My friend Carl Jones shared this today in a Facebook thread: “How many churches will play ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ tomorrow across the South, unaware that the song is un-Christian, rejects the salvation of Christ, and celebrates the murder of Southerners by the terrorist, John Brown?“ “’His terrible swift sword’ refers, not to the armor of God, but to the sword that Brown used in Kansas to hack a family to death in the middle of the night after he and his sons had dragged them from their homes. Their crime? They were Southern.“ “Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the song, was a Unitarian, not a Christian. Unitarianism rejects the Holy Trinity and regards Christ not as the Son of God, but as a prophet. The line in the song ‘as Christ died to make men Holy let us die to make men free’ is a celebration of war and likewise reflects the Unitarian belief that Christ’s work on the Cross was not complete, and that it was up to men to purify the world and free it from sin. I’m scratching the surface with regards to the message of this song, but suffice it to say it is not Patriotic and it certainly is not ‘Christian.‘” A knowledgeable commenter noted, “The tune is ‘John Brown’s Body,’ John Brown, of course, being a hero of Mrs. Howe’s.” And John Brown, of course, being the original American terrorist. “That, in turn, was originally a hymn called, ‘Say, Brothers, Shall We Meet You on Canaan’s Happy Shore.'” Yep, glamorizing a murderous maniac, stealing, destroying, and then forcing a sinister progressive product down our throats: it’s the Yankee way! I’ve written previously about the meaning of the reconstructed song and the evil of the New England crusader mindset which is craftily woven within it. Other Southerners have also described well that it’s “nothing more than a clever work of wartime abolitionist propaganda that has ever so slowly found its way into mainstream America.” Many smart Christians too don’t sing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” due to its anti-Christian theology and its blasphemous lyrics and intent. But not all Americans agree. One dissenter within Jones’ thread remarked: “I will sing this hymn in church tomorrow with great gusto and tremendous appreciation for all those who have fought and died and continue to do so – for our blessed freedom. No other place on earth is like this, warts and all.” Jones replied: “She seems to have an emotional attachment to this song and as a result is willing to discard facts in order to support her preferred beliefs. That’s her call, but it’s sorta like those who disregard the original intent of the law in order to shape it into what they prefer it to mean. There’s no logic to her position.” I agree wholeheartedly. So, if you must sing any “Battle Hymn” this weekend or on Monday’s Fourth of July holiday, perhaps you should try out Mark Twain’s version. It’s way more logical regarding our current cultural crises and more factual historically. The grapes of wrath are indeed ripe in 2022, so let’s be astute, seize the moment to secede from the status quo this Independence Day, and cancel Howe’s bloodthirsty hymn once and for all. This piece was published on DissidentMama.net on July 2, 2022.
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“What has given the South her identity are those beliefs and qualities which she has absorbed from the Scriptures and from her own history of defeat and violation: a distrust of the abstract, a sense of human dependence on the grace of God, and a knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured,” remarked author Flannery O’Connor in “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” “Saint Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. And this is what the fiction writer, on his lower level, attempts to do also.” I’m no fiction writer nor am I Catholic, but I am a journalist and an Orthodox Christian. And I am Southern born and bred just like Ms. O’Connor, so I can relate to O’Connor’s (little-o) orthodox sentiments, on both a cultural and a spiritual level. She continued, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. That is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety.” “But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.” Like the fine modern writer Casey Chalk points out, “O’Connor’s literary objective was not to tell the world about all the good, honest people in the South. Her aim was thoroughly practical, while metaphysical: to persuade her readers of their sinfulness and desperate need for divine grace… Her stories are consequently filled with unadmirable characters meant to stoke our consciences into repentance.” While “O’Connor’s literature is a labor of love for her native South (and the world), preaching the reality of grace in a land marred by sin, pride, violence,” Chalk notes, today’s Dixie is a place “desperate for something solid and grounded, especially as we rip up and tear down monuments to our once beloved heroes. … Without saints both secular and religious, our catechesis in right living is terribly impoverished.” We Southerners are so blessed that many of our heroes — like the venerable Lee and Jackson whose birthdays we celebrate this month — weren’t just remarkable generals, fearless soldiers, and humble leaders, but they were also pious Christians. In fact, I think it is the unwavering faith of much of Dixie’s patrimony that is really the main driver of the Southern cultural genocide. All other cultural-Marxist justifications are ancillary. “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic,” O’Connor confirmed. And to the rest of dead American society, simply put: the South’s most grotesque feature is our faith. Thus, it is we devout Dixians who have become today’s freaks precisely because we view man through the theological lens. And there is no love or even empathy for us, for we are traditionalists in a postmodern world, a culture-loving collective stuck in a presentist bad dream, a Jesus people navigating the treacherous seas of a post-Christian dystopia. A thorn in the side of “progress.” Good. But due to the reconstructions imposed upon of our forebearers and those we Southerners and our progeny still face at present, we have become a fragmented and atomized people. It is what writer Walt Garlington calls the “schism in the Southern soul.” Therefore, I offer up a prayer for Dixie’s Land — a “good thing to be stuck with,” as O’Connor would say — so that all the “freaks” will be made whole through loving God. This piece was originally published on DissidentMama.net.
“This weekend’s desecration at Hollywood Cemetery is morally wrong,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney says regarding the March 12 vandalism. “Disturbing final resting places is contemptible, criminal and will not be tolerated.” Huh. Those are some pretty disingenuous statements considering the caustic comments made by the duplicitous mayor about razing the city’s many Southern monuments which honor the dead. The malevolent mayor“We’re transforming the landscape, removing symbols of injustice,” Stoney tweeted. “Meanwhile, the work doesn’t stop to transform systems built on that same hateful foundation.” Couldn’t the Hollywood vandals claim they were following the mayor’s lead and simply “transforming the landscape”? Well, he sure knows how to use his systemic power to build the hate in Virginia’s capital city (and beyond), strengthening the anti-Southern mobsters’ foundation of anarcho-tyranny. I mean, there ain’t nothing more systemically unjust than living in a society in which those that hate you hold all the power and seek to grow it through force. As an acolyte of former Virginia governor and Clinton stooge Terry McAuliffe, who quipped “there is no place for you here” to the Unite the Right protesters defending the Lee monument in Charlottesville, you’d think that Stoney would include final resting in the whole cultural-genocide campaign he and his “social justice” buddies run. The equity sham is big business, after all. And considering that Stoney calls the monuments “symbols of hate” and advises that Richmond should “tear down the system that those monuments symbolized,” aren’t those who wrecked the graveyard just following orders? Graves are memories of the dead, as are monuments. Erroneous analogiesHe continues, “Many onlookers have stated to me that it reminds them of when the Berlin Wall fell. You’re my age — I’m 39 — so images of the Berlin Wall for me are the graffitied wall fallen. We didn’t know what the words said at the time … [but] when we lifted those monuments off their pedestals, off of their platforms, it certainly felt like that moment when the Berlin Wall fell.” Yes, folks: razing monuments to famous Virginians in her capital city is akin to tearing down the geopolitical barrier put up in a country conquered by foreigners. He’s actually asserting that the fall of communism is just like today’s invaders, traitors, and despots destroying the history and tradition of the homeland natives. I can guaran-damn-tee-it that “Kill whitey,” “Racist traitor,” “KKKcops,” “Protect black trans women,” or even “Black lives matter” were nowhere to be found on the Soviet-built structure. Is Stoney’s mind so logically starved and fed with agitprop that he cannot see that he is the Soviet-style aggressor? That he himself created the climate for Hollywood’s unholy ravaging? Hell, maybe he should read my essay, “Russian lessons for Dixie.” “Failing to remove the statues now poses a severe, immediate and growing threat to public safety,” Stoney proclaimed in a statement. “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge, and protesters attempt to take down Confederate statues themselves … the risk grows for serious illness, injury, or death.” Y’all, he’s seriously saying that Richmond must cave to the violent iconoclasts in order to protect people from violence and the less than 1% mortality rate of the coof. Seems Stoney is just a self-serving man who will use any excuse to feed the neo-Bolshevik beast? Who da thunk? It’s been a long time comin’Man, how I yearn for the days of yore when Richmond wasn’t a totalitarian train wreck. In my essays “Rebel with a cause” and “Richmond: Paradox & permanence,” I’ve discussed my dismay at what has become of the place where I born and lived for the first two-plus decades of my life. Even in the ’90s, Virginia wasn’t the wretched hellscape that it is today. Although it was largely governed by Doug Wilder, the country’s first black mayor who claimed