March 26, 2020

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Every Southerner Should Get Chronicles Magazine

Friends,

On various occasions I’ve made references to Chronicles Magazine and cited articles printed in it. Remarkably, Chronicles is the only print magazine of stature (it is also online) in America which has represented and aired traditionalist conservative viewpoints, in depth and intelligently, now for forty-four years.

Edited by Dr. Paul Gottfried (Raffensperger Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, Elizabethtown College), the magazine includes some of the finest writers of the Old or Traditionalist conservative persuasion in the Anglosphere. And recently, Chronicles, which has been consistently favorable to the heritage and traditions of the South, has published even more quality essays by and on Southerners. Early this year the magazine inaugurated a series –“Remembering….”—which undertakes to recover the thinking and wisdom of various writers, many of them from the South, who contributed mightily to American history and culture, but who, largely due to the dominance nationally of the anti-Southern Neoconservatives, have been neglected or exiled from the public square.

In the December 2019 issue, for example, Chronicles featured fascinating appreciations of Mel Bradford (by Clyde Wilson), Robert Lewis Dabney (by Zachary Garris), and an introductory essay by Gottfried titled, “Remembering the Right.” Subsequent issues have featured an appreciation of the late historian Eugene Genovese (by Robert Paquette, a Genovese amanuensis, in the January 2020 issue) and Tar Heel writer Richard Weaver (by Jay Langdale, in the February 2020 issue).

Chronicles has never been afraid to address controversial issues from a traditionalist point of view, and thus go against the grain of our consumerist and authoritarian gate keepers who now control the establishment Conservative Movement and who accept far too many precepts and agenda points of the looney Left. An excellent example of this intelligent and thoughtful non-conformity—this “emperor-has-no-clothes” approach to the intellectual bankruptcy of “Conservatism Inc.”—is the February 2020 issue, which not only has the Weaver appreciation but several other significant contributions that every thinking Southerner would do well to search out.

A major contribution is Dr. Brion McClanahan’s superb critique of the latest initiative of the fanatically “woke” Leftwing historical establishment, “The 1619 Project,” which attempts to frame all of American history in the terms of race as the pivotal benchmark in the development of this continent since the first African slave stepped off the boat. McClanahan’s essay is a masterful response that demolishes the very basis of “the project.” Another essay by him in the same issue, “The Reinvention of Reconstruction,” demonstrates how Reconstruction and it policies were renewed as an ideological platform for both historians and politicians in the 1960s, and how this ideology has come to dominate all discussion about the War Between the States, about civil rights (expanding beyond simple laws on accommodation or voting, to such extremes as same sex marriage and a race-consciousness in nearly aspect of American life), and the virtual excommunication of anyone who would question that narrative.

Another fascinating February contribution, “The Great Debate: Lincoln’s Legacy,” by H. A. Scott Trask is a thorough examination of the famous and long-running discussions between Drs. Harry Jaffa and Mel Bradford over the (nefarious) role of Abraham Lincoln, not just during the 1861-1865 War, but even more significantly since then on the decay and destruction of American institutions and the Constitution. Trask goes into some detail regarding the profound and significant debate between Jaffa, who seized upon the Declaration of Independence—in particular, its propagandistic exclamation that “all men are created equal”—to assert that equality was the fundamental basis of the American nation, and Bradford, who firmly rejected that proposition: America was based on communities and families who came to these shores for land and liberty; NOT to establish some egalitarian “world state,” as Jaffa implied (see for example, Bradford's deeply-reasoned, “The Heresy of Equality,” Modern Age, Winter 1976). Editor Gottfried adds additional and critical commentary.

As both Trask and Gottfried show it was Southerner Bradford’s rather complete take-down and devastating assault of the “Lincoln Myth” that got him into serious trouble with the Neoconservatives. Supported in 1981 by Senators Jesse Helms and John East of North Carolina, and Howell Heflin of Alabama, to be President Reagan’s head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bradford was immediately attacked by columnist George Will and other establishment (Neocon) conservatives for his writings on Lincoln and the Confederacy. Such views, once welcomed by the older Conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s, were now verboten and most likely “racist.” And after a barrage of negative attacks, the appointment went to Democrat, Neocon-favorite William Bennett.

For full disclosure I admit that I have had a few items published by the magazine over the past couple of years, and a review of my book, The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage (Scuppernong Press, 2018), by Dr. Donald Livingston of The Abbeville Institute, was published in the May 2019 issue. Let me add that I have been a subscriber for nearly thirty of the magazine’s forty -four years, and I look forward to its arrival in my mailbox each month.

The annual subscription price for the print edition is $48.00 a year, twelve monthly issues—well worth the cost (which would be about the same for a husband and wife at middling steak house).

Chronicles subscriptions and a view of some of the recent articles are available at its Web site: https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/. There is also an “800” number for those who prefer the old-fashioned method of using the telephone. And while you are there on the Web site, take a look at the Archive of articles and essays, a veritable cornucopia of excellent traditionalist writing.

Every Southerner who really cares about our heritage and traditions, who is concerned about the present parlous state of the American nation, and who is worried about what kind of country we have become and what we will leave to our children and grandchildren, should receive Chronicles.

In a sense, it is one of the best “weapons,” certainly intellectually and historically, we can have in our meager arsenal. In these dark days, as our monuments come down and, to quote poet William Butler Yeats,    “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity,” Chronicles is a ray of light and a hope for our future.

