January 13, 2018
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Fighting Back
Against the Attempts to Extirpate Confederate Heritage: Memphis and the Assault
on Our Western Christian Inheritance
Friends,
You
may have heard about the police state-totalitarian and patently illegal actions
of the City of Memphis to take down the historic statues honoring General
Nathan Bedford Forrest and President Jefferson Davis and the bust memorializing
Captain Harvey Mathes of the 37th Regiment Tennessee troops. Despite
the strictures of the Tennessee Heritage Law and the decision of the Tennessee
Historical Commission contrary to such actions, the cultural Marxists who
dominate the government of Memphis (and who have re-enslaved and placed the city's black citizens back on the—this time a Marxist—plantation), the city fathers of that city have
outrageously ignored and violated the law.
While
most (establishment) Republican leaders in Tennessee, just like their
pusillanimous GOP co-cowards in most other states, have failed to take the
legally dictated legal action (for fear of being called “racists”), the
national Sons of Confederate Veterans has and is launching several major
lawsuits to ensure that the laws of the State of Tennessee, not to mention the
wishes of a majority of citizens of that state, are obeyed.
How,
you may ask, is this legal action in Tennessee important in the overall context
of what we should call “the battle for Western civilization?” Very simply the
response is this: what is occurring in Memphis—and in other cities and states
across not just the South, but the nation as a whole—represents in microcosm the
multilevel and multifaceted assault on the entirety
of our Western and Christian traditions, our inheritance and our legacy.
From
the very initiation of the current attempt to “cleanse” our environment of
symbols of our past—that is, those symbols that the culturally Marxist Left
finds offensive or inconvenient to their Progressivist narrative, those symbols
that illustrate another narrative, a broader vision of our historic Western
Christian heritage—from the beginnings of this assault, the cultural Marxists
have clearly selected those targets that they believed would be easier to destroy and demolish...as their first step.
If
last year, or, if after the Dylan Roof attack in 2015, the fanatical Left had
made a concerted and immediate effort to take down and remove all monuments and plaques
honoring, say, President George Washington or President Thomas Jefferson—both of
whom were slaveholders—their campaign would have failed, would have collapsed.
Public opinion was not ready for such radicalism and, despite decades of
Progressivist disinformation and ideological miseducation in our schools and
media, would not have countenanced it.
But
Confederate monuments and symbols: Ah, there was a target that could be tarred
and feathered with more essential public support! Already there were dozens of establishment
“historians” in major universities infected with the ideological virus of
cultural Marxism, for whom “racism” was seen as the driving force, the central
characteristic of American history. And the Confederacy? There was a ready-made
target, a putative nation that was, so they wrote, “founded on racism.”
While
a frontal attack on Washington and his historical and cultural symbolism at
this time would have probably failed, an attack on the Confederacy, its heroes,
its monuments and its memory, was seen as more productive and potentially successful.
But—and
this is the essential point that absolutely must be understood—the attack on
all things Confederate (and implicitly, Southern) was and is just a FIRST STEP,
a first step in the complete “purification” of America, a complete and total
purging of ALL of our historic symbols and of our historical memory. And
eventually, the total transformation of the historic nation, itself.
What
those who split hairs and endorse taking down Confederate monuments while at
the same time defending the Washington symbols fail to understand is that the
defense of the monuments honoring Generals Lee and Jackson is part of a
seamless defense of the entirety of
our Western and Christian heritage and traditions. Defending symbols of the Confederacy and its soldiers, and a defense of our other national symbols, cannot be
separated.
This
has been the fatal error of the “Neoconservatives,” those pundits and
scribblers mostly in Washington or in New York who now dominate the so-called “conservative
movement,” its think tanks and journals, Fox News, and who provide the meagre
intellectual gruel for most establishment GOP thinking. Accepting implicitly
the essential cultural Marxist narrative about race and racism, they are
impelled by succeeding logic, to come to similar conclusions as their supposed
enemies over on the “farther Left.”
Accepting the egalitarian myth that “America was founded on the
ideological principle—the unrealized idea—of equality” (a principle
which is demonstrably and historically false), they remain prisoners of their
circuitous logic.
So,
they attempt to split hairs like all temporizers in history. They countenance a “little bit of revolution,”
while attempting (always unsuccessfully) to resist the full effects and results
of their initial if tepid agreement with the Revolution’s premises.
