January 13, 2023

 

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

MLK, Russell Kirk, and the Ignominy of Modern Conservatism

         

                                                    

For the past forty years (officially since 1986) the third Monday in January has been celebrated as a federal holiday, Martin Luther King Day. Federal and state offices and many businesses either close or go on limited schedules. We are awash with public observances, parades, prayer breakfasts, stepped-up school projects for our unwary and intellectually-abused children, and gobs and gobs of over-the-top television “specials” and movies, all geared to tell us—to shout it in our faces, if we don’t pay strict attention—that King was some sort of superhuman, semi-divine civil rights leader who brought the promise of equality to millions of Americans, a kind of modern St. John the Baptist ushering in the Millennium. And that he stands just below Jesus Christ in the pantheon of revered and adored historical personages…and in some ways, perhaps above Jesus Christ in the minds of many of his present-day devotees and epigones.

It seems to do no good to issue a demurrer to this veritable religious “cult of Dr. King.” There are, indeed, numerous “Christian” churches that now “celebrate” this day just as if it were a major feast in the Christian calendar. In short, Martin Luther King has received de facto canonization religiously and in the public mind as no other person in American history.

And the King cult has taken hold in the “conservative movement” with an especial tsunami-like effect.

The latest outrage of this revolutionary “cleansing” of traditional conservatism has been what has been inflicted on Russell Kirk, the “Sage of Mecosta,” the generally acknowledged founder of the American conservative movement back in the early 1950s. And it comes at the behest and invitation of the very institution bearing his name, The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, which plans to host a joint conference with the Acton Center, on Monday, January 16, with black activist John Woods, Jr., doing the honours. Under the looming visage of Abe Lincoln, Woods’ Web site, Braver Angels, defines his own organization as dedicated “to depolarization…bridging the partisan divide….” (A photo of a gaggle of brainless, lovey-dovey, googly-eyed Clinton and Trump supporters decorate the site.)

Here is part of the blurb from the Kirk Center:

Without King and Kirk, modern American Social Justice liberalism and modern American conservatism as we know them would not exist. And yet, for all of their differences, our modern politics suffer because contemporary liberalism and conservatism often lack the grounding in virtues, communitarian values and faith in an ordered universe to which both Kingian Nonviolence and Kirkian Conservatism held fast. Is it possible that by reacquainting ourselves with these lost traditions we could summon the better angels of left and right and restore a politics of virtue for the modern age?

Outrage is too mild a term to use to describe this inane barbarity. It is built on lies and blatant falsehood.

At one time figures such as Kirk were considered too unwieldly, too untouchable to be incorporated into the swirling vortex of crazed conservative political correctness. Very simply, although the standard encomia were regularly paid to his earlier accomplishments and role, his essential (negative) views on King, his opposition to the civil rights movement (and legislation), his staunch arguments against egalitarianism, his opposition to the frenzied anti-colonialism of the 1950s and 1960s (cf., his adventure novel, A Creature of the Twilight, set in late colonialist Africa), and his virulent disgust directed at George H. W. Bush (which led him to become chairman of Pat Buchanan’s campaign in Michigan in 1992, just as I chaired the North Carolina Buchanan effort) are significant mileposts which Kirk biographer, Bradley Birzer, must acknowledge (see generally, Birzer, Russell Kirk: American Conservative;  University of Kentucky Press, 2015).

From 1967, when I was a college freshman, until shortly before his death in 1994, I corresponded frequently with Russell. As chairman of the Pfeiffer University Visiting Lecture Program—that would never happen today!—I brought him to my school. And, then, after a year as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia (where I finished my MA in 1971), Kirk asked me to come to Mecosta to serve as his assistant for 1971-1972. There I was privileged to learn from the Master.  Not only did I delve deeply into roots of traditional Anglo-American conservatism (I assisted RK on Eliot and His Age and The Roots of American Order), but one responsibility I had was to edit Kirk’s little educational quarterly, The University Bookman. There he demonstrated his willingness, among other difficult topics, to debate cognitive disparities between the races (publishing, for example, reviews of Dr. Audrey M. Shuey’s study, The Testing of Negro Intelligence, and other politically-incorrect volumes).

And then, I recall sitting in his library with him as the results of the Michigan Democratic presidential primary filtered in in the spring of 1972. Although television sets and radios were not permitted in the old house, “Piety Hill,” up the street, I had a radio, and at Russell’s urging I brought it down from my room (the second floor of the library building). Kirk delighted in George Wallace’s upset victory, although I don’t think he wished his wife Annette to find out!

