December 31, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

2018 Reflections, Franklin Graham, and a

Newly-Published Essay at LEW ROCKWELL.com

Friends,

I take this opportunity on this last day of 2018 to wish you all a very prosperous, healthy, and happy New Year 2019! This year has been a tumultuous one, with all sorts of events, some expected, many unforeseen. We have witnessed—even with the election of Donald Trump in 2016—the forces of the Deep State advance and tighten their noose around both individual Americans and American associations who  are seen as not politically-correct. Fundamentally, our access to free speech as guaranteed to us in the Constitution continues to erode as giant mega-corporations such as Facebook and Google subtly—and not so subtly—attempt to censor our speech and expression, if we are traditionalists or dissent from the steadily-advancing Progressivist template on gender and race.

The most recent example is the Facebook expulsion and attempted censoring of the Reverend Franklin Graham. His “thought crime”? He supported several years ago North Carolina’s famous HB2 legislation which would have prevented men from using women’s bathrooms! And, even though—after an outcry—Facebook reversed its position, the unmistakable markers and symbols of what awaits us all in the future are clearly visible: that is, if we ONLY TAKE A CLEAR LOOK at what is occurring.

No doubt Mark Zuckerberg and his Silicon Valley friends, whose knowledge of our Constitution and appreciation of the history of our republic is as minuscule as their knowledge of computer technology is great, can sit back in their gated communities (yes, he and his friends DO believe in walls when it concerns them personally!) and sneer at the rest of us. They sit on their hoards of golden lucre and exert a kind of virtual control over millions, especially our children who are, let us face it, “addicted” to the shiny baubles of electronic technology. Indeed, what is Zuckerberg but a contemporary make-over of the Wizard of Oz, but without the grace and enchantment of the Hollywood creation of seventy-nine years ago? Perhaps his immense power is so great that a more apt comparison might be with Darth Vader or maybe the Dark Lord Sauron of The Lord of Rings?

The year 2018 has seen a stepped-up and even more frenzied effort to find something—anything—with which to damage, weaken, perhaps expel from office President Trump. The egregious excesses and overreach of the Mueller Commission, the unleashed and vicious venom of our media and Hollywood, the unbridled passion of the Democrats, and the characteristic cowardice of too many Republicans and so-called “conservatives”—continue apace and show no indication of slowing down in 2019. In 2016 Donald Trump was the unlikely bull-in-a-china-shop, the uncouth battering ram that many of us hoped would at the very least punch a hole, a small hole, but still a hole, in the thickening wall and ceiling of authoritarian oppression that characterizes our creaky and weary republic. Coming, himself, from the establishment Wall Street class, extremely wealthy and not dependent on special interests, he was—quite rightly—seen by the forces of the Deep State as a traitor to his class and all the more dangerous.

But with those advantages he also carried with him disadvantages as he assumed office: he was largely unschooled in the treacherous game, the poisonous waters of Washington politics and Potomac back-stabbing. Perhaps he was, as well, too apt to believe those who came to him after his election, “former” Never Trumpers with crocodile tears in their eyes, who begged for positions in the new administration…foul chameleons who would change their colors for a high-ranking sinecure: Nikki Haley, any0ne? Or, John Bolton. And most shockingly, Lindsey Graham. 

None of these self-proclaimed “conservative” leopards had changed their spots. In their elastic ability to manipulate their allegiances and their willingness to “say the right” things at the right time, these oleaginous creatures of the twilight convinced the president of their bona fides and their loyalty. But they remained and remain “fifth columnists” all the same, waiting for the right moment to strike.

That, perhaps, has been the biggest weakness of the Trump presidency: President Trump appears actually too ready at times to take a politician at his sworn word. And that is something that in Washington you NEVER do.

This past Sunday, December 30, Senator Graham had lunch with the president to beg him to reconsider the decision to pull American troops out of Syria, all 2,200. After the meeting, Graham averred that he felt “reassured” that there would be no “precipitous withdrawal.”  Yet, the president’s ultimate resolve to end our unwieldy, untenable, and unwise intervention there, one of his major campaign pledges, continues. But we must watch and see just what kind of effect the plaintive cries of Deep State globalists like Graham might have. The power of the zealously interventionist foreign policy establishment is still very significant, and even a Donald Trump is subject to it.

Back on December 23 my installment of MY CORNER applauded the president’s decision to exit Syria. That particular column was picked up by the LewRockwell.com site, the nation’s largest and most important Web site for libertarian thought. While I do not define my thinking as strictly “libertarian” as I understand the term, I do share in my view many points of convergence and agreement with old fashioned, liberty-loving libertarians, especially on foreign policy questions and on the defense of our Constitution and states’ rights. And the LewRockwell site has been a leader in the defense of the basic rights of Americans: we should be grateful for that voice.

Nearly 2400 readers have read my article based on that generated publicity. And several of my articles on THE REMNANT newspaper Web site have been read by seven or eight thousand; so, the word is getting out.

Perhaps the professional hate-hunter Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will soon have to raise my “hatemonger” status?  I count his attacks as badges of honor—and I respond with disdain and contempt, as I have done since he first attacked me and my reputation some fifteen years ago (for a long, detailed account I published on his various malfeasances).  In our topsy-turvy world sometimes it’s the enemies you make that tell who you really are.

