October 6, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
Abbeville Institute Publishes:
“How the Neocons are Helping Destroy Western Civilization”
Friends,
The
Abbeville Institute has published another essay of mine, this one titled: “How
the Neocons are Helping Destroy Western Civilization.” Like many of my
published essays, this one is based on an item first offered as an installment
in the MY CORNER series [September 15]. And once again, I examine what has been
occurring with and in the so-called “conservative movement.” The two examples
discussed—egregious instances of how establishment “conservatives” seem to be
marching in lock-step with the further left progressivists—are not,
unfortunately, isolated or rare. For they indicate a certain frame of mind, a
destructive misunderstanding of the American Founding and, at base more
profoundly, a philosophically poisonous attitude toward Western civilization,
despite their protestations to the contrary.
ABBEVILLE INSTITUTE
How the
Neocons are Helping Destroy Western Civilization
Boyd Cathey on Oct 4, 2019
Every now and then an acquaintance who
reads what I write will ask me: “Boyd, why are you so critical of writers and
commentators—Neoconservatives—like Victor Davis Hanson, Ben Shapiro, Brian
Kilmeade, and those who appear on Fox News? Why do you seem so condemnatory of
articles and essays that show up in, say, National Review or The
Wall Street Journal? Aren’t there some good and worthy items there…aren’t
there some good things coming from those folks and from those publications?”
My answer is short and in the form of an
analogy: Suppose you had a cantaloupe. It appeared to be just fine and
pleasing. But a considerable portion of it—a large interior portion you could
not really see or determine—was rotten. Just as you say to yourself, “Yum, this
is a tasty cantaloupe,” and continue munching away, before long and before you
realize it, you are getting into parts of the fruit that maybe at first didn’t
seem so bad. But, in fact, you have begun to digest decaying fruit. And then it
is too late….
Certainly, this analogy is imperfect.
Nevertheless, that is what happens when you embrace such personalities as
Hanson and Shapiro and Guy Benson, or immerse yourself in such journals
as National Review or in the courses of study in American
history at Prager University. Every isolated nugget of truth is mixed in with
historical and philosophical rot and falsehood…and for far too many people, the
meagre “good” gotten by such involvement is more than counter-balanced by the
gradual acceptance and infection of what is erroneous and not good.
Just recently I heard Congressman Dan
Crenshaw (Republican-Texas) tell his Fox News audience—once again— that America, its foundation, is based on the proposition of “equality
for all” and
“spreading the Gospel of Democracy” to all the rest of the world. Just
like for his far less intelligent compatriot in Congress, Adam Kinzinger
(Republican-Illinois), who never saw a war that he did not want this nation to
be in, and most members of the establishment “Conservative Movement, Inc.,”
Crenshaw partakes of a discernible philosophical foundation which is
essentially inimical to the designs and thinking of the Framers of our
Constitution and the Founders of this country. Although he and Kinzinger would
undoubtedly and strongly deny it, in fact, their view owes far more to the
febrile mental extrapolations and interpretations of Trotskyite publicists of
the 1930s and 1940s than to the resolutely anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic
vision of most of the men who cobbled together an American confederation in
1787, and who led that confederation in large part until 1861.
In effect, such enterprises as Prager
U, National Review, and most of Fox (except for Tucker Carlson)
are in far too many ways just a more recent, maybe less noxious branch of the
Progressivist revolution which has been eating away at and infecting Western
civilization for well over 100 years.
Harsh words? Yes. But let me offer just
two examples to illustrate. And, as I have done in past installments in this
series in essays about Hanson and Shapiro, I believe these examples are not only dispositive but
highly symbolic of an ingrained—and very dangerous—mindset about our history.
And it is a mindset that says much about the philosophical foundations of those
who mouth such convictions.
As the old saying goes: A word to the
wise is sufficient. Every “good” item you might read in a magazine like National
Review, or insight that you might pick up in one of Hillsdale
College’s “American heritage courses,” also contains, eventually, a slow
mental infection, a “hook” which if allowed to fester will pervert and distort.
(Hillsdale President Larry Arnn is a
zealous follower of the late Harry Jaffa who debated Professor
Mel Bradford over the disastrous role of Abraham Lincoln in American history.