Such examples of his thinking and actions are now all swept under the carpet, carefully ignored, or simply rewritten, and the “Sage of Mecosta” emerges with new raiment, diminished and stuffed in a Procrustean bed, fully “trans-ed” and purified of his earlier inequities and sins of racism and against “human rights.”

Let us recall a little history, and this I essentially repeat from my earlier essays on this subject to which I refer the reader.

Mention the fact that King may have plagiarized as much as 40 % of his Boston University Ph.D. dissertation [cf. Theodore Pappas, Plagiarism and the Culture War: The Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr, and Other Prominent Americans, 1998, and Martin Luther King Jr Plagiarism Story, 1994, if they are have not been scrubbed from circulation], or that he worked closely with known Communists throughout his life, or that he advocated American defeat in Vietnam while praising Ho Chi Minh, or that he implicitly countenanced violence and Marxism, especially later in his life [cf., Congressional Record, 129, no. 130 (October 3, 1983): S13452-S13461]—mention any of these accusations confirmed begrudgingly by his establishment biographers David Garrow and Taylor Branch, or mention his even-by-current-standards violent “rough sex” escapades (which apparently involved even under-agers) [cf., Cooper Sterling, January 13, 2018, VDare] and you immediately get labeled a “racist” and condemned  by not just the zealous King flame-keepers on the Left, but by such “racially acceptable” conservatives like Rich Lowry and Dinesh D’Souza who supposedly are on the Right.

Indeed, in some ways Establishment “conservatives” such as Lowry (National Review), D’Souza, Glenn Beck, the talking heads on Fox and the furious scribblers at nearly all major “conservative” journals, and many others, not only eagerly buy into this narrative, they now have converted King into a full-fledged, card-carrying member of “conservatism inc.”—a “plaster saint” iconized as literally no one else in our history. Thus, this latest attempt to “scrub” clean Russell Kirk so that he, too, can join the new holy pantheon…finally, it simply had to happen.

Celebrating King becomes a means for the modern “conservative” movement to demonstrate its “civil rights” and “egalitarian” bona fides. When the Neoconservatives made their pilgrimage from the Trotskyite Left into the ranks of conservatism in the 1960s and 1970s, they brought with them a fervent believe in a globalist New World Order egalitarianism that characterized their Trotskyite ideology, and the determination to redefine and re-orient the traditional American Rightwing, and to re-write, as well, American history.

Thus, the purges of the old conservative movement in the 1980s and 1990s—there was no room for Southern conservatives like Mel Bradford, no room for traditionalist Catholics like Frederick Wilhelmsen or Brent Bozell Sr., no room for paleo-libertarians like Murray Rothbard, no room for Old Right anti-egalitarians like Paul Gottfried, and no room for “America Firsters” like Pat Buchanan…. These figures did not believe in King’s (and Lincoln’s) “promise of equality,” and thus were no doubt scarred by latent or real racism.

King Day becomes, then, for the modern Conservative Movement an opportunity for it to beat its chest, brag about its commitment to civil rights and “the American dream, the unrealized idea of equality” (that is, to distort and re-write the history of the American Founding), and to protect its left flank against the ever increasing charges that it could be, just might be, maybe is —“racist.” 

The heavily-documented literature detailing the real Martin Luther King is abundant and remains uncontroverted. During the debates over establishing a national “King Day” in the mid-1980s, Senators Jesse Helms and John East (both North Carolinians) led the opposition, supplying the Congress and the nation, and anyone with eyes to read, full accounts of the “King legacy,” from his close association and collaboration with the Communist Party USA to his advocacy of violence and support for the Communists in Vietnam, to implicit support for Marxist revolution domestically. Ironically, it was Robert Woodson, a noted black Republican, who highlighted in a lecture given to honor the “conservative virtues of Dr. Martin Luther King” at the Heritage Foundation on November 5, 1993, the difficulties in getting black advocates of the older generation to respect King’s role as a Civil Rights leader. According to Woodson, as quoted in an excellent essay by Paul Gottfried,

…when Dr. King tried to bring the Civil Rights movement together with the [Marxist] peace movement, it was Carl Rowan who characterized King as a Communist, not Ronald Reagan. I remember being on the dais of the NAACP banquet in Darby, Pennsylvania when Roy Wilkins soundly castigated King for this position. [Paul Gottfried, “The Cult of St. Martin Luther King – A Loyalty Test for Careerist Conservatives?” January 16, 2012].

But not only that, behind the scenes there were voluminous secretly-made FBI recordings and accounts of King’s violent sexual escapades, often times with more than two or three others involved in such “rough sex” trysts; and of his near total hypocrisy when discussing civil rights and other prominent civil rights leaders. It is, to put it mildly, a sorry record, scandalous even by today’s standards…Indeed, King makes Harvey Weinstein look like a meek choirboy in comparison.