March 21, 2020

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

For Never Trump “Conservatives” Joe Biden is the “Simple Answer”

Friends,

As you are aware various “big name” establishment “conservative” leaders have never reconciled themselves to the election of Donald Trump. For these folks, mainly clustered “inside-the-DC-Beltway” or closeted off behind walled estates in northern Virginia or in posh apartments in New York’s upper east side, the rest of the conservative base, out in what the late leftist novelist Phillip Roth called “fly-over country” are “deplorables,” just as Hillary Clinton despectively described them. In fact a week or two ago, former John McCain Republican consultant Rick Wilson yucked it up on CNN with his extreme Left buddies in tones of dripping condescension—and scarcely concealed hate—about those mostly “rural boobs.”

Good for a disdainful laugh.

Lest you thought that 2016 signaled the decline of these Republican ersatz-conservative plutocrats, think again. Yes, it is true that their most important journalistic mouthpiece, The Weekly Standard, went under in a richly deserved death. But the Standard’s most prominent scribblers did not go away. Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg almost immediately founded an online journal of “conservatism,” The Dispatch, where they could continue to spew forth their continued disdain for Trump and the hoi polloi, we poor unfortunate rubes who have been misled by the “racism” and hatred engendered, let loose, and normalized by the present administration.

And former Standard editor, Bill Kristol—the son of the Neoconservative journalist Irving Kristol—has his own online mouthpiece, The Bulwark, where he continues to spout an unrestrained message of irreconcilable Never Trumpism.

Of course, since 2016 some of the zealous anti-Trumpers have attempted to glom onto Trumpism and, as Neoconservatives have done in the past, turn it and shape it in their own direction—a continued globalism internationally and a continued retreat into moral degeneracy domestically. Thus the praxis of such Fox luminaries Goldberg, Hayes, along with Ben Shapiro, Guy Benson, and that “big boy” wannabe, Charlie Kirk—yes, the self-same, transvestite-hugging Turning Point USA honcho who shows up increasingly on Fox News as a pundit. (Charlie comes across as someone desperate for attention and anxious for fame; he preaches to collegians when he can, but loves to party up-tight with transgenders and others who make a total mockery of traditional conservative beliefs: this tragically is what has become of much of the “conservative youth movement.”)

And, of course, just as with the fanatical Left, these elitist conservatives are quick to condemn and excommunicate anyone as “racist” (or “sexist”) who in any way transgresses their shared, constantly advancing benchmarks for deciding just who has now become a “racist.” Thus, once welcomed conservative columnist and lecturer Michelle Malkin has become, in this new dispensation, “persona non grata.” Indeed, Amanda Carpenter on Kristol’s Web site viciously attacked her as “pro-Nazi” and probably a “holocaust denier” (n0 shred of proof adduced, of course): “And she now seems to have turned her back on all of that [establishment conservatism] in order to link arms with the most vocal elements of the white nationalist movement. Oh, I’m sorry. They insist on being called America Firsters. Same difference.”

And everything possible is being done to destroy Malkin’s career and livelihood. Once prominently viewed on Fox, she now is effectively banned from the network because, as Carpenter describes it, she has defended in some ways Nick Fuentes. Who is Fuentes? “Think of him as a younger, Catholic fundamentalist version of Milo Yiannopoulos.”  Fuentes, you see, marched in Charlottesville, and no matter what his beliefs or motivation, that for the race-conscious Neocons is an unforgivable sin.

Even more unforgivable, according to Carpenter: “Fuentes and his followers loathe what they call ‘Conservative Inc.’—a group of ‘fake conservative establishmentarians who are insufficiently observant of ‘traditional values.’ One of those values is severely restrictionist immigration policy, which at some point, began to tickle Malkin’s ears. So, too, has she adopted the anti-‘Conservative Inc.’ language, even though her entire career had been—if we are being honest—a product of the actual Conservative Inc. Which is to say, CPAC, Regnery, YAF, Fox, and all the rest.”

Now the Never Trump Republicans have something called “The Lincoln Project,” with a goal of defeating the president at the next election, and nothing is exempt as a weapon in that campaign. Most recently they have bitterly attacked Donald Trump over his handling of the COVID-19 epidemic—if it will bring down the hated “man with the golden hair,” it’s just fine as a tactic. The headline on a Huffington Post (!) article March 21 reads: “GOP group uses Donald Trump's coronavirus lies against him in new attack ad,” and the list of organizers reads like a list of John McCain and George Bush policy advisors and political consultants: Rick Wilson (again!), Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, Jennifer Horn, et al. The New York Times—never missing a beat to attack the despicable Donald—featured their joint opinion piece, “We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated,” prominently in its December 17, 2019, issue.

Bill Kristol states it even more clearly: “if you’re inclined toward American constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and a free economic order–as well as a liberal  [Italics mine] world order anchored by the United States–it’s Joe Biden.”

You see, Biden is the “moderate candidate.”  He’s who Kristol calls “The Simple Answer.” Got that?

Can you believe this? This is the man, the brain-dead candidate who has adopted almost all of Bernie Sanders’ socialist positions. And yet Kristol and company push him as THEIR candidate. Tells you something, does it not, about THESE so-called “conservatives.” And it should impel us to go back and re-examine the history of how these vaunted Neoconservatives—the Irving Kristols, Norman Podhoretzes, and their offspring—infiltrated and seized control of the old conservative movement and denatured it almost beyond recognition back in the 1970s and 1980s.

