April 3, 2020
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
NEW ESSAY at Abbeville
Institute: Never Trumpers Like Joe Biden and Hate the South
Friends,
I pass on to you my latest published essay at The Abbeville
Institute. Small parts of this essay appeared on MY CORNER back on March 21,
but most of it is new material.
Never Trumpers Like Joe Biden and Hate the South
Boyd Cathey on Apr 2, 2020
Thoughtful
Southerners of a conservative and traditional bent have known since the 1980s
that the old Conservative Movement which began back in the 1950s with the
publication of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, and then
with the inauguration of William F. Buckley’s National Review,
has no room for them, no room for their writers (unless those authors pass a
rigorous test as to their opposition to “racism” and “sexism”).
At
one time significant Southern eminences like Mel Bradford, Andrew Lytle, and
others were welcomed to the pages of NR, to Kirk’s Modern
Age and to other conservative journals, but those venues saw their
doors close to Southern traditionalists in the later 1980s and early 1990s.
Indeed, that process had begun years before with the migration of various
non-Communist Leftists and Trotskyites into the Movement, with those
interlopers—the Neoconservatives—assuming authoritative power in the
establishment Conservative Movement. At first welcomed, the newcomers soon
gained near complete control…of magazines, foundations, think tanks, and more.
[There are two excellent articles in the February 2020 issue of Chronicles magazine,
by Scott Trask and Paul Gottfried, exploring the disgraceful treatment of
Bradford by the Neoconservatives.]
While
Kirk praised the constitutional philosophy Calhoun and explosive brilliance of
John Randolph of Roanoke (he had done his MA degree at Duke on Randolph), and
early Buckley featured sympathetic essays about the South during the turbulent
civil rights years, that is no longer permissible in the ranks of the Movement.
Malefactors are expelled, labeled as “racists,” and forbidden a national
platform.
In
contrast to an older conservative sensibility, the zealous globalism of the
Neoconservatives, in some ways a carry-over from their Marxist internationalist
days, now largely infects conservatism. Kirk’s praise of Robert Taft and
Patrick Buchanan (he chaired Buchanan’s 1992 presidential run in Michigan), and
his endorsement of an “America First” foreign policy are now considered en
dehors de debat. Such “small America” views are now seen by
Conservatism Inc. as suspiciously nativist and unacceptably populist.
Of
course, any defense of Confederacy and its symbols is seen by the anti-Southern
Neocons as suspect. For the Neocons defending Confederate monuments is an
unforgivable sin, probably “racist.” From Victor Hanson Davis to NR editor
Rich Lowry (“Mothball the Confederate Monuments,” National
Review, August 15, 2017), the verdict is the same: “[Lee] betrayed
the U.S. government and fought on the side devoted to preserving chattel
slavery.”
In
2016 many traditional Southerners, long situated in “the back of the bus,” gave
their support to Donald Trump, for “the Donald” represented a chance, albeit a
slim one, to begin the overthrow of the dominance and stranglehold of the
powerful Neocons and gain once again a tenuous seat at the table. Many of those
hopes, once so high, have been dashed, have not materialized. Indeed, the
president, despite generally admirable instincts, has not been a “second Grover
Cleveland”—a kind of respite from post-War Between the States Republican
policies that Southerners welcomed in in 1885.
Yet
even the small steps toward a renewed “no-longer-silent majority” of
traditionalist Southerners and populist Midwesterners have been met with
furious opposition from the elite Conservative gate keepers.
Various
“big name” establishment “conservative” leaders have never reconciled
themselves to the election of Donald Trump, nor to the anti-Deep State
symbolism that he represents (even if not justified by the president’s
actions). 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 Southern and 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 few weeks 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,
even more, for 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.
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 moral 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 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.” Malkin has
attacked what she calls “Conservatism Inc.”—conservative establishmentarians
who, according to Amanda Carpenter on Kristol’s Web site, “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.”
Can
you believe this? Biden 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, denatured it almost beyond recognition, and exiled
prominent Southern personalities back in the 1970s and 1980s.
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. His book, The Land We
Love: The South and Its Heritage (Scuppernong Press) was published in
November 2018.
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