The
late Senator Jesse Helms used to say that the only thing you find in the “middle
of the road is a dead chicken.” In the
end, whether it be the temporizing Kerensky in Russia in 1917 or the
Girondistes during the French Revolution, our history is littered with the
unlamented carcasses of dead chickens, of those who tried to have it both ways.
A
defense of monuments to General Lee is, in fact, a defense of Western Christian
tradition. Not to understand that is to seriously fail to comprehend what our
Western Christian tradition is all about…and only enables our fierce and frenzied enemies who seek, in their darkest
designs, to destroy it and us.
So, against Memphis the national SCV has filed legal actions, actions against enemies of our history and our inheritance. I pass on today [below]
the official press release of Commander-in-Chief Tom Strain with complete
details of actions being taken. And I also append after that a slightly revised
My Corner that I wrote back on
November 4, 2017, defending President Trump’s Chief of Staff General John Kelly
[On November 15, The Abbeville Institute published a version of this at: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/lee-kelly-and-the-marxists/
]
Dr.
Boyd D. Cathey
SCV Telegraph
SCV GOES ON THE OFFENSIVE IN MEMPHIS
Files TRO
and Injunction
SCV National and the Forrest Camp 215 yesterday filed
several court actions against the City of Memphis to combat and rectify the
despicable crimes against and theft of Confederate statues on the night of
December 20, 2017. On that night, the City ordered police and cranes into
Forrest Park and Confederate Park and forcibly removed the Forrest Memorial
Equestrian Statue, the Jefferson Davis Statue, and the bronze bust of Capt.
Harvey Mathes, 37th Tenn. Infantry. The Forrest gravesite was also damaged. The
statues were taken to an undisclosed location.
The SCV Court filings against the City and "any and all
co-conspirators" include requests for a Temporary Restraining Order and a
Preliminary Injunction. These actions, filed in (Nashville) Chancery Court,
call for the defendants to exercise all duty and care for the 3 statues and
prohibit the defendants from further damaging, moving, selling, or in any way
harming or otherwise disturbing the statues and the Forrest gravesite pending
further legal action. It is likely that additional lawsuits will be
filed, to combat violations of the Tennessee Heritage Act and to pursue damages
incurred under the laws.
Our legal team and the Forrest Camp members have been
working tirelessly since the infamous theft to gather evidence, conduct
interviews, and collect incriminating documents. Very simply, the filing of a
TRO is not an easy matter; briefly, an 'injury' must be shown, court cases have
to be cited, evidence submitted, and an indication of future court success must
be shown in requesting a TRO. We have been extremely busy these past few weeks
building our case and we continue to pursue legal action on multiple fronts.
It is our opinion that the City and its cohorts committed numerous
violations of state law, civil law,
cemetery law, and a host of other illegal acts in what appears to be a sham
scheme to remove the Confederate monuments and to circumvent Tennessee
law. Though the state attorney general has offered no help in
prosecuting these crimes, the SCV has called on the Tennessee Legislature to
appoint a special prosecutor to pursue charges against the Memphis mayor, city
council, and all those involved in the thefts and/or damage to the Parks and
monuments.
Special thanks go to our legal team headed by Mr. Doug
Jones, and co-counsel David Livingston, and SCV JAG Scott Hall, and especially
to the men on the front lines who have done yeoman's work to face the City in
this fight: Lee Millar, Camp Commander Alan Doyle, and Tennessee Division
Commander James Patterson and the Commander-in-Chief. Continuous
consultation has been provided by the SCV GEC and the Division Officers.
All of us have been involved, as have many of you.
But the fight has just begun. There is much more to do and more
legal action to follow. We will not rest until our statues are returned to
their rightful place and these scalawag or carpetbagger politicians in Memphis
are punished. And we need you to help. Please donate to the Heritage
Defense Fund to carry this fight to the enemy. Legal action results in legal
bills. We need your donations to assist in the fight.
As famous author William Faulkner said on viewing the Statue
of Forrest 75 years after the General's death: "Still powerful, still
dangerous, still coming".
And so we likewise say to the City of Memphis:
General Forrest and the SCV are still coming.
We will continue this journey, with your and God's help.
