Monday, December 30, 2019

December 30, 2019


MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

“Worldliness Cloaked in Godliness”

Friends,

The words are not mine, but of my dear friend “The Dissident Mama,” and they appear in her latest column, a superb critique of what “establishment” Christianity has become in our time.

What caught her attention was the editorial—if  you wish to call it that—by one Mark Galli, editor of the Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, savaging President Trump and demanding that he be removed from office forthwith, without delay. Yes, because of his supposed quid pro quo with the president of Ukraine, but, with much more sinister intent, because of who he is and what he represents.

You see, President Trump, for all his failings both personal and administrative, represents a real clear and present danger to the Progressivist global project. Standard Republican opposition, like that of the Bushes I and II, or from the likes of John McCain or Mitt Romney, is one thing: it’s like “tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum” in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass—no real opposition at all, but rather over who gets the spoils and whether we advance to the secular Paradise, the global Parousia, a bit faster or a bit slower. Both political parties—and most of their leadership—partake of this dialectic, and share in the power. We now denominate it the “Deep State.” Or perhaps what the late Dr. Sam Francis called Leviathan (from Old Testament usage).

Certainly since the end of the War Between the States, this geographical entity we call the United States has been headed in that direction: more governmental control, greater centralization, the secularization of society, and the end of traditional Christian belief. And with a burgeoning state-run educational system which has essentially one diabolical duty: to inculcate and indoctrinate into each generation a set of “values” and beliefs which is not only inimical to those held by most of the Framers, but which within the scheme of Western Christian thought is destructive and dissolvent.

But one immense force, one powerful presence remained to block this progress. One major institution stood in the way, and inspired opposition to this headlong descent into a horrid “slough of Despond” which we were told is Paradise on Earth, but in reality is the fetid bowels of Hell.

Overcoming this presence was and has been the last major phase of the world Revolution that began in force with the Enthronement of the Goddess of Reason in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris…. But actually commenced long before that in the screeds of some of the religious revolutionaries, and, ultimately, in the serpent’s “Non serviam” in the Garden of Eden: the desire of restless man to become as gods.

While much of established Protestantism fell to this temptation with the assaults of “higher Biblical criticism” and “social gospelism” in the Nineteenth Century, it was only in the Twentieth Century that the major obstacle to the success of Progressivism was tackled in earnest and with any success. That bitter, incarnate enemy was the Catholic Church which throughout the course of the Nineteenth Century and much of the Twentieth had denounced liberalism, Modernism, Evolutionism, pseudo-democracy, and equality of the sexes.

It was in the early Twentieth Century that theological Modernism was joined at the hip with a theoretical cultural Marxism. Although condemned formally by Pope St. Pius X (in his 1907 encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis) and by successive pontiffs up until Pius XII, Modernists and Marxists had learned that open, face-to-face opposition was futile. Rather, infiltration and slow methodical progress, the “long march” through the institutions—not just in the Church—was the way of success.

And in the Second Vatican Council those progressivists, largely hidden from view but burrowed away, nonetheless, in seminaries and colleges, at magazines, and at media centers, emerged. While maintaining the façade of orthodoxy, the language—the expression of the Faith—used by that Council in its documents was altered just enough so as to render it capable of various interpretations, both orthodox and heterodox.

And what followed was disaster. The minions of Revolution emerged full-blown. The last major redoubt against the success of the Progressivists, the last institutional opponent against the advance to a global dystopia—to that secular Antichrist—disappeared largely from the battlefield, except in small huddled groups.

Then, a curious event happened. Just when it appeared that the triumphal election of Hillary Clinton would cement the final victory of the Revolution, an upstart billionaire, brash and, yes, profane, came upon the scene. He was not like the shining knight in armor, the chevalier sans reproche, the Sieur de Bayard of French history, but a bustling Yankee who spoke boldly and openly…and with whom millions who seemed to awaken from their lethargy and somnolence identified. Almost it appeared that the gnawing sensation within normal people—that belief that things were badly out of kilter—all of a sudden had found a mouthpiece.

It did not matter that he was woefully imperfect or that he was not the most cultured or most proficient by the current standards of etiquette. After all, did not God speak through Balaam’s donkey? Did not He choose the vehicles for His messages to His creatures? Donald Trump represented something far more dangerous to the ongoing Revolution: he incarnated and represented millions of “deplorables”—those “irredeemables”—who had not been brought along by the academics and educators, the Hollywood elites, the media, and the cocooned political class.

