Saturday, August 29, 2020

August 29, 2020


MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

LewRockwell and Reckonin’ Publish Gottfried’s Confederate Flag Day Essay

Friends,

Another column in the MY CORNER series has been picked up and, with editing, published by Web journals. And in its edited form I pass it along today.

It is the piece I did a month ago on the incredible work of Dr. Paul Gottfried [July 25, 2020], specifically recalling and republishing his memorable address at the North Carolina Confederate Flag Day ceremony on March 3, 2007, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dr. Gottfried is perhaps this nation’s pre-eminent Old Right conservative scholar, and the remarkable address given back thirteen years ago needs to be read anew by every Southerner (and American) who treasures his traditions and heritage…and is willing to answer the Charge to preserve them in these perilous times.

LewRockwell.com published the essay on July 29, “Recalling Paul Gottfried on Southern Heritage,” and the access link is:


Clyde Wilson’ Reckonin.com journal published the essay on August 23, “Appreciating Paul Gottfried,” and the access link is:


I offer the full essay here with my introductory commentary:

                                                            *****

Back a little over thirteen years ago (2007) as chairman of North Carolina’s annual Confederate Flag Day observances, I invited my friend Dr. Paul Gottfried to travel to the Tar Heel State to be the keynote speaker for our event at the historic 1840 State Capitol. His remarkable address was later reprinted in several journals, including the old and much-lamented Southern Partisan magazine.


Recently, in surveying the hundreds of older files I’ve collected I noticed Paul’s address, and I re-read it. And I noticed how prescient and still-current it remains. In 2007 he observed events occurring and trends that were quickly developing, and in dramatic fashion he both saluted the dwindling number of Southerners who were actually defending their culture while also warning them about what was happening and about to happen.

Since Dr. Gottfried’s Cassandra-like advertence to that audience of 150 brave souls in the State Capitol’s House of Representatives chamber that crisp March Saturday, things have gotten incredibly worse…to the point that there is now a real question as to whether anything, not just symbols and monuments, but anything in our Southern heritage will survive the present revolution and the utter and craven cowardice of the political (and cultural) elites who are supposedly on “our side.” Almost without exception those leaders have deserted the battlefield, even given way to the Enemies of our culture.

These days lines from William Butler Yeats’ eschatologically-tinged poem written after the devastation of the First World War, “The Second Coming,” return to me constantly, emblematic of our current age:

        Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
        Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
        The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
        The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
        The best lack all conviction, while the worst
        Are full of passionate intensity.

Ironically, I know of no stronger defender of our Southern heritage and traditions and our rights historically, than my friend Paul Gottfried. Of Jewish Hungarian descent, educated at Yale (PhD), professor emeritus at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, author of around twenty superb books mostly on political theory, a polyglot whose work is actually better known and appreciated in Europe—he has continued the, at times, lonely task of defending the older Conservatism (which welcomed Southerners) that once enjoyed respectability and currency, but now has been overwhelmed and practically exiled by the pseudo-conservative, warmed-over globalist Neoconservatives, descendants of Marxist Leon Trotsky, who despise our Southern traditions and heritage.

They much prefer embracing all the “civil rights” conquests of the far Left and zealously pushing American involvement in wars—almost anywhere—across the globe to establish what they call “liberal democracy.” Which of course, means the imposition of same sex marriage, transgenderism, destruction of older traditions and religious belief if these stand in the way of their plans: thus, for example, the late John McCain’s frenzied attack on Russia’s Vladimir Putin because Putin supports traditional marriage and because Russia has outlawed homosexual propaganda in Russian schools. Such positions are a no-no, unacceptable to our Neoconservative elites in the Republican Party or on Fox News. Older traditions which stand in the way of Neoconservative internationalism and egalitarianism must be attacked and displaced, and anyone defending them maligned and excluded from “the Conservative Movement.” 

Just recently the American embassy in Moscow ostentatiously flew the gay liberation flag to celebrate gay rights (Russia had just overwhelmingly passed constitutional amendments completely outlawing same sex marriage). President Putin’s comment (July 3) was to mock the silly American gesture: "Let them celebrate,” he responded to the stunt. “They've shown a certain something about the people who work there," he added with a wry smile. But the embassy’s action also illustrates something about current American culture and society, and the Neocon dominance even within the Trump administration, and it may help to explain why the Neoconservative virus which dominates the Conservative Movement and the GOP also despises the traditional South and its heritage. 

I pass on Professor Gottfried’s remarkable clarion call, his 2007 speech, which is still current and spot on, even more so in today’s revolutionary, anti-Southern and anti-Confederate atmosphere. Prophetic and hard, but necessary truth, if we would only listen and act.



Why do they hate the South and its Symbols? By Paul Gottfried

​Confederate Flag Day, State Capitol, Raleigh, N.C.  – March 3, 2007

Those Southern secessionists whose national flag we are now celebrating have become identified not only with a lost cause but with a now publicly condemned one. Confederate flags have been removed from government and educational buildings throughout the South, while Confederate dignitaries whose names and statues once adorned monuments and boulevards are no longer deemed as fit for public mention.


