November 9, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
Charlie Kirk, Young
Conservatives, and the Destruction of Western Civilization
Friends,
Throughout
the 360 plus installments in the MY CORNER series I have argued and maintained repeatedly
that the Modern Conservative Movement, along with the Establishment Republican
Party in general, have not been, as they purport to be, actual defenders of the
traditions and beliefs of Western Christian civilization. On the contrary, there
is, tragically, ample evidence that “movement conservatives” have become
enablers, the tacit allies—unindicted co-conspirators, if you will—of those on
the Left that they claim to oppose. And, then, after the latest Progressivist aberration
is foisted off on the American citizenry by Leftist lunacy, they normalize and
canonize it as “conservative,” and repel any criticism of their new-found
convictions as “extremist” or “far right,” or perhaps, joining their implicit
allies over on the further Left, “fascist.”
The
examples and documentation for this are ample and abundant, and increasingly is
not even disputed by those so-called conservatives we might see on Fox News or
hear via radio.
The most
visible, the most palpable, the most critical surrender by the “Movement” has
come in questions concerning the actual moral basis, the moral norms that have
governed our society and which have created and protected the social framework of
Western culture for nearly two millennia.
Some of
you may recall only a few years ago, when the US Supreme Court in its infamous Obergefell v. Hodges
decision (June 26, 2015), held by a 5–4 vote,
“that the Fourteenth
Amendment requires all states to grant same-sex marriages and recognize
same-sex marriages granted in other states.”
[The Court at that time overruled its prior decision in Baker v. Nelson, which the Sixth
Circuit had invoked as precedent.]
Previous to that stunning
judicial fiat, thirty-three states had conducted popular votes over whether to
include amendments defining state-recognized marriage as between one man and
one women, and thirty-one had overwhelmingly voted “yes,” thus affirming not
only the constitutionality of traditional marriage and that same sex marriage was
not guaranteed by the respective constitutions of the states, but implicitly
affirming a critical and essential firmament of our society.
In North Carolina,
for example, the vote to approve a Marriage
Amendment was by an overwhelming 61% to 39% (including a majority of black
voters). Even Leftist California voted 52% to 48% to maintain traditional
marriage.
Before Obergefell it seemed that the country
had spoken loud and clear. Movement Conservatives and Republicans were thought
to be defending traditional marriage, after all much of their base was composed
of traditional Christians, both Catholics and Protestants who opposed same sex
marriage.
Yet, almost as if by
legerdemain, following the Court’s outrageous decision it seemed that the once,
supposedly-staunch opposition, simply melted away, disappeared—and we beheld nightly
on Fox and elsewhere, horribile dictu,
amongst “conservative opinion makers” and leaders of the Republican Party not
just the counsel that we “had to accept the Court’s opinion,” but that perhaps
it was in fact “conservative” for us to do so: indeed, we were told “having
stable same sex couples, legally married and recognized by the State” was a “good
thing.” And a parade of “authorized” spokesmen belabored the point: George
Will, Charles Krauthammer, George
W. Bush, Guy Benson, Jonah
Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, and so on—the list is quite lengthy.
Despite
what we were promised just four years ago, that this—same sex marriage—was the
limit and that those “authorized” conservatives would not permit further
attacks on our moral traditions to go answered—despite that assurance, the
desultory defeatism and supine acquiescence by those media and journalistic
elites has continued unabated, even heightened in intensity and enthusiasm for the latest assaults
on the very moral foundations of our society.
Case in
point: the unashamed embrace (no pun intended) by prominent “conservatives,”
including self-promoted “leaders” of conservative youth, of transgenderism and,
yes, the glorification of what I would call “drag queen kultur.”
Frequently
Fox News will have as a guest Charlie Kirk, head of a campus group, Turning
Point USA. As one of the most prominent “college-aged conservatives” who
supposedly counters Leftist arguments among collegians and millennials, Kirk
has assumed an important role, we are informed, in the “war of ideas.” Yet, at the very outset he has, as it were,
thrown in the towel, surrendered on the essential and critical moral
foundations that actually give cultural conservatism its motivation and ability
to respond to and repel the assaults mounted by those who would pervert and
destroy what is left of our Western civilization and the inheritance we have
received.