Despite Mark Galli’s hysterical pseudo-Christian screed against President Trump  in Christianity Today, it is we who are the REAL targets. It is we, the unreformed, the non-adepts, the uninitiated into the fraternity of the elites, who are the enemy. We remain faithful to our baptism; we remain faithful—even if without the great erudition of the academics at Harvard or Berkeley—to what we have received. Our comprehension may not be on a philosophical level, but nevertheless we see what is happening and what has happened. And we are still able to tell the difference between eternal good and infernal evil.

Thus we stand with pitchforks in our hands, like Pat Buchanan’s “Pitchfork Brigades” of nearly thirty years ago.  Donald Trump will pass from the scene, but our counter-revolution has only begun. We seek no quarter, and we give none. We are outnumbered, and we know it.

But we have one Doomsday Weapon: we have the final power and judgment of the Creator Himself. Even if we must live for centuries like the early Christians in catacombs or imprisoned by our secular masters, we know how history will end: “Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat.”

May each of you and yours have a happy and blessed New Year!
*****
Here follows The Dissident Mama’s latest column:

Woe unto you, elitists!

Just before Christmas, Christianity Today published an article entitled “Trump Should Be Removed From Office.” It was written by editor Mark Galli, who said the facts surrounding the case are “unambiguous” and that the president’s alleged quid pro quo with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky was “not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”

I am not here to defend Trump as a saint. Sure, there are reasons to impeach this president, just as there have been grounds for kicking to the curb each and every president from Abraham Lincoln onward. We have an “imperial presidency,” as historian Brion McClanahan aptly describes it.

McClanahan rightly states that foreign aid (which is at the heart of the manufactured Trump brouhaha) is itself unconstitutional, yet all presidents sign off on it. Hell, virtually all foreign policy has been unconstitutional since 1861.
As an example of the selective-outrage lunacy of Trump’s impeachment, McClanahan cites the Marshall Plan as one giant quid pro quo, yet no Democrat worth his salt ever complains about that. Well, it was just smart post-WWII policy, they say, certainly not bribery. What are you, a pinko commie?

Why then all the inconsistent indignation toward illegal governance just when Trump’s in office? The answer, of course, is power. As President Andrew Johnson (who himself was impeached by the radical Republicans over Reconstruction measures) once declared, “Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.” Yep, especially when the praters themselves are lawless profiteers, like the criminals, liars, and thieves in Congress and their evangeleftist foot soldiers.

So when CT gets all high and mighty, claiming that their civic sleight of hand and clear ideological motivations are “not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments,” it should be abundantly clear that sanctimony is not purely the business of politico shysters. There is no difference when the Wall Street Journal says that “Those attacking the ‘Deep State’ are really attacking the rule of law” than there is when CT says that resisting “social justice” is unbiblical. In fact, it is these statist straw-men arguments that work in concert to propel forward “progress.”
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Theology professor Robert A.J. Gagnon also notes that “the same CT that called Obama ‘the evangelical in chief’ now acts as if Democrats’ allegations about abuse of power are undisputed and no other interpretations of events exist.” The “elite” evangelical bubble is all hot air, no substance.
Gagnon suggests looking at Galli’s own words in “Still Evangelical?” a book comprised of Never-Trumper evangelical insiders waxing very political and occasionally theological-ish about the disconnect between mainline Christian bigwigs and the unwashed Protestant masses. “It’s as if we’re each speaking a different language,” Galli wrote.

“That was certainly the shock some evangelicals felt after the election of Donald Trump, especially when they heard that 81% of white evangelicals voted for him,” he continued. “Most evangelical Christians like me exclaimed, ‘Who are these people? I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian who voted for Trump.'”
This reminds me of the old story of film critic Pauline Kael who in 1972 pontificated, “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” Since she was so insular and protected from non-urbanites – you know, fly-over-country types, rural folk, and people who never earned a degree (gasp!) – Kael was utterly flabbergasted by Nixon’s 49-state landslide. After all, reality evidenced that those horrid knuckle-dragging yahoos did indeed exist beyond her cosmopolitan safe space. Icky!

