Friday, March 30, 2018

March 30, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

A Few Words (Again) on Russia, and a Longer Column on the Continuing Attacks on the South and the Confederacy by the Neoconservatives and Dominant Conservative Movement

Friends,

march-15-2018-my-corner-by-boyd-cathey.html]. As I pointed out then, this bizarre case in which facts have been massaged, manipulated and withheld from the accused party, contains one major fundamental objective: the continued attack upon a Russia which refuses to accept the precepts and controls of secularist globalism, economic tutelage, liberal democracy, and, to summarize, the New World Order. After all is said and done, the template is really that simple. The current frenzied hatred for Russia, from the Neoconservative “right” to the radical farther Left, is anchored squarely in that.

Additionally, and connected to this overriding thematic narrative has been the Mainstream Media (and including Fox) “take” on the recently completed Russian presidential elections. Everyone from Andrea Mitchell on NBC, who termed those elections a “sham,” to Karl Rove on Fox, who suggested that Russian opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, would have won the election had he been allowed to run, echoed this party line.

Perennial protester/candidate Navalny had been convicted of corruption and thus unable to offer a challenge:

In December 2017, Russia's Central Electoral Commission barred Navalny from running for President in 2018, citing Navalny's corruption conviction. The European Union said Navalny's removal cast "serious doubt" on the election. Navalny called for a boycott of the 2018 presidential election, stating his removal meant that millions of Russians were being denied their vote. [Wikipedia]

Yet even if Navalny had been able to offer his candidacy, every poll—including the highly respected Levada Poll—indicated that at best he would have gained no more than around 15%. Indeed, in the March 18 election Vladimir Putin garnered over 76% of the vote, with a nearly 70% total turnout of the Russian electorate—Navalny’s vaunted “boycott” never got any traction at all. And despite the best claims of Rove and Mitchell of election shenanigans, the some 1,500 international election observers agreed that the presidential election was fair.

Indeed, one could make the case—as Ron Paul and Dr. Paul Craig Roberts have both done—that the elections in Russia were more democratic than our own elections here in the United States have been [see, for example: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/03/26/integrity-vanished-west/]. After all, our country has a highly visible history of election irregularities—and not just the vote stacking in Chicago (by Mayor Dailey) in 1960 that allowed John F. Kennedy to win the presidency, or the fact that by just getting a driver’s license in California, no matter your citizenship, enables you to register to vote, or the constant scenes of paid-for buses carrying voters to the polls, each rider armed with a little card instructing him or her whom to vote for.

Talk about democracy? And that we should condemn Russia for not practicing it? When was the last time we condemned our Middle Eastern ally Saudi Arabia, an autocratic non-“democratic” state, if there ever was one? Or, Egypt under its authoritarian president al-Sisi, or Turkey under its president Erdogan? All allies of the United States….

Let’s face it: democracy in the United States today, at least nationally and to large degree on the state level, is dominated and controlled by money and moneyed interests. You have money—and lots of it—you have a real voice.

In short, the arguments of Hanson, Lowry, and other Neoconservatives violate the basic standards of historical investigation and writing.

There is no daylight historically between the Neocons and those now leading the establishment “conservative movement,” and the far Left Marxists when it comes to interpreting American history and our nation’s Founding. Indeed, George W. Bush's point man and vaunted political consultant, Karl Rove, has praised viciously anti-Southern Marxist historian Eric Foner as his "favorite historian." Given that fatal historical myopia, is it any wonder that “conservatism inc.” is now a miserable and losing proposition when it comes to opposing the forces of the farther Left in the battle for what is left of the American republic and our inherited culture? Needless to say, any traditional American who claims to be a real conservative and who continues to accept the tutelage of such individuals and their organs—indeed, any Southerner who continues to conflate such historical drivel with a defense of his own heritage—needs to re-examine his views and undergo a reality check.

I pass long Ilana Mercer’s column, which quotes extensively Professor Clyde Wilson and Dr. Brion McClanahan:

Victor Davis Hanson’s Attack On Southern Heritage Is Vintage Leftist, Cultural Marxism

http://barelyablog.com/victor-davis-hansons-attack-on-southern-heritage-is-vintage-leftist-cultural-marxism/

by Ilana Mercer March 29, 2018

Victor Davis Hanson’s [latest essay] “The Confederate Mind” is an attack on the South, which is, as Prof. Paul Gottfried points out, “fully consonant with the Cold War left-liberal tradition that one finds, for example, in the work of Arthur Schlesinger. Note that in The Vital Center, and in other tracts, Schlesinger repeatedly compares Confederate leaders to Nazis, Communists and other unsavory types that the US had been at war with.” Gottfried is the historian of the American and European Right.

“This may be the most loathsome thing I’ve seen by Hanson in quite a while,” ventures historian Dr. Boyd Cathey (who contributes to the Unz Review and to Barely a Blog). “The Confederate Mind’ is just one more piece of screaming evidence that the neoconservatives and the establishment ‘Conservative Movement Inc.’ is not only no friend of traditionalists, but rather is collaborating with zeal with the far Left in the destruction and the extinguishing of what is left of Southern heritage.”

