October 31, 2023
MY CORNER by Boyd
Cathey
Standing Against the
Totalitarian Horde at Home and Abroad
Friends,
A few weeks ago a close acquaintance of mine wrote an impassioned
letter intended for publication in a South Carolina newspaper. Unfortunately,
but not unexpectedly, his letter was not printed by any media source in the
state….Not because it was crude or appeared to incite violence; not because he
employed foul language or insulting attacks against opponents. Indeed, the
letter was well-written, well-argued, and based on widely-available facts.
But in the contemporary USA, intelligent, well-expressed
presentations, even those factually based are no longer guaranteed a hearing if
they come from someone who is not suitably “woke” or who does not buy into the
constantly-advancing and society-altering Leftist tsunami. In fact, what we see
and have experienced here in America in the last several decades has been a
dedicated, largely successful effort to shut down, neutralize, or buy off any
dissent from or disagreement with the actions and goals of the DC elites, the
entrenched Managerial State and its engorged tentacles which now extend
inexorably into the lives of nearly every American. The First Amendment be
damned, if it doesn’t support those ideological aims.
Richard Hines, the author of the letter, is a long-time
political player, not only in the Sandlapper State, but also on the national
level. Over the years he has served in the South Carolina legislature,
co-chaired a Ronald Reagan for president campaign, and was then appointed to various White House administrative posts
in the Transportation Department and General Services Administration. After
Reagan’s tenure, Richard formed a consulting firm to represent a diversity of
clients in Washington.
But it is his role as a steadfast
and outspoken defender of the old South, its history, its culture, and its
symbols and monuments which has strongly characterized his subsequent years.
As a fearless champion of Southern heritage he has expended tremendous energy
and his own fortune in support of those ideals. He and I were both contributing
editors to the old, and much-lamented, Southern Partisan Magazine. That
is where we first met forty years ago, and our friendship since then has been
based on our shared commitment to the traditions and culture of our native
region.
Indeed, he has been bitterly attacked
precisely for his positions and effective activity. In 2005 The Nation,
perhaps the country’s pre-eminent far left journal, launched a vicious attack
on my friend, terming him “Lobbyist for the Lost Cause,” parading its shoddy attempt at opposition
research before its fanatical readers. But such assaults have not deterred him
or his efforts.
Most recently Richard co-authored
with Dr. Paul Gottfried in Chronicles Magazine an eloquent piece on the
historic and artistically impressive Confederate monument in the Arlington
National Cemetery (“The Fate of Moses Ezekiel and His Memorial to the
Confederate Dead,” Chronicles,
November 2022). The monument is surrounded by the graves of hundreds of
Confederate veterans, buried with honor on the grounds of what once was the
home of Robert E. Lee. No matter that the sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, was an
internationally famed sculptor and that the monument is intended as a symbol of
national reunification. The Feds, with bi-partisan support, decided that symbol
of reunion and honor to the dead was a symbol of racism and “white nationalism”
and had to go.
But Richard is also keenly aware
that issues such as the survival of a Southern culture and heritage are
inextricably bound up with the direction the American nation seems to be taking
globally. Not only in the United States with its grassroots MAGA movement, but also
in most European and other countries, there is a rising tide of popular
opposition to this increasing control by unseen, unaccountable elites and bureaucrats,
whether in the myriad of offices and agencies in Washington, DC, or in faceless
buildings in Bruxelles and Geneva.
One uniting position for the various
popular opposition movements is the return of power and authority to the people
and, as well, to the historic regions which compose those countries—the application
of the old principle of subsidiarity—that what can be done on a lower level of
society should not be the responsibility of a higher level of governance. The
modern state has become a Behemoth, unanswerable to the populace, incapable of
being dislodged, as if an unapproachable cocoon of wealth and privilege. This
“new aristocracy”—or better said, oligarchy—is far more venal, far more
vicious, far less visible, and far more effective in forcing its iron will on
society than any older form of aristocracy based on inheritance and family and
rooted in service to the commonwealth.
Not just the various attempts to remove
the leading Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, from the ballot
in several states—all in the name of “our democracy”(!)—but recent calls by
members of this elite that perhaps we have too many elections, illustrate that
the intentions of the ensconced Managerial Class have far more to do with a
globalist “great reset” and the retention power than with their hollow paeans
to “democracy.”
In the United States the enablers
of this Leftist march towards totalitarian globalism are the “neoconservatives”
and a coterie of Republican “insiders” who have traditionally controlled the
party and dominated GOP politics out of Washington. Their blinkered
internationalism and desire to impose a Pax Americana on the rest of the
world fit comfortably with the zealous Leftist goal of bringing “our
democracy” (by force if necessary) to the most remote desert and the furthest
jungle in the world.
Richard Hines understands this. He
understands that if this country shall survive we must return to the wisdom of
the Fathers of our country and to the constitutional, America First principles
that once made this country great: decentralization, respect for our inherited
rights, non-intervention globally, and the defense of our borders and
not those of some faraway land that no one can find on a map.
Here is his letter:
To the
Editor:
Our neo-conservative elites [who are not
really conservative at all], as epitomized by Nikki Haley and Lindsey Graham,
obviously think our election every four years is for a “President of the World”
instead of a Chief Magistrate of the American Republic. Lindsey’s presidential
ambitions ended in complete failure and are now happily forgotten. Afghanistan,
Iraq, Ukraine, you name it – Lindsey never met a war he didn’t like. In calling
for an attack on Iran last week, Nikki Haley breathlessly repeated the mantra
“Finish them! Finish them!” as if the annihilation of 92 million Iranians was
the final round of a boxing match.
Sadly, much of the current chaos we find
ourselves in is of our own making. Clearly we have learned nothing from
Afghanistan, which was an unprepared and ignorant “lunge to defeat” in the
words of one diplomat. The Washington-manufactured conflict in Ukraine, which
helped create our current proxy war with Russia, is much the same. We turned a
blind eye to the pre-existing ethnic conflicts which were fired by fictitious
borders created in the years of the Soviet Union. The result, which should have
been obvious even in the 1990’s, is that millions of ethnic Russians were
trapped in a country whose regime outlaws their language and their religion.
Whether you like him or not, Donald Trump
told the unvarnished truth when he said he could stop that war in twenty-four
hours by turning off the dollar spigot in Washington which fuels the conflict.
Not only would it end the war there, but this would have a beneficial effect in
the Middle East. Former intelligence officer Scott Ritter has argued
persuasively that Hamas terrorists are armed in part with American weapons
obtained on the black market which we originally supplied to the Ukrainians.
The leaders of our young Republic, especially
George Washington and John Quincy Adams, were prophetic when they warned
Americans to beware of foreign entanglements. As Secretary of State, Adams said
that “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy… She is the
champion and vindicator ONLY OF HER OWN… She well knows that by once enlisting
under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign
independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all
the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition,
which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom…. The fundamental
maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might
become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own
spirit.”
This statement is not a mere anachronism.
Should we not return to a rational America First foreign policy, coupled by a
return to Christian morality in our society, America as we have known it will
certainly cease to exist.
Wise counsel, indeed.