In any event, I pass on the LewRockwell article, and I am pleased to join them in their stouthearted opposition to American globalism and the imposition of a New World Order.

LewRockwell.com

anti-state•anti-war•pro-market

General Mattis, Syria, and the “Lost It” Hysteria of the DC Swamp Deep State Globalists – They Now Advocate a Military Overthrow of President Trump

By Boyd Cathey 

My Corner

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/12/no_author/general-mattis-syria-and-the-lost-it-hysteria-of-the-dc-swamp-deep-state-globalists-they-now-advocate-a-military-overthrow-of-president-trump/

December 24, 2018

Friends,

My intention this morning was to begin a short series on what the Holy Feast of Christmas means, and must mean, for us…and I still intend to write about that. But a couple of very good friends, one of whom is a neighbor who stopped me in the local Food Lion the other days, have inquired about the recent decision by President Trump to pull our 2,200 troops out of the cauldron of the Syrian “civil war” (AKA, terrorist rebellion): could I offer some additional information and background on what just happened. I told my friend that I had written an installment in this series that very day, December 21, for MY CORNER.

In that column I made reference to five other installments which went into some detail on the background of the Syrian civil war…and why we should never have been there. But the idea of providing a short, accessible summary about what just happened this past week kept popping up as something that might be very useful to my friends and readers.

So this morning, without a lot of my commentary I want to pass on several items that I think will place what just happened into some context and perhaps give you ample background to begin to understand what President Trump did.  And, hopefully will offer perspective on why the near totality of the Foreign Policy Establishment, and the political Deep State elites in Washington—All Democrats and most Republicans in Congress (and on Fox News)—are beside themselves, upset, angry that our president is fulfilling his promise regarding Syria, and even calling for a “military coup against the president” [why, I ask, aren’t such pundits being arrested for proposing treason?].

Various politicians—from Republicans like uber-globalist Senators Lindsey Graham and Ben Sasse, plus oodles of Democrats, ALL UNITED [what does THAT tell you about the globalist nature of the Deep State cliques who not only control the US of A, but wish to control the rest of the world as well?]—have harshly condemned President Trump for his Syria decision, and even more so for the fact his Secretary of Defense General James Mattis has resigned.  Mattis, too, like the globalists in Washington—now twenty-six years after the fall of world Communism—wanted to continue to send American boys to die in foreign civil wars in jungles and deserts where we have no business being, so that the fruits of American egalitarianism and (pseudo) democracy could be inflicted on those downtrodden states….not to mention expanding control of the American financial global elites who would control their economies, their oil, and just about everything else…oh, yes, all in the name of “democracy.”

Why, just think of all the benefits we could inflict, say, on Syria: transgendered Mullahs, same sex bathrooms replacing Shar’ia law in those madrassa Islamic centers of learning, free abortions for those downtrodden Muslim women, wonderful commercials everywhere on Syrian TV for Viagra and Preparation-H, with same sex partners showing them all how it is done, and “democratic” elections with maybe Karl Rove parachuted in to instruct them how to manipulate votes. Maybe we could even encourage a few million Mexicans to move there to bolster whichever side the new “Demo-Republicrat” globalist alliance supports? And, why not get George Soros involved, too, if he is not already involved?

)Is this not, in sum, what we’ve been fighting for? Not so much against ISIS (the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and the Russians have done almost all the fighting and defeating of ISIS), but for one more desert outpost of “American democracy and equality”?

And that, in reality, is why everyone from the Establishment left to the Establishment “conservative movement” are all so upset, and why they now talk of…actually…a “military coup” against President Trump. The resignation of Mattis was just a pretext, the nail to hang their frenzied and putrid ideological hat on. And it is that same unrestrained fervor, that vicious anger still over the results of 2016, their resentment that “THAT MAN sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” that same Deep State lunacy that has even a few of them, get this, “contemplating suicide”! [Let me wish they carry through with that threat—the Dark Lord of Hell awaits them with open arms.]

So, here, first, is a brief account of those unleashed reactions from the devilish denizens of the Deep State: you must read these to begin to comprehend the quasi-religious madness these folks exhibit. And, once again, I ask: can there ever be any kind of “peace” with these votaries of the Dark Lord? Second, Andrew McCarthy responds to a vitriolic anti/Never-Trump piece by National Review’s David French. McCarthy is not ordinarily thought of as a staunch Trump loyalist and the magazine he writes for is and has been an outpost of Establishment Never-Trumpism, but he does make some good arguments about Syria, and why we should not be there and why we should get out….

Read the Whole Article

December 28, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

New REMNANT Essay: Remembering Who We Are: Our Hope and Challenge for 2019

Friends,

I hope and pray that each of you and your families have had a joyous and blessed Christmas, and I offer my very best wishes for 2019. This entire week through January 1^st is traditionally known as an “octave,” the eight days of celebration in the ancient liturgy beginning with the Birth of Our Lord on December 25^th, and culminating in what for centuries was known as the commemoration of the Circumcision of Our Lord. Not only is it a time of great joy—Our Blessed Lord came to us and Salvation is given to the world—but it is also a time for reflection and re-commitment. Indeed, in certain ways this is the origin of the common practice of making those New Year’s resolutions, which should encompass spiritual goals above all.