*****

On this subject there is no better, no more acute observer and historian than Dr. Paul Gottfried, and so I pass on his latest essay on the topic today:

Since When Is Joe Biden a 'Moderate'?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/since_when_is_joe_biden_a_moderate.html

By Paul Gottfried  March 15, 2020

In an exultant commentary on Joe Biden’s victory on Super Tuesday, New York Post-syndicated columnist Salena Zito tells us: “The Dems’ silent majority, which doesn’t tweet, is finally crying out for moderation from the party.” Zito also quotes Dave Saunders, “a legendary Democratic strategist in Virginia,” who “finds it ‘ironic’ that southern voters are often criticized by the national party for being too moderate, but they’re the ones who saved the party from a left-wing candidate like Sanders.” Presumably Biden is the personification of “moderation,” as I’m reminded whenever I hear the Fox News All-stars praise him, while attacking the evil Bernie as a commie-loving radical. It’s been Joe’s accomplishment to rescue his party and nation from the “leftist demagogue” who is running against him. He is helping to return the country to “moderate” government, which presumably is not something that Trump has been doing because of his divisive personality.

Unfortunately, there is no indication that Biden will be practicing any kind of “moderation” if elected. For one thing, depictions of him as a moderate overlook the inconvenient fact that he is running well to the left of former president Obama, who was our most leftist chief executive up until his election in 2008. Candidate Obama publicly opposed gay marriage, favored strict border controls, and would never have announced, in contrast to Biden, that he wished to provide medical assistance and public benefits to those who were here illegally. On just about every social issue, Biden the “moderate” has positioned himself well to the left of Obama. On immigration and advancing the LGBT, feminist, and Black Lives Matter agendas, I don’t find any distance between Joe and Bernie.  Certainly not enough to justify the exaggerated contrasts between the “moderate” Biden and the “radical” Sanders.

Second, in assessing how Biden would govern this country, we should consider his continuing gaffes on the stump. Why are we supposed to think that Biden’s stumbling for words, incoherent outbursts, and inability to recognize what day of the week it is or what state he is in tell us nothing about how he would govern? Biden may well be in mental decline, and if that is the case, there are lots of people out there waiting to take advantage of his presidency. We might start the list with the Secret Service officials who have been in trouble because of their felonious misdeeds and rank partisanship. But perhaps we should look for Biden’s beneficiaries in public administration more generally. Federal employees are overwhelmingly Democrats and would be delighted with a presidency that allowed them to have their way. However ineptly Trump has called out his bureaucratically entrenched enemies, he has correctly observed where they are. Biden is also indebted to the media for methodically covering up his ridiculous statements and his fits of anger when encountering unwanted questions. He also owes the media big time for their steady recent attacks on Sanders, which helped cleared the way for Biden’s nomination. Such unfailing support may come at a high price, if Biden is elected. And let’s not forget those black leaders like Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who have vigorously campaigned for Joe. What exactly will a President Biden owe such leaders for gaining him the overwhelming support of black Democrats? One can only imagine. Of course, Biden’s helpers were right to pick him over the principled socialist Sanders. Joe is not likely to refuse favors and he does have a proven record of corruption, and very corrupt relatives whose corruption he’s facilitated.

There are also neocons and #NeverTrumpers ready to pile on to the gravy train. Bill Kristol has talked up Biden on his website The Bulwark as the candidate for “normal Americans, who don’t care to choose between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders." From Bill’s standpoint, Joe is “the simple answer” for those who wish to avoid extremism.  According to this endorsement: “if you’re inclined toward American constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and a free economic order -- as well as a liberal world order anchored by the United States -- it’s Joe Biden. And if you’re not, then it’s Bernie Sanders.”  Allow me to place the emphasis here exactly where Kristol and his anti-Trump friends would want it to go, namely on “a liberal world order anchored by the United States.” That signifies continuing confrontation with those countries that Bill and his friends don’t like; and this happy dream might become reality under President Biden, who would be aided in his protection of our democracy by neocon advisers.   

We have not yet reached, however, the ultimate beneficiary of a Biden presidency, the person whom he chooses to be his running mate. Since “I’m an old guy,” as Joe recently admitted, he will need a “vice-president capable of being president.” In December he mentioned as possible picks certain left-leaning women, including the “woman who should have been governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams.” Assuming Joe wins in November but his mental acuity continues to decline, a leftist woman possibly of color may be our next de facto president.

March 19, 2020

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

More on COVID-19…from Peter Hitchens and Pat Buchanan

Friends,

If you watch any network television (other than movie channels) or tune into the Internet or Facebook or Twitter, then you have been deluged by news of the Coronavirus-19 [COVID-19], with widely diverging stories and reports. In one brief twenty minute period yesterday I heard one “expert” declaim that the United States was headed for the worst crisis, health-wise, since the Spanish flu that killed nearly 700,000 Americans in 1918, while another “expert” averred that we should pass the real crisis point, the expansion point, by mid-April and get better after that.

After a half hour of this madness, I switched to the Sirius classical music channel: better to have the inspiring—and comforting—sounds of Johannes Brahms and Sir Edgar Elgar, than the constant deluge of hysteria, parading as “facts.”