Tom Strain
Commander-in-Chief
November 4, 2017
MY CORNER
General John Kelly, Robert E. Lee, and
the Marxist Ideological Prostitution of American History
https://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2017/11/november-4-2017-my-corner-general-john.html
===============================================
Friends,
You would
think that David Duke had somehow been elected president. Or, maybe in this
topsy-turvy, Alice-in-Wonderland period of history we are living through, that
the reactionary Vladimir Putin had somehow actually taken over the White House.
The editorial din, the screams of outrage seemed to drown out all other news.
Surely, the very fate of the republic was at stake.
What had
happened? The White House Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, had actually
dared—and in public!—to defend the historical reputation and honor of Robert E.
Lee. In our era of totalitarian political correctness, which parades in drag as
an epoch of sublime “tolerance” and “free expression,” such views are the
height of historical and cultural heresy—and not to mention what the Mainstream
Media tells us—of political suicide. Such “heretical” views must not only
be shouted down by what is termed “professional historians” (who act more like
the Soviet politburo), but also banished from public discourse completely.
Kelly made
his comments on the inaugural program of Laura Ingraham on Fox, “The Ingraham
Angle,” Monday, October 30.
But what
caught my attention was not some yahoo spouting bigoted screed. That is not
what we saw, not what we heard. No; there before us was a lauded former Marine
general, very calmly and reasonably making some points about our history and
about Confederate commander Robert E. Lee who, until fairly recent years and
the subversion and ideological transformation of American academia by outright
cultural Marxists, was held in high regard by most Americans. His admirers have
included such larger-than-life historical figures as Sir Winston Churchill,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Here is
the critical paragraph that got General Kelly into so much trouble with the
dominant, culturally Marxist historical profession (the entire interview is
available as a video online):
“I would
tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. He was a man that gave up his
country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than
country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s
different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War,
and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their
conscience had them make their stand.”
That
sent the cultural Marxist editorial writers at The New York Times, The
Atlantic, and The Washington Post, and on major news
networks, into a frantic tizzy, scurrying to find weighty “academic” opinion
not so much to present serious arguments against Kelly, but, rather, to
ridicule him and, as it goes in most politically-correct academic circles these
days, to paint him as ignorant and obscurantist, someone who should be
shunned—and scorned.
So, The
Post turned to two history professors at Columbia University, both of
whom have written scholarly tomes that satisfy the requirements of the modern
establishment, cultural Marxist approach to our nation’s history. Stephanie
McCurry and David Blight eagerly weighed in [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/10/31/historians-respond-to-john-kellys-civil-war-remarks-strange-sad-wrong/?utm_term=.43f698d42611]. But rather than present specific
arguments against Kelly’s comments, they took refuge in the “argument from
Authority,” that is, regurgitating the modern historical narrative that: (1)
the War Between the States was only about slavery, (2) the Northern side was
engaged in a semi-religious crusade to free the slaves, while the Southern side
was dedicated entirely to defending the peculiar institution, and (3) any
Southerner who fought for the Confederacy was a “traitor.”
Implicitly,
this argument assumes that secession was an unconstitutional act of treason,
and that for states to engage in it was an act of rebellion and, for
individuals, a traitorous act. Yet, despite the condescending assurances of
Professors McCurry and Blight that this is the correct view, the question was
not only far from decided in 1861, historically the preponderance of
evidence—actual factual evidence—indicates that most Americans, and most of
their leaders, believed during the pre-war period that secession was an
acceptable constitutional option in serious circumstances.
In
particular, the two academics attack General Kelly's belief that the War
was avoidable, if there had been more of a willingness to compromise, to
reconcile differences. For that inability, they blame the South. Yet as recent
historians like William Marvel and Thomas Fleming have chronicled, it was the
Lincoln administration that torpedoed every effort at peace during the critical
months of early 1861.
What is
more disquieting about the position taken by McCurry and Blight is the
underlying assumption that modern scholars have somehow come up with “new”
facts that overwhelmingly support their views. To use Professor Blight’s
expression, he and McCurry and other contemporary historians have “exploded”
the pro-Southern reconciliationist narrative that earlier historians once held.
Yet, the simple fact is that there is no boat load of new “facts”
but only an ideological reinterpretation of the same old facts, and
that re-interpretation is guided by previously announced and pre-set Marxist
objectives. It is that ideological template that controls the contemporary
historical narrative and dominates the historical profession.