Today, to echo that liturgy and the traditions of our faith, I pass along to you a recent column I published in THE REMNANT newspaper (December 15, 2018 print issue, volume 52, no. 21), which has now also been published on The REMNANT’s Web site (December 21). It is based on an earlier installment that appeared in MY CORNER on November 28, but has been edited a bit.

Here’s THE REMNANT essay:

  

Friday, December 21, 2018   ONLINE EDITION

Remembering Who We Are…Hope in the Midst of the Ruins of Our Culture

https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/4267-remembering-who-we-are-hope-in-the-midst-of-the-ruins-of-our-culture

Written by  Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

The late scholar Mel Bradford once used the wording “remembering who we are” as a title to a book of finely-honed essays about his beloved Southland. It seems to me, as Bradford so artfully and gracefully suggested in his writings, that it is memory, both individual and collective, which is essential not just to the passed-on heritage of any culture, but to the very existence of that culture. We remember the deeds, the sayings, the handed-down lore, the usages, and the faith of our fathers and grandfathers (and mothers and grandmothers). Their lessons, their admonitions, their successes (and failures), their examples, even their everyday customs inform us and our actions, and, indeed, help shape our lives and view of life. Historically, these are in many respects the very same accoutrements that give definition and offer the earliest structure to our existence, that define us, and that also provide an inheritance which we, in turn, impart to our offspring and descendants.

It is thus memory that is integral to the continuation of a culture and a people. We inherit the wealth and the richness of the remembered past, and we are impelled to both add to it in our own way and also pass it on. To quote the 12^th century theologian, John of Salisbury (a quote often favored by my mentor, the late Russell Kirk):  "We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."

A society—a culture—that discards memory, that cuts itself off from its inheritance, whether purposefully or accidentally, deprives itself of the accumulated wealth of that heritage. Of course, there are always those who revile the past and its legacy, or at the very least, seek to modify or transform it. And, no doubt, change and reform, in some degree, are always necessary to any well-functioning society.

There is a fascinating quote from Prince Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s famous novel detailing the turmoil of mid-19^th century Italy, The Leopard (Il Gattopardo): “Things will have to change in order that they remain the same.” There is a wonderful film based on that novel starring, quite improbably, Burt Lancaster which director Luchino Visconti directed (1963), in which the tensions between the immemorial past and the circumstances created by change are vividly explored.

No society—no culture—can completely denude itself of its inheritance and its history and actually survive. Such experiments in total revolutionary transformation have inevitably ended in bloodshed and incredible destructiveness—in the massacres of the French Revolution, and more recently, in the Gulag and the concentration camp, or in blood-soaked Maoism.

Over the past half century and more we have witnessed a different kind of revolution; it does not employ as weapons of choice the tank and bayonet, nor the Gulag as the final destination for unrepentant opponents—at least not yet. It has been an unfolding, all-encompassing cultural movement spanning decades, subverting and then incorporating in its service diverse radical revolutionary elements injected into our educational system, into our entertainment industry, into our politics, even into the very language we use to communicate with each other. The “violence” it metes out is mostly of the cerebral nature, not of the physical kind, but rather predicated on shame, humiliation, fear of the loss of a job or reputation, and the playing on the natural human desire for conformity, while steadily upping the ante in our laws—constantly moving the goalposts of what is acceptable. It is the kind of intellectual “violence,” now writ large, that once impelled people to look the other way when their neighbors were hauled off to Siberia under Stalin, or to Dachau under Hitler.

And it has been highly effective, utilizing as its major weaponry the terrifying twins, the ineradicable accusations of “racism” and “sexism,” and a whole panoply of sub-terms that accompany such charges: “white supremacy,” “historic white oppression,” “colonialist imperialism,” “misogyny,” “toxic masculinity,” and increasingly expanded to incorporate terms like “anti-migrant” or “anti-transgender” bigotry.

The overarching desire of this Progressivist Revolution is, in fact, not reform—not what Lampedusa’s character the Prince of Salina says consolingly about some things changing so that other things can remain the same. No, it is incredibly “post-Marxian,” making the older Communist and Marxist revolutionary dreams seem tame in comparison. It invokes and demands a total reversal, a complete transformation in which nearly all, if not all, of those institutions, those traditions, and that inheritance vouchsafed to us from our ancestors is rudely discarded, rejected, and vilely condemned as racist, sexist, fascist—in other words, our remembered past is cut off from us.

And we are then naked before history, isolated individuals, without a heritage, without a past, without family, and without memory: neutralized and bland “tabula rasa” vessels to be filled with the “new” Progressivist ideology that will convert us all into the model obedient automatons only hinted at in Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four or by Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov’s deeply disturbing 1994 film of Stalin’s Russia, Burnt By the Sun.

Don't miss Dr. Cathey's Christmas column in the December 31st Remnant Newspaper, in the mail now.  Subscribe today!

