Saturday, November 9, 2019

November 9, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Charlie Kirk, Young Conservatives, and the Destruction of Western Civilization


Friends,

Throughout the 360 plus installments in the MY CORNER series I have argued and maintained repeatedly that the Modern Conservative Movement, along with the Establishment Republican Party in general, have not been, as they purport to be, actual defenders of the traditions and beliefs of Western Christian civilization. On the contrary, there is, tragically, ample evidence that “movement conservatives” have become enablers, the tacit allies—unindicted co-conspirators, if you will—of those on the Left that they claim to oppose. And, then, after the latest Progressivist aberration is foisted off on the American citizenry by Leftist lunacy, they normalize and canonize it as “conservative,” and repel any criticism of their new-found convictions as “extremist” or “far right,” or perhaps, joining their implicit allies over on the further Left, “fascist.”

The examples and documentation for this are ample and abundant, and increasingly is not even disputed by those so-called conservatives we might see on Fox News or hear via radio.

The most visible, the most palpable, the most critical surrender by the “Movement” has come in questions concerning the actual moral basis, the moral norms that have governed our society and which have created and protected the social framework of Western culture for nearly two millennia.

Some of you may recall only a few years ago, when the US Supreme Court in its infamous Obergefell v. Hodges decision (June 26, 2015), held by a 5–4 vote, “that the Fourteenth Amendment requires all states to grant same-sex marriages and recognize same-sex marriages granted in other states.”  [The Court at that time overruled its prior decision in Baker v. Nelson, which the Sixth Circuit had invoked as precedent.]

Previous to that stunning judicial fiat, thirty-three states had conducted popular votes over whether to include amendments defining state-recognized marriage as between one man and one women, and thirty-one had overwhelmingly voted “yes,” thus affirming not only the constitutionality of traditional marriage and that same sex marriage was not guaranteed by the respective constitutions of the states, but implicitly affirming a critical and essential firmament of our society.

In North Carolina, for example, the vote to approve a Marriage Amendment was by an overwhelming 61% to 39% (including a majority of black voters). Even Leftist California voted 52% to 48% to maintain traditional marriage.

Before Obergefell it seemed that the country had spoken loud and clear. Movement Conservatives and Republicans were thought to be defending traditional marriage, after all much of their base was composed of traditional Christians, both Catholics and Protestants who opposed same sex marriage.

Yet, almost as if by legerdemain, following the Court’s outrageous decision it seemed that the once, supposedly-staunch opposition, simply melted away, disappeared—and we beheld nightly on Fox and elsewhere, horribile dictu, amongst “conservative opinion makers” and leaders of the Republican Party not just the counsel that we “had to accept the Court’s opinion,” but that perhaps it was in fact “conservative” for us to do so: indeed, we were told “having stable same sex couples, legally married and recognized by the State” was a “good thing.” And a parade of “authorized” spokesmen belabored the point: George Will, Charles Krauthammer, George W. Bush, Guy Benson, Jonah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro, and so on—the list is quite lengthy.

Despite what we were promised just four years ago, that this—same sex marriage—was the limit and that those “authorized” conservatives would not permit further attacks on our moral traditions to go answered—despite that assurance, the desultory defeatism and supine acquiescence by those media and journalistic elites has continued unabated, even heightened in intensity and enthusiasm for the latest assaults on the very moral foundations of our society.

Case in point: the unashamed embrace (no pun intended) by prominent “conservatives,” including self-promoted “leaders” of conservative youth, of transgenderism and, yes, the glorification of what I would call “drag queen kultur.”

Frequently Fox News will have as a guest Charlie Kirk, head of a campus group, Turning Point USA. As one of the most prominent “college-aged conservatives” who supposedly counters Leftist arguments among collegians and millennials, Kirk has assumed an important role, we are informed, in the “war of ideas.”  Yet, at the very outset he has, as it were, thrown in the towel, surrendered on the essential and critical moral foundations that actually give cultural conservatism its motivation and ability to respond to and repel the assaults mounted by those who would pervert and destroy what is left of our Western civilization and the inheritance we have received.