Recently,
Charlie Kirk and others in his group attended an event, Politicon, where
he consorted and praised a creature,
a drag queen, who calls himself “Lady Maga,” and who advertises himself as “America’s
conservative drag superstar.” Photographs show Kirk yucking it up cheerfully with
Lady Maga, as well as Michael Knowles, a chief reporter for Ben “Never Trumper”
Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, arm-in-arm
embracing the drag queen. When online right wing journals, including Big League
Politics, criticized Kirk, Glenn
Beck and other “movement” figures eagerly jumped to his defense, smearing
those who would criticize the Turning PointUSA honcho as “white nationalist,
homophobic ‘trolls’.”
Although perhaps this should not come
as a surprise to close observers of our rotten political process given the
history of the Neoconservative-dominated “conservative movement,” it still
should shock those “deplorables” out in fly-over country who somehow believe
that watching Fox News or reading The
Wall Street Journal will save us all from impending doom.
It won’t.
As recently as this past May that once standard bearer of the American
conservative message, National Review,
recommended “Time
for a Compromise on Transgenderism.”
Beginning with the phrase, “the country’s
conversation about gay rights is far more mature and considered than it was two
decades ago,” the article continues its precipitous decline in logic and its
broadside against the very religious culture, founded on Natural Law and the
Divine Positive Law, that created our civilization: “Americans, especially
conservative ones, should reflect on our culture’s honest and fair attitude
toward homosexuality and acknowledge that the most sensible path out of the
present acrimony will probably require similar compromise….acts like
ostentatiously calling people by pronouns they don’t want, or belittling their
personal struggle, are boorish and petty. It means acknowledging that arbitrary
discrimination against transgender people is a cruel bigotry like any other.”
And if we criticize transgenderism, author J. J. McCullough claims, we “let
loose [our] inner reactionary.” And that must not be permitted.
Thus
we have the specter of “Drag
Queen Reading Hours” for pre-schoolers at an increasing number of public
libraries, with National
Review Senior Editor, David French,
calling such displays “a blessing of liberty.”
So,
follow the logic: first, there was “easy” divorce—just shack up if it feels
good, then split if it doesn’t please you. Then, abortion, now the law of the
land. In 2015 came same sex marriage (and previous to that sexually mixed armed
forces and the end of most unisex colleges). And now the fanatical #MeToo
Movement and transgenderism, and the “authorized” conservatives tell us that we
must “compromise,” that we must accept this—it’s a fait accompli, and, maybe even conservative to do so! After all
Charlie Kirk and his groupies and the Ben Shapiro gang think so, and they are
the ones who present themselves to students and millennials as conservatives.
With
such champions, with such defenders of our civilization, we are lost. For they
are not on our side, they are not our defenders. In fact, they are a Fifth
Column, insidious minions of those who wish to obliterate and destroy our
Western Christian civilization—whether they understand that or not.
I
have quoted the Southern writer Robert Lewis Dabney as he described such “conservatives”
during the debates on womens’ suffrage 130 years ago, and his quotes on the
suicidal mission of establishment
conservatism are, I think, familiar. But
today let me quote another prescient prophet and superb thinker, the great
Spaniard Juan Donoso Cortes (1809-1853):
“There is no man, let him be aware of it nor not,
who is not a combatant in this vicious contest; [there is no one] who does not
take part in responsibility for the victory or the defeat. The king on his
throne, the prisoner in his chains, the poor and the rich, the healthy and the
infirm, the wise and the ignorant, the old man and the child…share equally in
the combat. Every word that is pronounced is either inspired by God or by the
World, and necessarily proclaims, implicitly or explicitly, but always clearly,
the glory of the One or the triumph of the other. In this singular warfare we
all fight through forced enlistment; no one escapes; exceptions of sex or age
are unknown. In this warfare all men are soldiers. And don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight…or
that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have
already joined a side [and it is not God’s side]…that war is extended as far as
space, and prolonged through all time. In eternity alone, the country of the
Just, can you find rest, because there alone there is no longer combat.” [from Donoso
Cortes, “Ensayo sobre el Catolicismo, el Liberalismo y el Socialismo,” my
translation]
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