May
30, 2020
MY
CORNER by Boyd Cathey
The
Riots and the Destructive Failure of the Egalitarian Myth
Tucker
Carlson and Ilana Mercer Speak
Friends,
Increasingly, I try to avoid news-binging,
watching assiduously all the compiled, feculent bilge that passes for news
reporting these days, those authorized “stories” fed to us like tasteless,
industrial-strength pablum to non-rational infants, or more, to non compos mentis inmates of the giant
asylum which is what our country is quickly becoming.
Viewing just a few minutes of Fox’s coverage of
the reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this past week, I was
struck by the essential sameness of what could have been seen—and was, in fact,
seen—over on MSNBC or even CNN. First, the cries and jeremiads about “racism”: Will
we ever overcome that “problem” which seems to be endemic in our history, in
our character, the broadcasters exclaimed in virtual unison? Then, the
hand-wringing about the destruction of property, the “wrong way to express revulsion
at Floyd’s death,” again said by almost all the pundits, although a few of the
more exalted social justice types at CNN expressed degrees of sympathy for the
rioters (after all they were just exhibiting their “justified rage”).
Just as for CNN and MSNBC, Fox has its own agenda,
which goes like this: “racism” exists; it violates the “Ideal of America” and
the American Founding wherein to quote the Declaration of Independence (and they
fatally misunderstand its meaning), “all
men are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”; the Democrats have historically opposed “equality” and “equal
rights” for minorities (cf. the ignorant
musings of Dinesh D’Souza); and, so, only Republicans and “conservatives” can
actually realize that Ideal of Equality.
Yet, that whole conversation is tragically
misconceived, based on an almost complete misunderstanding of human nature,
American history, and the very founding of the old American republic. Our
Founders and Framers loathed egalitarianism. They knew—and foresaw—the ravages
and destruction it would cause if ever imposed or enacted into laws of the
republic. Equality does not exist in nature, does not exist under Natural Law,
and attempts to legislate it are bound not only to fail, but cause tremendous
and perhaps fatal consequences to the society where it is imposed.
It has been the objective of
restless revolutionaries for centuries to get people to reject Nature and to
reject the God-given order that must exist if a stable and moral society exist.
Simply because my neighbor has more property and possessions than I, does not
mean that I have the “right” to go seize them at my pleasure. I have only the “right,”
indeed, the obligation to work hard and use my
intelligence, and, as St. Matthew tells us in the Parable of the Talents, to
achieve to the fullest what pertains to
me (and not to anyone else but me). In so doing, I accomplish what God has
allowed me in this life, and which should not and must not be compared invidiously
to the achievements of anyone else.
The great accomplishment of the
history of revolutionary madness, whether of the Cromwellian variety, of the
French Revolution, of the Soviets, or, indeed, of our modern social justice “insaniacs,”
has been to convince vast numbers of our population that orders in society, the
inherent natural inequality is somehow wrong, or as we hear now on all networks
and from almost all pundits, “racist.” Yet, that natural inequality in no way
inhibits a man’s essential and real, God-given dignity (again, re-read the
Parable of the Talents).
What happened in the streets of Minneapolis
(and elsewhere) after a single (and rare) example of one policeman’s use of
excessive force was not a sign of the reaction against “institutional racism”
lurking just beneath the surface, but of an intellectually corrupted
population, infected by generations of egalitarian venom, being told constantly
by our cultural and political elites that they are victims. And, also, in a
very real sense an invitation to rebel against the laws of Nature and of God.
Can any society, any social
order survive in this template? Is civil life and comity possible when large
portions of that society reject its very bases and foundations? Ilana Mercer in her excellent nationally-syndicated
column of May 28, 2020, writes “…courtesy of its globalist elites, America
is no longer a society, much less a serious one…And America, it's fair to say,
is no longer a people in any meaningful way; it is a Walmart with missiles,
where [we direct] fusillades at one another.”
I have written previously about the potential,
even probable
break-up of the creaky old American nation. What has happened on the
streets of major American cities in recent days has far less to do with an
imagined “institutional racism” than with the fact that there
is no longer anything, other than perhaps geography, that binds us all together.
A (decreasing) portion of our citizenry still believes in the old traditions and
standards, and in that Natural Law that produced our fragile experiment in
constitutional republicanism; but a large (and growing) portion rejects that
inheritance and has joined in the immemorial rebellion against God and Nature.
Between the two there can be no peace. In such a conflict one side must win,
the other lose…either that, or they must separate.
Tucker Carlson, almost alone on Fox, hits the
target, or a portion of it, and I pass on his short introduction to his Friday
night, May 29, program. But his monologue is significant not just for what he
does say, but the unsaid implications that follow. No nation can continue this
way for long, no nation can avoid the essential questions and the ironclad laws
of Nature itself.
(Begin about three minutes in, then for seven minutes)
(Begin about three minutes in, then for seven minutes)