“Where they are I don’t know,” she mused. “They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater, I can feel them.” (Cue heavy dank breathing, banjo music, and the aroma of chewing-tobacco spittle permeating the air.)
Similarly, Galli actually describes himself and other progressive Protestants as “‘elite evangelicals,” but that “doesn’t mean we are superior in any way, only that we are a distinct social class, mostly defined by being leaders in evangelical institutions and movements.” Good Lord, Galli’s pride would be comical if it weren’t so sinister.
“And this class of evangelicals has discovered that we have family members so different they seem like aliens in our midst,” he explains. “These other evangelicals often haven’t finished college, and if they have jobs (and apparently a lot of them don’t), they are blue-collar jobs or entry level work.” Eh, screw the poor if they’re white folk. Man, Galli’s Christian charity runs deep.
He continues, “They don’t write books or give speeches; they don’t attend conferences of evangelicals for social justice or evangelicals for immigration reform. They are deeply suspicious of mainstream media. A lot of them voted for Donald Trump.”
What Galli means by “class” has nothing to do with economics, of course, but everything to do with being woke on the “religion of anti-racism,” as politics professor Eric Kaufmann calls it. And anyone who deviates from the dogma – which includes all the rainbow flavors of cultural Marxism like feminism, LGBT, and anti-fascism – is an apostate at best and an evil-doer at worst.

That’s why Trump can move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, support increased legal immigration, aim to end the criminalization of homosexuality around the world, sign into law the $1.4 trillion spending package for fiscal year 2020, and sign an executive order targeting the fictional scourge of anti-Semitism on America’s college campuses (just to name a few of the president’s non-populist policies), yet still be considered the Racist In-Chief.

As law professor Jonathan Turley, who is no fan of Trump, explained to Congress during the impeachment hearings, there is a “paucity of evidence … [yet] an abundance of anger.” The elites are mad as hell. Why? Because Trump dared to resist (at least during his campaign) the status quo of open borders and forever wars: two of the most vital components of the globalists. He spoke to and for Joe 6-Pack, and right past the oligarchs and their gate-keepers.  Trump, despite his flaws, broken promises, neoconism, and lack of intellectual curiosity, is still seen as a “believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people” – the very definition of a populist – simply by virtue of not always kowtowing to the elites. He’ll call out the corporate media and the statist swampers, and then bypass them altogether by tweeting directly to the people. This is a big no-no in empire etiquette. Evangeleftists “keep and protect globalist norms,” remarks Dr. Steve Turley, who has his finger on the pulse of the elite-vs-populist clash for civilization.

Trump may be a symptom of the “imperial presidency” disease, but he is enough of an outsider, an outlier, a lower-class man, an anti-establishment guy that he is considered a threat to the machine. Even though your average Trump-voting evangelical dutifully pays his taxes, recites the Pledge, and waves his American flag, he too is still seen as a pariah just because he questions some facets of the progressive order. The untouchables must be scorned precisely because they have pulled back the veil.
Populists are willing to take on some economic pain in order to prevent or at least curtail large-scale change in culture and community, says Kaufmann. These are the build-the-wall voters who rallied behind Trump. They are altruistic to a fault but certainly not suicidal. At least not anymore, and this awakening doesn’t work for the globalists and their cultural Marxist schemes. So, the archetype and their symbolic leader must be smashed.

This is why evangeleftists and Deep-Staters alike bemoan “the rise of identity politics” but only for the populists, you see. The elite power structure is built upon placating and celebrating every self-defined aggrieved minority while simultaneously pushing Jim Snow Laws. This is why Galli will castigate Trump voters but most certainly not “black theologians” who say that whiteness is wicked. Gotta stick with the program.

This CT controversy goes way beyond some Ameridox Christians writing pro-Democrat articles. It’s about the unholy matrimony of evangelicalism and the Deep State. It’s about the Soros-funded “evangelicals for hire” and the overall leftist infiltration of mainline Christianity, as well as high-church Protestantism, Catholicism, and even some quarters of Orthodoxy. It’s about an American religiosity hellbent on growing the bureaucratic managerial state and all of its progressive tentacles. It’s worldliness cloaked in godliness. It’s a new world order sold as truth, justice, and the American way.