Such attempts have always run aground when eventually confronted by human nature itself, those God-given natural characteristics ingrained in the human being and psyche that desperately seek belonging, family, a usable history, and memory. In the past all putative totalitarian systems have been impelled to offer substitutes in an attempt to satisfy those natural longings.  Verifiably, none of those ersatz replacements has worked, whether the Goddess of Reason enthroned in Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, or the deification of the Worker and Party (or of Chairman Mao) under Communism, or modern appeals to a debauched and poisonous corruption of Christianity.

Yet such efforts continue, and in our day with increased feverish and fanatical determination. Just take a look at the Web sites of such zealous groups as the Workers World Party (centered in Durham, NC), Redneck Revolt, Black Lives Matter, or various Antifa-related outfits. The chiliastic vision of some future Utopia bleeds through nearly every line, it is right around the corner, if only—if only—all those white supremacists and racists, all those male misogynists, all that historic, European-originated and colonialist bigotry and oppression, could be swept from the scene, and, of course, if only those monuments to Confederate veterans or to Christopher Columbus, and maybe to Fr. Junipero Serra, too, could be secreted safely away in some remote museum (just a small first step, of course, in the continuing revolution).

And our timorous and pusillanimous elites, those cowardly “guardians” of our culture, those globalists and “deep state” denizens, and those political prostitutes, give way in fearful obeisance and run, cowering, to hide in the tall grass.

It is the lunacy—the sickness—of the madman, but unlike the outbreaks of such contagions in the past, its modern roots are far more demonic, and it is far closer to apparent success. It is best described perhaps in the words of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats in his visionary poem written almost 100 years ago, “The Second Coming,” an intimation of the final emergence of the “Rough Beast,” an incarnation of what can only be described as the “anti-Christ,”

            “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 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.”

This, then, is the ultimate challenge and the multifaceted Enemy—the Legion—we face, which appears to have victory and domination within its grasp. And it is why we must never lose hope, for Our Creator is still Master of the Universe, and His promises are as valid and true now as ever before.

Our watchword—our abiding confidence—may be summed up in the words of early 20^th century Spanish writer, Miguel de Unamuno in his volume, The Tragic Sense of Life: “Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.”   

Published in  Remnant Articles

Read 2318 times Last modified on Friday, December 21, 2018

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

Boyd D. Cathey, a native North Carolina, received an MA in history at the University of Virginia (as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow) and served as assistant to conservative author, Dr. Russell Kirk, in Mecosta, Michigan. Recipient of a Richard M. Weaver Fellowship, he completed his doctoral studies at the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. Then, after additional studies in philosophy and theology, he taught in both Connecticut and in Argentina, before returning to the United States. He served as State Registrar of the North Carolina State Archives, retiring in 2011. He is the author of the new book, The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage, and various articles and studies published in several different languages about political matters, religion, and culture and the arts.

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December 24, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

CHRISTMAS GREETINGS…and A Little History

Friends,

On this day, Christmas Eve of the Year 2018, I take the opportunity to wish each of you and yours a most Blessed and Joyous Feast of Christmas! May Our Lord bless you and anneal you in His graces.

We have all thought fleetingly, I suppose, about the origin of name “Christmas” at one time or another, and we know that it comes from the conjunction of two words: “Christ” and “Mass,” that is, “Christ’s Mass,” the liturgy celebrated in His honor, commemorating His birth in the historic Christian calendar. 

The Wikipedia, following various histories, sums up well how the name came to be in popular usage.

"Christmas" is a shortened form of "Christ's mass". It is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, which is from Old English Crīstesmæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038^, followed by the word Cristes-messe in 1131.  Crīst (genitive Crīstes) is from Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), a translation of Hebrew Māšîaḥ (מָשִׁיחַ), "Messiah", meaning "anointed"; and mæsse is from Latin missa, the celebration of the Eucharist.

The form Christenmas was also historically used, but is now considered archaic and dialectal; it derives from Middle English Cristenmasse, literally "Christian mass". Xmas is an abbreviation of Christmas found particularly in print, based on the initial letter chi (Χ) in Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), "Christ", though numerous style guides discourage its use;^[37] it has precedent in Middle English Χρ̄es masse (where "Χρ̄" is an abbreviation for Χριστός).^[36]

In addition to "Christmas", the holiday has been known by various other names throughout its history. The Anglo-Saxons referred to the feast as "midwinter", or, more rarely, as Nātiuiteð (from Latin nātīvitās). "Nativity", meaning "birth", is from Latin nātīvitās. In Old English, Gēola (Yule) referred to the period corresponding to December and January, which was eventually equated with Christian Christmas. "Noel" (or "Nowel") entered English in the late 14th century and is from the Old French noël or naël, itself ultimately from the Latin nātālis (diēs)meaning "birth (day)."

It is fascinating to note that in 1659 the Puritans in control of the Massachusetts Bay Colony actually banned Christmas and the festivities surrounding it which they considered, in their Iconoclastic and heretical way, to be an affront to God:

“For preventing disorders arising in several places within this jurisdiction, by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries, to the great dishonor of God and offence of others, it is therefore ordered by this Court and the authority thereof, that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon such accountants as aforesaid, every person so offending shall pay of every such offence five shillings, as a fine to the county.” [ https://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/how-the-puritans-banned-christmas/]

For those zealots, Christmas was a distraction, a pagan celebration that smacked of the feared Catholic and Anglican traditions. Too much celebration, too much joy took away from their practical and stern Gnosticism. Indeed, by so doing they actually cut themselves off from living Christian tradition and the inheritance of 1500 years of Christian faith.

