January 13, 2020
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
As Year 2020 Begins
Southerners Take
Stock
Friends,
Back on
January 2nd I remitted some general thoughts on this New Year, 2020. It was an
introduction to a much longer essay by “The Dissident Mama,” which followed.
Subsequently, I reworked my introduction into a stand-alone essay with a focus
on the Southland and our gravely endangered heritage and traditions. That essay
was published today by The Abbeville Institute, and I pass it along to you now:
ABBLLE INSTITUTE
As the Year
2020 Begins–Southerners Take Stock
By Boyd
D. Cathey
As 2020
commences it is perhaps appropriate that we take stock—that we take a look
globally at just where we are, politically, culturally, religiously.
All our
basic and fundamental social institutions are under tremendous stress, if not
outright attack, not just legally and politically, but far more insidiously, in
how they are defined and how they affect us. Our very language is altered to
reflect this radical transformation: words and phrases are banned, old words
are recast and redefined, implicit (and often explicit) speech codes have more
effect than anything that the older “less free” society of our grandfathers
experienced. And this linguistic terrorism—for that is what it is—is inculcated
into our young from the very beginning, in the primary grades, via television
and Hollywood, by unthinking parents, by friends.
And the
family? Has not our society redefined that also? Any two people who “love” each
other for a while and who cohabitate (shack up) for a time, with or without
children? No matter what sex, or any “intermediate” sexual orientation. No
permanency, and certainly nothing sacred or sacramental. Very little sense of
responsibility: if a fetus happens because the necessary birth control didn’t
work, very simply abort it. No problem; nothing must stand in the way of the
pleasure, the sexually stimulated moment. How many tens of millions of lives
has our society, in its lust for pleasure, snuffed out since 1972?
All the
nations of Western Europe protest proudly how “democratic” they are. In the
United States we never cease talking about how precious “our democracy” is
(just witness the ceaseless verbiage spewed forth during the recent impeachment
hearings). In the rest of the world no country ever boasts of being an
authoritarian state: when was the last time we heard a nation’s leaders waxing
eloquent about how totalitarian they were? Even the most autocratic Islamic
state now declares itself “democratic.”
Has not
that word lost its savor and meaning altogether?
Democracy—the
rule by the populace, as defined by the ancient philosophers—does not exist
anywhere, save perhaps still in a few Swiss cantons, or on the lowest levels of
governance in some faraway communities in Wyoming or Idaho. The rest is
fraudulent, bought and paid for by major financial interests and lobbies, and
on a supra-national level by the likes of globalists such as George Soros,
whose Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) now reach into nearly American city
and county of any size, handsomely funding candidates who will do his bidding.
Just ask the voters of Virginia.
The
established church—at least in America and Western Europe—seems to have
surrendered to the most diabolical and anti-Christian forces: the major
Protestant denominations have all joined in the mad rush to become more “woke”
and more revolutionary, adopting the slogans and platforms of the
Progressivists who seek nothing less than the abolition of historic Christianity
and the civilization which is based on it.
In large
part, the visible Catholic Church—once the stalwart opponent and beacon of
Christian counter-revolution against demonic Progressivism—has followed the
leftist course mapped out at the Second Vatican Council, with its present
supposed head acting as a cheer-leader for revolutionary change on every level.
Opposition to his lunacy is rising, but the formal elements of power are now in
the hands of Progressivists.
Perhaps
only in Eastern Europe and in Russia do we see a coherent resistance,
religiously and politically, to the madness that afflicts us. Ironically, it
was the separation from America and from Western Europe—the Iron Curtain—that
in a way saved those
countries from the poisonous infections coming from our nation which was
dominated in large part by the victors of 1861-1865, and which had become the
“Typhoid Mary” of Progressivism.
For the
defeat of the Southern Confederacy on the field of battle was not just a
military reverse; it signaled the defeat of a major outpost of Western
civilization and its vision of society which was distinctly connected to and
annealed by 1,500 years of traditional Christianity. This was the realization
of thousands of European volunteers to the Confederate cause—from Naples, from
Spain, and from other countries of the old continent. What they saw in
the Confederate crusade was a continuation of the struggle against liberalism
which raged throughout the nineteenth century. The Southern cause was the cause
of legitimacy, of tradition, of the old established order, of the survival of a
Christian inheritance vouchsafed to those warriors at Manassas and Gettysburg.
And now,
after more than 150 years of subjugation and indoctrination by the scions of
the Yankee victors, there is perhaps “a light coming from the East,” a message
of resistance telegraphed to the descendants of the heroes of Chancellorsville.
Hope exists always as long as there are men standing forthrightly for it,
willing to go to battle, willing to teach others, willing to pass it on. As the
Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno once wrote: “our life is a hope which is
continually converting itself into memory and memory in turn begets hope.”
Thus, when
the yoke of Communism was lifted in Eastern Europe, it was to the wellsprings
of national identity, to national heritage, to pre-Communist religious faith,
that many of these nations turned. They had largely escaped the forty-five
years of “Americanism”—in the worst cultural sense—that Germany, France, and
Italy had experienced.
Yet, it is
this same narrative, this same globalist “Americanism” that today’s
conservative movement—Neoconservativism—continues to push on the rest of the
world, just like their uncomfortable bedfellows a bit further to the Left. Both
the Establishment conservatives AND the open Left share the same postulates and
objectives, differing only in degree and expression.
As
Southerners the lessons we glean, then, may come from Eastern Europe and from
Russia, and they remind us of who we were as a people, of the inheritance which
in so many cases we have discarded. Those former Eastern Bloc nations, in
particular Russia and Hungary, stand as “signs of contradiction,” and offer to
us lessons, if we would only examine them.
Despite
the Swamp and the Deep State—despite the future technological tyranny which
stares at us in the face—despite the assaults in every aspect of our
lives—despite it all there is Hope and the vague but very real awareness that
we are human, creatures made by God, and that our role is to stay the course,
remain true to the faith and to our inheritance.
My
favorite Psalm is number 26, in particular these words (vs.3): “Si consistant adversum me castra, non timebit
cor meum. Si exurgat adversum me praelium, in hoc sperabo”: Even if
entrenched armies were to stand against me, my heart would not fear. If a
battle would rise against me, I would have hope….
A very happy and blessed New Year in the Hope that never dies!
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.
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