In 1993, writer Daniel Walker argued that “The parallel rise of theological liberalism and the growth of governmental power in this century in America was hardly coincidental. Historic Christianity was abandoned by theological liberalism, and the ‘Social Gospel‘ movement – having given up on the Gospel – wished to impose its own vision of the City of God here on earth. Biblical authority was weakened; a governmental authority filled the void.”
My friend Boyd Cathey summed up this duopoly through the lens of the impeachment “charade.” He said it’s “an effort not just against Donald Trump, but against any and everyone who voted for him, against all of those who dissent from the ongoing policies of and control by the Deep State, all those who have realized or begun to realize that what we stare in the face is not the corpulent mass of evil flesh that goes by the name of Jerry Nadler or the beady-eyed evil of an Adam Schiff, but a ‘rough beast’ (to use William Butler Yeats’ term) of satanic proportions, intent on our extinction, and the enthronement of a new false god of Baal, what the late Dr. Sam Francis called the Leviathan – a totalitarian world government, more fierce than anything envisaged by Stalin or Mao, without liberties, without tradition, without morality … and without God.”

The Deep Staters and evangeleftists are like the religious establishment of Jesus’ day. They fancy themselves wise experts who vie for control simply because the lower classes just need some good reformin’. They try to force upon the perceived peons their pretend notions of morality, yet they never practice what they preach.

In Matthew 23, Jesus boldly proclaims, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” He calls the elite “ye fools … blind guides … Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,” and refers to them as “hypocrites” 14 times in total.

The governmental and churched elites pretend to be beacons of light, selfless public servants, ethical arbiters of justice, unbiased teachers of the law (both man’s and God’s), and benevolent leaders, just leading their hapless flock. But despite their assurances of upholding the Constitution or the Ten Commandments, they are corrupt inside. Globalism is their god, and there’s nothing more “profoundly immoral” than happily leading sheep to the slaughter while trying to convince them otherwise.

As the brilliant Father Seraphim Rose once opined, “Philosophers and other supposedly responsible men in governmental, academic, and ecclesiastical circles, when they do not retreat behind the impersonal and irresponsible facade of specialization or bureaucracy, [they] usually do no more than rationalize the incoherent state of contemporary man and his world.” Today’s elitists do both.


Woe unto you, elitists! No matter how much you quote the Founders or cite Scripture out of context, the populists in the pews aren’t falling for the hypocrisy of ye white-washed tombs. Thank you, Jesus!

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

December 24, 2019


MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord
Reflections on the Hope that Came to Us Two Millennia Ago