Yet, all so-called conservatives, Rush Limbaugh included, continue to quote Hanson admiringly.

A brilliant scholar himself, historian of the South Clyde Wilson regularly critiques Hanson for being a poor historian; primary sources are hardly the primary focus in Hanson’s “work.”

This is an interesting angle (and Wilson a most interesting thinker). Ignorance of the historic method is in fact a must for the likes of Hanson, explains Prof. Wilson, in “The War Lover,” with reference to Hanson’s ideological relative, Dinesh D’Sousa. For if you cleave to primary sources, as the historic method demands, it becomes difficult to reduce the warp-and-woof of history to the abstracted, desiccated principles the neoconservative seeks out in support of his theories:

… D’Sousa actually knows less about the real history, the real lived human experience, of his adopted country than I do about Paraguay. … But in ignorance is strength, because by the Straussian cult ritual, which D’Sousa here popularizes, you are not supposed to know any history. In fact, knowing history and giving it any weight is prima facie evidence of fascist tendencies. It demonstrates that you are incapable of seeing the universal principles by which proper interpretations are made. That is, the universal and eternal meaning of history is only to be obtained by Straussian exegesis of a few sentences which Straussians select, from a few documents which they select, written by a few men they select.

This methodology is perfection when one wants to sacralize Lincoln and what he wrought. All one need do is quote a few pretty phrases that evoke nationalist and egalitarian sentimentality. Though the methodology does tend to break down when challenged by the well-informed, as when Professor Harry Jaffa, in his debate with Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, was reduced to irritable denials of plain historical facts.

Hanson first came to notice by pointing out how Greek democracy was a product, not of theory, but of the importance to the state of the body of armed citizen-soldiers. There was not much really original about this – it is the old story of the Anglo-American yeoman—but it was useful to point it out.

Since then, Professor Hanson has gone on to writings about modern history that appear to glorify war, at least war as carried out by the armed forces of what he regards as democratic societies. This celebration (not too strong a word, I think), of the allegedly wholesome benefits of war has obviously provided comfort to the “democratic” global imperialists with which America is cursed today – and has thus made Hanson something of a celebrity.

In “A Class War” Hanson glorifies the great democratic achievements of General Sherman’s notorious March through Georgia and South Carolina in the winter of 1864-1865. Let us quote the blurb: “How 60,000 armed Midwestern men, in a 300-mile march taking less than 40 days, squashed aristocracy in America, and changed the entire psychological and material course of our national history.”

One might ask where, exactly, General Sherman got the moral and constitutional authority to change the psychological and material course of American history, but such questions do not occur to those who are preaching crusades. This is not a new story. It is the same old stamping-out-the-grapes-of-wrath rationalization: Northerners rising in righteous might to put down the treason of Southerners who, corrupted by slavery, harbored an evil desire not to want to belong to The Greatest Nation on Earth. It’s the same familiar story, but the old girl has had a make-over. She has a new hair-do and different cosmetics.

Here is a fair summary of Hanson’s description of Sherman’s March: a brave and democratic army of sturdy, idealistic Midwesterners performed a great military feat. In the process their democratic spirit was outraged by haughty Southern aristocracy and by the oppression of black people, whom they heartily embraced. As a result they resolved to destroy Southern society once and for all, and thereby bestowed on the universe a new birth of freedom.

There are so many things wrong about this paean to Sherman’s March that it amounts to a fantasy. Historians, before the era of PC, were expected to study primary sources, documents of the time, before they expounded on the meaning of historical events.

Anyone who has spent some time with the primary sources knows what a dubious characterization Hanson has made. That war was an immense event, occupying a huge area and involving several million people, and one can snip quotations to provide examples of anything one wants to find. I am referring here to the bulk and weight of the evidence and only the evidence left by Northern soldiers.

You do not have to pay heed to a single Southern testimony to understand what happened on Sherman’s March and why. It is all in the letters and diaries of the participants. I urge anyone who lives above the Ohio and Potomac to go to your local historical society or state library and read some of those letters and diaries for yourself. You will see how “A Class War” creates a fantasy of righteous virtue and intention that badly distorts the weight of the evidence.

Why would anyone who wanted to celebrate American military prowess pick out one of the US military’s most inglorious episodes, and one which involved brutality against other Americans? When there are a hundred more edifying examples?

To begin with, the march was not a military feat. What was left of the main Confederate army, after self-inflicted wounds at Atlanta, was in Tennessee trying to attack Sherman’s supply lines and deal with two huge federal armies that were holding down the people of Tennessee and Kentucky. Sherman’s advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, opposed by a small but seasoned Confederate army, had not been so easy. The March through Georgia and Carolina was contested only by a few thousand cavalry and old men and boys of the home guard. When Sherman got to North Carolina he was met by the remnants of a genuine Southern army and was halted [temporarily] by a small force at Bentonville.…

[READ Dr Wilson’s “The War Lover“]

UPDATE: “Should we believe Russell Kirk or Victor Davis Hanson?” Brion McClanahan responds:

… Hanson has a strange fixation on the South, one that involves a constant effort to attach progressivism to Southerners like Calhoun and every American evil to the Confederacy. His truth is marching on.