The ostensible reason for this obliteration or dishonoring of Southern history, save for those civil rights victories that came in the second half of the twentieth century, has been the announced rejection of a racist society, a development we are persistently urged to welcome. During the past two generations or so, the South, we have been taught, was a viciously insensitive region, and the Southern cause in 1861 was nothing so much as the attempt to perpetuate the degradation of blacks through a system based on racial slavery. We told now that we should therefore rejoice at the reconstructing of Southern society and culture in a way that excludes, and indeed extirpates from our minds, except as an incentive to further white atonement, the pre-civil rights past, also known as “the burden of Southern history.” This last, frequently encountered phrase is from the title of a famous study of the South by C. Vann Woodward, who in his time was a liberal-minded Southern historian.

Arguments can be raised to refute or modify the received account of Southern history now taught in our public schools and spread by leftist and neoconservative journalists. One can point to the fact that a crushing federal tariff falling disproportionately on Southern states contributed to the sectional hostilities that led to the Southern bid for independence. One can also bring up the willingness of Southern leaders to free blacks and even to put them in grey uniforms, as the price of the freedom that Southerners were seeking from Northern control. And even if one deplores slavery, this commendable attitude, which was also shared by some Confederate leaders, does not justify the federal invasion of the South, with all of its attendant killing and depredation. That invasion took place, moreover, in violation of a right to secede, with which several states, including Virginia, had entered the Union.

A comparison is drawn nowadays between two supposedly equivalent evils, the Old South and Nazi Germany. This comparison has entered the oratory of the NAACP and the Black Caucus; it has also has appeared with increasing frequency in social histories that have come from the American historical profession since the Second World War. A bizarre variation on this comparison, and one frequently heard from the American political Left, is between the Holocaust and Southern slavery. First brought up by the historian Stanley Elkins (when I was still an undergraduate), this seemingly unstoppable obscenity is resurrected whenever black politicians demand reparations. Not surprisingly, those who claim that the Holocaust was unique and that comparing it to any other mass murders, particularly those committed by the Communists, is an impermissible outrage have never to my knowledge protested the likening of American slavery or segregation to the ghastliness of Auschwitz.

The benign acceptance of this comparison by would-be Holocaust-custodians has more to do with leftist political alliances than it does with any genuine reaction to Nazi atrocities. At the very least, reason would require us to acknowledge that Southern slave-owners were vitally concerned about preserving their human chattel, even if they sometimes failed to show them due Christian charity and concern. Unlike the Nazis, these slave-owners were not out to exterminate a race of people; nor did Southern theologians and political leaders deny the humanity of those who served them, a point that historians Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese have demonstrated at some length.

But all of this has been by way of introduction to the gist of my remarks. What interests me as a sympathetic outsider looking at your culturally rich region, goes back to an agonized utterance made by someone at the end of William Faulkner’s magnificent literary achievement, The Sound and the Fury. The character, Quentin, who has journeyed from Mississippi to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to study at Harvard, and who will eventually take his life, tries to convince himself that “No, I don’t hate the South.” This question is no longer a source of tortured embarrassment, but part of a multicultural catechism that requires an immediate affirmative answer. That is to say, every sound-thinking (bien-pensant) respondent is supposed to hate the “real” South, as opposed to warm-weather resorts that cater to retirees and in contrast to places commemorating Jimmy Carter and Martin Luther King. The South, as the location of the Lost Cause and of Confederate war monuments, is one that we are taught to put out of our minds. It is something that a sensitive society should endeavor to get beyond—and to suppress. 

Looking at this anti-Southernness, in whose filter displaying a Confederate battle flag, particularly in the South, has been turned into a hate crime, one may wish to consider the oddness of such an attitude. Why should those associated with a defeated cause, and one whose combatants were long admired as heroic even by the victorious side, become moral pariahs for their descendants? Is there anything startlingly new about our knowledge of Southern history since the early 1950s, when my public school teachers in Connecticut spoke with respect about Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which would account for the present condemnation of the same figures? A few years ago, following my viewing of “Gods and Generals,” a movie that deals with the personality and military career of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, I was struck by the widespread attacks on the movie director, Ron Maxwell. Apparently this celebrated director had failed to use his art to expose “Southern racism.”

In fact there was nothing in the movie that suggests any sympathy for human bondage. In one memorable scene, for example, Jackson’s black manservant raises a question in the presence of his master, about whether it is proper to hold a fellow-Christian as a slave. The devout Presbyterian Jackson, who ponders this question, has no answer for his manservant, with whom he has just been praying. How any of this constitutes a defense of slavery is for me incomprehensible, but it does confirm my impression that there is something peculiarly twisted about the current repugnance for the Old South-- and indeed for any South except for the one reconstructed by federal bureaucrats in the last fifty years. On visits to Montgomery, Alabama, I have noticed two local histories, which, like straight lines, never intercept, but nonetheless confront each other on public plaques. One is associated with the birthplace of the Confederacy; and the other with the political activities of Martin Luther King and the distinctly leftist Southern Poverty Law Center. The headquarters of the SPLC, this watchdog of Political Correctness, stands obliquely down the street below the state capitol.

