November 30, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

TWO ESSAYS Published by LewRockwell.com

Friends,

I pass on two published essays which showed up on LewRockwell.com earlier this year. Both are taken from original pieces that I put out as installments in the MY CORNER series. I am pleased that Lew Rockwell picked them up and gave them far wider distribution than they would otherwise have had:

LewRockwell.comanti-state•anti-war•pro-market

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP and the Future of America

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/no_author/birthright-citizenship-and-the-future-of-america/

By Boyd D. Cathey
My Corner    August 28, 2019

Kamala Harris is very angry with Donald Trump.

With her usual condescension and scorn, she tweeted out on Thursday, August 22, that Donald Trump should go read the 14^th Amendment—the implication being that when the president brought up, once again, the possibility that he might issue an Executive Order regulating birthright citizenship, he was woefully misreading the application of that Reconstruction amendment.

Of course, for a supercilious Leftist elitist like Harris, Trump will forever be that ignorant, brash, illiterate, racist New Yorker who is just way out of his league. It doesn’t really make any difference that he graduated with a B.S. in Economics from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. You see, he doesn’t have all the fineries and veneer of the self-proclaimed East Coast-West Coast Brahmin Elites who have controlled this country, its economy, its foreign policy, and its government for more than a century. Despite the fact that he has—in my view—given in far too often to those same Elites, nevertheless, they will only accept 100% obedience and compliance. Upsetting the apple cart, thwarting the advance of globalism in the slightest will get you—the Russia Hoax, the White Nationalist/Racist Hoax, the Gun Control Hoax, endless investigations and multiple mini-impeachment efforts, plus the extreme and active (even violent) hostility of almost all the media, academia, Hollywood, and the political class.

You can’t get off the Deep State reservation, even a hair, and expect any mercy.

So, when once again the president declared that his administration was looking into ending “birthright citizenship” through a presidential Executive Order—something he had suggested back in October of 2018—all hell broke loose, and the officious and ideologically crazed Harris jumped like a famished black snake on a defenseless toad. Once again it was the Trump template of “full blown racism,” “appeals to white supremacy,” “undermining and attacking our democracy,” and, of course, since Trump is an illegitimate president, an interloper—then almost any type of resistance is permissible.

What such an Executive Order would do is clarify the application of the 14^th Amendment and, essentially, end birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens who come across the US border and then produce offspring who, then, as if by magic become American citizens.

Recall that the amendment was enacted after the War Between the States to guarantee the rights of citizenship to manumitted slaves and their offspring. And, indeed, there is a serious legal question about whether the amendment itself was ever legally and legitimately ratified. But be that as it may, it has applied ever since 1868.

Here is how Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment reads:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Harris and other open border zealots always quote the first section: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But the leave out, either by mistake or by direction: “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

It’s a key phrase, critical to understanding what the authors of the amendment intended and what for nearly 100 years was settled law up until the 1960s when leftist lawmakers got into the act simply by de facto practical applications. In other words, between the very clear and forthright intention of its authors that the 14^th Amendment only applied to slaves and their offspring born in the United States who are necessarily “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” andthe imposed practice we now have which enables a foreign woman to illegally slip across the Rio Grande and have a child who then, by that simple act, becomes a citizen and an “anchor baby,” permitting its illegal relations to all come across—between these two interpretations and applications there is an absolute irreconcilable difference.

The key figures in drafting the amendment at the time were clear: Senator Lyman Trumbull, pivotal in the drafting the 14th Amendment, declared “subject to the jurisdiction” meant subject to “complete” jurisdiction of the United States, and “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.” Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, responsible for the critical language of the jurisdiction clause, stated that it meant “a full and complete jurisdiction,” that is, “the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.” In other words, a non-citizen simply by giving birth on this side geographically of the Rio Grande does not produce a new citizen of the United States.

Presented with this history, those defending the current practice, including Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox, appeal, like Harris, to constitutional practice and to the courts.

But, actually, the Supreme Court has spoken on this question, at least indirectly.