The most recent example was an intellectually vapid piece in National Review Online titled “The Confederate Mind.” To summarize, Calhoun and the South invented the sectional conflict by insisting that their society was “superior to the grubby, industrial wasteland of the north,” despised the “deplorables” of their day, led the “secesh” movement with “evangelical style” language, and through their “regional chauvinism” caused the destruction of the Union.

The sheer a-historical stupidity of these positions almost merits no response. The sectional conflict was born in the North almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified. Northern sectionalists, under the guise of “nationalism,” insisted on secession as early as 1794. Northern “religious” leaders called Southerners devils while her political sons said that Southern statesmen were the drunken vomit of civilization. Seems the nastiness flowed from North to South for most of the antebellum period. …

For syndication rights to http://BarelyABlog.com or http://IlanaMercer.com, contact ilana@ilanamercer.com. Read more @ http://barelyablog.com/victor-davis-hansons-attack-on-southern-heritage-is-vintage-leftist-cultural-marxism/#ixzz5BESxW7dX

Tuesday, March 27, 2018

March 27, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

On the Gun Violence Debate: A Conversation with A Student Who Supports New Gun Prohibitions

Friends,

Back on February 22 of this year I offered a column that dealt with what happened—the school shooting—in Parkland, Florida [http://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2018/02/february-22-2018-my-corner-school.html], specifically the ideological use being made of the event. Was it not Mayor Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago, once of the Obama administration, who famously said: “You never want a serious crisis go to waste”? And the inflated image of millions of innocent and deeply fearful—and aggrieved—high school and middle school students “spontaneously” organizing and marching on Washington and its assembled politicians this past weekend, as well as doing the same thing in various larger cities across the land, has all the appearances of a mass movement which will not stop until “victory is achieved.”

But what, pray tell, is that goal, that “victory” for these adolescents? “No more guns!” thousands shout. “Ban semi-automatics and raise the age to possess guns from 18 to 21!” others scream. But just how many of these students, most of whom have undergone the bleaching and brainwashing effects of our public school system for years, know exactly what they are protesting? How many have really examined the issue of what now is called “gun violence”? How many truly understand what our Constitution states on the right to possess firearms? How many have any knowledge at all of what the courts, including the Supreme Court, have declared in various cases dealing with the 2^nd Amendment—indeed, how many even know what the 2^nd Amendment really says and means?

Just recently I had a conversation with a good friend of one of my cousins, a freshman at a nearby university here in North Carolina and a political science major (as well as a graduate of one of the supposedly best public schools in the state).

Here is how the conversation went (I quote from memory, but I think I have done both of us justice):

ME: “You support new laws to make most gun possession illegal?”

STUDENT: “Yes I do. Too many students have been killed brutally by people with guns. It’s got to stop. We need to pass new laws to take guns out of the hands of those persons.”

ME: “But how would you do that?”

STUDENT: “Well, I would make all semi-automatic guns illegal and raise the age for possession of guns to 21. And I would make a law that only people who use guns for hunting and special competitions should own them. The government should monitor all guns and only permit ownership in certain cases.”

Now, lest you think such sentiments are rare, I would suggest that the views of my cousin’s friend are reflective of a large portion of the students who gathered in Washington this past weekend. And, further, I would suggest that this sort of thinking reflects the miseducation—the anti-gun ideological indoctrination—that exists in our public schools and which is in many ways driving this debate.

Continuing, I asked:

ME: “But what about the U.S. Constitution? What about the 2^nd Amendment that guarantees my ‘right to keep and bear arms’ and which has been upheld by the courts? How can you justify taking the right to keep and bear arms away from 18, 19, and 20 year olds, when, if they can join the armed forces they do exactly that? And they can vote as full citizens at age 18? Aren’t you infringing on their rights as citizens?”

STUDENT: “Well, if that is what the Constitution says, then it’s lived beyond its usefulness and should be junked or at least changed. Look, student lives are at stake. We can’t let this go on, so, if we need to abolish the Constitution, then we need to do it. It’s that simple—don’t you see?”

Notice the use of “if” here—as it is fairly obvious that this honor high school graduate doesn’t know apparently what the Constitution says in the 2^nd Amendment, except that if it stands in the way of the latest political movement, it should disappear or be radically changed.

I responded to the student:

ME: “Let me ask you something: Each year thousands of cars driven by drivers between the ages of 16 and 21 run into and kill hundreds, probably thousands of people. Teenage drivers, students your age, are guilty of a disproportionate number of accidents and resulting deaths. Would you advocate raising the driving age to 21 and banning those ‘suped up’ sports cars that can really inflict mayhem in a collision?”

STUDENT: “No; it’s different. We need our cars to get around. You don’t need guns.”

ME: “That’s not the point: your argument is that more students are injured or killed by those aged between 18 and 21. My analogy is that cars driven by those in the same age group do the same thing. So, raise the age. Can’t you see that?