As various distinguished historians and authors such as Perry Miller and Paul Conkin have detailed, the Puritans of Massachusetts begat in third and fourth generations a degenerative vision of humanity that maintained the same frenzied zealotry and framework of the original Yankee Puritans, but had evolved into philosophical Transcendentalism and religious Universalism, and later such fanatical aberrations as Abolitionism and Women’s Suffrage. Without the firm anchor and foundation of tradition, “faith” became little more than a social philosophy advocating for change here on earth. In social reform and human progress would Salvation be found.

And we have seen in our own time the continued expression, the result of this philosophy. For today it is the same descendants of those Puritans, now vested in all the gross finery of Progressivist thought, who advance the latest cause for gender equality, same sex marriage, transgenderism…the same descendants and their allies who denounce anyone who challenges the new template on race as “racist”…and who with unleashed passion demand that the “new Gospel” of American-style secular democracy and equality be imposed on the rest of the world. There lies salvation for them.

So, tonight as we begin to celebrate the Feast of Christmas, by that very act we defy and denounce those Puritans and their progeny.  In the liturgy for Christmas Eve, we sing:

Læténtur coeli et exsultet terra ante fáciem Dómini, quóniam venit.

“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad before the face of the Lord: because He cometh.”

A blessed and joyous Christmas to you all and to your families! 

December 23, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

General Mattis, Syria, and the “Lost It” Hysteria of the DC Swamp Deep State Globalists – They Now Advocate a Military Overthrow of President Trump

Friends,

My intention this morning was to begin a short series on what the Holy Feast of Christmas means, and must mean, for us…and I still intend to write about that. But a couple of very good friends, one of whom is a neighbor who stopped me in the local Food Lion the other days, have inquired about the recent decision by President Trump to pull our 2,200 troops out of the cauldron of the Syrian “civil war” (AKA, terrorist rebellion): could I offer some additional information and background on what just happened. I told my friend that I had written an installment in this series that very day, December 21, for MY CORNER: https://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2018/12/december-21-2018-my-corner-by-boyd.html

In that column I made reference to five other installments which went into some detail on the background of the Syrian civil war…and why we should never have been there. But the idea of providing a short, accessible summary about what just happened this past week kept popping up as something that might be very useful to my friends and readers.

So this morning, without a lot of my commentary I want to pass on several items that I think will place what just happened into some context and perhaps give you ample background to begin to understand what President Trump did.  And, hopefully will offer perspective on why the near totality of the Foreign Policy Establishment, and the political Deep State elites in Washington—All Democrats and most Republicans in Congress (and on Fox News)—are beside themselves, upset, angry that our president is fulfilling his promise regarding Syria, and even calling for a “military coup against the president” [why, I ask, aren’t such pundits being arrested for proposing treason?].

Various politicians---from Republicans like uber-globalist Senators Lindsey Graham and Ben Sasse, plus oodles of Democrats, ALL UNITED [what does THAT tell you about the globalist nature of the Deep State cliques who not only control the US of A, but wish to control the rest of the world as well?]—have harshly condemned President Trump for his Syria decision, and even more so for the fact his Secretary of Defense General James Mattis has resigned.  Mattis, too, like the globalists in Washington—now twenty-six years after the fall of world Communism—wanted to continue to send American boys to die in foreign civil wars in jungles and deserts where we have no business being, so that the fruits of American egalitarianism and (pseudo) democracy could be inflicted on those downtrodden states….not to mention expanding control of the American financial global elites who would control their economies, their oil, and just about everything else…oh, yes, all in the name of “democracy.”

Why, just think of all the benefits we could inflict, say, on Syria: transgendered Mullahs, same sex bathrooms replacing Shar’ia law in those madrassa Islamic centers of learning, free abortions for those downtrodden Muslim women, wonderful commercials everywhere on Syrian TV for Viagra and Preparation-H, with same sex partners showing them all how it is done, and “democratic” elections with maybe Karl Rove parachuted in to instruct them how to manipulate votes. Maybe we could even encourage a few million Mexicans to move there to bolster whichever side the new “Demo-Republicrat” globalist alliance supports? And, why not get George Soros involved, too, if he is not already involved?

Is this not, in sum, what we’ve been fighting for? Not so much against ISIS (the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and the Russians have done almost all the fighting and defeating of ISIS), but for one more desert outpost of “American democracy and equality”?

And that, in reality, is why everyone from the Establishment left to the Establishment “conservative movement” are all so upset, and why they now talk of…actually…a “military coup” against President Trump. The resignation of Mattis was just a pretext, the nail to hang their frenzied and putrid ideological hat on. And it is that same unrestrained fervor, that vicious anger still over the results of 2016, their resentment that “THAT MAN sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” that same Deep State lunacy that has even a few of them, get this, “contemplating suicide”! [Let me wish they carry through with that threat—the Dark Lord of Hell awaits them with open arms.]