But you won’t hear any of that mentioned by the falling-all-over-itself media mavens at “Conservatism Inc.” or on Fox. In fact, such comments will get you exiled to the far reaches of the Gobi Desert and labeled a “racist,” quicker that my cocker spaniel gobbles down his kibble.

Almost all the material is now available and accessible online, including material from the Congressional Record. And I have listed it in previous forays into this topic. Much of what we really have come to know is thanks to the excellent work and dedicated research of the late Dr. Sam Francis, who served on the staff of Senator East. Francis’s work is critical, and originally was written to preface the publication of voluminous testimony and documentation placed in the Congressional Record by Senator Helms.

Francis’s essay and the Helms’ dossier were eventually published in book form (I have a published copy, but I’m unsure if you can still find it on Amazon). A few years back Dr. Francis’s introduction [“The King Holiday and Its Meaning,” February 26, 2015] and the lengthy Congressional Record material, which he prepared for Helms [“Remarks of Senator Jesse Helms. Congressional Quarterly,” February 26, 2005] were put online. For a very complete understanding of King’s association and cooperation with American Communists and his endorsement of Vietnamese Communism, as well as his putative endorsement of Marxism here in the United States while condemning the free enterprise system, these two items are essential reading.

But, say the scribblers at the “establishment conservative media,” wasn’t King really a conservative at heart, an old-fashioned black Baptist who believed in the tenets of traditional Christianity? Shouldn’t we simply overlook these all-too-human failings? And, like John Woods, Jr., shouldn’t we search diligently for those points of “consensus” and “shared communitarian values”?

The answer is a resounding NO.

I can think of no better summation of the real meaning of King Day and its bare-knuckled ideological use to deconstruct, dissolve and obliterate American traditions and heritage than to cite, again, Sam Francis:

“[T]he true meaning of the holiday is that it serves to legitimize the radical social and political agenda that King himself favored and to delegitimize traditional American social and cultural institutions—not simply those that supported racial segregation but also those that support a free market economy, an anti-communist foreign policy, and a constitutional system that restrains the power of the state rather than one that centralizes and expands power for the reconstruction of society and the redistribution of wealth. In this sense, the campaign to enact the legal public holiday in honor of Martin Luther King was a small first step on the long march to revolution, a charter by which that revolution is justified as the true and ultimate meaning of the American identity. In this sense, and also in King’s own sense, as he defined it in his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the Declaration of Independence becomes a “promissory note” by which the state is authorized to pursue social and economic egalitarianism as its mission, and all institutions and values that fail to reflect the dominance of equality—racial, cultural, national, economic, political, and social—must be overcome and discarded.

“By placing King—and therefore his own radical ideology of social transformation and reconstruction—into the central pantheon of American history, the King holiday provides a green light by which the revolutionary process of transformation and reconstruction can charge full speed ahead. Moreover, by placing King at the center of the American national pantheon, the holiday also serves to undermine any argument against the revolutionary political agenda that it has come to symbolize. Having promoted or accepted the symbol of the new dogma as a defining—perhaps the defining—icon of the American political order, those who oppose the revolutionary agenda the symbol represents have little ground to resist that agenda.” 

I will not be celebrating this day; rather, it is for me a mournful reminder of what has happened and is happening to this country…and what has happened to the once-fearless and vibrant “conservative movement” and now to the revered Dr. Russell Kirk.

                                         December 17, 2022

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey 

The Coming of Christmas, the Coming of Hope

In Times of Anguish and Despair

Friends,

Since the Charleston church shooting in 2015, the hysterical—I would say diabolical—attack on everything Confederate and traditionally Southern has continued non-stop. Our monuments have been desecrated and removed from public spaces, relegated to obscure museums or storage barns, sometimes smashed to bits (the latest outrage is the uprooting of the monument to General A. P. Hill in Richmond which had crowned his very grave for decades—his remains moved to a private cemetery, but the statue to a Black History Museum for additional scorn and degradation).

Our flags have been banned and termed “symbols of hate.” Entire sections of public libraries have seen anything remotely favorable to Confederate history and heritage expunged. Our children and grandchildren, if they are taught anything substantial at all about the War for Southern Independence, are instructed that the conflict was one of evil white oppressors attempting to maintain (and spread) slavery and “white privilege.” So-called “conservative” authors and media personalities condemn Southern tradition as “racist” just as those on the frenzied Left, and seek to forever expel an entire and integral part of the history of the American nation from any reasonable and fair comprehension.