Don’t get me wrong: this COVID-19 epidemic is a real crisis undoubtedly; it has serious ramifications not only in and on this nation’s health and health response, but perhaps even more dramatically, in our economy. And proactive and swift action at every level is dictated and necessary. That much, yes, and all Americans simply must collaborate in this national effort.

But, as in most major crises—recall 9/11, swine flu—oftentimes it is not the appropriate measures and sound advice that are seized upon, but a resulting public panic, the fear, and—shall we call it what it is—a type of madness that is even more worrying.

Fueled by all sorts of radically divergent (but imperious) pronouncements, I can imagine a housewife sitting at home with her three noisy out-of-school underage children viewing these reports and literally being overwhelmed by anxiety and worry: one more furtive trip to Harris Teeter or Food Lion to search the shelves for toilet tissue! And what if hubby gets laid off, if only temporarily; how does the mortgage get paid?

These are, it is true, very legitimate questions, and they severely affect millions of Americans. They must be addressed, and hopefully the president in his various initiatives will do just that.  Unfortunately, we have reached the point where events have progressed too far, the fear aggravated too much, and thus, while this public frenzy did not have to happen, could have been avoided, it’s now with us and seems to affect nearly everyone. In other words: the horse is already out of the barn.

If we stand back and take a longer view (which may only happen after this epidemic passes), this public panic—this madness—is a major argument against the effects of the kind of consumerist, media-addicted culture that engulfs us. In our society, prudence and rationality are in short supply, as anyone who has made that last trip to Food Lion already knows. Just like in the worst ravages of influenza, simple proactive measures and responsibility have been needed, not hysteria. But we have now probably gone beyond that point, and the more drastic initiatives talked about by the president seem imminent.

That doesn’t alter our current situation, but, let me ask, when this epidemic subsides and there is some recovery, will we engage in a serious examination—of the nature and resources of our health sector (e.g, why do we depend almost totally on China and other countries for our antibiotics?), of our economy and its dependency on a dangerous globalism, of the absolute need to enforce border and immigration restrictions, and perhaps most elusively, of the—I would say—largely deleterious role of our media in all this?

No easy answers, but these are examinations that demand consideration. Alas, given the nature of our decadent and corrupt democracy, although needed, I have to wonder if we will learn any lessons.

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

Two short essays today. The first is by conservative English contrarian, Peter Hitchens, who writes for the [London UK] Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday. His acerbic comments may irritate some, but he also raises some provocative points that deserve airing.  The second essay is a very recent column by Pat Buchanan, basically stating that the worldwide COVID-19 epidemic, with the resulting actions by various nations may be a real setback for globalism.

PETER HITCHENS: Yes, coronavirus poses a risk - but our response to it is not intelligent or useful. Britain is infected... by a bad case of madness

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/03/peter-hitchens-yes-coronavirus-poses-a-risk-but-our-response-to-it-is-not-intelligent-or-useful-brit.html

14 March 2020 11:00 PM

This is Peter Hitchens’s Mail on Sunday column

We have gone quite mad. I know that many people are thinking this, but dare not say so.  I will be accused of all kinds of terrible things for taking this view – but that is another aspect of how crazy things are.

Yes, coronavirus poses a risk. No, our response to it is not intelligent or useful. In fact, I think it is increasingly damaging and will soon become more so.

The key word here is proportion. There is nothing wrong with simple, practical precautions. 

I have for many years believed that door handles pose one of the greatest threats to health, and try never to touch them with the naked hand. I was taught from my earliest years to wash my hands before eating.

I am a health faddist. I work at a standing desk. For many years I have walked and bicycled wherever I can. I often take the stairs rather than the lift. I can’t understand how anyone in my generation or younger can smoke, given what we know about it. 

I regard sugar as a delicious poison to be avoided as much as possible. I drink little. I get up early and go to bed early. I believe cars are heart-attack machines, noisy, smelly, ugly devices, which depreciate in the gutter while they are not stopping us from exercising and wrecking our lower backs. Yet our country is so badly planned that few families can manage without them nowadays.

For these reasons, I reckon that my risk from coronavirus is quite small. If I catch it, and I quite possibly will, I doubt it will trouble me all that much. 

The truth is, people with what are called ‘underlying conditions’, many of which follow decades without exercise, are in danger not just from coronavirus but from almost everything. If the Government is so worried about them, why has it followed transport and housing policies that have made it hard and dangerous to walk or bicycle, and so devastated the health of the people? 

I must ask them: are you really worried about our health, or are you just afraid of being blamed for a small number of the deaths that your policies are causing?  And are you just anxious to try to demonstrate how good you are? In such matters, we fuss where we do not need to, and do nothing where urgent action is required.

If a train crashed tomorrow and ten people died, it would be huge headlines for days, even though railways are, in fact, extremely safe. An inquiry would be held.  But each year more than 1,700 people die in road crashes, and another 25,000 are seriously injured, and it barely registers, because their lives are ended or ruined in ones and twos.

Governments distil fear into power. In a way, they are right to do so. We fear foreign invasion. The State builds a navy to protect us. We fear crime and disorder. 

The State hires police and builds prisons. But they have become less and less good at these basic tasks, and perhaps they now seek other fields, where they can show how much we need them. 

