August 2, 2020
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
To Recapture the
Culture: The Abbeville
Institute Fall
Symposium 2020
Friends,
I pass on to you news of an excellent
opportunity to strengthen your knowledge of history and our Western
Christian—and Southern—heritage. Now, in these dark and revolutionary days
when it seems that “the centre cannot hold… [and] the worst are full of passionate
intensity” (William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 1919), there are few
citadels of sanity and open defiance to the frenzied and angry mob and
tsunami of self-inflicted destruction of our civilization.
Just yesterday my traditionalist
Spanish friends sent me news that two orthodox Catholic priests in Spain face
up to three years in prison for “the
crime of incitement to hate and racism because they had been critical of
Islam in diverse writings.” The Spanish equivalent of the district
attorney for the city of Malaga, Maria Teresa Verdugo, is demanding that
punishment for Fathers Custodio
Ballester and Jesús Calvo, who simply expounded the traditional teaching of
orthodox Christianity concerning the Muslim religion. And this in Spain, that
scarcely half a century ago was supposedly the most Christian nation in
Europe. I know because I finished my doctoral studies there in 1975.
This
incident in Spain can be multiplied many times over in the rest of Europe and
now also increasingly in the United States, especially with the arbitrary and
politically-inspired rules accompanying the pandemic. But although these
outrages are sometimes noted in the media, it is more insidiously in our
culture—in the arts, literature, music—where this zealous, fanatical
anti-Western cancer has taken firm root, with penalties meted out to the guilty defenders of the two millennia of
inherited Western culture, in many cases resulting in the complete re-casting,
re-writing, bowdlerizing, or banning of the great artifacts of our heritage.
Such
immortal works of genius as Mozart’s comic opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, which playfully makes fun of
Islam, was censored and its lines rewritten by the Canadian Opera Company.
For a recent production north of the border the company had some bright
“woke” scribbler “rewrite
the dialogue for
Mozart’s The Abduction from the
Seraglio in order to remove racist language.”
And
after years of patiently waiting to see a presentation of one of the more
fascinating operas of the first decade of the 19th century,
Gasparo Spontini’s Fernand Cortez, originally
produced (1809) to glorify the French invasion and conquest of “backward”
Spain (it was later revised to reflect the 1815 triumph of the Bourbons), a
decent video emerged this spring from the May Florence Musical Festival in
Italy. It’s a fairly traditional, well-sung production—none of those
“Eurotrash” touches that ruin so much of current musical and theatrical
ventures these days. Yet, because Spontini glorifies (in some wonderfully
heroic music) the conquest of Mexico and the conversion of the heathen Aztecs
to Christianity, the director felt compelled to add a projected-on-screen
message both at the beginning and at the end basically condemning Western and
white colonialism and racism. Nevertheless, the original libretto and music
emerge, but I expect to see fierce condemnations of its revival despite the
cosmetic application of political correctness.
As we
watch not just the monuments and symbols of our Confederate heritage
disappear from public view, but also monuments to Washington, Jefferson,
Christopher Columbus, Father Junipero Serra, and many others…and we observe
that many, if not most of our elected representatives in Congress and on the
state level either meekly utter a mild demurrer (at best) or, more likely,
accede to and go along with the vandalism and destruction of our Western
heritage for fear of being called a “racist,” it is we who should and must
summon outrage and disgust.
But
where is that outrage? Where is that disgust and willingness to take to the
streets to counter and show that we will not sit idly by when small,
well-organized groups of Antifa and Black Lives Matter revolutionaries seek
to erase our inheritance, indeed, seek to erase us?
Just
yesterday (August 1, 2020) in Raleigh, North Carolina, there was a
well-attended manifestation of “normal” people in support of our police. But
let me ask: we have reached the point where we have to go out in streets to
actually support one of the most normal and fundamental functions of a
civilized society? We have reached that
point? Where, indeed, are the thousands of others who silently oppose the
barbarism and the vicious attacks on our history, our culture, and the very
foundations of who we are as a people?