It may have been a pipe dream that the two historical narratives, divided by culture as well as race, could be either bridged or allowed to function simultaneously. What has happened is entirely different. One of the two competing narratives, the one about the South as a bigoted backwater until the triumph of revolutionary forces aided by the federal government changed it, has not only triumphed but has been used to drive out its rival narrative. It might have been a happier outcome if Southern whites and Southern blacks could have agreed on a single narrative that would not demean either race. The second best outcome would have been if both had retained their accounts of the Southern past, as separate non-intersecting ones that nonetheless remained equally appropriate for different groups. The worst outcome, however, is the one that we now have. It is one in which the descendants of the defeated are taught to vilify or treat dismissively their ancestors, so that they can demonstrate their broadmindedness and remorse about past racism.  As a result of this inflicted attitude one is no longer allowed to speak about the South as an historical region without focusing on its real or alleged sins.

But this has not always been the official situation. Certainly this was not the case, even in the North, from the years after Reconstruction up until the second half of the twentieth century, when even veterans of the Union army praised their former foes. It was also not always the case even afterwards, as Shelby Foote’s treatment of the losing side in his work on the Civil War, a classic that has gone through multiple printings, would indicate. The venting of hate and contempt on the South, as found in such predictably unfriendly authors as Eric Foner and James McPherson, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It underscores the fact that the Old South has been defeated twice—and the second time at the level of historical memory even more disastrously than in a shooting war that it lost in the 1860s.

The American white South has fallen victim to the “politics of guilt,” a dreary subject, albeit one on which I have written widely. The Yankee victors of the 1860s, who overwhelmed the Southerners by virtue of their numbers and superior industrial power, did considerable wartime damage. They also subsequently occupied the land of those whom they had vanquished militarily, but then did something that was equally important. They went home, and permitted their devastated opponents to rebuild without an occupying army. What I mean to say is that the first occupation was morally and psychologically less destructive than the ever deepening humiliation that is going on now.

The first victors were mostly Yankee Protestants, who in some ways were similar to those they had invaded and occupied. Once the passions of fratricidal war had cooled, these Yankees were able to view their former enemies as kindred spirits. Although they were establishing a bourgeois commercial regime, one that differed from the prevalent Southern way of life, the winning side had also recruited farmers and those whose culture did not diverge significantly from that of those who had fought on the Southern side. In a certain sense Socrates’ observation about Greeks once applied to Americans as well. While they could fight brutally with each other, they were still brothers, and so some form of “reconciliation” was eventually possible for the former enemies. And both North and South came up with a narrative about their past differences which bestowed honor to the heroes on both sides. This was possible with the Yankee Unionists, who wished to draw Southerners back into their community, even after a terrible war had been fought to keep the Southerners in a Union that they had tried to leave.

But the second civil war seeks the utter humiliation of those who are seen as opponents of a society that is still being imposed. The Southern traditionalists from this perspective are particularly obnoxious inasmuch as they are a full two-steps behind the project in question. Those who insist on these changes are no longer Victorian capitalists or Methodist and Congregationalist villagers from the North. They are post-bourgeois social engineers and despisers of Western civilization, a stage of development that these revolutionaries identify with discrimination and exclusion.

In Southern traditionalists they see those who are still celebrating a pre-bourgeois, agrarian, and communally structured world. That world appealed to hierarchy, place, and family, and its members displayed no special interest in reaching out to alien cultures. Such ideals and attitudes and the landed, manorial society out of which they came point back to a nineteenth-century conservative configuration. For our post-bourgeois leftist intelligentsia, this point of reference and model of behavior cannot be allowed to persist. It clashes with feminism and the current civil rights movement, and hinders the acceptance of a multicultural ambience.

The fact that people like yourselves are still around and still honoring the national flag of nineteenth-century landed warriors from the American South might have the effect, or so it is thought, of making others equally insensitive. Even worse, those who engage in these celebratory rites do not express the now fashionable “guilt” about members of their race and tribe. Those being remembered had owned slaves, and they would have denied women, whom in any case they treated as inherently different from men, equal access to jobs. Needless to say, non-Westerners are not required to dwell on similar improprieties among their ancestors or contemporaries, and so they may celebrate their collective pasts without disclaimers or reservations. The hairshirt to be worn only fits Western bodies, and in particular impenitent Southern ones.

It is against this background that one might try to understand the loathing that the political, journalistic, and educational establishment reserves for the unreconstructed white inhabitants of the South. You seem to bother that establishment to a degree that Louis Farrakhan and those unmistakable anti-white racists, who are often found in our elite universities, could never hope to equal. You exemplify what the late Sam Francis called the “chief victimizers” in our victimologically revamped society, an experimental society that fits well with our increasingly rootless country. But your enemies are also the enemies of historic Western civilization, or of the West that existed in centuries past. You may take pride in those whom you honor as your linear ancestors but equally in the anger of those who would begrudge you the right to honor them. What your critics find inexcusable is that you are celebrating your people’s past, which was a profoundly conservative one based on family and community, and those who created and defended it. For your conspicuous indiscretions, I salute you; and I trust that generations to come will take note of your willingness to defy the spirit of what is both a cowardly and tyrannical age.    