Additionally, let me repeat: possessing guns is a guaranteed right we have under the Constitution. We can own a car as property, but despite the fact that most people eventually use them, there is no guaranteed right for us to acquire them. You’re in school and live at home. You have car, but it is not absolutely necessary for you to have one. You have no ‘right’ to have one. But I do have the right under the Constitution, specifically, to keep and bear arms.”

At this point, there was a brooding silence, and so I continued:

ME: “Let me ask you another question, continuing with this comparison. Would you say that the responsibility for the deaths of those people killed by an automobile was with the automobile or with the car’s driver?”

STUDENT (rapidly responding): “The driver, sure.”

ME: “Okay, then, is it not the responsibility of the shooter who pulls the trigger in on-campus school violence and not the weapon he uses? I mean, suppose he uses a kitchen knife, or perhaps a bow and arrow. Should we ban them, too? Should we restrict them, say, as to age—no one under 21 can possess them? How many millions of folks have kitchen knives in their homes? How many BATF agents will it take to knock on every door and ask: ‘Let me see all your knives, and any bows and arrows you have.’ After all knives wound more people each year than guns. Does that mean my grand-nephew’s bow and arrow set he got last Christmas must be registered as a lethal weapon?”

At this point, there was more silence. But I had more questions.

ME: “Let me ask—what if in many schools you have three or four specially trained personnel who had access to guns, administrators who knew how to use guns safely. If this was the case and it was public knowledge, do you think those potential perpetrators would attempt the kinds of shooting we’ve seen?”

STUDENT: “Teachers don’t need and don’t want to be armed! That’s ridiculous.”

ME: “I’m not talking about all teachers or all administrators, just some specially trained persons—they mostly would be in administration—and that it would be publicly known. Don’t you think that might cause some aggrieved students to think twice?”

STUDENT: “Well, maybe…I suppose it might. I just don’t like the idea of guns in school.”

And I continued:

ME: “You told me that some of your friends had gone to Washington, and that you had high school friends who were organizing, as well?”

STUDENT: “Yeah, that’s right. I think they had support from some of their teachers and school administrators, and there were some churches involved, too.”

ME: “What about the political angle?”

STUDENT: “Well, I know that a lot of our movement is aimed against the powerful NRA who control Congress. And also at Donald Trump and the Republicans who are owned by the NRA.”

ME: “But the NRA did not pull Nicholas Cruz’s trigger; he did. The NRA in everything they do emphasizes gun safety and responsible ownership, including courses in how to properly and safely use a gun.”

STUDENT: “Well, what about those students who go off the deep end, who have mental problems?”

ME: “Agreed. But that doesn’t implicate the NRA or the right to gun ownership. That’s another whole issue, an issue that reflects what is occurring in our society, and, let me add, what kind of education and what kind of culture you and your friends are growing up in.

How many zombie movies have you seen in the past couple of years? You like AMC’s series ‘The Walking Dead’? How many thousands of persons in the series have their heads bitten off, shot or killed? How many characters get killed off in the ‘X-Men' series that is so radically popular? I mean, it is so easy and facile to understand how a young student—upset about something, maybe spurned in a relationship-gone-bad, perhaps feeling isolated and in despair, watching how Hollywood settles such things--might decide to pick up a gun, or perhaps a knife or bow and arrow, and decide to avenge the perceived grievance, and at the same time win a little fame and gain a little attention. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see how this society, including your own schooling, may produce this?”

At this point, the conversation seemed to trail off. My student friend, who was on spring break, had places to go, as had I. But as we parted he did say that he would think about what I had said. And I thanked him for listening and encouraged him to read more, and not just listen to other students and, yes, to his teachers and professors...and various politicians with an anti-gun agenda.

Will it do any good? Will he begin to think more deeply about the fundamental issues of this debate? Will he come to understand that many like him are being used as political battering rams by ideological forces which seek to undermine the 2nd Amendment as part of a longer range effort to gain more control over the lives and destinies of millions of American citizens?

To those questions I don’t have an answer. But I wish him well and wish him greater enlightenment, for the future of this nation rests upon the civic responsibility and understanding of young men (and women) like him.

Monday, March 26, 2018

March 26, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Deep State and the Survival of Christian Culture

[NOTE: Back on January 19, 2018, I authored a column for this blog on the increased machinations of the seemingly all powerful Deep State, titled "The Coup Against Trump and the Beast of the Apocalypse: Some Parallels in History from Post-World War II Europe." Briefly, in few words I attempted to sketch impressionistically what has been occurring in the United States since well before the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016, with comparisons with the "peaceful" take over of Eastern Europe by the forces of Soviet Communism after the conclusion of the Second World War. Since then THE REMNANT newspaper has re-published it in a slightly edited form, which I pass on to you today. BDC]

THE REMMANT

March 15, 2018 (vol.51, number 4)

Beginning back in 2016 the Obama administration, working hand-in-hand with the Hillary Clinton campaign, employed the FBI and possibly other government intelligence agencies in a multilevel and blatantly illegal and unconstitutional effort to malign, undermine and destroy the candidacy, and then the presidency, of Donald J. Trump. And, after his totally unexpected election, through investigations based on falsehoods and Communist-style disinformation using a Federal commission (headed by Robert Mueller), again employing the FBI, to bring him down, perhaps resulting in his impeachment.