In 1884, sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, John Elk, an American Indian, went to court to argue that he was an American citizen due to his birth in the United States. In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not grant Indians citizenship. As Ann Coulter cites that decision:

[The] “main object of the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black … should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”

And she adds: “American Indians were not made citizens until 1924. Lo those 56 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Indians were not American citizens, despite the considered opinion of Judge Napolitano.”

Ending birthright citizenship, based on a false and specious reading of the 14^th Amendment, is an idea whose time has come, in fact, is far overdue. At the very least, an Executive Order would force the courts, including the Supreme Court, to take a serious look at the historic abuse of our immigration system and the definition of American citizenship.

Let us hope that this time—nearly a year since he raised it—President Trump will follow through on his consideration: birthright citizenship has been and is an Achilles’ Heel in American immigration policy. Ending it would be a major step in securing our border and preserving the integrity of our culture.

**************

I believe I passed on to you last year the following legal essay by Professor of Law, John Eastman. It is a succinct but thorough restatement of the points made in my commentary.

Reprinted from  My Corner by Boyd Cathey.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LewRockwell.com anti-state•anti-war•pro-market

Who Wins the Culture War, Wins Everything!

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/10/no_author/who-wins-the-culture-war-wins-everything/

By Boyd D. Cathey
My Corner  October 2, 2019

Most installments in the MY CORNER series, in addition to a stated concentration on the South, address deeper cultural issues: questions about what is happening in our educational system, how Western culture is being transformed before our very eyes, the attacks on the visible symbols of our past, and, perhaps more insidiously, examining assaults on our history, on our memory and on our very language, that is, how we communicate with each other.

For up-to-the-moment, blow-by-blow accounts of the latest attempt—indeed, conspiracy—by the Deep State to take down and impeach President Trump, there are such voices as Rush Limbaugh, John Solomon, and others. From time to time, I can provide such information, or a certain slant or focus, but given the nature of what is transpiring and the headlong rush, my attention is drawn to what I consider more basic, more fundamental questions that underpin and shape our current conversations and debates.

I have heard it said that it was the great English prelate and author, Cardinal John Henry Newman, who declared that “all political issues involve basic religious questions.” But while studying in Spain I read something very similar written by the Spanish traditionalist, Juan Donoso Cortes (d. 1853): “The momentous political questions of our time, when examined closely, reveal deeply philosophical and religious roots. Unless these foundations are understood, debate will be like fighting the symptoms of a disease but not the cause.”

Knowing how to fight our enemies, knowing how to react and what to say and what, finally, to do, involves as the late Southern writer Mel Bradford used to say,  first, “knowing who we are,” that is, knowing that we are creatures made and given life by a Creator, that we are given stewardship over this planet, that there are both Natural and Divine Positive Laws that govern us and our existence; and that to transgress them will bring disastrous consequences, perhaps not at once, but certainly eventually.

And that is why the cultural and essentially religious battles—the conflict over who we are and our place in Creation—are so critical. It is why I have a very poor view of much of what passes for “modern kulchur,” including much of the architecture, the so-called literature, the cinematic excrescence, the painting and sculpture, and the music that is spewed forth by our contemporary society.

Certainly such products reflect our current dominant culture, for art follows and is inspired by reigning beliefs and standards in any society, while at the same time helps to shape that society’s future vision and conception of itself. And, no doubt, most of the artists in our society today fancy themselves just like artists of the past, using their creative intelligence to create works of art. Has this not been the self-appointed role of such persons throughout history?

The arts, in their major role, reflect a society’s beliefs and aspirations—think here architecturally of the Acropolis in Athens, the incredible monuments in Rome, the great cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims in France, representing the aspirations and thought of those foundations of our own civilization. Think of the great artwork of a Giotto, a Michelangelo, a Rubens, a Gainsborough; and in music, of Gregorian Chant, plainsong and polyphony, the great symphonic and liturgical works of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Bruckner.

Some of you may recall the great BBC series, “Civilization,” hosted by the late Sir Kenneth Clark and then shown in American theaters (circa 1970) and later on television. Lord Clark attempted, quite successfully, to connect the dots and illustrate both the complexity and the unity of our cultural inheritance and its organic development. As Bernard of Chartres declared nearly 900 years ago, “we are as dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” Our ancestors built upon and added to what was vouchsafed to and inherited by them, as a trust, as a precious legacy. And traditionally, this was thought to be the essential role of the artist: to create based on what he had received, to make it finer if possible, to enhance it, but never to disparage it or destroy it, and always to preserve it.