I have serious doubts about whether our Government has any idea how to slow the spread of this virus. I suspect it quietly reached these shores long before anyone noticed.

But I am quite sure that many of the current panic measures do far more harm than good. They create the idea that we are in the midst of a terrifying plague that will kill us all, when the truth – though disturbing – is far less frightening.

Their worst effect is to savage the economy by scaring people away from normal activities. 

I went to the cinema last Sunday evening and there were six people in the theatre for what ought to be a successful film.  A florist known to me has just lost hundreds of pounds in business from cancelled events this weekend. 

We have all seen the staggering, tottering behaviour of the stock markets, possibly triggered and certainly worsened by virus frenzy.

No doubt it will soon become impossible, under some frantic Emergency Powers Regime, to make this point. I’ll be accused of giving aid and comfort to the virus, or of spreading Alarm and Despondency. 

But before the roadblocks go up, and you need a pass to go to work, I thought I’d say it anyway. 

In the Pandemic, It's Every Nation for Itself

https://buchanan.org/blog/in-the-pandemic-its-every-nation-for-itself-138327

By Patrick J. Buchanan   Tuesday - March 17, 2020

"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time," said Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey to a friend on the eve of Britain's entry into the First World War. Observing from afar as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the Old Continent, Grey's words return to mind. And as the Great War changed Europe forever, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be changing the way European peoples see each other.

"All for one and one for all!" These were the words by which "The Three Musketeers" of Alexandre Dumas lived their lives.

This was the ideal upon which the EU and NATO were built. An attack against one is an attack against all. The Schengen Agreement by which citizens of Europe are as free to travel through the countries of their continent as Americans are to travel from Maryland to Virginia is rooted in that ideal.

Yet, suddenly, all that seems to belong to yesterday.

How the EU's nation-states are reacting to the coronavirus crisis brings to mind another phrase, a French phrase, "Sauve qui peut," a rough translation of which is, "Every man for himself."

The New York Times has written of the new reality. In Sunday's top story, "Europe Locks Up and Faces Crisis as Virus Spread," the Times wrote:

"While some European leaders, like President Emmanuel Macron of France, have called for intensifying cooperation across nations, others are trying to close their countries off.  From Denmark to Slovakia, governments went into aggressive virus-fighting mode with border closings."

Describing a host of countries heeding the call of tribalism and nationalism, the Times laments Monday:

"Today, Europeans are... erecting borders between countries, inside their cities and neighborhoods, around their homes — to protect themselves from their neighbors, even from their own grandchildren. Confronting a virus that knows no borders, this modern Europe without borders is building them everywhere."

In a few days, the Europe of open borders has become history.

"As the pandemic spreads from Italy to Spain, France, Germany," reports the Times, "there is a growing sense of the need for harsh, even authoritarian methods, many of them taken from China.

"Europe has been terrified by Italy. Suddenly, many of the continent's countries are trying to lock down, to protect themselves and their citizens. The idea of European solidarity, and of a borderless Europe where citizens are free to travel and work, seems very far away."

Italy, hardest-hit country after China, is on lockdown. Germany is closing its borders with Austria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia have announced they will close borders to all foreigners. President Donald Trump has expanded his travel ban on Europe to include two of America's oldest friends, Britain and Ireland.

Slovenia has closed its border with Italy. Norway is on lockdown. International travelers who arrive in Norway risk a mandatory 14-day quarantine, regardless of their health.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that Canada is barring entry to all travelers who are not citizens or permanent residents. The only exceptions are air crews, diplomats, and, "at this time," U.S. citizens.

What we are witnessing is the clash of the claims of human nature and of ideology. Through history, most men have put attachments of family, tribe, faith, country, race and nation above the claims of liberal ideology.

But while all citizens may have the same God-given right to life and constitutional right to "equal protection of the laws," all people do not have equal rights to our affections or concerns.

For most men, the claims of the heart are superior to those of the mind. Foreign folks do not have the same claims upon us as our own. In a crisis, people put families, friends and country first.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson declares that, "all men are created equal." Yet, what truly seems to enrage him and to justify the rebellion against George III are the crimes the king had committed and that he had been "deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity."

The king had violated the claims of our common blood while we Americans had not been "wanting in attentions to our British brethren."

Closing borders is a grievous offense against liberalism that is supposedly rooted in the sin of xenophobia. But what governments in Europe are saying by closing their borders, what Americans are saying by banning travel from Europe, is that while all men may be created equal, we will always put our own people first, ahead of the rest.

When a crisis comes, be it a war in which the survival of the nation is at stake or an epidemic where the health and survival of our people is at stake, we take care of our own first.

This is human nature. This is the way the world works.

March 15, 2020

MY CORNER  by Boyd Cathey

CORONAVIRUS-19 – What Is Really Going On?

Friends,

Saturday early afternoon is my regular grocery shopping time: almost every Saturday I dedicate an hour or two to stocking up for the following week. I’ve been going to my local (Wendell NC) Food Lion now for twenty-seven years. The staff there is friendly and helpful, and most of them know me by my first name. And I almost always find what I am looking for.

Yesterday I went for my usual visit, and the place was like a war zone: long lines, frantic women loaded down with toilet tissue (which was almost all gone from the shelves), hand sanitizer sold out, bread and soup in very short supply, and even store-bought water running low. As one store assistant—a long-time friend—told me: “This is worse than Hurricane Matthew or Fran, or maybe the last Winter blizzard we had!”