In short: an attempted coup d’etat, a complete reversal of the 2016 election, and the complete the destruction of what was left of our battered United States Constitution...unparalleled in American history since at least the unconstitutional measures of Abraham Lincoln, more than 150 years ago.

Let me describe this process in a somewhat novel way.

Let us recall a bit of history with three short recapitulations of events that took place in the nations of Eastern Europe right after the defeat of Germany in 1945 and the occupation of those countries by Soviet Communist armies, some seventy years ago. And there is a reason for this, for there are lessons for us today here in the United States, and there are also historical parallels, as well.

The seizure of power by Soviet-supported domestic Communists in those countries was largely a peaceful seizure of political power by puppets of and collaborators with Moscow, intent on controlling the post-war destinies of eight Eastern European nations (not to mention the Baltic States). That is, to establish a New World Order.

Let me emphasize the word “peaceful” here. During the period from 1944 until 1948, after clearing those states of German forces, the Soviet army brought with it the return of previously exiled Communists, who filtered back in to Berlin, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Warsaw, Prague, Belgrade and Tirana.

By the terms of the Allied agreements for the post-war—agreements that the Western Allies made with the wily Joe Stalin (and that the Western Allies should have known would not be honored—indeed, some “advisors” to Roosevelt were openly pro-Communist), “coalition” governments were to be established bringing together non-Communist political groups and Communist and pro-Communist groups to govern those countries. The diverse cabinet ministries were split between the differing political groups, with the Communists invariably getting control of the Ministry of the Interior (the equivalent of our security services and FBI agencies), the Ministry of Information (in charge of regulating the national media) and the Ministry of Education (for schools and universities). With these powerful agencies of government at work to further revolution, eventual seizure of total power by Communists was greatly facilitated—and with stationed Soviet troops usually close by, the transition from constitutional republics to Communist ones was made a near certainty.

Of great assistance were the honeycombed nests of philo-Communists and card-carrying Communists within Western governments of the time. One has only to examine the Venona Transcripts, such accounts as the Whitaker Chambers revelations, detailed volumes such as Perjury, and hundreds of other documents to understand how the American and British governments were largely willing to look the other way, if not actively encourage, the absorption of Eastern Europe (and later China) into the Soviet Bloc.

Now let me offer those promised passages concerning three non-Communist leaders who ran afoul of Communist revolution—and, again, let me emphasize that we are talking about “peaceful revolution,” or to put it into current usage, “silent coups.” If you read these short passages (mostly from the Wikipedia, or longer accounts) you may detect certain analogies, certain similarities with what is occurring today in the United States. The analogies, of course, are not always exact, but there is enough here to illustrate some similarities in praxis and process between then and now. None of these personalities was, strictly speaking a “right winger,” and each of them had faults and foibles and made mistakes. But they do illustrate what happens when “coalitions” with Marxists of any stripe are proposed, or if “collaboration” is followed, or we are counseled to “go along, to get along,” which has been the standard position of the Establishment Republican Party in the United States when faced with Leftist revolution.

JAN MASARYK

In February 1948 the majority of the non-communist cabinet members [of the Czechoslovak government] resigned, hoping to force new elections, but instead a communist government under Gottwald was formed in what became known as the Czech coup (Victorious February in the Eastern Bloc). Non-Communist Masaryk remained Foreign Minister, and was the only prominent minister in the new government who was neither a Communist nor a fellow traveller. However, he was apparently uncertain about his decision and possibly regretted his decision not to oppose the communist coup by broadcasting to the Czech people on national radio, where he was a much loved celebrity.

On March 10, 1948 Masaryk was found dead, dressed only in his pajamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry (the Černín Palace in Prague) below his bathroom window. The initial investigation by the Ministry of the Interior stated that he had committed suicide by jumping out of the window, although for a long time it has been believed by some that he was murdered by the nascent Communist government. (Others in the country put it thus: "Jan Masaryk was a very tidy man. He was such a tidy man that when he jumped he shut the window after himself.")

ZOLTAN TILDY

Tildy became Prime Minister of Hungary, serving from November 15, 1945 until February 1, 1946, when Tildy was elected President of Hungary. He was an ex officio member of the High National Council from December 7, 1945 until February 2, 1946.

Tildy served as the first President of the Republic of Hungary until July 31, 1948, when he was forced to resign after allegations emerged about his son-in-law being arrested for corruption and adultery. Tildy was held under house arrest in Budapest until 1 May 1956. He was appointed to the position of a state minister in the coalition government during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He was eventually arrested by Soviet forces after the revolution was crushed by Warsaw Pact intervention. On June 15, 1958, Tildy was sentenced by the Supreme Court to six years' imprisonment, in the trial of Imre Nagy and associates….

KING MICHAEL OF ROMANIA

In March 1945, political pressures [from the United States and Britain!] forced King Michael to appoint a pro-Soviet government headed by Petru Groza. For the next two-plus years Michael functioned as little more than a figurehead. Between August 1945 and January 1946, during what was later known as the "royal strike," King Michael tried unsuccessfully to oppose the Groza government by refusing to sign its decrees. In response to Soviet, British, and American pressures, [!!] King Michael eventually gave up his opposition to the communist government and stopped demanding its resignation.