But since at least the early twentieth century artists have more significantly emphasized the radically transformative, even revolutionary, at times highly political element. Of course, artists throughout history have used their talent to advance new ideas with social and political import; that’s always been the case.

But, I would suggest, not with the same demonic fervor or determination, not with the same ideological commitment and involvement that we have witnessed in our time. And not with the same type of influential dominance by the Marxist Frankfurt School and its votaries in almost every field of knowledge, a dominance which fully comprehends the role of culture in the success of the revolutionary activity it advocates.

Whether in such enterprises as “critical theory” in literature, deconstructivism in architecture, or the use of music as a weapon to undermine societal mores and standards, too often it seems that “the arts” have been weaponized and have become critical elements in the destruction of our civilization, rather than estimable and valuable additions to it.

Where—what—are today’s monuments to rival the cathedral at Chartres, music to compare with Mozart’s Requiem or Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, or paintings to be set beside the work of a Rembrandt or El Greco? And even more recently, where are the architects to rival a Ralph Adams Cram (d. 1942) or a Daniel Burnham (d. 1912)?

Some of us are old enough to remember when the “Ed Sullivan Show” on CBS featured the then-new English sensation, the Beatles (1964), at almost the same time that NBC cancelled the long-running, classical music standard “The Voice of Firestone” (1963). Irrespective of the talent, or the inventiveness, or the catchy tunefulness of the Fab Four—something most of us would readily acknowledge—that appearance and what then followed like an avalanche represented a seismic cultural shift, and the opening of the floodgates, as it were. Soon, weekly national broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera were also off NBC, relegated first to public radio, and finally to a few private radio stations. And I am old enough to recall all sorts of rock groups which soon crowded out almost all other musical programming from national networks and local stations, largely exiling both country music and classical music to niche markets. (The country musical variety show Hee Haw only lasted on CBS for two years, 1969-1971, before cancellation and going into syndication. Other non-Rock programming soon followed.)

The most egregious offense in all this was the disconnection of citizens, of the populace, from our civilization’s very rich musical inheritance. While my parents were not what I would call “classical music experts,” they at least understood and appreciated its value and importance in our society and to our culture. Just consider some of the scores (and subjects) of films of the 1930s until the early 1960s, think about the music used in early popular television programs like “The Lone Ranger” (1949-1957), or “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” (1955-1958), think of those memorable Warner Brothers cartoons, especially Elmer Fudd’s  “I Killed the Wabbit,” or those Woody Woodpecker cartoons we also grew up with. How many of us still associate Rossini’s William Tell Overture with “Hi-Yo Silver!” any time we hear the final gallop of that piece being played.

And, sure, the use of such music has continued in film, but certainly not with the broad influence or significance it once had. Nor with the role of connecting average, everyday citizens with their inherited culture. In our day the classical tradition occupies, it seems, a niche which grows smaller by the year, with fewer listeners and devotees, and with music impresarios attempting frantically to remedy the situation by heavy mixes of “pop” cross-over concerts, neither truly classical nor truly rock.

It has been a great accomplishment of cultural Marxism and its adepts in the arts to separate in large measure our population from its heritage—a major step in the conquest of our culture and the transformation of our civilization. And the resulting atomistic individualism—a formless anarchy—is the exact condition desired by the enemies of our civilization. In the words of the late T. S. Eliot our foundations have been destroyed, made largely inaccessible or beyond our reach, “to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp their mechanized caravans.” [Notes towards the Definition of Culture, 1948]

At the very base of our conflict today is this imperative: to recover those bonds which unite us to our heritage, for it is in retrieving that inheritance (and the faith which accompanies it) that we gain strength and renewal for the battles that lie ahead of us.

*****

With these thoughts in mind, I pass on a link to my latest essay published by The New English Review. It’s titled, “Richard Strauss and the Survival of Western Culture.” I hope you’ll see the connections and even relevance in what I’ve written.

Reprinted from  My Corner by Boyd Cathey.