to be a moderate but was actually a progressive back then. His woke accomplishments include such gems as admitting women into the Virginia Military Institute, ridding the Battle Flag from the Virginia National Guard uniform, and removing “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” as the state song. And he’s certainly not afraid to play the racism card when he doesn’t get his way today. However, I think the 1992 Cowboy Junkies’ song “Oregon Hill” sums up the traditional/contemporary balance that Richmond used to possess. Although the band hails from Canada, the lead guitarist Michael Timmins penned the song when he was at the house of his then future wife, an alum of the city’s uber-artsy Virginia Commonwealth University and a resident of the bohemian neighborhood in which the 135-acre historic Hollywood is located. The lyrics seem to encompass the end of an era in which opposing worldviews are constantly colliding yet somehow still exist peacefully among one another. Back then, you could make a day trip to visit the United Daughters of the Confederacy where Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters flag was housed or the Virginia Capitol to see the spot where Lee accepted command of the Army of Northern Virginia in defense of his home. And that night, you could catch a live performance by GWAR or wax philosophical with Dirt Woman. But now, Jackson’s flag is gone, burned along with other historic artifacts during last summer’s riots, and Lee’s statue was removed by Yankee and scalawag political opportunists under the cover of night. Virginia’s once-unique capitol is no longer distinctive in its passion for the past and the peculiar present, but is now just generic in its iniquity and rootlessness. In his part-love-song/part-Richmond-ode, Timmins wrote: “The hoods are up on Pine Street, rear ends lifted too. The great-grandsons of General Robert E. Lee are making love with a little help from STP …Greasy eggs and bacon, bumper stickers aimed to start a fight, full gun racks, Confederate caps … A river to the south to wash away all sins. A college to the east of us to learn where sin begins. A graveyard to the west of it all which I may soon be lying in.” Hollywood’s equivocationEstablished in 1847, Hollywood houses the final resting place of three American presidents, six Virginia governors, two Supreme Court justices, 25 Confederate generals (more than any other cemetery in the country), and other prominent figures who have “significantly influenced the course of history due to their actions or opinions.” The Hollywood website adds that the location “ranks as the second most-visited cemetery in the nation, right behind Arlington National Cemetery.” There you will find a prominent 90-foot pyramid memorializing the 18,000 Confederate soldiers buried nearby. It’s made of stacked blocks of James River granite and is constructed without bonding, and was dedicated in 1869. Here’s what the cemetery has to say about the now-controversial architectural marvel: “When the pyramid was erected, Southerners still called the Civil War ‘The Lost Cause.’ Now we know that the cause was not a lost one. These men’s lives, along with those of their northern counterparts, were given to forge a single and better nation. Their blood, shed in battle, gave birth to a new America, one that in another century would restore and protect freedom around the world.” Just like Stoney, this kind of nation-statist, “America is an idea” narrative makes those who run the cemetery complicit in its destruction. Besides the imperial ideology, the mental gymnastics is ludicrous. Although they are right that it was pro-Confederate journalist Edward A. Pollard who coined the phrase in his 1866 book, “The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates,” we all know what it means now in postmodern times — slavery, oh, pardon me, “enslavement.” And those who honor their ancestors and their resistance to centralization are “lost causers,” i.e. white supremacists and Nazis. The cemetery officials are obviously trying to walk the woke tight wire while also preserving their cemetery. Instead of participating in this futile effort, they should simply reiterate the concise and compassionate words delivered at the opening of the museum of the White House of the Confederacy in 1896: “Our memorial will be here in Richmond, the heart and grave of the Confederacy, and around it hovers the immortal soul of love and of memory, which for all times will sanctify it to all true men and women. They will know that it is a memorial of no ‘Lost Cause.’ They will never believe that ‘we thought we were right,’ they will know, as we knew, that we were right, immortally right, and that the conqueror was wrong, eternally wrong. The great army of the dead is here, the sentiment of the living is here, the memories of the past are here, the monuments of the future will be here.“ “As all roads lead to Rome, so in the ages to come all ties of memory, of sentiment, of heart, and of feeling, will vibrate from Richmond. As every follower of the prophet at sunset turns his face to Mecca, and sends up a prayer for the dead and the living, so everywhere in this great South Land, which was the Confederacy, whenever the trumpet call of duty sounds, when the call to do right without regard to consequence rings over the woods and the meadows, the mountains and the valleys, the spirit of the Confederacy will rise, the dead of Hollywood and of Oakwood will stand in ranks, and their eternal memory will inspire their descendants to do right whatever it cost of life or fortune, of danger and disaster.” This piece was previously posted at DissidentMama.net on March 23, 2021. A second part, containing photos of the author's trip to Hollywood Cemetery, may be found here.
“The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form.” — Jefferson Davis A week ago today, the US Senate passed the National Defense Appropriations Act for 2021, which contained a provision that will automatically strip Confederate names from military bases. There are 10 such Army and National Guard installations spread across six states of the Southland. Out of 23 Southern senators who voted (Lindsay Graham was conspicuously absent), 18 voted for the legislation, including my two scalawag US senators, Thom Tillis and Richard Burr. Only 5 senators representing the South voted “nay,” although for most of them that had nothing to do with a principled defense of Dixie. Rand Paul was one “resistor,” who many within the Southern-without-apology movement are lauding. But let us not forget what the senator “from Kentucky” said in 2015 when defending Republican governor of SC Nimrata “Nikki” Haley‘s removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from Capitol grounds: “It’s a symbolism of slavery. And now it’s a symbol of murder for this young man, and so I think it’s time to put it in a museum,” the Pennsylvania-born Paul declared, referencing Dylann Roof. Canadian-born senator Ted Cruz was another part of this “rebel” quintet. Let us not forget what the senator “from Texas” tweeted in 2019 when slamming TN governor for supporting a day to honor Nathan Bedford Forrest: “This is WRONG … Forrest was a Confederate general & a delegate to the 1868 Democratic Convention. He was also a slave trader & the 1st Grand Wizard of the KKK.” A person who “renounces his nation and his homeland … is like one who renounces his parents: he does not have any worth and significance,” said St. Tikhon of Moscow. They’re “like a coin without an image and inscription.” At least US Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri (an Arkansas native) gets that leftists promote anti-Confederate hysteria as a tool in the “culture war.” By feeding into the uneducated anti-Dixie hate, even Southern Republicans are no friend to my people. Hell, it was 6 Texas Republican congressmen who broke ranks to vote with Democrats to remove statues of Confederates from the US Capitol. We should honor “Americans who worked to … preserve the Republic,” said Texas rep Michael Burgess, a Minnesota native. And it was a GOP-dominated legislature in Mississippi that changed the state’s flag, which featured an “offensive” Battle Flag. “We’re not moving further away from our Founding Fathers’ visions. We’re moving closer to them. We’re not destroying our heritage; we’re fulfilling it,” said the Mississippi House Speaker, who sounds not a bit different than Nancy Pelosi. “There’s no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of men of the Confederacy in any place of honor across our country,” said San Fran Nan in her recent floor speech cheering on the NDAA. “The men for whom these [military] bases were named are not heroes.” They are “white supremacists … [and] traitors who took up arms against America and killed American soldiers in defense of slavery.” This narrative is the same as Elizabeth Warren, the legacy-less poser who proposed the Confederate cleanse. “For the Trump White House to threaten vetoing a pay raise for our troops over this is downright despicable,” screeched Democrat Tammy Duckworth regarding the NDAA. Fortunately for her and the members of the US Armed Services Committee, she’ll get her cash and her forever-wars since “the Republican-controlled Senate backed the bill by 84 to 13, more than the two-thirds majority needed in the 100-member chamber to override a veto.” I mean, this puritanical-progressive madness wouldn’t have even gotten out of this GOP-controlled committee if “conservatives” had struck down the measure from the get-go. In typical Benedict Arnold fashion, all but two Republicans supported the PC stipulation. Of course Pelosi wants to relegate Robert E. Lee and other dead white men “to the crypt,” but why would so many Republicans ally with one of the most vitriolic and condescending snakes in politics? To give credit where credit is due, Trump did try to resist the onslaught and the increasing GOP capitulation, promising for months to veto the $741 billion defense bill if it included removing Confederate base names. “These monumental and very powerful bases have become part of a great American heritage, and a history of winning, victory, and freedom,” the president tweeted. “We won two world wars … that were vicious and horrible, and we won them out of Fort Bragg, we won out of all of these forts that now they want to throw those names away.” Trump is right. But the name purge that has most raised my ire is Virginia’s Fort A.P. Hill, named after my highest-ranking Confederate ancestor. In