Earlier
historians like the brilliant William A. Dunning, Avery Craven (The Coming
of the Civil War), Francis Butler Simkins (The South Old and New),
and more recently Ludwell Johnson (North Against South: The American Iliad,
1848-1877), Thomas Fleming (A Disease in the Public Mind: A New
Understanding of Why We fought the Civil War), Thomas di Lorenzo (The
Real Lincoln), and William Marvel (Mr. Lincoln Goes to War) are
discounted, accused of pro-Southern bias, a failure to understand the
underlying “racial” nature of American history, and an inability to comprehend
the “real meaning” of the Constitution (a “meaning” that strangely remained
mysteriously “hidden” to every president and every major American political
leader beginning with George Washington through James Buchanan!).
To
understand the attacks on Confederate monuments and on the reputations of men
like Robert E. Lee, one must understand that those assaults are essentially
ideological in nature, and that history is being used and manipulated to carry
them out. This was first recognized by the late Eugene Genovese, perhaps the
greatest of recent historians of the South, who noticed the obdurate
unwillingness of fellow members of his profession to acknowledge the rich
complexity of Southern history and their resistance to factual information that
countered their tendentious views.
The
multiple and feverish media attacks on General Kelly must be seen in this
light. Columbia historians like McCurry and Blight, and their epigones in the
Mainstream Media, zealously seek to further a cultural Marxist vision of
America and, thus, to advance the ongoing transformation of our society. For
such professors and their indoctrinated translators, history serves only to
facilitate their ideological agenda.
Fifty-seven
years ago (1960), President Dwight D. Eisenhower offered his view of
General Lee, and it remains a marvelous personal statement on Marse Robert and
his legacy. There is more historical wisdom and knowledge in Ike’s words than
in all the collected scholarly tomes of McCurry, Blight, Eric Foner, piled
higher and deeper.
The
president wrote the following letter in response to one he had received,
dated August 1, 1960, from a Mr. Leon W. Scott, a dentist in New Rochelle, New
York.
Scott's
letter [http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1721192/posts]
reads:
“Dear
Mr. President:
“At the
Republican Convention I heard you mention that you have the pictures of four
(4) great Americans in your office, and that included in these is a picture of
Robert E. Lee.
“I do not
understand how any American can include Robert E. Lee as a person to be
emulated, and why the President of the United States of America should do so is
certainly beyond me.
“The most
outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did was to devote his best efforts to the
destruction of the United States Government, and I am sure that you do not say
that a person who tries to destroy our Government is worthy of being hailed as
one of our heroes.
“Will you
please tell me just why you hold him in such high esteem?
Sincerely
yours,
Leon W. Scott”
Eisenhower's response, written on White House letterhead on August 9, 1960 reads as follows:
"August 9, 1960
Dear Dr. Scott:
Eisenhower's response, written on White House letterhead on August 9, 1960 reads as follows:
"August 9, 1960
Dear Dr. Scott:
Respecting
your August 1 inquiry calling attention to my often expressed admiration for
General Robert E. Lee, I would say, first, that we need to understand that at
the time of the War Between the States the issue of Secession had remained
unresolved for more than 70 years. Men of probity, character, public standing
and unquestioned loyalty, both North and South, had disagreed over this issue
as a matter of principle from the day our Constitution was adopted.
General
Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced
by our Nation. He believed unswervingly in the Constitutional validity of his
cause which until 1865 was still an arguable question in America; he was
thoughtful yet demanding of his officers and men, forbearing with captured
enemies but ingenious, unrelenting and personally courageous in battle, and
never disheartened by a reverse or obstacle. Through all his many trials, he
remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his belief in God. Taken
altogether, he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the
pages of our history.
From deep
conviction I simply say this: a nation of men of Lee’s caliber would be
unconquerable in spirit and soul. Indeed, to the degree that present-day
American youth will strive to emulate his rare qualities, including his
devotion to this land as revealed in his painstaking efforts to help heal the
nation’s wounds once the bitter struggle was over, we, in our own time of
danger in a divided world, will be strengthened and our love of freedom
sustained.
Such are
the reasons that I proudly display the picture of this great American on my
office wall.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower"
Dwight D. Eisenhower"
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