The Garden of American Zeroes

President Donald Trump put on a disappointing display at Mount Rushmore on July 3rd. President Trump opened his remarks by asserting that the Founding Fathers launched “a revolution in the pursuit of equality” and “human progress” by enshrining the “divine truth” that “all men are created equal”, thus setting in motion “the unstoppable march of freedom.” The President went on to repeat Abraham Lincoln’s claptrap, “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Never mind that President Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, completely rewrote the American Founding as having sprung from the Declaration of Independence, fully formed as one nation as Athena sprung from the head of Zeus, “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Never mind that the Declaration of Independence was a work of political rhetoric, not a Founding document or nationalist exposition; as Raoul Berger explained, “to import the Declaration into the Constitution is to overlook their totally different provenance. The Declaration was a product of rebels and revolutionaries; the Constitution came twelve years later, in no small part as a recoil from the ‘excesses’ of popularly controlled legislatures.” That Declaration was also drawn by the Continental Congress, “a league of independent States, each of which jealously guarded its independence.”

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is doubly fraudulent, for not only does it falsely trace the Founding to the Declaration, but it also totally misconstrues that document. Jared Taylor has time and again splendidly exposed what the Founders truly thought about race. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal”, he did not share the egalitarian definition of “equality.” This was an argument by Englishmen, directed at Englishmen, an argument that was directed upwards, not downwards as some sort of levelling. The American colonists were asserting their rights as Englishmen against the British Crown, to be treated as the Englishmen that they believed they were, rather than a second-class peonage. Additionally, even if we were to concede that the Second Continental Congress actually meant that “all men are created equal” — and they did not, certainly not according to our present “individual rights” fixation — this phrase still does not mean what the bipartisan Left would have us believe, for legal or civil equality was never understood as coextensive with social equality. The Founders did, however, believe that all men were created equal, with the vital understanding that “equal” in the eyes of God is not “equal” in the eyes of man.

The monuments that President Trump laments are of the tyrant Abraham Lincoln, the drunken lout “Ulysses S. Grant” (not his real name, by the way), and sundry abolitionists. Trump named Lincoln as “the savior of our union”, “the first Republican President” (because “Democrats are the real racists” is the new Republican platform, thanks to buffoons like Dinesh D’Souza) who “rose to high office from obscurity, based on a force and clarity of his anti-slavery convictions.  Very, very strong convictions.” Trump continued, “He served as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces during our bloodiest war, the struggle that saved our union and extinguished the evil of slavery.” Never mind that slavery not only was not the cause for the War of Southern Independence, it was not even a cause, serving only as a rhetorical weapon inflamed and exploited by Northern Radicals.

The President hit a new low and solemnly declared that, “at Gettysburg, 157 years ago, the Union bravely withstood an assault of nearly 15,000 men and threw back Pickett’s charge.” Pickett’s Charge, one of the greatest moments not merely in Southern history but in the history of Western Civilization, a testament to the very best men that our nation has ever produced, reduced to an evil attack that was blessedly vanquished. Trump went on with his authorized history of the United States, stating that “Lincoln won the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and led the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery for all time.” Never mind that the Emancipation Proclamation was a political document that, by design, freed not a single slave and served only to retroactively graft a grand moral narrative onto a war of ruthless conquest.

Trump cited the nonexistent “Judeo-Christian” Founding (would anyone care to tell me how many of the Founders were Jewish?), and decried the “radicals would tear down the very heritage for which men gave their lives to win the Civil War”, who “would erase the memory that inspired those soldiers to go to their deaths, singing these words of the Battle Hymn of the Republic: ‘As He died to make men Holy, let us die to make men free, while God is marching on.’” The Leftist revolution from above (this is important to note, as the blacks on parade in our streets are incapable of funding or organizing themselves, merely functioning as footsoldiers in a plot far greater than they could imagine), Trump continued, “would tear down the principles that propelled the abolition of slavery in America and, ultimately, around the world, ending an evil institution that had plagued humanity for thousands and thousands of years.  Our opponents would tear apart the very documents that Martin Luther King used to express his dream, and the ideas that were the foundation of the righteous movement for Civil Rights.  They would tear down the beliefs, culture, and identity that have made America the most vibrant and tolerant society in the history of the Earth.”

Evidently in an attempt to pursue Candace Owens’ will-o’-the-wisp, “Blexit”, Trump’s grand climax was that “we must demand that our children are taught once again to see America as did Reverend Martin Luther King, when he said that the Founders had signed ‘a promissory note’ to every future generation.  Dr. King saw that the mission of justice required us to fully embrace our founding ideals.  Those ideals are so important to us — the founding ideals.  He called on his fellow citizens not to rip down their heritage, but to live up to their heritage.” Right, because the Founders established America to secure transgender rights and install a black supremacist government, because American history is simply a linear progression of “fulfilling the Founders’ vision” by creating the “rights” of infanticide and mass immigration. Could this speech get any worse? Of course.