[…] Early on the morning of 30 December 1947, Michael was preparing for a New Year's party at Peleș Castle in Sinaia, when Groza summoned him back to Bucharest. Michael returned to Elisabeta Palace in Bucharest, to find it surrounded by troops from the Tudor Vladimirescu Division, an army unit completely loyal to the Communists. Groza and Communist Party leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej were waiting for him, and demanded that he sign a pre-typed instrument of abdication. Unable to call in loyal troops, due to his telephone lines being cut, and with either Groza or Gheorghiu-Dej (depending on the source) holding a gun on him, Michael signed the document. Later the same day, the Communist-dominated government announced the 'permanent' abolition of the monarchy, and its replacement by a People's Republic, broadcasting the King's pre-recorded radio proclamation of his own abdication. On 3 January 1948, Michael was forced to leave the country… He was the last monarch behind the Iron Curtain to lose his throne.

According to Michael's own account, Groza had threatened him at gun point and warned that the government would shoot 1,000 arrested students, if the king did not abdicate. In an interview with The New York Times from 2007, Michael recalls the events: "It was blackmail. They said, 'If you don't sign this immediately we are obliged' — why obliged I don't know — 'to kill more than 1,000 students' that they had in prison." According to Time, Groza threatened to arrest thousands of people and order a bloodbath unless Michael abdicate.

There are some lessons here—historical lessons—as we learn more about the blatant attempt of the Obama administration, in cahoots with the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, using and employing an agency of the Federal government—the FBI—to spy on and produce a fake and false “dossier,” and then unleash a completely political attempt, the Mueller Commission, based on the dossier, to basically overturn the 2016 election and to “get” the newly elected president on manufactured charges of, first, Russian “collusion,” then obstruction of justice, and now possibly financial irregularities that may have happened ten or twelve years ago. That strategy, of course, was the “alternative” strategy, the “security” angle that senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and his mistress discussed with the highest FBI officials (some of whom are still IN PLACE), just in case Hillary did not win the 2016 election.

Although we see some of that intrigue and calculated skullduggery being unraveled presently, do any of us doubt that the whole sordid and putrid and repulsive mess goes far deeper?

Are we not dealing with a Deep State along-the-Potomac “swamp” that makes those old-fashioned Soviet puppets seem at times mild in comparison? Have we not heard Glenn Simpson (of FusionGPS, the firm hired by the Clinton campaign whose fake dossier was used as the basis by the FBI and Obama to surveil Trump and his staff) declare that “some people were killed” in this process? Do we recall what happened to that disaffected Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, who mostly likely was the mole who released all those incriminating DNC memos to Wikileaks—murdered outside his DC apartment, and no culprit ever found or charged, oh-so-conveniently?

Indeed, the set of Marxists we are dealing with today, with their historical origin in a fanatical Trotskyite globalism, those Marxists who dominant the Deep State governmental and managerial establishment “swamp,” are not so much the lineal descendants of Petru Groza in Romania and Gottwald in Czechoslovakia, but worse.

They have extended their control and infection into nearly all realms of American life, they totally control one major political party and have succeeded in largely silencing the other (when not inducing it to go along as “enablers” or “collaborators”), they have taken control of the “conservative movement,” basically neutering it and empowering numerous “conservatives” to counsel “moderation”—that is, to act like Jan Masaryk, when they should be acting like Lech Walesa…but, then, those “conservatives” owe their origins equally to Trotsky and his philosophical minions, do they not? [e.g., Bill Kristol, David French, National Review, Weekly Standard, etc.]

This, then, is what we observe around us…and this is very simply what we must overthrow and defeat: no easy task. But it must be attempted if we are to survive as a people.

Perhaps the best way to summarize this inexpressibly horrid situation, this condition that defies easy description in some understandable way, is through a poem that the great Irish writer William Butler Yeats authored almost exactly 100 years ago (1919), in the disastrous and civilizationally-destructive aftermath of the First World War.

It is his famous “The Second Coming,” and in it he sees the collapse of civilization and our Western culture in the vision of a Biblical Apocalypse, a vision of the End Times, when sheer and pure evil—the evil Beast itself now unleashed by man’s corruption and sinfulness (for Yeats, the establishment of Soviet Communism)—ravages the old Christian world. What, indeed, would Yeats say, what would he write today, were he to see what we see, and what that current incarnation of the age-old Beast, the globalist New World Order, now unleashes upon the world?

Where, then, are those who denounce from the rooftops the contagion, the foul presence of the Revolution, the roaming and roaring Beast who, according to Scripture, not only devours and destroys our inheritance as Sons of God [cf. I Peter, vs. 8-10], but perverts our very souls?

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Saturday, March 24, 2018

March 24, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

TRUMP vs. the DC SWAMP: Give this Round to the Swamp, as the Trump Agenda Hangs by a Thread

Friends,

Despite his attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (to employ the classic expression made famous by Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott and others), President Donald Trump got rolled by the DC “swamp” this past week…and rolled badly, to the point that at the very least much of his “make America great again” agenda was at the very least put on permanent hold, if not sabotaged and put on life support.