Such shortages don’t affect me, since I live by myself (except for my handsome Cocker Spaniel), and I always keep a stock of necessary items on hand. (I learned that lesson back during the ravages of Hurricane Fran in 1996 when I was without power for eleven days!) But the extreme panic struck me.

And I thought to myself: the role of the media in generating this is very significant.

Now I am not an assiduous viewer of network television—I much prefer, if I watch the Boob Tube at all, to catch an entertaining old oater (say, with Randolph Scott or Audie Murphy) on Encore Westerns or a timeless classic on TCM. But I have noticed, that as much as the media profess to present the “facts,” their lurid presentations of the ravages of this latest Coronavirus (COVID-19) and its effects have only heightened the edginess and fears of an unwary and spooked public.

Nationally, to take only an example, just this morning the inveterate anti-Trumper, Chris Wallace, interviewed on Fox both Dr. Anthony Fauci of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. And Wallace tried every way he could to get them both to admit that the very fate of the nation was at stake, that we were headed for the direst of dire events—a terrifying recession, if not worse, and that President Trump had been “too slow” and confused in reacting. Their responses to an insistent Wallace were largely reassuring to anyone watching…but Chris seemed not at all deterred.

Worse still has been much of the local media. A regional television station in this area—NBC-affiliate WRAL—loudly proclaims that its only desire is to give viewers factual information, yet its coverage, replete with rumors and selected horror stories, has been nothing less than scandalous and hysterical.

One doctor the station located predicted millions would become sick, but failed to note that many millions get the flu each year as well. And thousands die from the flu annually. The death rate from COVID-19 (which is a variant strain similar to the flu) is between 1% and 2% in the United States, and the great majority of those, according to the CDC, are the elderly with existent serious health issues, again similar to the effects of influenza.

There is, of course, a definite political twist to all this. Take for example the early reaction of leading Democrats and in particular of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, who have criticized the president for “lack of action.” Given President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency this week and additional proactive measures by the administration and by Congress, some of this talk may lessen (but don’t bet on it). Recall the phrase of Mayor Rahm Emmanuel: “Never let a crisis go to waste [politically].” Expect to see the Democratic candidates and most especially the Internet and Twitter-world continue to ramp up and hype ignorantly this “crisis” and continue to “shout fire! fire!” and pretend that we are all contained in a crowded movie theater with the doors locked.

It has become one more stone to throw at the president. The Russia Hoax, the Kavanaugh caper, Michael Cohen, the Ukraine quid pro quo—they have all been trotted out to bring him down, and like darts which failed to strike the dart board, they’ve come up short. For far too many frenzied anti- and Never Trumpers, this COVID-19 situation presents one more opportunity to strike at the heart of the hated Donald.

And, if you can stomach it, take a peek at the coverage on MSNBC or CNN, and there, voila!, you will learn that to attribute this latest coronavirus to Chinese ineptitude is “racist,” to call it “Chinese Coronavirus” is another example of “Western white supremacy.” Maybe it has been in fact a plot hatched by some reactionary old white men huddled in the basement of the White House, intent on devastating brown and black peoples across the globe? Think I’m kidding? At this point and in this perfervid intellectual climate, I wouldn’t gainsay it.

After all is said and done, it comes down to these questions: what is the actual situation in the United States, what should I (and my family) do to avoid infection (practical steps), and what are the symptoms of COVID-19. And overall how should we react, prudently and rationally…and not like a heard of Gadarene swine plunging off the cliff into the Sea of Galilee.

The surest and most accurate source of up-to-date information is the Federal government’s own special Coronvirus-19 Web site, which offers essential details.

As Dr. Fauci and the CDC have stated, the symptoms of COVID-19 are characterized by a very high fever, a deeply-based cough, a noticeable shortness of breath, persistent pain in the chest, and in more serious cases possible mental disorientation.  In fact, these symptoms are similar to those of aggravated influenza or pneumonia, and the need to treat them medically is very much like the treatment of those illnesses: strong antibiotics, constant hydration, and self-isolation until those conditions go away—with a visit to one’s doctor or an emergency room only in extreme cases.

And, just like the flu—and clearly evident in the presently-counted cases—for most people exposed and the great majority contracting the infection the illness will not be life-threatening at all. Again, those most at risk—just like with influenza and pneumonia strains—will be the elderly with persistent health and immunity issues. Like with the flu most contracting COVID-19 who act reasonably and prudently (and without the frenzy I witnessed at Food Lion yesterday!) will fully recover.

Certainly, there are simple measures to avert infection and they should include frequent handwashing with anti-bacterial products, avoiding close or intimate contact with those with evident coughing and sneezing problems (and if you yourself are beset with persistent deep coughing, high fever and sneezing, cover up and depending on the severity, contact your physician).

Unfortunately the panic continues. The stock market has taken a hit; the airlines and travel businesses have seen a precipitous decline in business; many schools have let out, and with underage children at home, two-working-parent households are in a quandary. Perhaps millions will suffer economically in the short term. The president has taken bold action, and we shall see what effect the concerted actions—most likely over-actions—of government have.