November 28, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

A THANKSGIVING MEDITATION

Friends,

I take this opportunity to wish you and your families a most joyous and blessed Thanksgiving, and to thank you for being readers of this column over the past year.

I recognize that these pages have reflected my own particular idiosyncrasies—that much of what is passed on to you is not necessarily what dominates the nightly news. Indeed, with so much coverage, via radio, the Internet, and television, it is difficult to keep up with events, whether the Russia Hoax or the ongoing latest charade, AKA the Impeachment “investigation.”

So, I concentrate on other, perhaps less discussed topics and concerns, items that I believe also deserve publicity and commentary, and, most especially, the defense of our Southern heritage. For that heritage has been and continues to be essential to any true understanding of the Founding of the country, and its eclipse upon defeat of the Southern Confederacy paved the way for the aberrations and the revolution we have experienced since then.

I normally do not traffic in counter-factual history—the “what ifs” of history. But, I have to think that had the Confederate States of America somehow managed to win its just independence, that our contemporary situation, our society in 2019, would be far different. Thus, even those commentaries that I offer which appear not related to the tragic events of 1861-1865 and afterwards, have a connection to that watershed period in our history and culture.

Since at least the French Revolution and before, the forces of radical change—the forces that see history as an evolving, progressive advance in wisdom in which old truths and verities, traditional beliefs and standards, must be thrown out or at least subverted—have been on the march: “onward and upward,” they scream. Whether it be the minions of 19^th century liberal democracy demanding the end of the Old Order, or the siren call of the Socialists demanding the redistribution of wealth, or the violent assaults by frenzied Communists, or the latest attacks by mindless race-and-gender “social justice warriors” who have been indoctrinated and had their minds poisoned in our universities—the goals are the same: the destruction of the natural order of things and the upturning of Divine Positive Law in society. Or, as the French Revolutionaries did: the enthronement of the “Goddess ‘Reason’” in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

This—the Revolution—is indeed not only a Revolution against God, but also against the true humanity of man, against the Natural Law, and against the Divine Positive Law. In that sense, it is indeed satanic, in the full sense of that designation.

And thus it must be vigorously and totally opposed, not because we believe that we will, ourselves and alone, be successful, but because we have the assurance in Faith that our cause is just, and, that with God victory is possible.

For that reason alone we are justified to continue, intoning the great traditional hymn “Te Deum” (Fourth Century A.D.) as we continue, smiles of confidence radiating from our faces, our Hope to be fulfilled even if we do not, individually, live to see it so:

We praise thee, O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee: the Father everlasting.
To thee all Angels cry aloud: the Heavens, and all the Powers therein.
To thee Cherubim and Seraphim: continually do cry,
Holy, Holy, Holy : Lord God of Sabaoth;
Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty: of thy glory.
The glorious company of the Apostles: praise thee.
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets: praise thee.
The noble army of Martyrs: praise thee.
The holy Church throughout all the world: doth acknowledge thee;
The Father: of an infinite Majesty;
Thine honourable, true: and only Son;
Also the Holy Ghost: the Comforter.
Thou art the King of Glory: O Christ.
Thou art the everlasting Son: of the Father.
When thou took upon thee to deliver man: thou did not abhor the Virgin's womb.
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death:
    thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
Thou sittest at the right hand of God: in the glory of the Father.
We believe that thou shalt come: to be our Judge.
We therefore pray thee, help thy servants:
    whom thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood.
Make them to be numbered with thy Saints: in glory everlasting.
O Lord, save thy people: and bless thine heritage.
Govern them: and lift them up for ever.
Day by day: we magnify thee;
And we worship thy Name: ever world without end.
Vouchsafe, O Lord: to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us: have mercy upon us.
O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us: as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have I trusted: let me never be confounded.

-----

JEFFERSON DAVIS' THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION OF 1861:

WHEREAS, it hath pleased Almighty God, the Sovereign Disposer of events, to protect and defend us hitherto in our conflicts with our enemies as to be unto them a shield.

And whereas, with grateful thanks we recognize His hand and acknowledge that not unto us, but unto Him, belongeth the victory, and in humble dependence upon His almighty strength, and trusting in the justness of our purpose, we appeal to Him that He may set at naught the efforts of our enemies, and humble them to confusion and shame.