President Trump announced a new executive order, to establish a “National Garden of American Heroes.” Who are these “American heroes”? Susan B. Anthony. Frederick Douglass. Martin Luther King, a Communist agitator who, at the very least, stood by and chuckled as a woman was raped in the room with him. Abraham Lincoln, the pioneer of “total war” whose heathen commanders put the South to the sword and an enduring, crushing poverty. Christa McAuliffe is an American hero? She died a tragic death, sure, but how exactly is she an American hero? Jackie Robinson. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the demagogue whose grossly inaccurate polemic Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped fan the flames that led to the War for Southern Independence. The icing on the cake, however, is Harriet Tubman, an irrelevant nonentity to whom no serious historian would even devote a fraction of a footnote.

President Trump almost certainly didn’t write this treacle himself. I’m sure that he really does believe “Dr.” Martin Luther King advocated for “colorblindness”, and that he deserves to share the honor with Jesus Christ of having a federal holiday on his birthday. I’m sure that the Republicans of Mississippi really do believe that the Confederacy was abhorrent. I’m sure that Republicans in the Senate really believe that Army bases should be renamed, that “Juneteenth”, a joke almost as hilarious as “Kwanzaa”, should replace Columbus Day; Mark Steyn is absolutely correct to predict that “Juneteenth” will simply be “the anti-Fourth of July” and eventually subsume our Independence Day.  I’m sure that Donald Trump believes his speech will secure the votes of his base, just as he believes will his cynically-timed pardon of Roger Stone. None of this is an excuse.

In conversation with me on the Fourth of July, Paul Gottfried discussed the disgusting scene in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, commenting quite accurately that “after the first ten minutes of the speech, I thought I was listening to Michelle Obama or, even worse, Rich Lowry.” Mr. Gottfried noted that, “after hearing Donald’s supposedly inclusive oration last night, it dawned on me that he and his neocon-GOP advisers consider Southern whites to be so worthless (except as voters) that they’ve decided to cancel their culture. Although there were multiple references to Lincoln’s struggle for equality and the speeches of MLK, and even mention of Harriet Tubman, there were no Southern white heroes except for Jefferson (as the author of the ‘All men are created equal’ phrase in the Declaration of Independence) whom Americans were urged to admire. I also had the impression that Trump was condoning the vandalization of Confederate monuments, which, it would seem from his speech, don’t belong to his neocon-MLK version of the ‘American heritage.’” By his unmitigated praise of everything except the South, President Trump, whether intentionally or not, bestowed upon Black Lives Matter terrorists the implicit right to perpetrate cultural (for now) genocide against Southern history.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board recently said as much, though more explicitly, writing that “this current anti-monument wave degrades what originated as a legitimate grievance: the presence of Confederate monuments, many erected during the Jim Crow era to perpetuate the Lost Cause myth and advance white supremacy. But that idea has been taken over now by what has turned into a mob intent on willy-nilly eradication of chunks of American history.” Here, we see the same legitimization of the vilification and eradication of Southern culture and history, the Journal advancing the absurd argument that the horde has only just now “turned into a mob” since it has turned its attention to more “mainstream” symbols of American, though, more specifically, white history. Make no mistake — now that the New York Times has turned the horde loose upon Mount Rushmore, it will be sandblasted in due course. Color me surprised that Stone Mountain wasn’t dynamited first.

The most crucial and underexamined aspect to this Cultural Revolution is the complete absence of any sort of counterrevolutionary pushback. We are in uncharted territory, as Newton’s Third Law of Motion has simply ceased to operate. To those of us sympathetic to separatism and secession, myself included, Mr. Gottfried asserts, honestly and unequivocally, that “there can be no secession if the Right continues to show signs of brain death. Since there is no pushback the Left has won by default.” There is no organized Right, just as there is no institutional Right; the American “conservative” movement, as Mr. Gottfried has emphasized throughout his entire academic career, is nothing but “an instrument of the Left intended to neutralize the Right.” As the great Southern Presbyterian R.L. Dabney wrote over a century ago, “American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition.”

Mr. Gottfried observed that, “from the utter indifference of most Southerners to the desecration of their history, one might think these denizens of the Southland are in perpetual hibernation, except for barbecues and football.” Football, of course, being an early mechanism by which the worship of blacks was facilitated on a large scale, as well as an Achilles heel that Leftists use to target Southern State legislatures. We can look forward to hearing the “black national anthem”, whatever that is, at NFL games now. Do we Southrons care about our heritage? I do, and my fellow compatriots in the Sons of Confederate Veterans do, I’m not all that convinced that the rest of the population does. The Solid South was suffocated long ago. It might sound cruel, even verging on victim-blaming, but Mr. Gottfried is correct, as ever, to observe that “white Southerners have brought this on themselves by allowing both parties and the conservative movement to spit in their faces, without reacting.” We did this to ourselves. Neoconservative shills like Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott vomit on a plate and we lick it up, asking, “Please, master, give us more.” We demand nothing in return.

