wisdom for future generations. While supporting and praising the Army, he sat silent in the vote on a declaration of war. He believed that President Polk had brought on war by provoking an unnecessary border incident. This was a very bad precedent. A state of war came into existence without a Congressional declaration. He also warned against imperialism—taking over foreign peoples and governments. This was bound to destroy republican freedom. I am a year older than Mitch McConnell but am a lot smarter (as well as better-looking). Same goes for Joe Biden, now and always.
The U.S. now has two holidays for African Americans (one of them fraudulent) and only one for the founders of the country. What I have noticed recently in streaming television shows (mostly intelligent European ones): ads for HIV drugs showing gloriously happy sodomites. I have also noticed that in every show, in the first 5-10 minutes, there will invariably appear an admirable black person, no matter how irrelevant to the country or the plot. This is nearly universal for recent shows in European countries. In one Iceland police series, white supremacists were being evil to an African immigrant. Happy sodomite couples also invariably appear in almost every series as an everyday matter. Is somebody trying to tell us something? The great Wendell Berry teaches a lesson for us in these degraded and threatening times on the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is merely a program, hope is a Christian duty. Just before the War for Southern Independence, the great William Gilmore Simms wrote: “The virtues of a people depend very much on the incorruptible integrity of language.” In this light consider the current babblings of our politicians, advertisers, bureaucrats, college presidents, leading clergyman, “experts.” The old idea of integrity - that you should say what you mean and mean what you say - has disappeared from American discourse. It is worth reminding ourselves who is “the Father of Lies,” the first corruptor of language. In his nonfiction speeches and essays Faulkner made a similar point. What he was hearing in America was not words but rather “mouth sounds.” Speaking of Faulkner, he said his favourite things were horses, trees, and silence. While I am not remotely on the same level and have never been fortunate enough to deal with horses, I got the other two right Americans, I don’t know how many or what percentage, live in a media “news” world that is totally distorted as to facts and emphasis, suppresses important things, and often lies.
Our politics are not likely to change until a large audience gets some real information. What percentage of voters actually know about Biden’s criminal son? 10 per cent? About the corruption of the Ukranian regime we are supporting? About our falling behind China in technology and productivity; about the violent crimes of Antifa and BLM that judges and prosecutors have excused? About the power that the foreign dubious billionaire George Soros now exercises over our courts? About the shoddiness of the prosecutions against President Trump and the people who are pushing them? Tucker Carlson’s success has indicated the existence of a great thirst for real news. There are opinion print and online journals that do great work in bringing out the truth, but at most they reach a few hundred thousand people. Many “conservatives” still subscribe to National Review that long ago betrayed our cause. Let’s suppose we had a television/internet service that could do real reporting. Such a service need only be on two hours in the evening news slot. This is doable. Probably Trump could fund this himself, or a few other well-heeled genuine Red Staters. It does not need advertising. Imagine what a one-hour factual documentary on Hunter Biden or Soros could do for public enlightenment. The news, of course, would have to be thorough and highly competent, but the main point would be to report on what the “mainstream media” distorts by emphasis and lies. And here is the most important point. The managers and reporters have to be dedicated to the purpose of the channel, new people for the national scene. . The people with the knowledge and the energy are there but they will have to be found. It will be useless and self-defeating to take people who have already been acculturated in the regular media. You have to have the right non-Establishment people. We know how that worked out with Reagan and Trump. Reagan was captured by the Republican establishment even before his first day in office. The result was that the government that he had promised to rein in became more bloated than ever and social policies more leftist. We perhaps need to be reminded that Trump entered office without knowing how to find the right people. His administration ended in a debacle brought on by his own party elite who wanted as badly as the Democrats. My South Carolina Election Board recently queried me. They noticed that I had not voted in a while. Was I still alive and at the same address? I answered affirmatively. I was pleased to see that they were so much on the ball. And they were right---I had lost interest in voting some time back. I was tired of being a loser, even when my candidate won. I voted for Goldwater in 1964 and Wallace in 1968. I never had any trust in Nixon, nor in any Bush, major or minors. I voted for a winner, Reagan (once) in 1980, although I already knew that with Bush on the ticket the Establishment had a rope around his neck and we would never see the promised reforms. The promised reduction of government was turned on its head. I punched a hole for Buchanan in 2000. To tell the truth, I can’t remember whether I bothered to vote for Trump in 2016. I figured I had done my duty by writing good stuff about his candidacy. And I was happy that the Yankee dude had easily demolished a dozen empty-suit pygmies that were touted as the best and brightest of the Republican party. Another Bush would have meant certain death for the country. But as soon as I saw Pence on the ticket I knew that the Establishment had things under control and the grassroots rebellion had no chance. This conclusion was quickly confirmed by Trump’s top appointments. So, as for voting, I was tired of the whole thing and sure that my little act was irrelevant. For added irritation, just on my way from the polling place not too long ago, a young policeman pulled me over. There was a very light rain and I was guilty of not having on my headlights. The home of the brave and the land of the free. Politicians are astir about the importance of our “early” Republican primary in South Carolina. I am too bewildered to even know what to do. I would like Trump to win. I long ago lost any faith in him. I can’t see that he has learned anything that would make him a better Chief Executive. But he has