the summer of 1941, the Army training facility was established “pursuant to War Department General Order No. 5,” and by the following year, it served as “the staging area for the headquarters and corps troops of Major General George S. Patton’s Task Force A,” which was instrumental in Operation Torch. And let us not forget that “Ol’ Blood and Guts” was greatly influenced by Confederate Col. John S. Mosby, who was a friend of the Patton family. “The Gray Ghost,” as Mosby was known for expertly besieging the Yankees in guerrilla attacks and then fading into the countryside, would often play war games with the future WWII icon. In WWII, “the first flag Marines raised upon taking the [Okinawa] headquarters of the Japanese Imperial Army was the Confederate one. It had been carried into battle in the helmet of a captain from South Carolina.” Another WWII hero, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, created a Dixie Division of the Army, which proudly displayed the Battle Flag as part of its heritage. In fact, it was Ike who, as part of the Civil War Centennial Commission, played such a vital role in memorializing the valor of the Southern soldier, especially Robert E. Lee. “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” opined Dishonest Abe in his second inaugural address. America did have a short-lived reconciliation era in part of the 20th century, but that was a blip in history. “This is not a political moment to me but a solemn occasion to lead our Mississippi family to come together, to be reconciled and to move on,” prevaricated Republican Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, a native of the Magnolia State and a supposed Trump ally, at a ceremony celebrating his state’s succumbing to the social-justice struggle session. Sickening. After invasion, total war, nearly one million lives lost, theft (both economic and spiritual), purposeful widows and fatherless children, the misery that was Reconstruction, and the current cultural genocide, the nation-statists now want more? As Andrew Lytle surmised, “This is like the thief who robs a house the second time and complains that the owners do not eat with silver.” My ancestor A.P. Hill was murdered by federal troops. You know that libertarian catchphrase, “Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff”? Well, that happened to my kith and kin back then, and it sure is happening right now. Where are my apologies? Even with the Armed Forces’ push to diversify, including their fast track to citizenship for immigrants (read: demographic replacement), “today’s Army is disproportionately dependent upon the South for volunteers,” with 44% of the military still hailing from Dixie. “We have been soldiers for 2,000 years,” explained former US senator and Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb of his Southern, Scotch-Irish heritage. “The military virtues have been passed down at the dinner table.” The social engineers at the Pentagon claim their mission is to unify a rainbow of peoples through the singular goal of “preserving freedom,” but we wide-awake Southerners know that the effeminized military is only satiated when it tears down real men. Southerners, it’s time to stop bearing the burden and getting nothing in return. It’s not like the military even protects our own borders. If only (read: satire). US Army Gen. Mark Milley called the Confederacy an “act of treason.” Both the Navy and Marines have banned “all depictions” of the Battle flag on its military bases. This includes “bumper stickers, clothing and posters.” David Petraeus, former U.S. Army general and CIA director, wrote an article urging for anti-Confederate conformity with such zeal that he called for renaming Fort Jackson, which he mistakenly thought honors Stonewall, not Andrew Jackson. Historical genius he is not. Thankfully, some military brass have a clue. “The myth of Johnny Reb as the greatest infantryman happens to be true,” stated Retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters. “Not only the courage and combat skill, but the sheer endurance of the Confederate foot soldier may have been equaled in a few other armies over the millennia … the physical toughness, fighting ability and raw determination of those men remains astonishing. The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of bravery, not slavery.” If you think anti-Southern bigotry isn’t a big deal, just stop and consider US Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Why would this career deep-stater resign and make it his main mission in life to expunge Confederate history from the military? Hint: it has absolutely nothing to do with Southern chattel slavery, but everything to do with your slavery, right here, right now. Malign the the archetype as “oppressor,” and every “oppression” can be made whole through his eradication. Since it is white male Christian society that cultural Marxism aims to destroy, and since most white Christian males live in the South, and since they happen to be on average the most conservative voting demographic in the US, it’s a synergistic scheme of a sinister magnitude. “Our Citadel, our inheritance and culture, our very identity and being as a people representing 2,000 years of Western Christian heritage,” as Boyd Cathey describes it, already puts us in the cross hairs of globalists. Then couple that with the Confederacy’s resistance to “the Leviathan and managerial ‘big government'” and the Southern man’s “othering,” and there you have the perfect linchpin. His castigation or even extinction becomes leverage for every leftist cause, from BLM to the welfare-warfare state. And it’s all based on “the war was about slavery” mythos. It’s all a dirty damn lie. Originally, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy deemed the renaming of bases as “divisive,” but then changed course after the NYT accused the military of “celebrating white supremacists.” Plus, “the recent uproar over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police drove McCarthy’s reversal,” chirped an Army official. “White supremacy … [and] ideological-driven racism” are immersed in the military, claimed a military survey. “Overall, troops who responded to the poll cited white nationalists as a greater national security threat than both domestic terrorism with a connection to Islam, as well as immigration.” And this retarded revelation (as in retarding reality) was reported in The Military Times in February, months before the Floyd flimflam. Of course, the article’s feature photo is an image from Charlottesville, giving legs to what I call “archetype derangement syndrome.” Mission accomplished! “Manifested ignorance and ideological falsehoods” are the tools used in the information war against the Southern tradition. And the agitprop is supported by Lincoln cultists like Victor Davis Hanson, Glenn Beck, Brian Kilmeade, Dinesh D’Souza, Ben Shapiro, and even Tucker Carlson. It’s about “demonizing the South to purify the nation,” allege these conservative cowards. Perhaps these Republican reprobates think virtue signals will give them a pass with the cultural Marxists, or maybe they’re loyal opposition. Or it might just be party politics. “Republicans won the civil war. That’s our history,” tweeted former Navy SEAL and GOP congressman Dan Crenshaw, who is supposed to represent Texas’ 2nd district and whose traitorous ways I’ve written about before. “Democrats have a long list of segregationists & KKK members. That’s their history. I’m glad to help them confront that racist past.” “Conservative” Mark Levin and the motley malcontents over at PragerU also push the tedious “Dems the real racists!” narrative. Whatever are their reasons, it’s a big con that undergirds the therapeutic state and the caste system under which Southern folks live. Not that long ago, America First frontman Nick Fuentes wasn’t all that sympathetic to the the pro-Confederate position. But he now gets that the assault on my people is the springboard from which every dirty tyranny of the culture war is launched. American Firsters and the Southern-proud remnant must ally to “destroy the GOP.” Raze Southern symbols? Well, that’s just fine. But burn a BLM sign? Lawd, that’s a hate crime! This lunacy is not only a cultural genocide built upon reeducation, but this attack against Southern heritage has been and still is a literal genocide. This isn’t a culture war; it’s an existential war! This isn’t politics. It’s personal. To me, this isn’t really about the bases themselves. Honestly, I’m no fan of the U.S. military and its war-mongering ways. Let’s face it, those installations are in no way representative of the Confederate principles of decentralization, human-scale governance, and self-determination, not self-loathing. Rather, they embody the “Yankee empire” which is “aggressive abroad and despotic at home,” as Gen. Lee so aptly prophesied. (The Republicans who didn’t support the NDAA due to its Big Tech “unconditional immunity” scheme and the halting of troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Germany should take note.) A smug Military.com writer joked about Sherman’s total-war annihilation of the South, insulted my ancestor’s ailing health, and called honoring Confederate veterans a type of “participation trophy” in an article offering up “10 much better names.” His snarky-to-serious suggestions for base rebranding ranged from NFL wide receivers and unknown abolitionists, to pirates and a bevy of predictable black “firsts.” Truly, the empire doesn’t deserve Southern heroes. Replace ’em with “humanitarian” warriors, such as Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, or Madeline “500,000 dead Iraqi children was worth it” Albright. Or what about Base Black Panther or Camp Cardi B, or Camp Netflix or Fort OnlyFans? I’ve got it: Fort Floyd. I mean, nothing would be more fitting than commemorating for the ages Murica’s fentanyl-addicted, amateur-porn saint. Let’s make bashing the South a losing GOP strategy. Like my advice to cops, let’s “walk away.” Let’s personally secede, from the military-industrial complex and from the GOP at the federal level, and take over the party at local and state levels, or both parties. Let’s take down Old Glory, and raise up our Battle Flags because the fight is the same as it ever was. So, if you Republicans don’t want us, we sure as hell don’t want or need you. Be sure to keep an eye out my forthcoming part-personal/part-history essay about A.P. Hill. This article was previously published on DissidentMama.net on December 18, 2020.