The White House, Mr. Gottfried continued, “takes Southern white votes entirely for granted. In fact, it has begun to treat Southern whites like Nazis while assuming their votes will be there in November.” The President “thinks he can spit on Southerners and allow their monuments to be vandalized and torn down but these fools will vote for him anyhow.” If only he could spend one tenth the time on us that his campaign spends on interests that solely benefit blacks and harm whites, like “criminal justice reform.” Will we allow President Trump to get away with reverently speaking of Martin Luther King’s “promissory note”, thereby implying that we must pay some great debt, some unfulfilled promise, to “minorities”? If the recent past is any indicator, the answer to this will be yes, though there are signs that Trump is finally, rightfully, losing the white vote; as one writer has pointed out, these whites aren’t decamping for “Joe Biden” — they are simply dropping out. In the final analysis, the President used his speech to essentially sanction the destruction of Confederate monuments and the Stalinist erasure of Southern heroes from the pantheon of “American heroes.” I am surprised that Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and John Brown were not included in Trump’s Garden. In his bumbling as always attempt to condemn the Left, he legitimated the “1619” fallacy that lies behind its entire crusade.

Although Mr. Gottfried suggests that Southerners must make ourselves heard and prove that we do care about our history by writing a letter of protest to the Trump Administration, burnished with hundreds of signatories and indicating that “the undersigned are rethinking their decision to vote for the President after his insulting and demeaning speech”, I advocate a stronger course of action. In short, sans the wanton violence, we must emulate the Left. Look at how Black Lives Matter has been able to catapult the names of countless irrelevant black thugs from obscurity to international name recognition, all of whose victim narratives are almost wholly fraudulent. Our victims, the martyrs so gruesomely sacrificed upon the altar of Diversity, number in the tens of thousands. Our narratives are ironclad. We have God and His truth on our side. Why not start a mass protest movement? Why not call it “White Lives Matter”? Why not make our rallying cries, “Remember Wichita”, “Remember Knoxville”, and remember the tens of thousands of other names that people like Paul Kersey and Colin Flaherty have so painstakingly documented? Why not take up as our mantra the name of Jessica Whitaker, or the name of the legion of other innocents whose brutal murder as the propitiation of sin for their “white privilege” has been so brazenly ignored by the Lügenpresse? Afrikaner organizations such as AfriForum have adopted mass protest tactics to commemorate the memories of the legions of white South African farmers who have been mercilessly slaughtered there since the installation of black rule. We can easily do the same.

Finally, we must hearken back to something that Clyde Wilson said to me, the first time that we met, at Maurice’s Piggie Park in Columbia, South Carolina: “We must destroy the Republican Party.” As I have written (here, here, here, and here), the Republican Party exists only to coopt and neutralize any real Right before it can emerge. There is less than no reason to vote for the Republican Party, for until it is eviscerated and rebuilt to serve the interests of its constituents (not too much to ask, is it?), it is our enemy. An extension of the Trump Administration will not abate the Revolution. Fat lot of good “conservative” leadership has done the nation, with eight years of George W. Bush, one of the worst Presidents in American history, leading to another eight years of the mysterious Great Destabilizer Barack Hussein Obama, leading to the current latter-day James Buchanan unwilling to lift his eyes from Twitter to take meaningful action on behalf of his own supporters. What of those mythical “conservative judges” that the Trump campaign loves to talk about? Give me a break.

To place our faith in the GOP again is to join Wovoka in the Ghost Dance. The recent primary victory of the airhead open Chamber of Commerce shill Tommy Tuberville (who, by the way, isn’t even from Alabama) over the original America First patriot Jeff Sessions is an awful portent. It reveals that Paul Gottfried was correct: the white South no longer appears to care whether it lives or dies. As Tucker Carlson has observed, the senile “Joe Biden” is not the opponent, that role filled by the totalitarian Egalitarian Regime cynically using Biden as the first truly empty suit, a version of “Chauncey Gardiner” from Hal Ashby’s Being There. At least an open and avowed Leftist Administration, rather than the closeted Leftist GOP, would, as Mr. Gottfried suggested, “advance the contradictions of the system faster and culminate with some luck in a counterrevolution.” The coming totalitarian Left is just that, coming. It cannot be halted at this time, whether a Republican sleeps (and sleep he does indeed) in the White House or not. Rather than breed more “#WINNING” complacency, we may as well hit the gas and hope that it will finally force us to act. We might as well get it over with, for if the gambit fails, and we still don’t act, we wouldn’t have acted anyways. And in that case, we will deserve everything that’s coming.