Now therefore, I, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, in view of impending conflict, do hereby set apart Friday, the 15th day of November, as a day of national humiliation and prayer, and do hereby invite the reverend clergy and the people of these Confederate States to repair on that day to their homes and usual places of public worship, and to implore blessing of Almighty God upon our people, that he may give us victory over our enemies, preserve our homes and altars from pollution, and secure to us the restoration of peace and prosperity.

Given under hand and seal of the Confederate States at Richmond, this the 31st day of October, year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty one.

By the President, JEFFERSON DAVIS

-------------------------------

Then, gird on your swords and take up your shield of Faith! The battle for our civilization, our culture, our inheritance, and our Faith rages…and with God’s good grace we shall go forth. And should we perish, not to fear, that in the end we may share in His victory.

Happy and Blessed Thanksgiving!

November 26, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

ENVIRONMENTAL MADNESS:

The Second Coming of Greta Thunberg

Friends,

I pass on to you an original essay which has not appeared previously or elsewhere. This one, titled “The Second Coming of Greta Thunberg,” was published today at the LewRockwell.com Web site, and it documents an over-the-top example of what I call “environmental madness,” the conversion of what was once a rational and legitimate concern for our environment, our natural resources, and the goodness granted to us by God, into a stridently fanatical, irrational, and hysterical semi-religion—which in a very real sense attempts to supplant the traditional faith that created the two millennia of our civilization. What it offers is a stark, verifiably mad counter-reality, a new Barbarism without Hope, without Faith, and without God.

Hilaire Belloc’s characterization of the Barbarians is quite apt:

“[T]he Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true.  We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”

I pass on my essay at LewRockwell here:

LewRockwell.comanti-state•anti-war•pro-market

Top of Form

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The Second Coming of Greta Thunberg

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/11/no_author/the-second-coming-of-greta-thunberg/

By Boyd D. Cathey   November 26, 2019

Back on November 20, 2019, Tucker Carlson had a guest on his program, a self-denominated progressive—which he often does. But this time the guest was an environmentalist “with a difference,” as the saying goes. And this guest specifically reminded the television audience that formerly, not that long ago, environmentalists—conservation voters—supported strict immigration limits.

And the reason was simple enough: an overcrowded population within our borders increases dangers and threats to our environment, to our natural resources, and to our efforts to maintain those characteristics and that natural goodness and beauty which, I suspect, most of us appreciate and value highly.

The Leftist Web site Media Matters cited Carlson, speaking with his guest:

One of the greatest blessings we have as Americans is the amazing pristine beauty of our country. Ever been to the coast of Maine, or Big Sur, or the Tetons? It’s incredible. Now, why is that? Well, even with 320 million people living here, this country still is not particularly crowded. That’s the key, the old environmental movement understood that, and was why they campaigned for lower immigration levels — because crowded countries are never beautiful countries. But the modern left and modern environmentalists care much more about identity politics than the actual physical environment, so they’re pushing for open borders, because their donors want it.

Carlson’s point and the reason for having the guest on was to emphasize just how contradictory the modern progressivist environmentalist movement has become, how it had become captured by a zealous ideology.

And that point hit home the very next day. For then news leaked out and spread like wild-fire on social media. Indeed, dozens of mostly strident and frenzied Leftist Webzines featured the story:

“Greta Thunberg: Did She Time Travel from 120 Years Ago?”

The story was that someone had discovered an old, archived photograph taken 120 years ago, now housed at the University of Wisconsin Special Collections. In that photograph was the image of a young teen who could pass—the Twitter world speculated—as climate activist Greta Thunberg’s doppelganger, her exact twin.

Art News inquired breathlessly: “Is This Photo Proof That Greta Thunberg Is a Time Traveler From the California Gold Rush?” Aol.com exclaimed with scarcely concealed wonder: “120-year-old photo of Greta Thunberg lookalike is freaking the internet out.”  The Aol account continued, “The images show three young children working on a gold mine in Canada’s Yukon territory in 1898, with the eldest child bearing an uncanny resemblance to Thunberg, leading many to claim that the teen activist is a ‘time traveler’ sent to save the world.”