The $1.3 trillion budget he signed—and signed admittedly against his better instincts—is a disaster for his announced stepped-up border enforcement and the beginning of the construction of the “wall” he promised repeatedly during the presidential campaign. And it funds those very same sanctuary cities that are flagrantly defying federal statutes on immigration. Additionally, it extends handsome grants to the abortionists at Planned Parenthood.

True—and this is the rationale that General Mattis and others certainly used to persuade the president against his better judgment to sign this outrageous deficit-bloating elephant—it funds the military, and funds it handsomely. And, yes, our troops need pay raises. But at what price? Indeed, the newly budgeted and updated weapons systems, the hundreds of billions in new spending (in some cases beyond the president’s requests), would appear calculated for a heightened American military expansion worldwide, everywhere on globe, in any and every faraway conflict in every desert oasis or jungle in East Timor or South Sudan.

Yet, this was not—is not—the foreign policy agenda Americans voted for in November 2016. It was not the agenda enunciated by candidate Trump. This is not the essence of traditional American conservatism. And, I have to believe, that it is not what his instincts actually were.

Yes, he promised to strengthen and rebuild our military, to enhance the fighting ability of our armed forces, to provide our troops not only with the most up-to-date weaponry but long overdue salary increases. And that is much needed. But this budget goes far beyond that. Indeed, it is a fervent globalist Neoconservative’s fondest dream: billions to engage in new and future conflicts all across the face of the globe, and all in the name of “making the world safe for liberal democracy” and the imposition of what is not-so-politely called “American values” (which in too many cases are little more than open doors to crass commercialism, a Wall Street stranglehold of local economies, and the forced importation of the worst and most tawdry aspects of a decadent morality which infects and destroys traditional societies).

This is not what Donald Trump promised, and down deep this is the reason he hesitated long before reluctantly signing what may be the worst piece of legislation to be vomited forth by that fetid bog known as the “US Congress” in many a decade.

There was Senator Chuck Schumer, a broad smile on his face, praising this enacted budget as exactly what the Democrats wanted; there was Senator Mitch McConnell, with a broad smile on his face also, congratulating his colleagues [AKA, the other swamp-dwelling DC swine], on a “job well done” and “averting a government shutdown.” And there were millions of “deplorables,” folks who voted for President Trump, wondering what the Hell had just happened.

Very simply: the Swamp won this one. That is, for the rest of 2018 leading up to the congressional elections in November, the Trump Make American Great Again program is basically dead, at least in Congress. And that is exactly as Congress wanted it, both Democrats AND Republicans. Indeed, the Congressional GOP, with a few exceptions (e.g. Senator Rand Paul, and the hard core Republican right wingers in the House), are about as useful to that agenda as how FDR’s first vice-president, John Nance Garner, characterized the office of the vice-presidency: worth as much as a bucket of warm p—s.” The difference being that Garner’s liquid was at least not harmful to the Constitution; the Congressional Republicans, the majority of them, on the other hand, collaborate with the Democrat radicals and enable them, and thus facilitate the end of what is left of the old republic.

The emperor Napoleon’s head of secret police, Joseph Fouche’, on learning of the assassination by French authorities of the Duke of Enghien (1804) and witnessing the universally negative reaction to it, famously stated: “It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder.”

That is exactly what happened this past week, and what Donald Trump certainly recognized instinctively—he actually said as much, before violating and going against those very instincts; rather than following his essentially sound intuition, he listened to those cloying courtiers, those sweet-sounding sirens (AKA, “advisers”) who have managed to climb the greasy pole and in large part surround him. And those bureaucrats do not really serve the president, nor do they serve the American citizens, and certainly not those who voted for President Trump.

Indeed, again this past week there was news of a major leak of supposedly-secure presidential business regarding the Mueller investigation that had to have come from senior White House staff. Loyalty to the president? Or loyalty to the Deep State? And these are the same “advisers” who convinced the president to ignore his better judgment, his America First program, and embrace what can only be called the contrary.

And so, what is it that Republican congressional leaders and candidates can offer to the American electorate this fall? Other than a tax cut, what is there left of the Trump agenda in 2018? Ironically, this is probably exactly how the swamp-GOP wanted it: first, get Trump’s ear and surround him with “advisers,” then get him to put a bullet into his own announced agenda, and do it despite his promises and his own very reluctant hesitation. That is, triangulation once again: “You haven’t got any choice, Mr. President. If you veto the legislation, why, there will be more gridlock and a government shutdown, which will be blamed on you (and us!), and you’ll end up getting nothing!”

Argument made; case closed; and managerial government back to normal. The swamp wins.

But this is exactly why millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump: to disrupt and stop this normalcy, or at least go down trying to stop it. And Donald Trump, the master of the deal, the master negotiator, had proven earlier that he was capable of rolling the Democrats and forcing a recalcitrant GOP to do his bidding (and humiliating Chuck Schumer). But not this time.