Monday, August 24, 2020

August 24, 2020


MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Abbeville, LewRockwell, and Reckonin’ Publish MY CORNER Columns  
  
 And a Plea for Action

Friends,

Since August 13—scarcely ten days ago—several installments in the MY CORNER series have been picked up and published by larger, national Web journals. Indeed, the traffic at my blog site has been greater and more intense than at almost any time in the past, with hundreds of readers checking in to read items. (How soon will it be before the Internet Gestapo notices and bans me?…Thank the Good Lord I no longer work for the State of North Carolina, or that I use Twitter or Facebook!)

In several cases, I went back, edited and corrected those original columns—there are always a few words or expressions that need changing or rephrasing. LewRockwell.com has published three essays, and both Reckonin.com and The Abbeville Institute have published one each.

As these columns were corrected slightly for publication and so read a bit differently, over the next few days, I will offer them here in their published forms.

First, in chronological order, the column “The English Language and Grammar are Racist! Get Rid of Them!” published by LewRockwell.com on August 13, 2020:

LewRockwell.com anti-stateanti-warpro-market

The English Language and Grammar are Racist! Get Rid of Them!



By Boyd D. Cathey  My Corner    August 13, 2020

Friends,
In these revolutionary times it had to come sooner or later—any brief moment of serious reflection (rare these days, it seems) would reach this point inevitably. And it is not like it’s totally new, but this time it’s with us with a force that we should expect to grow inexorably and be picked up by the advance guard of the cultural fanatics as a magic talisman that will be foisted on our schools and on us.
If “white supremacy” and “racism” are purveyed and maintained by the use of the structures and historic foundations of “white” language and grammar, well then, that language and grammar must be undone, critically deconstructed, and “other” forms of written and verbal communication admitted as equal. Indeed, if our historic means of communication is so infected with traditional “whiteness,” is there not an extreme case for not only reducing its importance and influence, and recognizing, for instance, “black English,” but maybe even eradicating “white language”? After all, by the logic of this argument, language is and has been a “weapon” of historic cultural racism and control by “white oppressors.”
While this agenda has not yet asserted its dominance over the literary canon or the accepted norms and style for serious writing and communication, it has in fact had tremendous success in modes of communication such as Twitter and Instagram, which increasingly control cultural expression. And one can argue that it is just a matter of time before the swirling linguistic revolution, with its already de facto acceptance and everyday normalcy, reaches the college classroom and the publishing houses, as well as the media. Indeed, the entertainment industry no longer resists it to any great extent.
As a sign of the future, just recently I ran across the statement of the chairman of the English Department at Rutgers University (June 19). The open letter of chairman Rebecca Walkowitz will, no doubt, be the precursor of additional actions, some stated, others just implemented, to follow.

Here is how the Reuters News Service characterized Walkowitz’s intentions:
The letter expresses the Department’s plans to respond to the calls of BLM to “create and promote an anti-racist environment in our workplace, our classes, our department, our university, and our communities; and to contribute to the eradication of the violence and systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color members of our community.”
Within the letter Walkowitz outlines a series of concrete steps to promote departmental changes, including expanding the availability of seminars engaging with discussions of social justice and improving graduate student life.
This same section also includes Walkowitz talk[ing] about incorporating “critical grammar” into the university’s pedagogy. This approach, according to Walkowitz, is meant to “challeng[e] the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard “academic” English backgrounds at a disadvantage.
“Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them w/ regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents,” the letter noted.
If you can read through the fashionable pseudo-intellectual framework that surrounds what Ms. Walkowitz is essentially saying, it is this: “we’re going to eliminate standards in grammar and writing, and let students who don’t speak or write ‘traditional English’ express themselves accordingly.”
And more ominously, there is the assertion that traditional modes of communication are inherently biased and oppressive. Is not the next step in this process a radical deconstruction in grammar? Already great works of our literary heritage have undergone this deconstructive process to reflect critically the goalposts of “woke” anti-racism and feminism, standards that now regulate how we read and interpret them.
Grammatical expression is next.
The logic, as I say, is inexorable. For the cultural revolution to succeed it must transform or suppress the language of the oppressors.
My friend Dr. Clyde Wilson’s solution to our academic problems grows more attractive by the day: “Napalm our universities,” he once wrote me. Although written mostly (I suspect) in a jocular vein, there is much truth to what Professor Wilson wrote and observed. Until we get control of higher education—and until our Republican-dominated legislatures stop buying into the dangerous practice of trying to outdo their Democratic cohorts in throwing millions of dollars at those financially-bloated sinecures of lunatic leftist plutocracy and revolution—there is simply no way we can even think about saving our culture, much less restoring it.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
Copyright © Boyd D. Cathey
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Secondly, the installment “Cancel Culture Comes to Wake Forest, North Carolina,” reporting on the expulsion of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans from The Forks Cafeteria, their meeting venue for the last twenty-eight years (without ANY adverse incidents, only praise), was picked up both by LewRockwell.com and The Abbeville Institute.