So, here, first, is a brief account of those unleashed reactions from the devilish denizens of the Deep State: you must read these to begin to comprehend the quasi-religious madness these folks exhibit. And, once again, I ask: can there ever be any kind of “peace” with these votaries of the Dark Lord? Second, Andrew McCarthy responds to a vitriolic anti/Never-Trump piece by National Review’s David French. McCarthy is not ordinarily thought of as a staunch Trump loyalist and the magazine he writes for is and has been an outpost of Establishment Never-Trumpism, but he does make some good arguments about Syria, and why we should not be there and why we should get out.

===============================================

Establishment Meltdown Over Mattis Resignation: They Talk of Impeaching President Trump, Coups and Suicide

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/12/establishment-meltdown-over-mattis-resignation-talk-of-impeaching-pres-trump-coups-and-suicide/?omhide=true

by Kristinn Taylor December 20, 2018 

The Establishment is melting down after the sudden resignation by Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Thursday. Talk of impeachment, coups, and suicide abound over fears that Mattis was the last ‘adult’ keeping President Trump in check. Mattis resigned as Trump moved to assert mastery over his presidency this week in key areas after nearly two years on the job.

Former AFP White House reporter Andrew Beatty wrote that nearly anywhere else Trump would forced out of office by a military coup, “Syria withdrawal, Afghanistan draw down, Mattis gone, govt shutdown looming, President making decisions on the fly. Almost any other place in the world the guys in camouflage would be at the TV station by now.”

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson passive/aggressively called for a coup, “If we lived in a lesser country than our great nation, today is the day we really would be talking about a military coup. Soldiers down to the enlisted ranks are raising hell about the President’s Syria decision.”

Foreign Policy Pentagon reporter Lara Seligman wrote the press corp is contemplating suicide over Mattis’ resignation, “I think I speak for all national security reporters tonight when I say I’m about ready to jump off a cliff. But at least I already wrote the “who will replace Mattis” story two months (only two months?????) ago @ForeignPolicy“

The Washington Post’s [house “conservative”] Jennifer Rubin called for Trump to be impeached and removed from office, “it is time for Senate Republicans to seriously consider removing Trump in the event the House moves to impeach. Trump is a menace to our democracy and national security”

The Washington Post’s Matt Viser made a play on the winter solstice tomorrow, “Tomorrow is the darkest day of the year.”

Veteran Hollywood actor Ed Asner (Mary Tyler Moore Show and the move Elf), “With Mattis’ departure could we be seeing the first steps of a coup?”

The Wall Street Journal reported a Pentagon official saying, “We are on the edge,” “Lawmakers and Pentagon officials said tonight that they were shaken by Mattis‘s departure and what it could mean for the U.S. military and the nation’s national-security strategy. “We are on the edge,” one Pentagon official said. “This is unbelievable.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said Mattis’ resignation is his worst nightmare.  Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is scared, “This is scary. Secretary Mattis has been an island of stability amidst the chaos of the Trump administration. As we’ve seen with the President’s haphazard approach to Syria, our national defense is too important to be subjected to the President’s erratic whims.”

House Speaker-designate Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she was “shaken and “concerned”. “General Mattis was a comfort to many who were concerned about the path the Trump Admin would choose to take. His resignation letter is defined by statements of principle — principles that drove him to leave the Administration. All of us should be concerned at this time.”

Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) joined Pelosi in expressing concerns about Mattis resigning.

The Washington Post reported a former senior administration official saying, “There’s going to be an intervention. Jim Mattis just sent a shot across the bow. He’s the most credible member of the administration by five grades of magnitude. He’s the steady, safe set of hands. And this letter is brutal. He quit because of the madness”

More Washington Post, “A sad day for America’: Washington fears a Trump unchecked by Mattis”

CNN reported D.C. is shaken and scared, “Shaken, saddened, scared: Washington erupts over the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis”

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe fears a Trump nuclear war with Mattis gone, “Yes: this. Retweet if you were hoping a grownup like Jim Mattis would stand between Trump and the nuclear codes.”

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The Syria Fairy Tale Lives!

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/syria-troop-withdrawal-middle-east-policy/

By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY  December 22, 2018 6:30 AM

Americans will no longer support Washington’s incoherent Middle East adventurism.

Unlike my colleagues, I’ve been a bemused spectator during this week’s Syria follies. As readers of these columns know (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here), I believe the United States has less interest in Syria than in the persistence of drought in Burkina Faso. That is why I was a steadfast naysayer on American intervention in a conflict among rivals whose common ground consists of hatred for America and affinity for sharia supremacism (and the abetting thereof — I’m looking at you, Vladimir).

The current frenzy was ignited by the president’s abrupt decision to pull U.S. forces (all 2,200 of them) out of Syria. This prompted Defense Secretary James Mattis’s resignation — though General Mattis’s stinging letter indicates that Syria was really just the last straw for him after two years in the Trump grinder.

