April 29, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
The Death of a Modern-Day Christian “Knight Without Fear” – Aaron Wolf,
R.I.P.
Friends,
A week ago Sunday—Easter Sunday—Aaron Wolf, Executive
Editor of Chronicles Magazine, passed
away. After what had been for him, his wife Lorrie, and his family one of the
best weeks of his life, he was struck down on the Day of Resurrection by a
sudden and massive heart attack: Our Lord had called Aaron unto Him.
I got to know Aaron over the past couple of years because I
had submitted several articles to him that were then published in Chronicles. We became friends. I knew of
his fine writing which appeared in every issue of the magazine, always adding thoughtful
insight to each topic he examined.
I also
knew of his love for and defense of the heritage and history of the South. In
2018 he had accepted an invitation to speak at The Abbeville Institute, where
he offered a superb presentation. Abbeville
has published the text of the presentation on the institute’s
Web site. [https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/awake-for-the-living-lee-and-the-feeling-of-loyalty/] And there is also a You Tube
video of Aaron’s splendid remarks. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olx6lCiQPwQ] I urge you to watch the
video and read the transcription.
Aaron demonstrated both a profound understanding of
Southern history and a deep appreciation of the legacy left to us by our
ancestors. Like another fallen “Chevalier
sans Peur,” the late Mel Bradford, he knew that the key to our future, to
our survival as a people, was “remembering who we are,” continually delving
into that wellspring—that rich heritage stretching back millennia—that for
centuries has defined us and given us our character. In that sense, remembering
who we are is the ultimate act of piety, of pietas,
and a recognition that we are part of that history and culture that comes to us
from our forefathers. If we turn our backs on it, if we deny our history, we are
thrust out into the darkness of barbarism and despair, and end up by denying our
own essential personhood.
Aaron understood that, and he took that appreciation not
only to his stellar work at Chronicles,
which, along with its editor Chilton Williamson Jr., helped make it the
premiere magazine defending and advancing the principles and reality of our
Western Christian civilization, but to his everyday pursuits, his role as a
devoted family man, and his belief in God.
And now Our Lord has called Aaron to Himself, and on
Easter, the Day of Resurrection.
My prayers are for him, and for his wife Lorrie and family,
and for the work of the enterprise, Chronicles
magazine, for which he so tirelessly labored and through which he helped define
the response that every devout Christian must make to the cunning temptations
and snares of the modern and soulless world in which we live: “Non possumus!” “We cannot—we will not succumb to your tawdry
enticements!”
Rather, we—our small remnant—sing the hymn of ultimate
victory and praise, chanted at the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor
Charlemagne in 800 A.D., the Laudes
Regiae: “Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!” – Christ conquers!
Christ reigns! Christ commands!
In many ways, they were Aaron’s watch words.
The last issue of Chronicles
fully edited by Aaron was the May 2019 number, and I am honored that it featured
a major review by Professor Donald Livingston of my book, The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage (Scuppernong Press,
2018; hardback). Dr. Livingston is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Emory
University and internationally known author, as well as co-founder of The
Abbeville Institute. His review is found at pages 17-18 of the print version of
the May issue, and is also available online for subscribers.
I offer the review here, but I also entreat you to
subscribe to the print magazine which, as I say, is the major print publication
in today’s dark world defending the two millennia of our culture and
civilization against the barbarians.
Faithful
Son
Boyd
Cathey is an 11th generation Carolina
Tar Heel who was mentored by and worked with Russell Kirk. The Land We Love: The South and Its
Heritage is written reverentially, just as one might reflect
on the memory of one’s mother. For the South is not just any region of
the United States, like the Midwest, the Southwest, or even New England.
From 1776 to 1860 the South was at the core of American identity. In the
first 72 years under the Constitution, only five presidents were elected from
the North. None served two terms; whereas five Southern presidents served
two terms. All the territory beyond the original 13 states was acquired
by Southern presidents.
As of 1860, the South was America: Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, the Louisiana Purchase, the
Alamo. But this Jeffersonian America was challenged with the formation of
the Republican Party in 1854. It was a revolutionary party and a
sectional party. Its goal was to consolidate the states into a
centralized regime of crony capitalism ruled by the emerging New York-Chicago
industrial axis. This aim stood in stark contrast to the America that
Southerners did so much to create and sustain. So, they seceded and took
the Founders’ constitution with them, word for word, except for a few reforms
to prevent crony capitalism and to strengthen state sovereignty.
Unlike other regions, the South was once an
independent country. It suffered defeat in one of the bloodiest wars of
the 19th century and endured the humiliation of military occupation and
plunder. Out of this Golgotha came a tragic view of human life and human
nature that immunized the best of the Southern people against the ideological
enthusiasms of the age.
In time North and South would be reunited,
and the War would be seen as a battle over a contested American identity that
existed among the Founders themselves. This gave the Confederacy an
honorable heritage. Southern heroes such as Lee became models for
emulation by all Americans. President Eisenhower kept a portrait of Lee
in the Oval Office throughout his two terms.
But that America is as gone with the wind
as the Old South itself.
Written from the aforementioned
perspective, this book is a collection of short essays that appeared in various
journals from the 1980’s into 2018, the period in which the Cultural Marxist
understanding of America came into its own. The chapters cover a great
variety of topics: Southern Founders; the attack on Confederate monuments;
Southern writers, religion, and character; secession movements; the South in
film; the Southern Poverty Law Center; the South and Christian civilization;
race relations; and the baneful character of ideology. The essays are
short, eloquently written, and—since they range over a variety of characters,
events, and topics—continually stimulating.
Readers of this book will come away with an
understanding of Southern virtues, but they will also wonder whether the
tradition that produced those virtues still exists. Have most Southerners
been transformed into a nomadic, Sunbelted mass of deracinated Americans
wearing Ray-Bans? It might seem so. In recent years, those leading
attacks on Southern monuments have been Southern mayors, city councils,
governors, and prominent leaders of Southern churches and denominations.
Today, two years after the tragic events of
Charlottesville, one is hard-pressed to find a state or federal political
leader willing to defend the Lee monument there, though it still stands by
court order. A South whose leadership cannot (or will not) say a good
word about Lee is in serious decline, if not already dead. Have
Southerners lost their immunity to ideology? Have they internalized the
Cultural Marxist mantra that America is structurally white supremacist, sexist,
and homophobic to the point that they are morally disarmed by the dreaded
charge of racism? The question applies not only to leaders but to
rank-and-file Southerners as well, who failed to assemble en masse to protest the
desecration and tearing down of their monuments.
Traditions do die, and usually with a
whimper. Boyd Cathey is aware of this, and running throughout this book
are reflections on the Christian virtue of hope as well as two essays that
encourage recovery: “The Vigil of the Nativity: Reflections on the Hope that
Came to Us Two Millennia Ago,” and a substantial final meditation, “Reflections
on the Future.”
[The Land We Love: The South and
Its Heritage, by Boyd Cathey (Wake Forest, NC: Scuppernong Press) 308 pp.,
$28.00]
This
review appears in the May 2019 print issue, pages 17-18.
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