How many times must we watch and listen to obnoxious Fox personalities such as Karl Rove, Marc Thiessen, Bret Baier, and Brian Kilmeade (who praises the radical actions of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass in a book, no doubt largely ghost written for him) or writers at the one-time “conservative” magazine, National Review, or self-appointed conservative-favored historians like Allen Guelzo, warmly praise the destruction of the Southland and the deification of “Father Abraham,” with the concomitant destruction of the old American constitutional system?

Our so-called “conservative” Republican defenders, political creatures without souls like Senators Thom Tillis, Tim Scott, and Lindsey Graham, and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, have not only gone along with this cultural genocide, but in many cases have led and championed it. How many “conservative” GOP Southern senators stood up to oppose the original proposal (2019) for a national Naming Commission to ruthlessly remove the names of our nation’s military posts (and any and all iconography associated with them) which in any way recalls the honor and careers of anyone related to the Confederacy? You can count them on just one hand.

The most recent example of action by the Naming Commission is its dedicated effort to uproot and remove the Arlington National Cemetery Monument to the Confederate veterans buried there. That supremely historical and artistically beautiful statue was created by famed sculptor Moses Ezekiel, a proud Jewish Confederate, whose work is known and respected internationally. But more than that, the monument’s erection was supported by four American presidents as a major gesture symbolizing the real re-union of North and South. Yet today’s “conservative” representatives in many ways are far worse than Joseph Stalin’s iconoclasts; they are evil cultural barbarians. Their actions are a direct and demonic attack not only on the very understanding of the Framers’ view of the American federation, but also on the collective weight of Christian tradition, itself.

Perhaps more disconcerting is the apparent apathy and lack of concern shown by so many of our fellow Southerners. Anesthetized by far too many of our elected representatives and their pseudo-defense of our traditions and heritage, mired in the neo-abolitionist “newspeak” of favored “conservative media outlets” like Fox News, their children infected by the schools,  and brain-dead, thanks to jaundiced entertainment, is it any wonder our compatriots are poisoned by regional self-hatred and a resulting feeling that, as one friend recently told me, “nothing can be done—we just have to live with it.”

With this understanding and sobering observation in mind, I return to a Christmas message I authored several years ago. It is a message of Hope in the midst of Darkness. With a few changes, I think it may have even more resonance now for traditional Southerners in today’s world which is increasingly consumed by madness, apostasy, and outright rebellion against the laws of Nature and of God.

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In America circa 2022 the Powers of Darkness have asserted their near-complete control over what is left of this decaying and decadent nation. Now perhaps more so than ever we behold the awful visage of sheer Evil—in the scowls of our leaders, in most of our institutions (the media, the church, education), and in the very faces of our fellow citizens. Truly, it is a kind of demonic possession, not so much in the traditional theological sense, but, yes, as a type of intellectual possession full-blown, which directs thoughts, actions, indeed, language itself. This rampant Evil refuses to accept dissent. Those of us who oppose it are labeled disdainfully “deplorables” or “irredeemables,” and worse:  we are called racists, bigots, homophobes, white supremacists, misogynists, not worthy of any consideration except for our very extinction. We are “cancelled,” our monuments pulled down, our symbols forbidden, our voices banned, and thousands—perhaps millions—of our number placed on Joe Biden/Merrick Garland’s “domestic terror watch list,” to be punished for our views, perhaps even eventually imprisoned (as has happened to hundreds of simple bystanders who went to Washington, DC, in January 2021 to protest the great election rigging of 2020).

And if not cancelled or banned, perhaps it will be as a “woke” student son of some friends lectured me several years ago: “You older conservatives will die off in a few years, and with you, your bigoted views. Then we young Generation-Z people will take full control of this country!” Those words were burned into my thoughts and memory, because there is some truth in them—because with our schools and colleges now captured by the diabolical progressivists, the triumph of critical race theory and woke socialism, and dictatorial trans ideology dominant in our schools, each year thousands of newly-minted demonic automatons (i.e., formerly our children) are spewed out like zombies. With the subservience of both political parties to managerial Deep State globalism, the future looks bleak.

At times it seems that all hope is dimmed, that a new Dark Age descends irresistibly over us, that we are helpless before its ravages and destructive power. But in fact Hope has not been exiled from the World. In these darkest moments, in the apparent despair, it continues to light our way, if we would listen and take heart.

The Advent Season—and the coming celebration of the Nativity of Our Lord—fill us with anticipation and scarcely concealed joy as we await the memorialization and recreation of that ineffable Event—unimaginable in human terms—that forever changed human history.