The access link to the LewRockwell publication, “Cancel Culture Comes Home: The Forks Cafeteria in Wake Forest, North Carolina,” August 20, 2020, is:


The Abbeville Institute edition appeared on Monday, August 24, 2020:

ABBEVILLE INSTITUTE

Cancel Culture Comes to Wake Forest, North Carolina


By Boyd Cathey on Aug 24, 2020
I have written previously about the very real dangers of what is called “cancel culture.” Indeed, what we have—what we see and experience today in the United States—is a massive attempt, increasingly successful, to not just inhibit the rights of more conservative and right-leaning citizens from expressing their views, but to “doxx” them, get them fired from their jobs, publicly shame them, instill in them fear to effectively shut them up completely. This is happening not only on our college and university campuses, controlled almost in their entirety by totalitarian leftists who talk excessively about “our democracy” while doing their damnedest to suppress it, but also in society generally. (Again, I ask—I demand—to know why our conservative legislators continue to throw millions in taxpayer dollars at these bloated, overpaid excuses for Marxist indoctrination camps?)
The increasing instances of suppression are to say the least deeply deleterious to whatever future this American republic might have. When you have as many as one third, maybe one half, of the persons in these United States now whipped up fanatically into a vicious ideological frenzy, with a desire to ban and repress and punish their fellow Americans—when you have local and state governments seemingly paralyzed by, if not supportive of the anarchic chaos in dozens of American cities—when you have a news media in its near totality abetting this process and purposely shaping (and suppressing) the news to reflect an extreme revolutionary agenda—when most of the Internet and tech industry monopoly zealously undergird this process and censor opposing voices, then can the real fate of “our democracy” be secure? Are not the extremists, with their unbridled—and learned in school—hatred, actually engaged in a form of projection when they talk about equality, democracy, racism and bigotry: guilty of the very same things they accuse others of?
All this was recently brought home locally in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Wake Forest, once a small college town and still the seat of Southeastern Baptist Seminary, from its tradition as a desirable small town about fifteen miles north of Raleigh to its present condition as a “bedroom” community of nearly 45,000, is host to a large branch of the North Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the 47th Regiment NC Troops, Camp 166. The local SCV has been very active there, civically and publicly-mindedly, for nearly thirty years participating in everything from the local Christmas parade to support for Adopt-a-Highway and Tri-Area Ministries programs.
Then came last week one more insane effect of cancel culture, like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, an example of the lunacy and the real ideological sickness that seems to possess so many of our fellow citizens. For twenty-eight years the 47th Regiment NC Troops Camp has been meeting at The Forks Cafeteria & Catering in downtown Wake Forest, in one of the Forks’ private conference/dining rooms, without any adverse incidents at all. Indeed, a state divisional SCV meeting was held there a few years ago (again, with no problems at all). But this past week David Greenwell, the owner of The Forks, notified the SCV that it could no longer meet there because the organization represented “hate and racism,” even though he could not cite even one example where such “hate and racism” were on display. Indeed, he admitted: “I have never had any problem with the group at all. They were always nice and friendly.”
This in microcosm is where we are in society today—this is what has happened and is happening to our culture. While too many of our folks, regular citizens who work and raise families, sit by and indifferently watch, our traditions, our heritage, our beliefs and values, the very symbols we honor are uprooted, spat upon, defiled…and we are told to shut up or else face the bitter effects of cancel culture.
But this cannot continue without end. Either we stand up and oppose this destructive and devastating frenzy, or we will simply disappear into the bowels of history, perhaps to be cursed by our grand-children to whom we leave the barren desert of the Gulag.
*****
I pass on a news article from a local online journal about the decision of The Forks Cafeteria; at the end of the story is contact information if you should wish to make your views known to the owner (please, if you do so, be polite).