See my essay at Abbeville, “Mel Bradford and the Defense of Southern Conservatism,” July 17, 2014.)
Two examples, then, and both are
significant and both bracket the major offensive of unfolding, progressive
“conservative movement thought.”
First, Dennis Prager is seen regularly
on Fox, and just recently he appeared on the Mark Levin program. Levin,
characterized by his brash and seemingly uncontrollable histrionics, lapped up
Prager’s insights. Prager is currently featuring a certain Professor Allen
Guelzo (Professor of History, Princeton University) to discuss the War Between
the States and Reconstruction. (See his online lecture: “Reconstruction: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,”
September 9.)
And like Victor Davis Hanson—and,
ironically, like out-and-out Communist Eric Foner—his argument is that: (1) the
War was all about slavery and the fulfilling (by force of arms) of our
“national destiny” of “equality for all,” and (2) the Yankee armies should have
remained as brutal occupiers in the defeated South for a far longer time after
the war “until a newer generation learned a newer lesson about race and rights other
than white supremacy.”
The question immediately arises: how
does this revisionist historicism differ from the Marxist vision of a Foner or maybe Eric Hobsbawn?
And the answer is: not much.
Yet this narrative is pushed, and pushed
hard by the Neoconservatives and the Establishment Conservative Movement. So,
my question back to my interrogators is: “Why do you continue soaking up these
noxious nostrums, even if there might be an occasional bit of reason or truth
discovered therein, when you can go elsewhere, to other journals
and online sites, to find something which will provide the same information but
that is far less infectious?” [I would offer here as alternatives: Chronicles magazine,
The Abbeville Institute, Reckonin.com, The Agonist, New
English Review, Takimag.com, VDare.com, Big League Politics, and several
others.]
My second example, the second major
offensive involves the ferocious attack on a major and essentially defining
characteristic and historic quality of Western civilization: our inherited
Christian moral tradition, a tradition and belief system that is inextricably
bound up with the very existence of our culture. It has, thus, been a primary
target of the unrelenting post-Marxist social justice warriors—beginning with
divorce-on-demand, paid for abortion for all women, the destruction of the
bonds of matrimony and same sex marriage, full acceptance of transgenderism and
“gender-fluidity” (i.e., on Monday I “feel” like a woman, but on Tuesday I
“feel” like a man), and now even pedophilia. And its effect is to both deny the
laws of nature and the Divine Positive Law. Without those foundations, our
civilization cannot continue, and our enemies know that full well.
So why do figures such as Jonah Goldberg, George Will, and National
Review’s David French (and many other “conservative” spokesmen) not only
accept such aberrations, but actively support and advance them in our society?
And here it is very instructive to read
what major National Review contributor David French has to
say about “Drag Queen Story Hour,” a program now present in some of our public
libraries, and aimed at “grooming” young impressionable pre-schoolers across
the country.
French thinks it’s not only fine,
but a wonderful expression of “the blessings of liberty,”
indeed, he thinks such activities should be widespread. Or, as he says: “There’s this idea
that victory is the natural state of affairs and defeat is the intolerable intrusion,”
demonstrating the mindset that has caused mainstream conservatism to conserve
nothing throughout the decades. “What I’ve been trying to tell people is
that none of this stuff is fixed. There is not necessarily an arc to history….”
Just two examples, but two of an
increasing number which illustrate the utter corruption of the Establishment
Conservative Movement, and its Fifth Column use by those on the further Left.
Such luminaries as David French and Dennis Prager, and their ilk rationalize,
then normalize and make acceptable the aberrant behavior and anti-Christian
beliefs which are destroying what remains of our civilization.
They propound a toxic mix which, in the
end like every toxic mix, will be fatal to its recipients. That cantaloupe may
seem okay, but in the end rot and decay will spoil it…and make you sick.
About Boyd Cathey
Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in
European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain,
where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in intellectual history from
the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to
conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years
he served as State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History.
He has published in French, Spanish, and English, on historical subjects as
well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of Confederate
Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical organizations. He
is the author of the book, The Land We
Love: The South and Its Heritage (published by Scuppernong Press, 2018).
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