We sit
back in our arm chairs like zombies and watch “America’s Got Talent” or some other
insipid program on network television; we complain about the abbreviated
football season; we grumble about bars not opening; some have lost jobs and
income due to COVID-19. But where is the swelling outrage about what is and
has been going on to simply eradicate and wipe off the map and out of history
the culture in which we were born, the culture which annealed and made us who
we are? Where is the anger about the near-total subversion of our schools and
colleges? Where is the revolt against the scandalously fake and false “news
coverage” by our media, both national AND local?
Sadly,
too many of our leaders in the established conservative movement and in the
Republican Party have succumbed to the enticements of power, position and
reputation. They would, to quote Pope Leo XIII in the 19th century
about liberalism, “rather rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” They are more
concerned for their power and wealth, their positions and not being labeled
racists or bigots or white supremacists, than for stoutheartedly defending
the legacy we have received from our ancestors (and that is being attacked by
the unhinged revolutionaries). Their approach, at best, is what I would call
the “Rodney King approach”: can’t we all just get along? Maybe if I give you
much of what you want—maybe if we take down just those offending Confederate
statues or change the names of those forts—maybe we can all get along? Okay?
And
this is precisely what far too many GOP members of Congress have decided to
do. It won’t work with the revolutionaries: they will take what you give and
demand more until there is nothing left to give.
It is a
bankrupt mentality that results eventually in total surrender and defeat; it
emerges out of the philosophical underpinnings of those we call
“Neoconservatives,” those former Leftists, in many cases globalist
Trotskyites, who drifted into the conservative movement in the 1970s, and who
now dominate not only establishment conservatism but also the GOP.
My
question, so often expressed in my columns, is this: when shall we stand up
and fight? Those manifesting their support for the police in Raleigh
yesterday did so; but where are those thousands, the so-called “silent majority”?
Will it take a Biden victory at the ballot box, and new authoritarian
executive orders, new restrictions, and then, finally, when some ragged and
bearded “woke” millennial or smelly, obese feminist comes banging on your
door, demanding that since you have three bedrooms you must give one up and
share it with a destitute illegal immigrant who has already been convicted of
a dozen felonies, but let off by our corrupted judicial system? Will that be the moment when you say:
“Wait! No!” But won’t THAT moment be too late…?
Remember
the scene in the epic film Dr. Zhivago,
when Yuri and Tanya have settled in their home in Moscow, which has now been forcibly split up
and separated into tenements by the Soviet government.
Think
it can’t happen here? Think again. Think you cannot be banned, have your
expression restricted, get fired not only for writing something considered
offensive to the powers-that-be, but for the very fact that you think something no longer
acceptable—in some ways these conditions are already here. And yet the
refrain is still, “I don’t want to miss ‘America’s Got Talent’ or the PGA!”
My
recommendations? Talk to your friends, organize at first in small local
groups for self-preparedness and defense; insofar as you can, meet with
others of like mind and have a plan for possible future events; participate
in demonstrations like yesterday’s pro-police manifestation in downtown
Raleigh; get a gun and gun license if you don’t already have one; and, of
course, vote this fall. And this may not be enough, because assuredly the
extremists and fanatics intend to steal the election, and we all know that.
In the
meantime, the Abbeville Institute is offering once again a symposium that
should attract a large attendance. It treats of an issue that affects both Southerners,
but also all Americans: “Who Owns America?”
We have
the specter of immense corporate America…Facebook, Twitter, Google, the tech
industry, and many of the boardrooms across this benighted nation…now
enthralled by Black Lives Matter and cancel culture. Unlike the traditional
Leftist attack template, the American corporate plutocracy is now squarely on the side of
revolution and “woke” culture, as Tucker Carlson describes in his blockbuster
book, Ship of Fools.
This
year 2020 and this election may well be our last real opportunity to reverse
and alter what has been occurring. If the unhinged Left continues its
devastation through our institutions, that, with the major demographic
changes and the utter corruption in our education system, will condemn us to
disappear, and we shall witness the unceremonious and ugly demise of what is
left of our civilization.
The
Abbeville Institute understands that it is through assaults on the South and
its heritage that so many of these attacks have first come. Their symposium
this October in Charleston, South Carolina, offers an excellent opportunity
to better familiarize yourself with our incredibly rich but under severe
attack heritage…and to prepare the arduous effort to take it back and restore
it.
Here is
the program and details:
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