Recently, Charlie Kirk and others in his group attended an event, Politicon, where he consorted and praised a creature, a drag queen, who calls himself “Lady Maga,” and who advertises himself as “America’s conservative drag superstar.” Photographs show Kirk yucking it up cheerfully with Lady Maga, as well as Michael Knowles, a chief reporter for Ben “Never Trumper” Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, arm-in-arm embracing the drag queen. When online right wing journals, including Big League Politics, criticized Kirk, Glenn Beck and other “movement” figures eagerly jumped to his defense, smearing those who would criticize the Turning PointUSA honcho as “white nationalist, homophobic ‘trolls’.”

Although perhaps this should not come as a surprise to close observers of our rotten political process given the history of the Neoconservative-dominated “conservative movement,” it still should shock those “deplorables” out in fly-over country who somehow believe that watching Fox News or reading The Wall Street Journal will save us all from impending doom.

It won’t.

As recently as this past May that once standard bearer of the American conservative message, National Review, recommended “Time for a Compromise on Transgenderism.”   Beginning with the phrase, “the country’s conversation about gay rights is far more mature and considered than it was two decades ago,” the article continues its precipitous decline in logic and its broadside against the very religious culture, founded on Natural Law and the Divine Positive Law, that created our civilization: “Americans, especially conservative ones, should reflect on our culture’s honest and fair attitude toward homosexuality and acknowledge that the most sensible path out of the present acrimony will probably require similar compromise….acts like ostentatiously calling people by pronouns they don’t want, or belittling their personal struggle, are boorish and petty. It means acknowledging that arbitrary discrimination against transgender people is a cruel bigotry like any other.” And if we criticize transgenderism, author J. J. McCullough claims, we “let loose [our] inner reactionary.” And that must not be permitted.

Thus we have the specter of “Drag Queen Reading Hours” for pre-schoolers at an increasing number of public libraries, with National Review Senior Editor, David French, calling such displays “a blessing of liberty.”

So, follow the logic: first, there was “easy” divorce—just shack up if it feels good, then split if it doesn’t please you. Then, abortion, now the law of the land. In 2015 came same sex marriage (and previous to that sexually mixed armed forces and the end of most unisex colleges). And now the fanatical #MeToo Movement and transgenderism, and the “authorized” conservatives tell us that we must “compromise,” that we must accept this—it’s a fait accompli, and, maybe even conservative to do so! After all Charlie Kirk and his groupies and the Ben Shapiro gang think so, and they are the ones who present themselves to students and millennials as conservatives.

With such champions, with such defenders of our civilization, we are lost. For they are not on our side, they are not our defenders. In fact, they are a Fifth Column, insidious minions of those who wish to obliterate and destroy our Western Christian civilization—whether they understand that or not.

I have quoted the Southern writer Robert Lewis Dabney as he described such “conservatives” during the debates on womens’ suffrage 130 years ago, and his quotes on the suicidal mission of  establishment conservatism are, I think, familiar.  But today let me quote another prescient prophet and superb thinker, the great Spaniard Juan Donoso Cortes (1809-1853):

“There is no man, let him be aware of it nor not, who is not a combatant in this vicious contest; [there is no one] who does not take part in responsibility for the victory or the defeat. The king on his throne, the prisoner in his chains, the poor and the rich, the healthy and the infirm, the wise and the ignorant, the old man and the child…share equally in the combat. Every word that is pronounced is either inspired by God or by the World, and necessarily proclaims, implicitly or explicitly, but always clearly, the glory of the One or the triumph of the other. In this singular warfare we all fight through forced enlistment; no one escapes; exceptions of sex or age are unknown. In this warfare all men are soldiers.  And don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight…or that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have already joined a side [and it is not God’s side]…that war is extended as far as space, and prolonged through all time. In eternity alone, the country of the Just, can you find rest, because there alone there is no longer combat.” [from Donoso Cortes, “Ensayo sobre el Catolicismo, el Liberalismo y el Socialismo,” my translation]

The Charlie Kirks, the Ben Shapiros, the Jonah Goldbergs, the David Frenchs of this world have chosen sides, and it is not ours

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