Sons of Confederate Veterans kicked out of the Forks Cafeteria

By wsj30 on Aug 15, 2020
By JAY LAMM | editor@wsj30.com
The local Sons of Confederate Veterans has been kicked out of Forks Cafeteria because of customer complaints about Confederate symbols visible during meetings.
The group has been meeting at the downtown Wake Forest iconic restaurant off Brooks Street for the last 28 years. The group was notified by phone Wednesday night by David Greenwell, owner of the Forks Cafeteria. 
Greenwell said Friday that he understands the position of the group, but he did what is best for his business in a progressive time in history.
Frank Powell, former commander of 47th Regiment NC Troops Camp 166, a chapter of the SCV, received the phone call from Greenwell.
“The call was out of the blue. Unexpected. We were shocked and upset,” Powell said. “We have been meeting there for 28 years. We started when the restaurant was in the old Seminary cafeteria on the Seminary campus. He said he had received complaints and he didn’t want us meeting in his restaurant. His tone sounded as if he was mad at me.” 
Powell said his group met in a private room and disturbed no one. A Confederate battle flag was on display in the room during the meeting. Powell said it couldn’t be seen from outside of the room. 
“We meet the first Thursday of every month. We have about 50 members, but we average about 25 at a meeting — young and old,” said Powell. “The owner doesn’t know what we do at our meetings. He’s hardly ever around when we are there.”
Greenwell said he didn’t make the decision hastily.
“I have never had any problem with the group at all. They were always nice and friendly,” said Greenwell. “People started to complain. There was a placard in an easel the nights of the meeting that displayed Confederate symbolism. It could be seen from the cash register station, and it upset some customers.”
Powell said Greenwell never asked him to remove the flags or signage. 
“Our meetings usually feature a historical program and the speaker will sometimes bring artifacts. This has never been a problem,” said Powell. 
“The Confederate Battle Flag represents hate and racism in this country, at this time. I just couldn’t have a group with that symbolism in my business anymore,” said Greenwell. 
“None of us will ever eat at The Forks again,” said Powell. “We have received much support in such a short time. So far about 100 people have said they will not eat there again”
Greenwell said he has learned a lot about some of his customers and people in the community since he made the decision to not allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to meet in his business. He said he realizes he might lose customers. 
“I have received calls, messages from people who say they will no longer support my business.  You never know about some people, friends, you thought, but I do now,” he said.
Powell said his group is not a hate group but a group preserving heritage and making a difference in the community. 
“We have a section of US-1 for the Adopt-a-Highway program we keep clean. We participate in the Wake Forest Cemetery Walking Tour every year. We have supported the Wake Forest Purple Heart Banquet for the last five or six years with a financial donation and buying tickets to attend the event. We’re a member of the Wake Forest Community Council for the last few years, and I’m serving as treasurer this year. We support Tri-Area Ministries with donations every month,” Powell said.
The organization also marched in the Wake Forest Christmas Parade for 26 years before it was cancelled in 2019.  The parade was cancelled due to threats of protest and violence because of the same Confederate group’s intended participation.
“We are misunderstood. No one knows what history is anymore. We feel we are a victim of pure discrimination,” Powell said, adding that the group has sought legal advice. “Just about every community group in Wake Forest meets at The Forks, but now, not us. We just want to be treated like everyone else.” 
Now, the group is looking for a new meeting place, but nothing had been decided.
“We have a couple of places we are looking at,” said Powell. 
The next meeting is Sept. 3. 
Greenwell said he was prepared for the fallout of his decision. 
“I know I will lose business because of this decision,” he said, “but I needed to be progressive for the future of my business and its place in the community.”
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Here immediately below is contact information for The Forks Cafeteria & Catering, if you should wish to let them know how you think about this application of “cancel culture”:
Telephone number: 919-556-6544
                                                        **********
This essay was previously published in a slightly different version at Boyd Cathey’s blog site, MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey,
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A Plea for Action: 

This essay has gotten more traffic than most of my pieces, as it documents the outrage caused by cancel culture, now in our smaller towns and cities.

These attacks—these assaults which are increasingly local and community oriented—symbolize and are emblematic of what is occurring also nationally and internationally. The frenzied lunacy about race and gender, for that is what it surely is, threatens to dismantle and utterly destroy our two millennia old civilization.

Yes, even at the local level, in places like Wake Forest, North Carolina, and at the local cafeteria that goes by the name The Forks.

And I ask you: Do you understand what is happening? Do you see not just in a “micro” sense, in a local next-door sense, but also in a global, “macro” sense, what is happening to us, to our world, and to YOU and YOUR family and your beliefs and heritage…and culture?

And then the question, the critical question: But what can I do? How can I oppose this, change this, if possible? For we feel in too many cases that we lack influence, that we are essentially powerless, that too often the “Deep State” agents control far too much, and that our elected representatives and others above us, dictate what is happening…and that they are in league with those who would do us in.

Previously I have suggested that there are steps we can take, and the first of these is to be well-informed. Web sites like the ones I’ve listed, including Chronicles magazine (both online and in print), Abbeville Institute, Reckonin.com, VDare, Breitbart, and a few others. Then, there are columnists like Pat Buchanan, Ilana Mercer, Paul Gottfried, “The Dissident Mama,” Phil Leigh, and others.

Secondly, despite the Coronavirus, it is important that we maintain the same kind of communication as our forefathers did in 1775 and 1776, revamped “Committees of Correspondence,” that is, sharing the information we find and read, correcting or adding to it as needed, and maintaining a close contact with like-minded friends and neighbors.

Thirdly, although presently (during this epidemic) gathering together for meals with friends or to meet and discuss issues is difficult, we still must attempt that, even meeting in small groups in friends’ homes. And in such cases, depending on the size of the group or the venue and topics, it may be good to have a rough agenda, especially if action is discussed (writing letters to local journals, petitions to this or that local government, etc.).