Friends,
Several years ago I wrote the following little essay, and my thoughts therein, I believe, resonate even more so now in today’s world increasingly consumed by madness, apostasy, and outright rebellion against God. At times it seems that all hope is dimmed, that a new Dark Age descends irresistibly over us, that we are helpless before its ravages and destructive power. But what I wrote back then I firmly hold to, for in fact Hope has not been exiled from the World. In these darkest moments, in the apparent despair, it continues to light our way, if we would listen and take heart. I offer that essay this special day.
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Today is the Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord, a day filled with anticipation and scarcely concealed joy as we await the memorialization and recreation of that ineffable Event—unimaginable in human terms—that forever changed human history.
The sin of Adam—Original Sin—affected all mankind and left descendants marked, indelibly stained by that original fault.  Adam’s sin was a form of disobedience, but a disobedience so grave and monumental against God’s Creation, that only the Coming of the Messiah, the Second Person of the Trinity of the Godhead, could repair it. And the Son of God would be Incarnate in a woman who would be pure and herself immaculate, untouched by the inheritance of sinfulness (by the merits of her Son). Only such a pure womb would be fitting for the Incarnate God. And only the Incarnation into one of His creatures would serve the purpose of demonstrating that Our Blessed Saviour would come to us, not only as God, but also in the form of Man—this was fitting because it was to Mankind that He was sent.
For hundreds of years the People of Israel had awaited the coming of a Messiah to lead them, to liberate them and, if you will, to repair Adam’s Fall. But this vision—whether expressed in the revolts of the Maccabees or in later violent episodes like the revolt of Simon bar Kokhba against the Romans (132 A.D.)—implied not just satisfaction for sinful ways, but increasingly the establishment of an earthly and insular kingdom for and of the Hebrews.
And although Our Lord and Saviour indeed came first to the Jews, and offered them His reparative Grace and Salvation, it was by no means to be limited to them. Indeed, His message was universal (as it had been to Abraham). And those Hebrews who accepted the Messiah—and those gentiles who also joined them—became the Church, the “New” Israel, receptor of God’s Grace and holder of His Promises and carrier of His Light unto all the world.
While a majority of old Israel rejected Our Lord, demanding His Crucifixion before Pilate, those who followed Him and believed in Him entered the New Covenant, a New Testament. It is in this sense that the Christian church inherited the promises of Israel and the Old Testament, and fulfilled those prophesies. And that fulfillment continues.
St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus [2:11-15] summarizes both the dazzling and miraculous wonder of Our Saviour’s Grace amongst us and its inexhaustible power to transform us, as we await His final Coming in Glory: “The grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and might cleanse to Himself a people acceptable, a pursuer of good works. These things speak and exhort: in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We—the Christian church, those chosen out of Grace who accept God’s gifts—are in a journey to that final day when Our Lord will return. We have been given for that journey the armament of Our Lord’s graces in the Sacraments and through His love, our Faith, and a Hope that whenever we are tempted to despair, pulls us back and redirects our vision.
Years ago when I was doing my doctoral work in Pamplona, Spain, I had several dear friends. One of them, by name Teofilo Andueza, although he and wife lived in the city, kept his family’s ancestral home and farm up in the Pyrenees Mountains. On numerous Saturdays we would travel out there; the women would busy themselves in the kitchen to prepare roasted lamb chops, pork shoulder, “patatas fritas,” various “ensaladas mixtas,” all sorts of desserts (flan and pastries), and, of course, there would be plenty of Rioja wine and cognac. After eating—which usually continued off and on for most of the day—we would sit and smoke some “puros” (Cuban cigars—well, I didn’t worry about THAT aspect of Cuban Communism back then!).
I remember on one occasion Teofilo took me up to the crest of a nearby mountain; below we could see the city of Pamplona, as he related how in 1873 the city was occupied by “liberals” who supported the central and centralizing government in Madrid, but that elsewhere in all of Navarra, in every rural village and small hamlet, the people had risen up as one under the military banner of “God – Country – States’ Rights – and the Rightful King” (against the liberal king then installed in the nation’s capital). In July 1936 Teofilo, his father, and his elderly grandfather (who as a teen had joined the 1873 Traditionalist rising) all volunteered to fight under that same banner, the standard of the Traditionalist Carlist Communion against the secularist and socialist Spanish Republic (which is so loved by the establishment Neoconservatives these days).
Like his grandfather in 1873, Teofilo was barely 14 when he enlisted in 1936. And while his grandfather was too old to see active, front line combat in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 (serving in rear-guard duty), Teofilo saw combat in some of the fiercest battles against the Red Republic and marched in the Victory parade in Madrid in 1939.
But like my other Carlist Traditionalist friends—who were termed “Intransigentes” by more moderate (and compromising) partisans on the Right—Teofilo believed that Francisco Franco had not carried through with the actual re-establishment of a Christian kingdom as promised—too many foreign influences, too many compromises, and, lastly, opening the door in 1953 to all the worst aspects of American commercialism and cultural decay. The national reawakening promised in 1939 had not taken place, its fruits dispersed, and in exchange, Spanish society had increasingly accepted the worst features of American culture and secularist thinking.
At the top of that mountain crest, as we looked down at Pamplona, Teofilo became emotional. “My grandfather fought against that liberal contagion 100 years ago,” he exclaimed. “And in 1936 three generations of my family dropped everything and went to war against the communists and socialists, to a crusade for Christ the King—that He might reign in society.” And then, he turned to me, took me firmly by the shoulder, and said: “And now, if it were just you and me—and we were on God’s side—once again we would be victorious, for even if we are only two, nothing is impossible to men if they fight on God’s side!”
I have remembered that incident constantly over the years, especially when things appear dark or despairing.  For not only did Grace and Salvation and the Healing for sin come into the world in a humble Cradle in Bethlehem a little over 2,000 years ago, but Hope came also. And it buoys us up, gives us balance and equilibrium, and acts as “Faith’s Sentry” to protect our Faith from harm and the threat of despair and apostasy.
In the year 312 A.D., facing an immense military challenge, the Emperor Constantine prayed to the Christian God, asking what he should do. As related in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, he had grave doubts about the traditional Roman gods. He prayed earnestly that the Christian God would “reveal to him who he is, and stretch forth his right hand to help him.” His prayer changed the course of human history. The answer came in a vision emblazoned across the noonday sky, and upon it the inscription read: “In hoc signo vinces”—By this sign you shall be victorious. The emperor then ordered that his soldiers have the Christian cross inscribed on their shields.
Victorious at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine then issued orders that the Christian church was to be fully free in its mission and the exercise of its functions. Although he did not make Christianity the official religion of the empire, Constantine bestowed favors on it, built places of worship for Christians, and presided over the first general church council. He became the first emperor to embrace Christianity and was baptized on his death bed. In less than 300 years the faith of Christ born in humble surroundings in remote Judaea and persecuted mercilessly and ruthlessly, nourished by the blood or martyrs, now emerged from the catacombs, triumphant, a light unto the pagans, to continue its salvific mission.
Is this not the power of Faith supported by Hope? That even if we be in the catacombs, even if we see our civilization and culture coming apart at the seams, even if we see the Church subverted and false prophets in positions of immense authority preaching false doctrines—even in these circumstances, we  hold “fortes in Fide,” firm in the faith, bolstered by Faith’s Sentry.
So, then, as we approach the Holy Day of indescribable joy, we know with assurance that the ineffable Gift from God of salvation and forgiveness is ours, and that no one can take our Faith from us, buoyed, as it is, by the unbreakable assurance of Hope—which came to us that Christmas so long ago.
“Even if it were just you and me—and we were on God’s side—once again we would be victorious, for even if we are only two, nothing is impossible to men if they fight on God’s side!”
Saving Grace entered the world two millennia ago, and with it the Hope we possess.  And there are broad smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts.
Merry and Blessed Christmas!


Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

Saturday, December 21, 2019

December 21, 2019


MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Real Meaning of Impeachment:  

My Essay at The Intellectual Takeout


Friends,

Another Website has begun to run some of my columns, and I am honored to mention them. That site, The Intellectual Takeout, is a program of The Charlemagne Institute, whose motto is: “Defending and Advancing Western Civilization.”

The Charlemagne Institute sponsors three initiatives:

1) The premier American journal of traditional conservatism, Chronicles magazine (for which I have written several articles during 2018-2019);

2) The Alcuin Internships, annual paid ten-week programs  geared “to college seniors, including seminars with thought-leaders from around the country, to discuss topics like virtue, the history of conservatism, the roots of the Western intellectual tradition, and Christianity’s role in shaping the West”; and

3) The Intellectual Takeout (ITO), “a website and social media network popular with Millennials and younger Americans. Its mission is to challenge the intellectual and secular orthodoxies of today. The program covers a wide variety of topics from metaphysics to daily life, culture, and politics. Each year, we publish over 2,000 articles which are viewed by over 9 million readers. Via social media, ITO's content is viewed roughly 150 million times a year.” 

The first essay that The Intellectual Takeout has selected to publish is my piece. “The Historic Impeachment Vote: The End of the Democratic Charade?,” which first appeared on December 18. The ITO version has been substantially edited and it is that version appearing on their Website.

I pass it on today:

 The Historic Impeachment Vote: The End of the Democratic Charade?


Boyd Cathey | December 18, 2019
     
On December 19, 2019, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will vote to approve Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump and agree to send them to the U.S. Senate. It will be only the third formal impeachment of a president in American history – the other two being that of President Andrew Johnson in the post-war 1860s and of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.
As everyone knows by now, the Senate will, after the formality of most likely a brief trial, vote down the two articles, and that will be that.
Or will it?
Given that almost certain outcome, why, then, have the frenzied denizens of the left proceeded in this manner, knowing the outcome?
The answers – there are several – have already been widely given, and the major ones are:
1.      Extreme pressure from the hysterical “social justice warrior” foot soldier base of the Democratic Party which continues to grow in strength and threaten incumbents who do not toe the line.
 