I began reading “The Land We Love” on the long flight back to the U.S. from Helsinki last January. My family and I had been on a three-week vacation in Russia, and our experiences gave me such a keen insight into the dramatic history and resilience of the Russian people, especially among the rekindled and growing Orthodox faithful. As I turned the pages in Dr. Boyd D. Cathey's book, I was overwhelmed by the similarities of the Russian and Eastern bloc peoples who suffered under the foreign influence of Bolshevism, and that of Southerners tormented by the nonindigenous ideology of central authoritarianism. Two agrarian societies remade industrial through blood and fire. I was awash with the knowledge "that you can't extinguish truth if good men and women stand boldly for it," as Cathey says. We in Dixie have experienced hardship and destruction, perhaps not on par with Soviet Communism's tens of millions killed, but a deadly religiosity nonetheless. And one that is born of the same rotten fruit. Godlessness. Egalitarianism. Collectivism. Coercion. Consumerism. Covetousness. "Progress." Under these totalitarian edicts, conformity by force is called "unity," while "shared community and kinship," as Cathey describes localized loyalties, are seen as "treason." I was also struck by the modern parallels. Both Russia and the South are absolutely hated by the oligarchs in D.C., NATO, the EU, and the UN; they’re condemned by Wall Street and the Pentagon; they’re targeted for propaganda campaigns by the corporate media, Hollywood, K-12, and academia; and they’re ceaselessly mocked and ridiculed by uninformed and/or subversive urbanites, elitists, wards of the political class, and self-loathing Westerners. Why? Because all right-thinking people know that Dixie and its white supremacists need(ed) to be conquered, colonized, and remade, just as Russia and its backwards nationalists must be reformed by any means necessary. Robert E. Lee was a traitorous slave-owner and Vladimir Putin is a thug who was in the KGB, so bombs away! It’s what’s known in geopolitical terms as “humanitarian warfare.” The globalists will save the planet (or “the Union,” as was the propaganda of the 1860s) and offer salvation to the Christofascists from Montgomery to Moscow. They are “the antithesis to their Leftist nostrums” after all. This is precisely why Cathey proudly displays a “Putin For President” bumper sticker on his car. This bogeymen narrative serves two purposes: to crush traditionalist opposition to the PC status quo and to set up the scapegoats who, with all their backwards notions of faith, family, and roots, are just standing in the way of “progress.” The road to establishing the new-world order is paved with bricks of the archetype, upon whom the revolutionary masses trample on their sprint straight to hell. Lulled into complacency by the false gods of consumerism and creature comforts, the South’s heritage and identity are on the decline, while Russia’s are on the march. Therefore, to ensure globalist domination, the oligarchs must finally extinguish the South’s flickering fire while trying everything within their deep-state power to stamp out Russia’s newly lit flame. Just check out the stark contrast of Putin’s New Year’s address, framed by images of the many stunning Orthodox churches which fill Red Square and the Kremlin, with that of globohomo deep-stater Anderson Cooper, talking smut while flanked by Times Square’s oppressive Yankee commercialism and event attendees even wearing ad-sponsored hats. It seems so strange that the former outpost of Stalin is more beautiful than is America’s supposed premiere city, the Big Apple, but it’s obvious to me which one is rotten to the core. “Our Southern society is an outpost of Western Christian civilization,” Cathey wrote, but I would argue, that Dixie (like Russia) is an enclave of civilization itself. Both cling to the bedrocks of faith and family, in spite of government-coerced progress. But we are quickly losing our grip, whereas Russians are holding on tight. What’s the difference? After 155 years of nonstop Reconstruction, the South is a “Christ–haunted society,” as Flannery O’Connor once noted. All that Yankee re-education has taken a toll; yet, “Southerners were – and still are – self-consciously ‘traditionalists,'” explains Cathey. “In both slavery and post-slavery times, it was not so much race, but rather a desire to preserve the social order – hierarchy and balance in society – which motivated most thinking Southerners.” Such a worldview is like kryptonite to the perpetual meddlers of puritanical-progressivism. When Puritan descendants “began to veer into Unitarianism, transcendentalism, and heretical millenarian cults” and eventually the “social gospel and secularist movements,” the South and its “orthodox Trinitarian and Incarnational Christianity … inhibited deviations and heterodoxy.” Southerners have always had a thick armor to repelling the wiles of invaders and reformers. “Above all other Americans, Southerners have maintained a unique sense of community and rootedness in time and place – and in the land they love.” So, it is “Southerners’ lived traditionalism” that leftists aim to destroy. They see it as competition. As too dissident. As too rebellious “to the lunacy of an ideology that promises utopia on earth, but ends in enslaving its inhabitants.” Dixie has been and still is “most resistant to such Siren calls.” The principles of the “Confederate Southerner … oppose not just the Leviathan and managerial ‘big government’ state that has been thrust upon us,” but they’re also defined by “how we differentiate ourselves from folks in the rest of the Federal union.” This “Southern philosophy” has always made us “Other,” even before the War of Northern Aggression, and most certainly since leftists co-opted the term for their aggrieved-minority schemes. Our ancestors didn’t care all that much because, honestly, most Southern folk didn’t sit around caring two hoots about what Yankees thought of them. Similarly, the average Russian doesn’t spend much time pondering the machinations of the Russophobes in the West. What should rouse the ire of traditionalists is when the globalists want us either in bondage or dead. “The current American political system has been largely a charade, parading as a ‘democracy,’ but in reality an insatiable and ruthless oligarchic Behemoth … a caste system more severe, more self-aggrandizing, and more domineering than anything traditional aristocracies ever envisaged or dreamed of.” But as Cathey reminds us, God is the author of history, not man. Cathey notes, “Who would have dreamed in 1916 that Vladimir Lenin, in lonely exile in Switzerland, would in one short year become dictator of the world’s largest nation? And then, who would have thought the Communist system he created would suddenly expire ignominiously in a few short months in 1991,” to quote T.S. Eliot, “not with a bang, but with a whimper.” “I see incredible lessons – and reasons for hope – in the experience and rebirth of a Christian Russia,” Cathey told me. He is right. Our enemies are (and have always been) the same. But through their ancestral faith, the Russians have a revitalized unity and determination. Christian folkways are at the heart of their people and their 1,000-year Orthodox history (illustrated at top with the Baptism of the Rus’ in 988), and it will be the key to their future. Southerners should take note. “We must stand for – we must dwell within – our Citadel, our inheritance and culture, our very identity and being as a people representing 2,000 years of Western Christian heritage, or we shall disappear into the abyss of history.” It’s time to cast off the yoke of nation-statism and its technocratic idols, and cherish our roots. “Those who keep high the standard of faith and conviction … with God’s good help and His grace, they do succeed,” Cathey sums up in the final chapter of his book. And that is exactly what Southerners need to remember. As the Apostle Matthew preached, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” We must not be “Christ-haunted,” but rather “Christ-centered.” This is how we prevail. Be sure to check out Dr. Cathey’s interview on The Scott Horton Show. The anti-war stalwarts discuss Russia – a topic that Cathey knows a thing or two about. This piece was originally published at DissidentMama.net on January 1, 2020. Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh wrote that “we have become a country filled with numb, detached, and desensitized people. Mass shootings are the ultimate manifestation of that detachment.” “These are empty, numb, detached people slaughtering their fellow humans because they are bored and frustrated with their meaningless lives,” he continued. But if it’s “detachment and desensitization causing these attacks, the next question is, what causes the detachment and desensitization?” Walsh goes on to name the internet, social media, cable news, feminism, video games, psychiatric drugs, atheism, and broken homes as some of the underlying reasons for the “cultural emptiness” and the violence it inspires. He calls them “culprits,” but he’s putting the horse before the cart. America’s “cultural emptiness” is the cause, not the effect. America is meaningless. She is a false god – a mythos that is steeped in totalitarian leftist ideology, and coercively implements the untenable and dangerous dogma of cultural Marxism on the masses, and then has the gall to call it “society.” It’s no wonder she’s falling apart at the seams. Walsh aptly captured this sentiment back in 2015 when he blogged that “No, America is not a great nation.” “Judge America by any measure – moral, political, economic, social, cultural – and none of it points to greatness,” Walsh wrote. “Not by a long shot. Not even close. Not anymore. Progressivism dominates all of these spheres, and with its rise our greatness diminishes.” “Not anymore.” Hmm, that certainly implies that something must have changed. Well, let’s look at the much-bandied-about word “nation.” Biblically, a nation isn’t a political entity, but rather one based upon people groups with a shared religion and history, time-honored norms, and familial ties. And nationhood even up until about the mid-19th century was still shaped by commonalities, like language, culture, faith, and ancestry, and was always defined within borders – some geographic, some political. Before the “Civil War,” the conglomerate of peoples which comprised America each had its own distinct regional culture. Different brands of Christianity. Different customs. Different roots. Most people considered their state or even their local community their “country.” But that all changed in 1861 for these United States. “We must honor the sacred memory of those we have lost by acting as ONE PEOPLE. Open wounds cannot heal if we are divided. We must seek real, bipartisan solutions that will truly make America safer and better for all.” — Donald J. Trump “We” became a nation-state forged in oneness, indivisibility, and equality by force of war. And though centralization has diligently goose-stepped along its long, steady “forward” march over the years, people are still tribal by nature. So America began to create new identities, but not through shared tangibles, but instead through empty ideas like pluralism, materialism, and egalitarianism, and fictional communities like multiculturalism, LGBT, and Apple vs. Android. In other words, nothing remotely similar to what traditionally and historically made a nation. It’s so Orwellian that the cultural Marxists had to make up a new word to encompass all these new, shiny identities: intersectionalism. It’s all the rage. Gone are the real ties that bind. Gone is the passing down of history and respect for forefathers. Gone are the bedrock institutions like the nuclear