November 15, 2017

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Clinton Scandal; NAACP Attacks the National Anthem

Friends,

Two topics today compose this installment of MY CORNER.

First, in our rapid news cycles, remember last week we once again witnessed a flurry of reports about those now infamous Clinton emails. And what was to be expected: the Mainstream Media’s zeal and care to defend the Hillary campaign against accusations that show up in Donna Brazile’s new tell-all book, Hacks: The Inside Story…. One of the better and more persistent writers on this topic, as well as on the entire “Russians Did It!” canard, has been the intrepid Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept. [https://theintercept.com/2017/11/05/four-viral-claims-spread-by-journalists-on-twitter-in-the-last-week-alone-that-are-false/ ] He has authored a well-researched piece concerning four falsehoods spread by Clinton supporters, Democrats and the Mainstream Media, in an attempt to prevent the real story from coming out. I will pass on his latest investigatory piece today.

What is patently clear through all the seemingly never-ending controversy is the absolute and frenetic determination of Hillary and the Dems, the media and the Deep State minions to deter any genuine investigation, to, as it were, keep the genie locked up inside the lamp. What we have before us is potentially one of the greatest constitutional scandals in American history. It is precisely the object of the Establishment, including many Republicans, to push a “false flag” narrative that we are told we must accept. That narrative has become both a diversion leading away from the real scandal as well as the basis for an attempted “silent coup” against our elected president. 

Millions of “deplorables” should, I suppose, be out in the streets or camping on the Washington DC mall, demanding that Congress pursue the Clintons (on the “lost” emails, on the Uranium One deal, on the Clinton Foundation “cash-to-play,” and other potential criminalities, not excluding political assassination).

Yet, our folks are “normal.” By that I mean that we work regular jobs (a lot of times longer than eight hours a day), we raise families, we deal with school, we attend church, we pay bills, we do  housework—in other words, we lead lives punctuated by regularity and a certain rhythm of life. Getting out in the street and protesting is not something most of us are inclined naturally to do. We lead different lives from the subventioned semi-professional agitators who seem to be bused from one “spontaneous demonstration” to another, and whose existence seems to be totally wrapped up in and convulsed by a manic and continuous “struggle” for such nebulous—and unobtainable—ideas as “equality” and “social justice.” 

We are not like that: our lives are not controlled by such all-consuming madness. In a sense, then, the difference between the “normals” and those culturally Marxist “social justice warriors” is not just one of political perspective, but, rather, is deeply spiritual and one of balance and the manner in which various facets of our humanity are integrated into the whole person.

Yet, even the most integrated and “normal” person—the person who normally eschews never-ending controversy and who lacks the inclination to continually “protest” this or that perceived injustice—the person who seeks only to live a “regular” life under both Natural and God’s laws, even that person may eventually reach a certain point, a watershed moment, when he believes he must act. On a very personal level, that may come when a law-abiding man has his home or family endangered by an intruder or potential criminal: physical resistance may be required. Or, it may happen locally when our inherent rights and communal well-being appear threatened—as happened to my neighborhood several years ago when developers wanted to put a new road through, displacing us all: although very few of my neighbors would ever attend a political rally or go demonstrate, they all came out to denounce the road-building project (which was defeated).

But getting out in the streets by the thousands—even for such truly noble causes like defending the unborn—is always a difficult proposition. Nevertheless, the present crisis—and that is what it truly is—demands our close attention and our action. Not necessarily staged and paid-for-by-George Soros-style raucous semi-riots like those we have seen mushroom since the election of President Trump, but yes, much more push back and organized resistance to the multifaceted efforts of the forces of the Deep State to thwart the will of American voters expressed last November and torpedo the efforts to enact a truly “make America great again” agenda.

That means increased vigilance and being better informed about events as they occur. That means more attention to what our schools are teaching our children, to what our pastors are preaching in church, to what we watch on television and what we read. It also means choosing our friends wisely, exchanging ideas and vital information with them. And it means a commitment to vote our convictions, which means continuing the draining of the “swamp” by voting out those politicians who are a part of it and who participate in it.

Articles like Greenwald’s assist us to understand and fathom the mountain of information—and the disinformation—that comes our way and clutters our television viewing.

My second topic fits in an odd way into this general theme. About a week ago the California branch of the NAACP (soon supported by other social justice warriors throughout the nation) officially came out in favor of changing our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” charging it to be “racist.” Here is what they said:  The anthem is "one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon." [https://www.newsmax.com/us/naacp-national-anthem-third-stanza-racist/2017/11/08/id/825008/?ns_mail_uid=61377180&ns_mail_job=1763053_11092017&s=al&dkt_nbr=010504l4m0yo] And in particular, they singled out the third verse, which reads: "No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave." Obviously, then, to those incredibly brilliant historians at the NAACP any pejorative use of the word “slave” by 19^th century Americans, and especially by someone like the Maryland aristocrat Francis Scott Key, is anathema, and its use in our National Anthem must be purged.

Key’s singling out of the “slave,” they insist, must refer to those slaves who had been induced to fight for the British during the War of 1812; and, thus, Key, from an old and aristocratic Maryland family must therefore be attacking them and supporting the “peculiar institution.” Besides, they add, as a prominent U.S. attorney he opposed abolitionism, citing the famous case of notorious agitator and abolitionist libeler Benjamin Lundy (1833), which Key forcefully prosecuted. Yet, they fail to mention that Francis Scott Key manumitted his own slaves, and that he represented several slaves (pro bono) seeking their freedom and publicly attacked slavery’s cruelties and abuses. Of course, that history doesn’t fit their narrative.

And more, any reading of patriotic literature from the period reveals that the use of such words as “slavery” or “slave” in such contexts very often is a metaphor for “treason” or “submission” to foreign rule or perceived tyranny (i.e., from Britain). “Hireling” and “slave” refer to those Americans—both white and black—who had, in Key’s view, sold out to the country’s former overlords. The meanings are descriptive, not racist or approving of the slave system, but rather of persons who prostituted their services to a foreign power.

Nevertheless, the NAACP narrative has gained traction, and by the same social justice warriors who rage against the monuments to Lee and the Confederate dead, and more recently, against symbols of Christopher Columbus and George Washington. It is part and parcel of a stream of revolutionary consciousness that infects much of our society, that poisons our culture, that distorts our history and our understanding of our past, that chokes off any reasonable discussion among our political leaders,  that infects Hollywood, and abuses and perverts our very language. It seeks nothing less than the total purging and complete transformation of our culture…the abolition of the West.

And, yes, it also underlies even the “Russians Did It!” narrative that so throttles and perverts current debate in our nation’s capital.

The Progressivist Revolution, partially stymied by the November 2016, election is like the Stars War film, “The Empire Strikes Back,” with a renewed, frenzied zeal to recover lost ground and put things aright—and in every facet, every dimension of our lives.

We may not have the inclination—at least not yet—to get out and imitate the ravings of “Antifa” or Black Lives Matter or the Communist Workers’ World Party in Durham, North Carolina, but, nevertheless, we must prepare and enter the combat, each in our own way. The stakes are too high….