2.     Demands by the powerful mainstream media, whose ranks are now cluttered by zealously indoctrinated former journalism students whose thinking and outlook were formed in our universities by their teachers – I should say “polluted” by our post-Marxist academic oligarchs (aka professors).
 
3.     The certain political use of the issue in the upcoming 2020 election.
Of course, the overarching rubric for all of this is an unrestrained and all-consuming hatred for Donald Trump (and his voters), and the concomitant desire, at all cost and by whatever means, to expel him from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No measure, no tactic, no weapon is out of bounds, and that includes what in effect is the virtual destruction of what is left of the American Constitution itself.
President Trump, for all his foibles and U-turns, despite some misfires in foreign policy, and despite his major mistake of placing in positions of power around him those – including Republican hacks and those whose loyalty is dubious at best – who wish him to fail and wish him harm…despite that, he has done an immense service to the creaky old American republic. He has pulled the mask off of the “Deep State” administrative and managerial bureaucratic Establishment. The Deep State has basically governed this country as its own private fiefdom for decades, with utter disdain and condescension for the rest of us…for us “deplorables” and “irredeemables,” to use Hillary Clinton’s oft-quoted language.
In certain ways, President Trump is not the real target here. His role has been far more symbolic and emblematic of something going on, something far more fearful to the elites so accustomed to running this country. It is something that he may be only vaguely aware of; and it is happening not just in the weary old United States, but also in Europe, in Brazil, and elsewhere. It is the rise of a popular reaction – a populist conservatism which rejects both the dominant establishment left and the “don’t-rock-the-boat” establishment conservative movement (and Republican Party). It is, to paraphrase Gilbert & Sullivan, the rejection of the “tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum” of our politics. It is also the realization, perhaps only vaguely, that the historic liberties and traditions, the historic moral codes of behavior, and the traditional beliefs upon which our civilization is based have been progressively perverted and decimated by a century of constant and ongoing revolution from the top, extended into every aspect of our lives.
Too many of our fellow citizens believe that all we have to do is tune into Fox News or vote for the GOP candidate to staunch and halt the Revolution. That is not sufficient. In fact, in some cases such devotion only abets and enables the forces of Revolution, as too many newscasters and pundits at Fox and too many Republican politicians are too deeply invested in the Neoconservative wing of the Deep State. Of course, there are exceptions, with Tucker Carlson, in some cases, as it were, getting “outside the box” and speaking truth to power. But even he must mind his “p’s and q’s.”
Thus, “the man with the orange hair” has to be stopped. Not so much because of who he is, but because of the extreme danger he symbolizes and means for the future of what can only be called the increasingly totalitarian globalist template. And that template is a dystopian nightmare far more demonic than anything George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four) or Arthur Koestler (Darkness At Noon) ever contemplated in their literary works. Or, by Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov in his chilling cinematic masterpiece about the insanity of Stalinism, Burnt by the Sun (1994).
At base, then, this is what this charade called an impeachment is all about. It is an effort not just against Donald Trump, but against any and everyone who voted for him. Against all of those who dissent from the ongoing policies of and control by the Deep State. Against all those who have realized or begun to realize that what we stare in the face is not Jerry Nadler or Adam Schiff, but a “rough beast” (to use William Butler Yeats’ term) of satanic proportions. This beast is intent on our extinction and the enthronement of a new false god of Baal, what the late Dr. Sam Francis called the Leviathan – a totalitarian world government, more fierce than anything envisaged by Stalin or Mao. Without liberties, without tradition, without morality…and without God.
This article has been republished with permission from My Corner.



Boyd D. Cathey holds a Ph.D. in European History from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an M.A. in Intellectual History from the University of Virginia.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

December 18, 2019


MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

The Historic Impeachment Vote: The End of the Democratic Charade?

Friends,
Today, December 19, 2019, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will vote to approve Articles of Impeachment against President Donald Trump and agree to send them to the U. S. Senate. It will be only the third formal impeachment of a president in American history—the other two being that of President Andrew Johnson in the post-war 1860s and of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.

As everyone knows by now, the Senate will, after the formality of most likely a brief trial, vote down the two articles, and that will be that.

Or, will it?

Given that almost certain outcome, why, then, have the frenzied denizens of the Left proceeded in this manner, knowing the outcome?