In the meantime, the grocery store shelves—the Walmart specials—the CVS displays remain cleaned out. Toilet tissue is nowhere to be had. In such cases, alas, my best advice to you is to invest in one of those foreign-style bidets, or barring that, if you can find some old Sears and Roebuck catalogs still around….snatch them up!

March 12, 2020

MY CORNER by Boyd

Russia Now Proclaims a "Belief in God to be Fundamental," while the US Embraces Paganism

Friends,

Over the past six years I have written several essays and in-depth articles about Russia, about its president Vladimir Putin, and about the incredibly long-lived charade—the Russia Hoax—which has been foisted off on the American public, including on millions of those who call themselves “conservatives” and support Donald Trump.

It’s a constant narrative that we are spoon fed nightly, and not just by the Mainstream Media (e.g., CNN, NBC, The New York Times, etc.), but vociferously by most pundits on Fox (with the exception of Tucker Carlson) and by much of the establishment “conservative” print media.

As I have noted and attempted to dissect, it is almost as if the fall of Soviet Communism in August 1991 never took place and the old Soviet Union somehow continued to exist and threaten our very lives and future with
“mutually-assured-destruction” (remember that term from our Cold War vocabulary?).

Despite the nugatory results of the heavily Democratically-weighted Mueller Commission and the continued hysterical sqwawks of Congressmen Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler—what does it tell us about our American political system that such men get elected?-- the success of that template in our popular culture is clearly evident.

But more than this resilient deep-seated impression, there is something far more sinister afoot.

The late Senator John McCain—notoriously—and  Senators Lindsey Graham and Ben Sasse, James Kirchick, Jonah Goldberg, and other Neoconservatives—those who form the veritable “conservative establishment” in our day—have attacked and criticized Russia and its president for “violations of human rights,” for discrimination against lesbians and homosexuals, for imposing a “religious orthodoxy” on Russia, and for “not being democratic” enough. 

In other words, those Russkies should be more like us and our model democracy, right?

That is, a system here in the United States where elections are bought and sold by major corporate and international billionaires, a system where George Soros can pour in millions of dollars to a targeted local race and convince (via ads and TV) voters to elect his chosen candidate (e.g., in Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc.), a system where the liberal-dominated courts refuse to countenance even the most minor voter ID conditions, a system where two giant incestuous power groups (Democrats and Republicans) literally control the real choices we have…that model democracy.

We officiously want the Russians to install that? We demand—in the name of “democracy” and “human rights”—that our corrupt model be their model. And in so demanding we follow along exactly the pathway of the George Soros’s of this world and the other anxious globalists for whom any real sign of independence, of attachment to national and native traditions, of true religious belief, and of adherence to moral law is anathema and verboten in the New World Order.

There is a reason why the Neoconservative/Conservative “establishment” and the Progressivists are joined at the hip when it comes to post-Communist Russia: and it is that what has occurred and is occurring there is an embarrassment and a reminder of what we once aspired to—a reminder of what Western Christian civilization once held to be fundamental—a reminder of what our historic culture was actually based on and in. What Russia has been doing and achieving cannot be allowed to stand, and certainly it cannot be described in any fair or faithful manner by Mainstream Media, lest the veil and scales on our eyes by removed.

For Russia has become, ironically, a veritable “sign of contradiction,” a sign that should shame us and shame this American nation, the proclaimed “home of freedom and liberty” founded on immutable principles based in a belief in God and His Providence…and look what has happened to us now.

I pass on two short items: first, a short abbreviated item on new constitutional changes in Russia—where on “conservative media” [sic!] have you heard these mentioned? Maybe those “conservative pundits” don’t want you to know…

Second, I offer another of my essays that appeared on LewRockwell.com, “They’re Coming to Get You! Build that Bomb Shelter Now!”

Russia passes Constitutional Reform

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/03/11/russia-passes-bill-allowing-putin-to-stay-in-power-past-2024/23946637/

Mar 11th 2020 5:13AM

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian parliament approved a sweeping constitutional reform in the third and final reading Wednesday, a move that will allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in power for another 12 years after his current term ends in 2024. [….]

The constitutional reform passed by the Duma on Wednesday would allow Putin to run for presidency two more times after 2024. Ahead of the national vote, it will be reviewed by Russia's Constitutional Court.

The changes redistribute the executive powers of the Russian government in Moscow and further strengthen the power of the presidency, while also banning same-sex marriage, prohibiting public homosexual displays, insisting on traditional religious instruction in Russian schools and armed forces, and listing “a belief in God” as one of Russia's fundamental values.

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

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/02/no_author/theyre-coming-to-get-you-build-that-bomb-shelter-now/

They’re Coming to Get You! Build that Bomb Shelter NOW!

By Boyd D. Cathey
My Corner  February 24, 2020

Right after the installment of MY CORNER of February 14 appeared, it was picked up and published nationally by LewRockwell.com. It was almost as if some well-placed Intel spook had met with me at “Rick’s Café Americain” (remember the film “Casablanca”?) and secretly revealed what was going to happen. The “Russia Hoax” was going to be fully reborn (in fact, as I wrote, it had never gone away). Like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster it emerged again from our corrupted and corrupt Intelligence agencies (those government apparatchiks who are beginning to make Inspector Clouseau look like a genius) and the bowels of the frenetically ideological New York Times (and those poisoned zombie-brains in Congress, e.g. Adam Schiff). The Mueller Commission, try as it did, couldn’t find anything substantive because there isn’t and wasn’t anything there, save for the putrid defecation of three years of strenuous Deep State “investigation.” But with the crop of Establishment Democrat candidates for president looking increasingly like a lesser version the Keystone Kops, something—anything—had to be found, some additional obstacle, some roadblock to stop “the Donald,” and much more dangerously, the counter-revolution that he has (at times, quite unwittingly) unleashed.