These latest chapters are already being folded into the Syria Hawk Fantasy Narrative. To recap, we are to believe that President Obama, by extracting forces from Iraq (inconveniently, pursuant to an agreement struck by President Bush) created a “vacuum,” in which ISIS spontaneously generated. It is supposed to be irrelevant to this story that the American people never supported Washington’s farcical sharia-democracy project, and that the Iraqis claimed to want our troops out even more than we did. What matters is that Obama’s decision “created ISIS,” dashing the dreams for a secular, pluralist democracy harbored by the moderate Muslims who predominate Iraq (at least on days when they’re not executing homosexuals and apostates), and making an unspeakable bloodbath of the heroic struggle by the same moderate Muslims to overthrow Syria’s Tehran-backed monster, Bashar al-Assad.

Of course, Obama did not create the Islamic State. Sharia supremacism did. What no one in Washington pontificating on Syria and neighboring Iraq cares to acknowledge is that this region is a tinderbox of fundamentalist Islam in which, if there were no intervention by outside forces, Sunnis and Shiites would be slaughtering each other until some strongman imposed order — something that is to be expected in a culture of voluntarism (God as pure will) where submission to authority is the norm. (Voluntarism is brilliantly explained by Robert R. Reilly in The Closing of the Muslim Mind.)

It has been 17 years since 9/11 and 25 years since radical Islam declared war against the United States by bombing the World Trade Center. Yet, head firmly in the sand, we continue to discuss such catastrophes as Syria as if the most critical fact on the ground, the power and prevalence of sharia supremacism, did not exist. Consequently, we subscribe to delusional history (Obama created ISIS) and make policy around the resulting storylines.

If there was a Syria silver lining, at least for us at National Review, it was the scintillating debate between my friends David French and Michael Brendan Dougherty, during this week’s edition of The Editors podcast. Because I am solidly in the MBD camp on the folly of our Syria escapade, much of what follows will read like a rebuttal of David. I am sorry for that, because I believe he made the counter-case as eloquently and persuasively as it can be made, scoring some unassailable points along the way. It will more than repay the time you make to listen to it.

The exchange that most struck me was when, pressed by Mike to explain what on earth the U.S. mission is in Syria, David replied, “Completing the job of degrading ISIS into irrelevance.” To me, this seems like tunnel vision.

ISIS is simply a breakaway faction of al-Qaeda. It started, long before Obama came along, as the network’s franchise in Iraq, during the anti-American insurgency that metastasized into sectarian civil war. Al-Qaeda did not spontaneously generate either. It arose largely out of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. You may notice a pattern here. The animating force is sharia-supremacist jihadism — the conviction that there is a divine injunction to impose Islamic law on Muslim countries and, from there, spread it globally. This is to be done by any means necessary, though fundamentalist ideology (in contrast to other interpretations of Islam) makes violence the highest form of jihad.

There has never been any vacuum in Syria (or Iraq). Sharia supremacism fills all voids. In focusing on ISIS, David discounts sharia supremacism as “an idea.” But it is much more than that. It is a cultural distinction — even, as Samuel Huntington argued, a civilizational one. It will always be a forcible enemy of the West. It doesn’t matter what the groups are called. You can kill ISIS, but it is already reforming as something else. In fact, it may no longer even be the strongest jihadist force in Syria: Its forebear-turned-rival al-Qaeda is ascendant — after a few name changes (the latest is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Levant Liberation Organization) and some infighting with other militant upstarts. There is a better chance that ISIS will reestablish ties with the mothership than fade away.

The fact that al-Qaeda, which triggered the “War on Terror,” does not factor into American clamoring about Syria is telling. The anti-ISIS mission David describes was not always the U.S. objective in Syria. First we were going to pull an Iraq/Libya redux and help the “moderates” overthrow Assad. But the “moderates,” in the main, are Muslim Brotherhood groups that are very content to align with al-Qaeda jihadists — and our fabulous allies in Syria, the Turks and the Saudis, were only too happy to abet al-Qaeda. Syria had thus become such a conundrum that we were effectively aligning with the very enemies who had provoked us into endless regional war.

When ISIS arose and gobbled up territory, beheading some inhabitants and enslaving the rest, Obama began sending in small increments of troops to help our “moderate” allies fend them off. But the moderates are mostly impotent; they need the jihadists, whether they are fighting rival jihadists or Assad. Syria remains a multi-front conflict in which one “axis” of America’s enemies, Assad-Iran-Russia, is pitted against another cabal of America’s enemies, the Brotherhood and al-Qaeda factions; both sides flit between fighting against and attempting to co-opt ISIS, another U.S. enemy. The fighting may go on for years; the prize the winner gets is . . . Syria (if it’s the Russians, they’ll wish they were back in Afghanistan).

Degrading ISIS into irrelevance would not degrade anti-American jihadism in Syria into irrelevance. If sharia didn’t ban alcohol, I’d say the old wine would just appear in new bottles. It was, moreover, absurd for President Trump to declare victory just because ISIS has been stripped of 95 percent of the territory it once held. Caliphate aspirations notwithstanding, ISIS’s mistake was the attempt to be an open and notorious sovereign. It was always more effective as a terrorist underground, and it still has tens of thousands of operatives for that purpose.