family and Christianity. Gone is any culture in the truest sense of the word. We are atomized radical individualists drowning in “humanitarian” warfarism and cold globalism. Be patriotic, citizen, and just remember that it’s “In GDP we trust.” “The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn All that remains is consumerist demographics. No wonder Americans are experiencing a crisis in identity, although it is particularly pointed for young white men, for they are the single demo which isn’t allowed to forge bonds with any other tribesmen. Male-only spaces are already on the endangered species list, especially if you’re a non-leftist. I mean, only a misogynist wouldn’t want to have enlightened females around to harangue them, right? And God forbid they want to hang out with (gasp!) … other white people who may be fellow Christians or Southerners or share some other connection or like-mindedness. Don’t they know that kind of identitarianism is meant for everyone but them? Can’t they just be good boys and fall in line with feminism, anti-racism, transgenderism, and woke capitalism like the America cultists are so desperately training them to do? Progressives have made it near to impossible for normal young white men to gather in the public sphere, much less have open and honest conversations in private spaces like church, work, and even family gatherings. “Hide the children, it’s neo-Nazis from Charlottesville. It’s the Proud Boys!” Sheesh, is it any wonder that they vent and bond with one another on social media? And the whole point of video games is to escape reality and feel as if you have some semblance of control, so is it really surprising that gaming is an alluring activity for those who’ve been marginalized? When you’ve been cast to the shadows, you may as well have some fun. After all, post-modern America has derided and smashed the things with which they most identify (masculinity, provider instincts, roots) and most need (respect, stability, faith). There would be no “gamification” or “internetification” of terror, if not for Archetype Derangement Syndrome. It’s a hateful hoax of most epic proportions. Yet now, even typically-common-sense Walsh has gotten on the #WhiteSupremacistTerrorism bandwagon, along with typical neocon hustlers like David French, Ben Shapiro, Jack Posobiec, and Ivanka (Trump) Kushner. Sigh. Here’s what I consider a measured and fair retort to Walsh’s above tweet: And then here’s a typical “American” reply to Lee Jackson: This exchange reminds me of the interview CNN’s Fareed Zakaria did with American Renaissance editor Jared Taylor last month, when his first question was “What is white?” before proceeding to spend an hour condescendingly claiming that it’s difficult to tell whether or not someone is white and then following up by discussing shrinking white demographics. Huh? Plus, the segment was entitled, “State of Hate: The Explosion of White Supremacy,” which further eroded Zakaria’s ridiculous “colorblind” fiction. Hey, Gary and Fareed. If we lived in a society based upon meritocracy, and NOT affirmative action, racial and gender quotas, HUD scams, social engineering in public schools, globohomo corporatism, victim-obsessed media, critical-theory brainwashing in universities, welfarism, BLM worship, racial “reconciliation” in churches, special rights for “aggrieved minorities,” the razing of real history, and censorship for dissidents, maybe ol’ Lee Jackson wouldn’t be so defensive. But instead, white people who are not guilt-ridden, and like being white and love their white kids somehow “speaks volumes.” Stunning and brave there, Gary. Only in America. Truly, we are immersed in a society of identity politics. Any person who denies that is a either fool or a fraud. It’s not true identity, of course. It’s purely political. But for some odd reason, it’s only white identity politics that’s the “real problem.” When Trump tweeted, “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform,” charlatan Ben Shapiro quipped, “What the hell does any of this have to do with immigration reform?” Uh, everything, Benny. The 1965 Immigration Act was one of the final steps in killing the foundations of America’s decentralized, once-authentic identities and natural settlement patterns, and replacing them with government-designed multicultural madness. Who da thunk that manufactured demographic changes would be the death knell of an already dying culture? Shocker! Or that these political calculations would result in increased social division, the proliferation of debt bondage for producers, and the infringement of freedom for resistors? But hey, tacos trump hate. Abundant ethnic food or dollar stores in every strip center along every generic street in every formerly-unique Southern town cannot make up for the loss in commonality and customs once shared by citizens in their various regional homes. Invasion, reconstruction, and political tribalism (for all but the ones who still happen to be the majority in this country) has a way of putting the kibosh on high-trust community and knowing your place in it. It is the centralizing oligarchs who over-medicate with prescription drugs through its sick care system, miseducate our youth in the poison of secular-humanism, promote the globohomo agenda, and undergird the rampant dysfunction of single motherhood. Let’s take a closer look at just one of these numbing cultural ailments. An article from 2018 claimed that nearly all of the deadliest mass shooters have been fatherless. Now, the author may use a broad definition of “fatherlessness” (not being raised by a bio dad in the same home, or simply having an “absent father”), but the larger point is that broken families play a role in the frustration and detachment felt by young men who absolutely need fathers and other strong male role models to help them mature into confident, healthy adults. No wonder suicide and drug abuse is on the rise among our youth. Now, couple that with white boys being told that every part of their identity is evil (their skin color is racist, their ancestry is white supremacist, and their gender is toxic), AND that there’s no mention of God in their lives and upbringing, of course hopelessness and disconnection are bound to result. And even when dads are present, they are often kowtowed by their feminist wives or penalized by the children’s mothers in anti-male family courts. Interestingly, it is the very nation-state which has made possible and profits off of this societal degradation that now wants to take my guns. The same progressive system which initiated this general malaise now wants to tag indentity-less-ness and skepticism of our governmental overlords as a mental disorder. Funny how that works. Apparently diversity is our strength when it comes to the truth about “mass shooters.” Shhhh, don’t tell the neocons, the corporate media, the lying politicians, and unhinged Antifa that I’m challenging their inane narrative, or they may “red flag” me. If the feds can’t pull off disarming normal folks, leftist governors and attorneys general will have their back. One step forward, two steps backs, as Lenin used to say. When a “news” outlet asks members of North Carolina’s congressional delegation: “Do you believe white nationalism is driving more mass shootings recently? Should hate-filled websites [obviously meaning alt-right sites] be policed?” you know I’m not being hyperbolic. This is deadly serious business, y’all. And it’s not only selective outrage when it comes to what gun violence gets covered and remains endlessly in the news cycle, but it is the the hyper-hysteria over guns themselves. Forget the fact that gun violence has gone down and that mass shootings are exceedingly rare. Even some leftists get that. Forget the real cause of our cultural emptiness. Forget the real damage being perpetrated on real people. Forget that to be a modern American, you must be a deracinated cog in the machine of the nation-state. Who really cares, right? After all, we’ve got immediacy and lots of stuff, like cell phones where we can virtue-signal to strangers about how woke, anti-racist, and empathetic we are, giving us that much-needed sense of belonging which we humans all crave. That should numb us to our identity-less-ness at least for a while, or at least until the next “national” tragedy. This piece was originally published at DissidentMama.net on August 7, 2019.
“I think it is a fascinating opportunity to rebrand ourselves,” said Winston-Salem Council Member John Larson. This occurred at a recent meeting held to discuss removing the word “Dixie” from the name of the Dixie Classic Fair. Indeed, all the usual suspects in this increasingly leftist North Carolina city were out in force in early April, ratcheting up their political and social capital in an effort to rail against the archetype: the white Southern man. The anti-Confederate theme and its slew of sad-sack characters were all so predictable and petulant, as they always are, but division pays in dividends. “Dixie does represent the Southern states that fought to hold on to slavery,” remarked misinformation officer Bishop Sir Walter Mack Jr., pastor of Union Baptist Church. The fair’s name is “derogatory and divisive to our community,” he added for surreptitious effect. “This is not 1969, this is 2019,” mused Reverend Carl Manuel of Burkhead United Methodist Church. “We are in the season of Lent. We need to search our hearts and minds. Let’s repent and start over and give the fair a name everyone will be comfortable going to.” How about those of us who aren’t comfortable with fellow Christians using Jesus as a tool for political correctness. Oh yeah, no one cares about the archetype’s feelings. One deviously named group involved in promoting the name change is Love Out Loud. This organization “works to link a number of the city’s various churches together across racial and denominational lines” (read: left-wing activism). Another is Get Hate Outta Winston, which was instrumental in just last month getting a monument to Confederate dead removed from a downtown courthouse due to “safety reasons.” “We saw what happened in Charlottesville,” dutifully parroted Allen Joines, the cucked city mayor. “We are on the right side of history,” exclaimed college student Destiny Blackwell of Get Hate Outta Winston. “We get to tear down white supremacy and build up black history and the achievements of black people.” Destructive Destiny seems to want Wakanda, but what she forgets is that Winston-Salem owes much to white people, including the universities, British common-law heritage, and Western Christian notions of altruism and justice – all means she uses for her revisionist ends. Dixie is “a highly charged word and, like the [Confederate Battle] flag, it will increasingly be relegated to the pages of history in a public way,” stated William Ferris, co-editor of “The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.” Ferris also happens to be director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, where Silent Sam has been ceremoniously torn down by students and its pedestal even removed by the tax-payer-funded school, all in direct violation of state law. The slavery mythos must live on in order to perpetuate the archetype’s destruction. Cultural Marxists don’t want history or tradition. They don’t want roots and commonality. They are thieves who want to take and trash what has been bestowed to them by the very people they detest in order to “progress.” They cannot give credit where credit is due. They co-opt and crush. Steal and plunder. They suck off the beautiful and rich culture of the South, only to turn around and seek even more inglorious “reform.” More puritanical purging. More routing of the sacred old for the abominable, soulless new. It’s all part of the continuing revolution. Such hubris.