How better to do this than have the president’s own Director of National Intelligence, along with his Deep State ideological “Intel savants” (a true oxymoron!), brief Schiff and top Democrats, and without the president even knowing it!  Ha! Talk about your own team sabotaging you—anyone remember those words of Julius Caesar: “Et tu, Brute?” And you also, Brutus? But it doesn’t take a Shakespeare play to instruct us on what is going on. As I have repeated too many times to count, President Trump’s major problem is that he has surrounded himself with Neoconservative and Deep State minions who diametrically oppose his announced agenda, and they have done everything possible—with some real success, especially in foreign affairs—to stymy and obstruct it.

Those once highly regarded agencies—the FBI, the CIA, the NSA—haven’t gotten much right since they officiously proclaimed from on high their dogmatic, infallible judgment about “weapons of mass destruction” hiding in Saddam Hussein’s outdoor outhouse. Their active immersion in the government-engineered plot to bring down a president—the Steele Dossier, the inveigling of General Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, etc., their use of British “intelligence” (the Brits stopped having “intelligence” after Enoch Powell’s warnings about unlimited immigration were ignored)—has revealed for anyone with eyes to see the fact that, at least in the upper echelons, those agencies form an integral part, an active arm of the managerial state apparatus that seeks to strangle any real dissent or opposition  to its New World Order designs.

Even so-called “conservatives”—the Neoconservatives, whom I often criticize—accept the Russia boogeyman narrative. But it’s not so much Trump who is the target, it seems, but in their version the Russkies are just warmed-over Communists who want to “destroy our democracy.” The Cold War, in their pygmy-sized brains, continues unabated, and even the vaunted Rush Limbaugh has very real difficulty distinguishing the Communist Soviet Union and post-1991 Russia. Flying in the face of subsequent history and fact, he uses the terms interchangeably: true, palpable historical ignorance on parade. For him and the zealous Neocon interventionists it is still October 1962 and we are still mired in the Cuban Missile Crisis, although now it has been miraculously transposed over to Ukraine. Just ask John Bolton (or the late, unlamented John McCain).

The other night I made myself listen to “Special Report with Bret Baier,” where the Fox News “All Stars” held forth, fully accepting the Hoax—yes, of course, they solemnly declared, the Russians are messing with and meddling in our 2020 election cycle, just like in 2016.  The Intel folks—whose probity and diligence cannot be doubted!—say so. And Chris Wallace (who is by no means a “conservative” of any flavor) pronounced to Ed Henry on another segment that very simply “we must take these active threats very, very seriously. The Russians are AGAIN manipulating our elections.”

Got that?

I almost regretted not signing up with that contractor who offered to build me a bomb shelter in my ample back yard. For only $125,000 he could construct for me an underground bunker that would withstand those incoming Russian MiGs….

Suddenly, I was put in mind of that satirical film from 1964, Dr. Strangelove. And I wondered if, echoing Peter Sellers in that scintillating cinema, the likes of Bolton, Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and those agents of Russophobia who now surround the president and have turned our Intel agencies and Congress into little more than a herd of docile bovines (with the connivance of all our television networks), we would finally see and experience the “Doomsday Weapon” (as in the final scene of the film).

Although from somewhat different perspectives and viewpoints, Establishment Conservatism (i.e, the Neocons) and the Left have made post-Communist Russia their target. Yet, the major threat by far—very far—is what the actually Communist Chinese are doing and have done. Adam Schiff doesn’t talk about that, and neither do most politicians or major American big name capitalists, because the Chinese Reds already own and dominate so much of this country’s infrastructure and business.

And the fact—still mostly hidden from most Americans—that post-1991 Russia has actually turned towards its traditional religious faith and conservative (especially moral) traditions doesn’t go over well with the transgender-pushing, pro-same sex marriage establishment which dominates both political parties, both Leftwing AND Conservative, here in the United States. Recall John McCain bitterly criticizing Vladimir Putin for his “persecution” and suppression of lesbians (i.e., “Pussy Riot”) and same sex supporters in Mother Russia?

This is what Mainstream Conservatism has become: a sordid and decrepit second cousin of the rapidly advancing Leftist juggernaut. And, once again, I quote Robert Lewis Dabney’s apposite words:

 This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn.

American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it he salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious, for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its ‘bark is worse than its bite,’ and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent rôle of resistance.

The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it ‘in wind,’ and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

As we hurdle on to diabolical moral degradation in America, each step worse than the last, even though our masters tell us not to worry and just accept it, our supposed opponents in Moscow, Kazan and Novgorod recover and celebrate their Christian and moral beliefs and inheritance.

What irony! Is this not a full exemplification of Gilbert and Sullivan’s image of “topsy-turvy”?

And for the American traditionalist, for the orthodox Christian, to quote Patrick Buchanan:   “On whose side is God NOW on?

**********

I pass on the LewRockwell.com issue from February 17.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.