If we stayed out of the way, America’s enemies would continue killing each other. That’s fine by me. I am not indifferent to collateral human suffering, but it is a staple of sharia-supremacist societies; we can no more prevent it in Syria than in Burkina Faso. And I am not indifferent to the challenge David rightly identifies: terrorists occupying safe havens from which they can plot against the West. But that is a global challenge, and we handle it elsewhere by vigilant intelligence-gathering and quick-strike capabilities. We should hit terrorist sanctuaries wherever we find them, but it is not necessary to have thousands of American troops on the ground everyplace such sanctuaries might take root.

The Kurds are a more complicated problem. We have had a good deal with the Kurds: We protect them from Turkey, they kill jihadists. I could not agree more with David (among others) that it is shameful to abandon them, and it is shame multiplied by cowardice if, as reporting indicates, Trump decided to pull out after a threat by Ankara.

When we look a little deeper, though, we see why Americans will no longer support Washington’s incoherent Middle East adventurism. When we made our arrangements with the Kurds, we knew the backbone of their fighting forces was the PKK, which the U.S. government has designated a terrorist organization. We knew the Kurds had territorial ambitions over which the Turks (and the Iranians, for that matter) are spoiling to go to war. We knew, further, that Turkey is our purported ally in NATO — quite apart from its failure to keep its defense commitments, this Western alliance maintains as a member the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a sharia-supremacist in the Muslim Brotherhood mold who despises the West. We knew, therefore, that conflict between Turkey and the Kurds was inevitable, that we would eventually have to make an excruciating choice, and that the freight of the NATO alliance would tip the scales in Erdogan’s favor. In fact, in the very conversation in which Erdogan advised Trump to steer U.S. troops clear of Turkey’s imminent anti-Kurd operations, Trump offered Erdogan a Patriot air- and missile-defense system in order to dissuade the Turks from completing a purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile-defense system.

Could we defy Erdogan and keep — or even beef up — the U.S. military presence to protect the Kurds (including protecting the designated terrorists with whom we’ve managed to ally)? Sure we could . . . but by what authority?

I felt like a lonely voice around here in April 2017, when I condemned President Trump’s airstrikes on Syria as an unconstitutional act of war and an embarrassing contradiction of Trump’s broadsides against Obama for doing the same thing. I was therefore delighted when, addressing Syria a few months later, David asserted, “The Constitution cannot be discarded when it’s inconvenient.” He elaborated:

It’s past time for a true congressional vote on American engagement in Syria. Any argument that previous use-of-force resolutions applicable to Iraq or al-Qaeda also apply to the current conflict evaporate the instant American forces find themselves holding foreign territory in hostile opposition to the foreign sovereign. There is no credible argument that any current authorization allows American forces to occupy a single square inch of Syria without the consent of its government.

Amen. The Constitution is not a suggestion; it is our law. But this week, it is somehow not even a consideration. I hold no brief for Trump on Syria (as noted above, I believe his lawless aggression risked a wider war no one wants). But I find it remarkable that, as the president was rebuked across Capitol Hill — from Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a true believer in American adventurism, to Democrats, who will exploit any pretext to attack Trump — congressional critics never paused, ever so slightly, over the fact that the troops they want the president to keep in Syria were never authorized by Congress to be in Syria.

Some commentators sensed the problem but tried to finesse it, allowing that it would be good for Congress to have a “debate” about Syria because it would give clarity to the mission. That misses the point. The clarifying debate is a residual benefit we get from the constitutional necessity of obtaining congressional authorization before committing acts of war against other countries that have not threatened us. If the mission is not authorized, its clarity is immaterial.

Which brings me back, finally, to the excellent discussion on The Editors. Here’s David again, defending the mission:

This is one of the clearer missions that I’ve seen. This is not a nation-building mission. This is a mission that is a degrade and destroy a specified enemy, and then hold a geographic line against geopolitical foes who would seek to take that geography and crush our allies. That’s a clear mission

Yes, it’s clear. But so was David’s declaration, a year ago, that there is no lawful authorization in existence that “allows American forces to occupy a single square inch of Syria.” How, then, is it permissible for our forces to be “holding a geographic line” in a foreign country? What does it matter that, rhetorically speaking, Syria, Iran, and Russia are “geopolitical foes” if Congress has never authorized the use of force against them?

We all know the answer to this. Obama did not seek congressional authorization for combat operations in Syria because Congress would have refused. And Congress does not want any president to ask for authorization because members do not want to be accountable — they want to go on cable TV and whine that whoever is president has been heedless, whether for going in or for pulling out.

Want to declare war against ISIS? I’d be up for discussing that. Or, as a matter of honor, an authorization of military force to protect the Kurds for what they’ve done on our behalf? I could be persuaded. Or even a declaration of war against Iran — it wouldn’t require us to invade, but it might be useful as part of a real “maximum pressure” strategy, rather than just making mean faces at them in Syria. I’d be open to all of that; but not to more unprovoked military interventions that don’t have congressional authorization.

There is nothing for America in Syria. We haven’t defeated ISIS by taking its territory, and it wouldn’t matter if we did because sharia-supremacist culture guarantees that a new ISIS will replace the current one. The names change, but the enemy remains the same. And if you want to fight that enemy in an elective war, the Constitution demands that the people give their consent through their representatives in Congress.