all the right enemies, is the only contender with a real grassroots following, and we can entertain a desperate hope that he might actually do something. Anyway, I can’t see that the voting will make any difference at all. No matter the vote totals, Establishment Republicans and Democrat vote stealers will make sure that the candidate of the “deplorables” never gets in. DeSantis started to look good for a while. He talked the talk and even walked the walk a little bit now and then. Now I am receiving every other day large, slick, coloured mailings on his behalf. These are exactly like the ones I get from Lispey Graham whenever he is up. They smack of money---Establishment? Adelson? DeSantis may be thinking he is helping himself but he is acting like a tool of the Republicans’ ruling politicians. The message I am receiving is less pro-DeSantis than it is anti-Trump. We are warned that Trump will lose and carry the whole party down with him. Why should I care about saving the Republican party? I have been writing for 40 years that it is the biggest obstacle that exists to any conservative success. The best thing that Trump has done, as my friend Ilana Mercer has pointed out, is to shake up our smug rulers. The empty shell of the Republican party is breaking into fragments. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of frauds. I am tempted to vote in the Democratic primary for RFK Jr. The poor guy has the same voice trouble I have, he tells the truth now and then, and it might damage Biden. I hope our Reckonin readers are not like the naïve run of Americans who actually believe that elections are honest. There has never been a completely honest election. Why should politicians, psychopaths seeking power over others for whom they have contempt, behave honestly when they have so much at risk? (“I feel your pain.”) Government of, by, and for the people? American are blissfully ignorant of how many time men have got into the White House with less than 50% of the popular vote. (I am not criticizing the Electoral College that the Founders designed as an exercise in high statesmanship. That was destroyed by the tricks of party operatives long ago.) Facts: Presidents who were elected without a majority popular vote: 1824, J.Q. Adams 30.9%; 1844, Polk, 49.5%; 1848, Taylor, 47.3%; 1856, Buchanan, 45.3%, 1860, Lincoln, 39.9%; 1876,Hayes, 48%, (win stolen for him by Congressional Republicans against the winning candidate); 1880, Garfield, 48.3%, (with only a .01 count over his opponent); 1884, Cleveland, 48.5 %; 1888, Harrison, 47.8%; 1892, Cleveland, 46.1 %; 1912, Wilson, 41.8%; 1916, Wilson, 49.2%; 1948 Truman, 49.4%; 1960, Kennedy, 49.7 (stolen for him in Chicago); 1968, Nixon, 43.4%; 1992, Clinton, 43%; 1996, Clinton 49.2%; 2000, little Bush, 47.9%, (stolen for him in court); 2016, Trump, 46%; 2020, Biden, (stolen). In some cases, these minority Presidents were catastrophes, especially Lincoln, Wilson, and little Bush. A good many other Presidents, some considered popular, never got beyond the 50-52% range. College girls had to sign in and out of their women-only dormitories and had a curfew.
College students today have cars and apartments. Hardly seen in my day. Whether it is better or worse for education, I don’t know. They are not tied down to campus like they used to be. College is now a part-time thing for most students and classes and studying is a sideline from more important activities. Many have outside jobs. The academic week lasted through midday Saturday, and both academic semesters were weeks longer than they are now. These days professors and students conspire together to do as little as possible. Contact lenses were an entirely new thing. The university cafeteria provided a solid meal for 35 cents. There were still a lot of adult veterans who were students so the atmosphere was different than later. I imagine that was the reason that at Chapel Hill in 1959 I witnessed the last great “panty raid.” Most of us really attended lectures and really studied although we had a lot of hangovers. Professors were conscientious and knew their subjects. Many were old fashioned Southern liberals but were more interested in learning than ideological conversion. The imported carpetbag Communists were a minority but a definitely growing one. Like William Buckley’s good friend Allard Lowenstein. There is a lot of evidence these days that more intelligent students don’t believe their professors and just perform dreary regurgitation to get through with it. Most students in my day were still in-state, from traditional North Carolina families. Most of the imports were affluent New Jerseyans and basketball players from the northeast. Chapel Hill was reputed to be the most “liberal” university in the South. I remember distinctly in 1963 I was walking across a quad of dormitories with open widows. Walter Cronkite, “the most trusted man in America,” was reporting on the radio that rightwing extremists had assassinated Kennedy in Dallas. The response of students to the news was hearty cheering out the windows! Everybody I knew enjoyed hearing Jesse Helms broadcast from Raleigh every evening. In the late 60s rich Yankees began to arrive and stage “civil rights” demonstrations that mostly harassed hard working small business owners. The women also seduced black janitors, usually to their bewilderment. Carpetbag faculty and administrators multiplied rapidly from Great Society subsidies. They were mostly disdainful of the students and locals. My favourite evening place was a redneck bar where you could get a hotdog for a quarter and a draft Michelob for 35 cents. There were really a lot of top-rate and controversial speakers and a lively intellectual atmosphere among students who cared about such things. I heard Buckley, Russell Kirk, Gerald Ford, Malcolm X, Billy Graham, and the leader of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. My attempt to start something at the university where I later taught was received with complete indifference by faculty. Unchallenged liberal mediocrity was the preferred atmosphere. It was newsworthy a few years ago that the UNC monument to the students who were Confederate soldiers was defaced and torn down. There used to be a big portrait in the library of our distinguished alumni General James Johnston Pettigrew. CSA. In another building there was a beautiful mural of Tar Heels at Gettysburg, painted with real young North Carolina men as models. I don’t want to know what has happened to them. Chapel Hill was still a pleasant village in those days. Now it is an overbuilt, expensive city, surrounded by gated communities for retired Yankees who wanted to settle in a place with “culture.” |
AuthorClyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews Archives
April 2024
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