They seek a “changing South,” where only “people of color” are put on pedestals. Literally. People not of color are erased. They don’t look at the tapestry of the South, its humanness, and its 400 years of truly diverse history. They only see a binary: white sinners, blacks saints. POC get to have their Unsung Founders Memorial, making the likes of Destiny all warm and tingly. Difference is, if you mess with this statue, you get arrested and charged with “racist acts of vandalism” and “ethnic intimidation.” “The South is evolving and considering its future and figuring how to best understand its history,” touted Ferris. “And contesting those memories is one way to do that. The word ‘Dixie’ is part of that re-evaluation of what the South is and how it should be publicly presented.” This attack on memory by the New South nihilists is a Pandora’s Box. Where does it end? Shall we ban Dixie Cups? Dixie Crystals sugar? The Dixie Chicks? Little Feat’s “Dixie Chicken” or the Band’s “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down”? Winn-Dixie grocery store? The children’s book “Because of Winn-Dixie”? What about “Designing Women” or “Desperate Housewives” because they featured actress Dixie Carter? Perhaps my friend’s daughter Dixie should change her “hateful” name? Or my neighbor, whose Labrador is named Dixie, should shoot his “racist” pooch or send just him to the doggy gulag? Seriously, someone please tell Dolly Parton that changing the name of her Dixie Stampede costs her more in the long run; she may sell lots of tickets, but being a sellout leads to spiritual debt. Instead, I say we “evolve” even further. Similar to the petition I created regarding my high school’s mascot, I propose that if the leftists don’t want some of Southern history, they should get absolutely none of it. Why should skulking ingrates and narcissistic nincompoops get to pick and choose? They’re really not that special, y’all. “Keeping the word ‘Classic’ out there keeps our brand out there,” Mayor Joines opined. Again with the “branding,” as if home and place were products for sale. Man, did the materialist, consumerist, and industrialist Yankee propaganda really take hold in these sycophants. They’d surely sell their granny down the river for 30 pieces of silver. But if “Dixie” means white supremacy, so does the word “classic.” After all, it’s born of the term “classical,” which is defined as “traditional, enduring” and/or “relating to the ancient Greeks and Romans.” Isn’t it the cultural Marxists who’ve been smashing tradition, annihilating anything enduring, and calling the ancients “dead racist white guys” for years? Yep. Council Member Robert Clark suggested “Winston-Salem Fair.” Interestingly, the city’s hyphenated name has roots that the historical illiterates won’t like. The city is partially named after Joseph Winston, first cousin of Patrick Henry who settled in North Carolina. Not surprisingly, this large-land-owning planter owned slaves. Up to 18. Gasp! So, the name “Winston” must be expunged. Forget he was a Revolutionary War hero whose sons included a NC supreme court judge, a lieutenant governor, and two who were major generals in the War of 1812. Forget their sacrifices. Racists must be smashed … it’s 2019, yo! What about Salem? Weren’t the Moravians who founded and built this religious settlement pacifists? Well, yes (’cause it’s easy to be a peacenik when you’ve fled your homeland for a place already carved out by pioneers), but they also … wait for it … owned slaves. Another audible gasp! Better toss those delicious Moravian cookies into the trash and burn your handmade Moravian stars while you’re at it. Okay, okay. At least these Protestants named their settlement after the Hebrew word “Shalom,” which first appears in the Old Testament in Genesis and means “peace.” But, anyone who’s well-versed in biblical history knows that the ancient Israelites too owned slaves, so “Salem” must be blotted out. (Anti-anti-Semites, take note.) Hmm, what about Forsyth County Fair? Certainly that’s a safe name. Think again. The county in which Winston-Salem resides happens to be named after Benjamin Forsyth, an officer in the War of 1812 and a vast property owner who had seven … you guessed it … slaves. Better start razing anything with Forsyth on it, including the community college, the hospital, and every single governmental building. Hell, if we want to dive deep into the politically correct rabbit hole, one could argue that the formation of counties themselves is a governmental product of “evil” colonialism. Likewise, the history of fairs can be traced back to those slave-owning ancient Romans, or at the very least, to the Middle Ages, when those white-supremacist Europeans would gather to have their racist festivals of jousting and falconry. We should definitely expunge “Carolina” while we’re at it. After all, Carolina comes from “Carolus,” the Latin word for Charles, and was meant to honor King Charles I of England, who made the colony’s original land grant. Well wouldn’t ya know, Charles’ reign was knee-deep in the slave trade! Yep, in the name of the oxymoronic god of unity and diversity, we must extinguish any marking or utterance of the word “Carolina,” too. I think that’s in the Bible somewhere, y’all. Regardless of what the self-proclaimed racial reconcilers name this event, they must search their hearts and minds, like the reverend suggested, and be certain to ban roller coasters and cotton candy, as both were invented by white dudes. Surely, these men were racists by post-modern “standards.” I mean, they were from the 19th century after all.
So, if the quisling politicians, vengeful anarcho-tyrants, and social-justice swindlers want to continue their covetous cultural genocide, I say these thankless Philistines should get nothing. Nada. Zilch. A big fat goose egg. If these pompous presentists are either unwilling or unable to grasp the nuances and complexities of history, let them have none of the benevolent benefits of the heritage they so loathe. If they’re all so freakin’ great, let them create a fruitful and functioning civilization, instead of riding on the coattails of the true innovators, thinkers, frontiersmen, statesmen, and founders they hate. There’s nothing worse than an ungrateful man who thinks his shit don’t stink. This piece was originally posted at DissidentMama on April 26, 2019. Liked it? Please consider supporting DM on Patreon. So, smart moms in two homeschool social-media groups of which I’m a member are super-excited about Hillsdale College’s free “Constitution 101” course. “Hillsdale’s conservative, so it must be teaching Christian-centered history,” they say. “Hillsdale doesn’t accept grants from the federal government or participate in federal financial-aid or student-loan programs. How principled,” they opine. “Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levine both endorse Hillsdale as being an ‘authority on the Constitution’, so it must be quality curriculum,” they hope. Hey now, not so fast. Let’s not take all these assumptions on face value. For years, I’ve been receiving and reading Hillsdale’s monthly mailed newsletter Imprimus, which highlights guest lectures, speeches by visiting professors, and articles by intellectuals associated with the college. It sometimes features valuable articles by modern thinkers I respect and offers up opinions that are not status quo. But not always. In fact, Hillsdale as a place of learning is overall a neocon institution. Sure, there are exceptions to the rule, like history professor Brad Birzer, and his wife and history lecturer Dedra Birzer. Much has been written and discussed about neoconservatism. In short, they were ex-Trotskyites who abandoned the left decades ago, and they and their descendants have been pushing for foreign interventionism, open borders, and giving up on the culture war, all while claiming to be for “Founding principles.” These wolves in sheep’s clothing pretend to be patriotic, yet undergird the very ideologies that are tearing America apart.
Larry P. Arnn, who delivers the first video lecture, is president of Hillsdale and also on the Board of Trustees of the Heritage Foundation – a neocon think-tank that alleges to advocate for limited government and fiscal responsibility, but simultaneously lobbies for foreign entanglements and “spreading democracy” through bombing campaigns. In other words: globalism a la the military-industrial complex while America burns. This isn’t guilt by association. Rather, it’s just connecting the dots. So, is it any wonder that I’m skeptical of this free Constitution course? Therefore, I signed up to see what all the fuss is about. One need look no further than the welcome email. The “about” section describes how the course will dive into “the Declaration of Independence and The Federalist Papers,” yet no mention of The Anti-Federalist Papers. So, already we know that the curriculum is slanted toward the Hamiltonian view of America, and not the decentralized view of Founders like Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Sam Adams, Richard Henry Lee, and James Monroe. Thus, Hillsdale is planting their flag on the hill of empire, not that of states’ rights. THIS is a problem, my friends. With the most charitable view possible, I understand that this could be an oversight. After all, many learned people don’t even know that there’s a collection of writings called The Anti-Federalist Papers, which argued that the U.S. Constitution would grow the federal government and eventually lead to an all-powerful executive branch akin to monarchy. Prescient, wouldn’t you say? In fact, if it wasn’t for the anti-federalists, we wouldn’t even have a Bill of Rights – the only fleeting safeguard against federal overreach and the complete eradication of our God-given liberties. These amendments sure ain’t a cure, but can you just imagine how even more embroiled in tyranny our lives would be without it? Okay, this was probably just an innocent mistake, you say. So then, let’s take a gander at the “overview” portion of the email. Hillsdale faculty who teach the lecture series tell us that “American political history is defined by three great crises.” Number One: the American Revolution. No duh. Number Three: progressivism. Yep, couldn’t agree more. But Number Two? Hmm. Here’s what they say.