Although many posters admitted that the story appeared to partake of sheer fantasy, the Twitter Left remained abuzz. The image posted online caused many to speculate: “…Thunberg might be superhuman (well, more than she is already).”

Tweets posted by  Indy100 reveal the insanity of many on the environmental Left:

‘Greta Thunberg’ is in a photo from 120 years ago…. Greta’s a time traveller, from the future, and she’s here to save us.

*****

Maybe in the near future she will decide the only way to save us is by traveling to the past, so the pic is of a future her in the past.

*****

Wouldn’t this mean that she’s a time traveller from the past, or from now and went to back then? I guess she could be from the future but that would mean she time travelled twice for some reason. Maybe she realizes it’s too late here in our time and travels again soon?!

*****

Great now she will be getting re-attacked by @foxnews saying the “Dems sent her back from the future”

*****

Or…Greta Thurnburg went back to the past to try to stop progress there, and was so unsuccessful then as well, that she was able to come into existence in a country that benefits greatly from industrialization, without which her cell phone is not possible.

She even fulfills and complies faithfully with the precepts of her own warnings. Unlike Bernie Sanders, or Al Gore, or Leonardo di Caprio who love their private airplanes, she refuses to fly in those carbon-chewing jets—none of those polluting machines for her. The Aol story relates: “After three months in the United States, she’s currently sailing back across the Atlantic with Australian Youtubers, a journey that is being documented across social media. On Wednesday, she shared that the sailboat has encountered rough weather but the team will hopefully ‘arrive in Lisbon, Portugal, sometime in early December’.”

Indeed, this is fanaticism with logic and principle! Commented another Tweeter: “Greta Thunberg is ‘The Doctor of Salvation’.”

Listen once again to Thunberg at the UN:

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean… People are suffering, people are dying, entire ecosystems are collapsing … and all you talk about is money and eternal fairy tales of economic growth. How dare you?” 

Was this indeed “the Second Coming of Greta Thunberg”?  Had that poor maid from circa 1899 all of a sudden miraculously returned to earth—time traveled as the Twitter Leftists speculated—to warn us of impending environmental doom (which will happen in just ten years according to Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes and now most Democrats)? Were we in the awing presence of a pure and innocent young girl, a secular prophetess, who had miraculously migrated through an entire century to warn usof the consequences of our environmental and social “sins”? Were we witnessing the 21st century’s paganized answer to the Holy Children of Fatima or to St. Bernadette of Lourdes, who had received direction from the Blessed Virgin to warn us of our apostasy from the faith of our Christian fathers?

Or was this, rather, a wallowing in the demonic dross that now overlays and dominates our culture, our politics, our entertainment, and environmentalism?  And from those who have turned real environmental concerns and questions into a veritable religion where there can be no dissent, no questioning—those who have created a counter-reality that seeks to replace the two millennia civilization created by our ancestors and their faith?

Of course, this speculation, this demented “miracle-ism” emits from those who, ironically, either openly deny or at a minimum pervert traditional doctrines of the Church and Christianity, who doubt those miracles recounted by Holy Scripture, and dismiss such accounts as myths and fables.

But when it comes to the meek and mild modest maid from modern Sweden, well, she can do no wrong. She is the Angelic Child, chosen to speak Truth to the Powerful, worshipped in thousands of school rooms across this nation—indeed across the entire world.

Certainly, as some commenters allow, Thunberg suffers from Aspergers Syndrome, she has a handicap, and criticism of her should bear that in mind. And, yes, her parents and/or probably some officiously ideological educators probably had much to do with the person she has become and the beliefs she now espouses and spouts in front of admiring and gullible minions across the globe.

But these factors do not lessen her personal responsibility nor her agreement to become a pagan icon—becoming, as it were, a modern Image of Baal for modern environmentalists and eyes-glazed-over progressivists. She fits neatly into their ideological passions and desires as a demi-goddess, a “Vox clamantis in Deserto”—a voice crying in the wilderness.

In this sense she incarnates both the fierceness and stridency of the unrelenting assault on our civilization and the perversion of genuine concern about our environment. And for that she must be held accountable and judged accordingly.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

Copyright © 2019 Boyd D. Cathey