I have been a staunch supporter of Donald Trump since 2015; I went to a December 3, 2015, rally for him in Raleigh, North Carolina; and I have defended him repeatedly since then…with a few notable exceptions: the insane appointment of South Carolina’s Nikki Haley as UN ambassador, the false flag bombing in Syria, and the need to hold a strong line on DACA. I continue to wish him well and will support him in those items he promised the electorate in 2016. But last week he shot himself not just in the foot, but in the temple. It is not fatal, at least not yet; but it could very well become so.

And the president’s agenda was not helped at all by the naming of former UN ambassador John Bolton as his new National Security Advisor. Bolton, over the years, has expressed a frenzied globalist New World Order view of the world and foreign affairs almost the exact opposite of Donald Trump’s. On the failed Iraqi operation, on Syria, on Russia, on North Korea, Bolton’s solution has been: commit American boys to die—and for what? “Democratic values.” Like other more exalted Neoconservatives he has never seen a far off foreign war that he’s never liked.

Here is what The American Conservative editorialized on March 23:

In 2013, Donald Trump tweeted, “All former Bush administration officials should have zero standing on Syria. Iraq was a waste of blood & treasure.” He campaigned on the promise of ending a foreign policy based on “intervention and chaos,” and he was elected to put America’s interests first.

Last night, President Trump broke with these promises by appointing Ambassador John Bolton to the position of National Security Advisor effective on April 9^th. Bolton is an ardent defender of regime change whose preferred method of “diplomacy” is preventative war. He embodies the worst of foreign policy thought from the Bush years and will certainly pressure the president to take aggressive actions against Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China, which could put us on the path to future wars.

The best explanation for Bolton’s appointment is that President Trump values having strong persons around him with differing opinions, and Bolton is forceful and a believer in “American power.” Maybe so; but such a rationale seems thin gruel, indeed.

Where does this leave Trump voters, the “deplorables,” we bitter clingers? And what of the America First agenda?

First and foremost, despite the inclination to simply throw in the towel and resign ourselves to what appears to be the inevitable triumph of the Deep State, we are not permitted that luxury. The stakes are far too high. This is a life-and-death battle. And I believe future polling and the voice of his base will indicate that to the president, despite the business-as-usual voices around him.

I don’t always agree with Rush Limbaugh, but catching a bit of his program after the president’s decision to sign the omnibus bill, every caller expressed dismay, disappointment and outrage… as did Rush, himself. Certainly, the president must be aware of that, in spite of the best efforts of some to convince him of the rightness of his decision. Millions of citizens need to deluge the White House with messages and missives expressing those exact sentiments.

Second, draining the swamp means not just electing a “president bull-in-the-china shop” to shake things up, but to physically “clean out the Augean stables” as did Hercules (with apologies to Greek mythology)—cleaning out the stinking manure factory which is known as “Congress.” And that means not only defeating Democrats but ridding ourselves (mostly through primaries) of Deep State establishment Republicans. And that means challenging them and mounting campaigns against them, despite pleas from party hierarchs that such action would “hurt party unity.” Those big boy power brokers need to be reminded that unity is entirely secondary when you seem to be going down on the RMS Titanic.

Thirdly, and I return to this topic again as in past columns, we must reject in the strongest of terms those false friends of the president, those fair weather supporters, those minions of the so-called “conservative movement, inc.,” who continue to try their damnedest to lasso the president and corral him on their ideologically rotten “establishment” plantation. For that would negate his entire agenda of nationalist and populist conservatism, of America First positions that won him the presidency against sixteen political pygmies representing that same discredited establishment.

And that means rejecting the nostrums of such Neoconservative organs as National Review, The Weekly Standard, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the American Enterprise Institute, and the dozens of other establishment, Neocon-infested organizations that provide the venom that infects the GOP and has so poisoned and perverted traditional Old Right American conservatism. And save for, on occasion, Tucker Carlson (and maybe a few others) on Fox that means absorbing much of what is propagated by that network with a hyper-critical eye. Many, if not most, of its commentators are left over Bushites whose support for the president is highly qualified and sculpted: only when he takes “direction” of the “conservative” establishment are they happy.

As in the case of Karl Rove, Trump’s populist and nationalist conservatism scares them, and while they normally do not frontally oppose it (like Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse and John McCain do), they still do their best to divert, control and shape it—just as what occurred with the omnibus budget bill.

From the beginning we knew this battle—this war—was going to be bloody and awful, and that the election, as difficult and seemingly miraculous as it was, would be only a first step. And, given what has happened since—the continued and forceful attempts to undo and negate the results of the American election [and our leaders have the unmitigated gall to criticize Vladimir Putin on his election which 1,500 mostly foreign poll watchers said was fair!] through fraudulent investigations and spurious accusations—and the utter refusal of Congress to even consider the president’s agenda—probably none of this should be surprising.

Nevertheless, the de facto surrender to the Deep State swamp this past week—even with the explanations and apologies—was a major blow. It was not yet a Gettysburg event, but it came close. And now our question must be: “Mr. President, we elected you to be a Nathan Bedford Forrest. Please don’t become a Braxton Bragg!”