No, no, no. This is complete historical revisionism. It’s the stuff of Marxist Eric Foner, Straussian Harry Jaffa, and plagiarist and “Lincoln idolater” Doris Kearns Goodwin, who’s wont is to demonize Robert E. Lee as a foot fetishist. Yet, these snake-oil salesmen are all lauded as the popular “historians” of the Washington elite. Why? Because they and their self-righteous ilk, like Victor Davis Hanson, Dinesh D’Souza, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, and all the talking heads at Fox News (save Tucker Carlson), use this misinformation to construct a narrative of America as an “idea” that wasn’t realized until St. Lincoln “freed the slaves” and smashed those evil racists below the Mason-Dixon Line. America must be cleansed of her “original sin” of slavery. It’s all presentist rubbish. Lincoln was no friend of the black man and certainly no freedom fighter. In fact, no American’s ideology has ever been more contrary to Founding principles than was Dishonest Abe’s. Because of his totalitarianism and subsequent worship, we now have a federal government that micromanages every aspect of our lives, as well as increased social division. We have lost states’ rights and voluntary association, which were cornerstones of America’s founding. We have attained the “idea,” and people couldn’t be any unhappier. Kinda makes Number Three seem silly, now don’t it?! We are living in the Hamiltonian vision of America, which metastasized into the cancer known as Lincolnian nationalism throughout the 20th century and has devolved into today’s “managerial state” (as the late Sam Francis called it). Out with the voluntary compact of sovereign states. In with the cult of Unionism and pegging Confederates as the heretics. It is this “propositional nation” mythos which is the basis for all this “reform” we’re drowning in today. It has opened the door for secular-humanism, radical egalitarianism, and universalism. It has smashed localism for centralization; destroyed equal justice under the law for the evils of “equality;” routed traditionalism for post-modernism; and annihilated self-determination for statism. The tale is how the neocons and their uber-leftist cohorts push for “permanent revolution.” And to do this, they must incessantly tear down the traditions that rooted Jeffersonian America up until 1861. Since the progressive notion of “exceptionalism” was fashionably spreading across the growing 19th-century landscape, the remnants of subsidiarity that survived only in the South had to be extinguished to attain the nation-state. And because it is still the only place where this Jeffersonian ideal exists, her people must be maligned and their culture razed. In the name of “progress,” the South must continually be demonized and distorted in order to “deify the idea of America.” To attain this new world order, the “pogrom against Southern history and symbols,” as historian Clyde Wilson describes it, must carry forward. It is the linchpin for the con. Today, the invasion (Third-World socialists, instead of Yankee soldiers and carpet-baggers) and total war (political correctness, cultural genocide, and anarcho-tyranny, instead of amassed Federal armies invading, killing, raping, pillaging, and burning cities to the sea) may look different. But make no mistake, puritanical-progressive conquest and Reconstruction still roll on. There may not have been 700,000 deaths … yet, but the goal is nonetheless the same.
If Americans get this wrong (meaning, the real crisis that occurred from 1861-1865 and the ensuing cultural Marxist “remaking” of America that has followed unabated), we cannot fully understand any history, much less have a firm grasp on current events, keen eyes for charlatans, or an understanding of modern threats which imperil any shreds of liberty that may be salvaged from the Lincolnian wreckage. Like all good propaganda, the Hillsdale hearsay is peppered with grains of truth, giving it the illusion of fact. Christian homeschoolers, please do your homework before buying into this dangerous paradigm. Don’t get conned. After all, there’s nothing more important than truth. Just because something’s free doesn’t mean it’s worth your time or money … or soul. In fact, it will end up costing your children (and their posterity) way more in the long run. • For more on neoconservatism, dig into the voluminous writings of American sage Patrick J. Buchanan, historian Boyd Cathey, and retired humanities professor and author Paul Gottfried. • For the truth about the War Between the States, check out the work of stalwarts the Kennedy Brothers, historian Clyde Wilson and professor Thomas DiLorenzo, the blogs of yours truly, and articles and podcasts by historian Brion McClanahan and the indispensable Abbeville Institute. • And for politically incorrect curriculum, please consider purchasing real history courses at Liberty Classroom and McClanahan Academy. I promise: they’re worth every dirty Lincoln penny. This piece was originally posted at DissidentMama on April 13, 2019. Liked it? Please consider supporting DM on Patreon. “Fools are my theme, let satire be my song,” wrote Lord Byron. The Romantic-era poet embraced the power of using humor to critique what he saw as the hypocrisy, pomposity, and absurdity of the establishment. Challenging the self-defined sense of importance and virtue among the elite has always been a balm for nonconformists. In Lord Byron’s case, he irreverently poked fun at the conservative social constructs and sexual mores of early 19th-century Britain. To him, freethinking was manifest in deviancy. But today, rebellion to the status quo is most evident in embracing tradition, faith, localism, and private property, and repelling globalism and the nihilistic ends of the progressives. And mocking the hair-brained schemes of the secularist, statists, and social-justice loonies is truly the most effective way to crack the veneer of this current establishment. They are a post-modern nobility who have created their own fiefdom, based on mythical merit, fantastical egalitarianism, perpetual victimhood, and punishment of the producers and dissenters. They’re a violent and coercive bunch, yet claim the banner of civil rights and love. They’re thin-skinned bullies who hide behind their privileged status in both the public square and private sphere. They lob literal and figurative excrement at those they deem the enemy, all while hiding behind the average American’s skirt of civility and altruism. Such petulant children. We must laugh at their illogical arguments, godlessness, and totalitarianism, and hopefully, cast them to the periphery – back to the margins of society where they claim to be while subsequently ruling every institution with an iron fist. Ridiculing their idiocy is necessary, for they thrive on failing and dangerous ideas, which are dependent upon rigid enforcement, the destruction of goodness, and the promotion of lies. After all, the best satire is grounded in truth and rhetorically destroys the inflated pride of fools. Enter in Snowflake Buddies: ABC Leftism For Kids! by Lewis Liberman. Released in November by the fine “Southern without apology” folks at Shotwell Publishing, the 30-page book is bursting with irreverent wit, catchy poetry, and beguiling graphics. “They’re realistic and not realistic at the same time,” my 11-year-old son astutely notes of the unique characters filling the book. The face-smashing Antifa Al, abortion-loving Fran the Feminist, and pee-dumping Barbara Belle grace the book’s cover (at top) from left to right. “Let me tell you about Mia the Marxist,” my eldest continues, as he and his 10-year-old twin brothers proceed to recite one of the short quatrains accompanying each letter of the alphabet. They giggle while narrating the simple but adroit rhyming scheme of “commie blog” and “State-run gulag.” Liberman, the brainchild behind Libertopia Cartoons, is a firm believer in the influence visual art holds over people. But to be successful, one must have both the aesthetic and content, he says. In other words, eye-catching graphics and truth, which is precisely why the right (or thin libertarians or traditionalists or conservatives or whatever you want to call non-leftists) typically dominate meme warfare. We all know the left can’t meme, hence, the reason some of the more honest cultural Marxists simply call for controlling, censoring, or outright banning right-leaning memes. They simply can’t compete, so Liberman ups the ante. We should all be “thinking about ways we can use art, creativity, and maybe even a little bit of fun to help ‘sell’ our messages,” Liberman explains in an Abbeville Institute article. And Snowflake Buddies does that in spades. My three homeschooled rebels also find entertaining Yoric the Yankee, whose meddlesome-induced red nose pokes out from beneath his puritanical-progressive Pilgrim hat. Spot-on history right there, my boys say. Some of their other favorite parodies are the barbaric Vic the Vulgar, Huey the Homosexual, and Uma the Undergraduate. But beyond the creative rhymes, clever graphics, various coloring pages, word search, and maze, Snowflake Buddies inspires contemplation. For instance, Lester the Lincoln Lover bulldozing a Confederate monument spurred a conversation about what exactly happens to Southern monuments once they’ve been razed by the iconoclasts. Deep thoughts and dialog on anarcho-tyranny, and all this from an affordable comic-like book. Now, my kiddos aren’t exactly the norm as far as consuming consensus opinion goes. (For example, a question in one of our math lessons the other day was “Name the cardinality of a set that doesn’t have any members,” to which one of their answers was “Democrats who will go to Heaven.” Yes, the snark runs deep in my house.) As a parent, I see this as an educational book filled with conversation-starters of current events, history, politics, culture, economics, and faith. Help your children start to pull back the veil, question post-Christian “authority,” and get those logical and critical-thinking juices flowing. And as an apostate to the PC cult, I think Snowflake Buddies also succeeds in holding a flame to the safe-space castle in which the snowflakes sit upon their chilling throne of lies. (As an Elf fan, I’ve been dying to use that reference for a long time.) The book is the proverbial nails on the chalkboard to those who wallow within the elitist echo chamber. I mean, being brought to task and not being taken seriously are two of the left’s biggest phobias. It holds a mirror up to the cultural Marxists, who embrace, benefit from, and control “the system,” all while they simultaneously screech, “Resist!” As the great libertarian thinker Tom Woods so aptly puts it, “We’re the real resistance: we resist the very Establishment the fake resistance loves.” It shines a light on the fact that leftists really aren’t warriors at all, but conformists who feed upon fraudulent public approval and misplaced social adulation. They are truly weak-kneed snowflakes – collectivists motivated by the brute force of the mob and the frenzied power of fashionable opinion. Hell, even Byron, an aristocrat who benefited greatly from his station in life only to deride it, was a real soldier and bravely joined the Greek revolutionaries in their struggle for independence against the Ottoman Empire. He was a man who could dish it out and take it. He was no spineless moral relativist. But then again, neither are the cultural Marxists. As opposed to moral relativism, their religious foundations are the inverse of truth and justice. Their dogma is built on the “oppressed vs. oppressor” ideology, and their sacraments are victimhood, micro-aggressions, presentism, infanticide, and fake PTSD. And happy, humble, traditional, live-and-let-live (you know, what we used to call “normal”) folks are seen as an enemy that must be vanquished by any means necessary. Conflict theory is their