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:
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
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
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.”
————————————————————————————————————
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,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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!”
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