The answers—there are various—have already been widely given, and the major ones are: 1) extreme pressure from the hysterical “social justice warrior” foot soldier base of the Democratic Party which continues to grow in strength and threaten incumbents who do not toe the line; 2) demands by the powerful Mainstream Media, whose ranks are now cluttered by zealously indoctrinated former journalism students whose thinking and outlook were formed in our universities by their teachers—I should say “polluted” by our post-Marxist academic oligarchs (AKA professors); and 3) the certain political use of the issue in the upcoming 2020 election.

Of course, the overarching rubric for all of this is an unrestrained and all-consuming hatred for Donald Trump (and his voters), and the concomitant desire, at all cost and by whatever means, to expel him from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No measure, no tactic, no weapon is out of bounds, and that includes what in effect is the virtual destruction of what is left of the American Constitution, itself.

President Trump, for all his foibles and U-turns, despite some misfires in foreign policy, and despite his major mistake of placing in positions of power around him those—including Republican hacks and those whose loyalty is dubious at best—who wish him to fail and wish him harm…despite that, he has done an immense service to the creaky old American republic. He has pulled the mask off of the “Deep State” administrative and managerial bureaucratic Establishment which has basically governed this country as its own private fiefdom for decades, with utter disdain and condescension for the rest of us…for us “deplorables” and “irredeemables,” to use Hillary Clinton’s oft-quoted language.

In certain ways, President Trump is not the real target here. His role has been far more symbolic and emblematic of something going on, something far more fearful to the elites so accustomed to running this country. It is something that he may be only vaguely aware of; and it is happening not just in the weary old United States, but also in Europe, in Brazil, and elsewhere. It is the rise of a popular reaction—a populist conservatism which rejects both the dominant establishment Left and the “don’t-rock-the-boat” establishment conservative movement (and Republican Party). It is, to paraphrase Gilbert & Sullivan, the rejection of the “tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum” of our politics, and the realization, perhaps only vaguely, that the historic liberties and traditions, the historic moral codes of behavior, and the traditional beliefs upon which our civilization is based have been progressively perverted and decimated by a century of constant and ongoing revolution from the top, extended into every aspect of our lives.

Too many of our fellow citizens believe that all we have to do is tune into Fox News or vote for the GOP candidate to staunch and halt the Revolution.  That is not sufficient; in fact, in some cases such devotion only abets and enables the forces of Revolution, as too many newscasters and pundits at Fox and too many Republican politicians are too deeply invested in the Neoconservative wing of the Deep State. Of course, there are exceptions, with Tucker Carlson, in some cases, as it were, getting “outside the box” and speaking truth to power. But even he must mind his “p’s and q’s.”

Thus, “the man with the orange hair” has to be stopped, not so much because of who he is, but because of the extreme danger he symbolizes and means for the future of what can only be called the increasingly totalitarian globalist template. And that template is a dystopian nightmare far more demonic than anything George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four) or Arthur Koestler (Darkness At Noon) ever contemplated in their literary works. Or, by Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov in his chilling cinematic masterpiece about the insanity of Stalinism, Burnt by the Sun (1994).

At base, then, this is what this charade called an impeachment is all about. It is an effort not just against Donald Trump, but against any and everyone who voted for him, against all of those who dissent from the ongoing policies of and control by the Deep State, all those who have realized or begun to realize that what we stare in the face is not the corpulent mass of evil flesh that goes by the name of Jerry Nadler or the beady-eyed evil of an Adam Schiff, but a “rough beast” (to use William Butler Yeats’ term) of satanic proportions, intent on our extinction, and the enthronement of a new false god of Baal, what the late Dr. Sam Francis called the Leviathan—a totalitarian world government, more fierce than anything envisaged by Stalin or Mao, without liberties, without tradition, with morality…and without God.
                                                                   *****

Yesterday, President Trump sent a fierce, passionate letter regarding impeachment to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. In some respects it was one of the finest things he’s ever written (or said). It went beyond his own case, the present political sham, and touched upon issues which profoundly affect the very foundations of our republic. In reading it and re-reading it, it is possible to see the real constitutional and legal issues, the political chicanery, and, yes, the actual threats to what remains of our liberties vouchsafed to us by the Framers and assaulted massively in 1861-1865, and diminished even more since then.

                                    February 11, 2024     MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey Descent into Madness: Dostoevsky and the End of...