gospel. Wrong think will not be tolerated. Thought crimes must be smashed and the perpetrators shamed and shunned, doxxed and fired, punched and kicked, and maybe even jailed. Snowflake Buddies is a bold middle finger to these “men without chests” as C.S. Lewis described the leftists of his day. It’s a brilliant and effective way of saying to the haters, “We won’t capitulate to fools. We will not comply. We ain’t skeered. And we drink leftist tears.” It’s the perfect gift for amusing fellow unReconstructed travelers, red-pilling “moderate” conservatives, educating budding liberty radicals, or triggering progressive family and friends. Embrace the creative snark, and let Snowflake Buddies be your song. This piece was originally published at DissidentMama.net on January 22, 2019. Liked it? Please consider supporting DM on Patreon. Words are important. They’re a vehicle to self-expression, so it’s really not all that surprising that co-opting language and redefining words has long been a tool used by propagandists spanning the globe. From tinpot dictators to imperial oligarchs to homegrown totalitarians, anyone who wants to seize power and dominate people knows they have to control language. The the best way to advance a cause that cannot withstand critique is simply to forcibly suppress the opposition. During Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China, Hitler’s ascent in Nazi Germany, Castro’s reign in Cuba, Stalin’s rule of the Soviet Union, and Pol Pot’s dictatorship in Cambodia, silencing dissent through barbarous violence was an extremely effective means to an end. Some of history’s most infamous mass murderers used paid henchmen to punish perceived troublemakers through firing squads, concentration camps, political imprisonment, gulags, forced starvations, and other macabre measures. The Gestapo of the Third Reich, the Stasi in East Germany, the Soviet Cheka, OGPU and NKVD, and the Khmer Rouge’s Santebal were amazingly deadly at rooting out resistance, whenever and wherever it emerged, even if it were only delusions of the thought-control enforcers or their beloved leader. But not all tyrants used secret police solely. The Nazis had the “Brown Shirts,” a paramilitary group of loyalists, who the Nuremberg Military Tribunal called “bullies” and “ruffians.” Hitler advised them to “take possession of the streets” in order to cause chaos, terror, and paranoia among citizens. These Sturmabteilung weren’t called Storm Troopers for nothing. And some dictators sanctioned only well-armed foot soldiers to further the unconscionable aims their movements. Fidel Castro utilized the machismo guerrilla strategies of his “Bearded Ones” to overthrow and maintain control of Cuba, while Mao Zedong mobilized a fierce and fanatical mass student group known as the “Red Guard” to achieve the same ends in Communist China. On Wednesday night, people saw these very tactics on full display in Berkeley, Calif. “Protestors” rioted against the mere presence of Milo Yiannopoulos, a provocateur who goes on speaking tours dismantling political correctness, all while having big fun poking his finger in the eye of the easily offended who permeate college campuses. “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” ― Salman Rushdie, novelist Yiannopoulos is popular because he says exactly what many informed non-leftist in the country feels: that progressivism is a scourge, a poisonous ideology that spreads into every nook and cranny of our personal, faith, work, social, and political lives. He never parses words and always delivers his dagger-to-heart rhetoric with equal doses sass and logic. The Anti-Milo Toolkit, which was created by a handful of female professors and graduate students, asserts that Yiannopoulos cannot be allowed to speak because his “claim for free speech rights” is a “cover for spreading genodical politics.” The pretentious manifesto concludes, “… we cannot ‘defend free speech’ without examining by whom and for whom speech is free.” You know, “Hate speech is not free speech” as the leftist mantra goes. “He who controls the language controls the masses.” — Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals” So, from high atop their powerful feminist thrones, these cultural crusaders have cast out their judgement to the peasants that Yiannopoulos wields too much power. They and their royal comrades get to determine what is “hate” and what is permitted opinion. Yiannopoulos’ colonialism, whiteness, and privilege makes him by default unworthy of being heard. Sheesh, no wonder he says “feminism is cancer.” Now, I agree with much of what Yiannopoulos says. But when I don’t, I would never want to ban him from speaking at a public engagement of which he’s been invited. I would never want to punch him because I dissent. “Social-justice warriors construct fictional worlds then try to bring real world consequences upon those who refuse to live within them.” — Jordan B. Peterson, psychology professor In fact, I don’t want to punch anyone. Well, I really do sometimes, but would I actually do it? No, of course not. As I tell my kids when they’re in a hot-tempered mood, “If we just went around punching everyone who said something mean to us, or called us a name, or made us mad, or looked at us the wrong way, all we’d be doing is walking around punching people!” Not punching people and breaking stuff and pepper-spraying a women and setting things on fire and hitting a woman is called being civilized. It’s called having basic human decency and self-control. It’s called not having a tantrum when you don’t get what you want. Regrettably, it’s becoming normalized to endorse violence. Take journalist Nesrine Malik. When referencing the inauguration-day brutality against white nationalist Richard Spencer, she said that this assault was “cathartic.” She explained, “Some positions simply cannot be entertained, let alone argued against” and “frightening and dangerous views” mustn’t be allowed to go mainstream. Taking “the moral high ground,” The Guardian writer continued, doesn’t always work. Couple this with the facts that progressives have never done well at “reasoned debate” and that a growing number of folks are fed up with social-justice tyranny, and the cultural Marxists have come to the shocking realization that they no longer control the debate. Malik is angry about the push back, as is Hollywood, from Sarah Silverman’s call for a military coup, Debra Messing’s declaring that “Resistance Works,” to Judd Appatow’s finger-wagging during the night of the riots. The “academics” and “educators,” who have been fostering this close-minded indoctrination unabated for decades, are hostile, too. They finally see resistance (of the civilized kind) to their totalitarian lunacy, and they want to break some stuff … or some people. Take Robert Weide, a Cal State professor who reportedly posted “The best response to micro-aggression is macro-aggression” on his office door in response to a speaking event by neo-conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. It’s like professors gone wild. “Ever since the French Revolution, the birth of the left as we know it … has been about one thing: social reconstruction at the point of a gun.” — Tom Woods, historian The left is low-information and high time-preference, and they’re mad as hell. Half of them have a displaced sense of entitlement because they’ve been taught they’re the “oppressed,” so they cling to and see everything through the lens of their self-appointed victimization (LGBTs, Muslims, “people of color,” women, etc.) And the other half sees themselves as “oppressors,” who must repent of their racism and/or misogyny through self-loathing and by joining the ranks of the church of purifying progressivism. Just beat up a Trump supporter, and your sins are washed clean. Silence someone’s expression, and you’re forgiven. Coercively convert an unbeliever to your religion or just shut him up by force, and you’ll be a martyr. NYU professor Michael Rectenwald calls it “marginalized hegemony”: a social order based upon group rights as being always superior to the ultimate minority of the individual. You might call it supra-rights for some some. This cultural control has gone unchecked for decades, but now there’s dissent to the madness. And the supreme leaders of this noxious ideology obviously can’t handle being challenged. They’ve gone from tearful hand-wringing to unhinged man-handling. The left is blatantly averse to freedom, which is defined as the “exemption from external control, interference, regulation” and the power to “act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint,” as long as your action doesn’t infringe upon another’s liberties (i.e. aggression). Malik admits that freedom is a “philosophical Achilles’ heel” that the left needs to just get over. So what the protest sign of “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free” really means is “Dominance for us, and the bottom of the barrel for the rest of you.” “Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable.” — Stefan Molyneux, blogger/vlogger Liked it? Please consider supporting DM on Patreon. The cultural Marxists aren’t only anti-liberty, but they’re also ignorant of history. Fascism and National Socialism (Nazism) are often seen as rightist movements. But I agree with socio-political theorist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, who says that because of progressives’ emphasis on mass mobilization and their opposition to individualism, those ideologies belong to the left. It is the social-justice warriors and their antifa co-conspirators who are the fascists and the Nazis.
The Toolkit asserts that “Words embolden acts of hatred and violence, and we must also acknowledge the emotional and exclusionary harms, as well as the physical violence, they enable.” So, let’s review some of the left’s own words from Berkeley. “This is war.” “Become ungovernable.” “Queers bash back. Harm any, face the many.” “He has no right to speak at Cal or anywhere else.” “No safe space for fascism, no platform for Nazis.” “Nazi punks fuck off.” “Kill Trump.” I even read a claim that some antifa rioters were threatening to rape female Trump supporters, but I couldn’t find valid confirmation on that gem. Sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. So much for their protest claim of “This is what community looks like.” It’s cognitive dissonance writ large. With useful idiots like this and their media, academic, and political enablers, the cult of leftism doesn’t necessarily have to “legislate its creed into law” to get what they want, as writer Robert A. Heinlein once penned. But his other words ring so true: that it’s just as potent by “suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.” This may allegedly shock old-school liberals, but this is a monster of their own making. It is abundantly obvious to the rest of us that social-justice warriors have finally taken the torch from their jack-booted forefathers. They are the Brown Shirts who shut down speech and smash windows a la Kristallnacht. They are the Red Guard who make their anti-regime parents and other enemies crawl through broken glass. They are the Bearded Ones who threaten, intimate, harm and will eventually kill. They’re not just bullies; they are barbarians. This piece was originally posted on DissidentMama.net on February 3, 2017. Liked it? Please consider supporting DM on Patreon. |
AuthorTruth warrior, Jesus follower, wife, and boymom. Apologetics practitioner for Orthodox Christianity, the Southern tradition, homeschooling, and freedom. Recovering feminist-socialist-atheist, graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and retired mainstream journalist turned domesticated belle and rabble-rousing rhetorician. A mama who’s adept at triggering leftits, so she’s going to bang as loudly as she can. Archives
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