Fourthly, there have been a few organized public protests and meetings recently directed against the draconian measures instituted due to COVID-19. But it is our declared enemies—the Revolutionaries in the BLM movement, Antifa, etc.—who are masters of mass demonstrations. Our folks are orderly and law-abiding, not use to such activity. That must change, even if it strikes us as a bit unnatural to get out in the street and hold up placards, and uncomfortable to be called “racists” or “bigots” by the local press which is now almost totally controlled by Marxist-types and those I would call “post-Marxists,” who have gone well beyond the old Marxist playbook.

Fifthly, on the personal level, each of us in family must evaluate our own personal safety and the requirements for us and our families to be safe and secure in this climate of spiraling violence. It is time for us to get licensed in firearm usage, to have protective weapons on hand for any necessity, to protect our families and our property—and really, thus, form part of the necessary defense of public safety and public order that is always required for any society to exist. We should also, when possible, work with our friends, even coordinate potential self-defense measures.

Sixthly, on November 3 each and every one of us must vote, and vote not just for our own personal welfare but for the very survival of the country and our civilization.

Finally, most of us profess the Christian faith. As such we know instinctively the immense power of prayer and penance before Our Lord.  Thus, our re-dedication to Him and to the triumph of His Reign as Sovereign King here below is absolutely imperative.

Long live Christ the King! must be our battle cry….And to Hell with false political and “religious” leaders in sheep’s clothing!

My favorite Psalm is number 26, and I quote from it (first in the Vulgate):
“Si consistant adversum me castra, non timebit cor meum. Si exurgat  adversum me praelium, in hoc sperabo”: “Even if entrenched armies stand against me in battle, my heart will not fear. In thee I will trust.”

This, then, is our task and our command, but also the promise by Faith which will overcome our enemies.

“Christus vincit! Christus Regnat? Christus Imperat!” – Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands! This antiphon—the Royal Laudes—was sung in the year 800 A.D. at the coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor signifying the establishment of one thousand years of Christian civilization.

Although since the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, our civilization is severely damaged, this is our objective: that in prayer and penance we take up the Sword of Faith and send our enemies back to Hell where they belong.


As the Crusaders exclaimed eight centuries ago: “Deus vult!” – “God wills it!”

Saturday, August 22, 2020

August 22, 2020
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
The End of COVID-19 May Be Coming…. And Soon!
Friends,
COVID-19 currently grips the nation, throwing nearly everyone into panic and despair. And we are told that life will never be the same again.
Yet, there are some clear signs that this situation could change, and change dramatically in the next six months.
Let me explain.
On occasion I am privy to significant information, factual and potentially far-reaching. And just yesterday a highly-placed scientist friend, who has many years of experience with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes for Health (NIH) and who works close by in the Research Triangle, relayed some critical data to me that, despite his plea that I sit on it and not  reveal it, I am releasing today.
Let me add that my friend has worked in health and disease prevention at various levels and is extremely well-connected, not only to our nation’s medical research profession, but he is also extremely well-placed politically. In fact, he is one of only two remaining Democratic friends I still have—the others I once had having now given up on me in exasperation and despair at my reactionary views, breaking off all contact and pronouncing me beyond salvation.
But my friend—I shall call him “Dr. P”—continues to befriend me, and as most of his left wing friends in the profession are so insufferable and priggish, he delights in conversing with me on occasion.
Now, let me state clearly what I discovered in conversing with my friend. You see, we had met for a couple of highballs at one of the few eateries still open for in-dining in the Triangle. It was at his request, and his invitation seemed strangely urgent. So we gathered for a couple of stiff ones, and he, almost bubbling over with the desire to share his highly-secret information.
Here’s how the conversation went (I remember his words almost exactly):
“Boyd, I really needed to tell someone about this!”
I answered: “Just what is it? You seem so bothered. How can I help?”
And Dr. P responded, lowering his voice but with heightened and almost uncontrolled excitement:
“Well, here’s the thing: If Joe Biden is elected come the November 2020 election, this COVID pandemic will very progressively begin to disappear as a national health problem, and by his swearing in on January 20 next year it will be practically gone as a health menace. The news media won’t be talking about it. In fact, there will be a vaccine—probably several—and Biden and Kamala will get all the credit. I know this for fact, as my high Democratic friends have told me so.”
I have to admit I was stunned, taken aback by this revelation. How was it possible that COVID, certainly the worst plague since the Bubonic Plague nearly wiped out the population of Europe seven centuries ago—How was it possible that simply because Joe Biden might get elected that it would for all intents and purposes just disappear in six months?
I didn’t know what to say, so I inquired prudently and carefully:
“What do you mean? How will this be possible? What do you know that the rest of us—at least the rest of us who are not in the elite scientific profession—don’t know?”
My Democratic scientist friend replied, even more cautiously and nervously than before, scoping out the rest of the eatery once-over for unwanted ears:
“Boyd, most of the panic and hysteria we see today is generated by the media and political leaders. Yes, COVID exists and has infected hundreds of thousands of people. But almost all the cases are mild, and the infected persons recover. Most medical professionals understand this. We see the situations in Europe where recoveries have occurred, and none of the draconian measures have been employed like here in the United States
“Not only that, but, as you might figure out, there is a pronounced and very heavy political element to all of this in our country. Most of the major health leaders follow along the political movement. It’s not that they are dishonest or anything like that; they just are caught up in the same frenzy that most everyone else is.
“Almost all the deaths, as you know, are restricted to senior citizens who already have life-threatening health conditions. Many live is assisted living or retirement centers in close proximity. An elderly lady who has COPD and Immune Deficiency conditions, should she get even a mild case of COVID, well, that would be enough  to maybe kill her.
“Among us professionals we all know that. But if she should die, well, the cause will be officially ‘due to COVID’.
“And the media is using this and the stats in a dramatically political way. It is an extension of the Russia Hoax, the Ukraine Caper, and so on, to get power and throw out Donald Trump.”
Again, I was stunned, feeling like someone had belted me in the stomach with a stethoscope. And I inquired further:
“So, what are you telling me?”
And my friend quickly responded:
“What I am saying is that come November, if Joe Biden is elected, you will see a marked change in how the pandemic is covered. It won’t be dramatic at first, but it will be noticeable and progressive, first there will be breaking news about the vaccines, then there will be a drop in cases and deaths because we will start counting only COVID cases not with complicating conditions. And, most importantly, you’ll see both less coverage on CNN and MSNBC and in the major media. In fact, the coverage will be increasingly positive. And Biden and Kamala will reap the benefits.”
My mouth was wide open, gaping in amazement as I heard my friend’s words. That our media and political elites would do this, well, floored me. How could this happen?
So I inquired a bit further:
“But, tell me, are you saying that our scientific community is in league or cooperating with our political leaders, that is, the Democrats?”
And Professor P replied quickly:
“Not exactly. There are all sorts of scientific analyses and views. Take what has happened to hydroxychloroquine. On almost every news outlet it is condemned, and anyone who administers it is branded a quack. And in the public mind it is seen negatively. Do you understand? Perceptions are generated and then elevated to almost divine, unassailable truth.
“Right now both the media, national and local, are engaged in a giant scare campaign which is essentially political. And the health sector, as divided as it is, doesn’t speak with one voice, although the impression in the public is that it does.”
Then, following up, I asked:
“What about a vaccine?”
My friend responded: “Well, if a vaccine is developed before the election, it will be hushed up for a while, at least until Biden wins. Then, probably in early 2021, he will stand in front of the White House and make the triumphant announcement that under his watch a miracle vaccine is being produced and distributed. It’s that simple.”
I have to admit I was incredulous listening to Professor P’s Intel. I wondered why he would share it, reveal it to me. After all, he is a registered Democrat, and I am on the Right.
When I queried him about that, he admitted that the burden of the information was too much for him, it weighed on him and his conscience. His wide acquaintance with highly-placed members of his profession and his knowledge of how Democrats were using and manipulating science troubled him. And he had to, as it were, spill the beans.
Why didn’t he go to the press, I wondered. And he allowed that he was deathly afraid of being doxxed, of being shunned by his profession, and of “cancel culture” that would severely punish him and his family.
For that reason, I do not use his name, but I did believe that the information was of such importance that it needed to get out.
I did have one last question for him, and it was this: but what happens if Trump is re-elected? And he just shook his head and groaned:
“In that case, COVID will just simply go on and on for a long while…at least until Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Nadler come up with new Intel and assertions that the Trump campaign has been working hand-in-hand with the Armenian secret service to influence the elections and change the vote totals in Kalispell, Montana. And I’m not kidding!”
Just at that moment entered into the restaurant, which had hitherto been almost empty except for us, a well-dressed man exuding what seemed a supercilious attitude to all around him. And my friend almost immediately shut up and abruptly rose from our table, rapidly exiting the eatery.
I followed him out, but not at once, not knowing the reason for his sudden departure. But outside, as I prepared to leave, I spied him, and in curiosity sidled over and asked why his quick exit.
It seems that the well-dressed newcomer was a co-worker, another scientist from the Research Triangle, and my friend feared that his presence there with me might raise uncomfortable questions.
I understood. And we said our good-byes and went our separate ways.

But I came away with a new comprehension. If Biden should win the presidential election—which I pray God he does not—then we shall begin to see some “miracles” occur right before our eyes. The media will rave in excitement, the politicians will ooh-and-aww  and heap praises on Biden and Harris, and the Great Pestilence of 2020—the most serious and dangerous event to afflict us since the Bubonic Plague—the Black Death of the 14th Century that killed fifty million souls, will recede in importance and significance. And as media coverage will noticeably lessen, the enthroned progressivists will continue to inflict their fatal damage on what is left of the American nation.

  July 3, 2024     MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey   The Real Meaning of July 4th and the Heresy of Lincolnian Interpretation            ...