The sin of Adam—Original Sin—affected all mankind and left descendants marked, indelibly stained by that original fault.  Adam’s sin was a form of disobedience, but a disobedience so grave and monumental against God’s Creation, that only the Coming of the Messiah, the Second Person of the Trinity of the Godhead, could repair it. And the Son of God would be Incarnate in a woman who would be pure and herself Immaculate, untouched by the inheritance of sinfulness (by the merits of her Son). Only such a pure womb would be fitting for the Incarnate God. And only the Incarnation into one of His creatures would serve the purpose of demonstrating that Our Blessed Saviour would come to us, not only as God, but also in the form of Man—this was fitting because it was to Mankind that He was sent.

For hundreds of years the People of Israel had awaited the coming of a Messiah to lead them, to liberate them and, if you will, to repair Adam’s Fall. But this vision—whether expressed in the revolts of the Maccabees or in later violent episodes like the revolt of Simon bar Kokhba against the Romans (132 A.D.)—implied not just satisfaction for sinful ways, but increasingly the establishment of an earthly and insular kingdom for and of the Hebrews.

And although Our Lord and Saviour indeed came first to the Jews, and offered them His reparative Grace and Salvation, it was by no means to be limited to them. Indeed, His message was universal (as it had been to Abraham). And those Hebrews who accepted the Messiah—and those gentiles who also joined them—became the Church, the “New” Israel, receptor of God’s Grace and holder of His Promises and carrier of His Light unto all the world.

While a majority of old Israel rejected Our Lord, demanding His Crucifixion before Pilate, those who followed Him and believed in Him entered the New Covenant, a New Testament. It is in this sense that the Christian church inherited the promises of Israel and the Old Testament and fulfilled those prophesies. And that fulfillment continues.

St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus [2:11-15] summarizes both the dazzling and miraculous wonder of Our Saviour’s Grace amongst us and its inexhaustible power to transform us, as we await His final Coming in Glory: “The grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and might cleanse to Himself a people acceptable, a pursuer of good works. These things speak and exhort: in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We—the Christian church, those chosen out of Grace who accept God’s gifts—are in a journey to that final day when Our Lord will return. We have been given for that journey the armament of Our Lord’s graces in the Sacraments and through His love, our Faith, and a Hope that whenever we are tempted to despair, pulls us back and redirects our vision.

Years ago (1970s) when I was doing my doctoral work in Pamplona, Spain, I had several dear friends. One of them, by name Teofilo Andueza, although he and his wife, Josefa,  lived in the city, kept his family’s ancestral home and farm up in the Pyrenees Mountains. On numerous Sundays we would travel out there after (traditional) Mass; the women would busy themselves in the kitchen to prepare roasted lamb chops, pork shoulder, “patatas fritas,” various “ensaladas mixtas,” all sorts of desserts (flan and pastries), and, of course, there would be plenty of Rioja wine and cognac. After eating—which usually continued off and on for most of the day—we would sit and smoke some “puros” (Cuban cigars—well, I didn’t worry about THAT aspect of Cuban Communism back then!).

I remember on one occasion Teofilo took me up to the crest of a nearby mountain; below we could see miles away the city of Pamplona, as he related how in 1873 the city was occupied by “liberals” who supported the central and centralizing government in Madrid, but that elsewhere in all of Navarra, in every rural village and small hamlet, the people had risen up as one under the military banner of “God – Country – States’ Rights – and the Rightful King” (against the liberal king then installed in the Spain’s capital). In July 1936 Teofilo, his father, and his elderly grandfather (who as a teen had joined the 1873 Traditionalist rising) all volunteered to fight under that same banner, the standard of the Traditionalist Carlist Communion against the secularist and socialist Spanish Republic (which is so loved by the establishment Neoconservatives these days).

Like his grandfather in 1873, Teofilo was barely 16 when he enlisted in 1936. And while his grandfather was too old to see active, front-line combat in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 (serving in rear-guard duty), Teofilo saw combat in some of the fiercest battles against the Red Republic and marched in the Victory parade in Madrid in 1939.

But like my other Carlist Traditionalist friends—who were termed “Intransigentes” by more moderate (and compromising) partisans on the Right—Teofilo believed that Francisco Franco had not carried through with the actual re-establishment of a Christian kingdom as promised—too many foreign influences, too many compromises, and, lastly, opening the door in 1953 to all the worst aspects of American commercialism and cultural decay. The national reawakening promised in 1939 had not taken place, its fruits dispersed, and in exchange, Spanish society had increasingly accepted the worst features of American culture and secularist thinking.

At the top of that mountain crest, as we looked down at Pamplona, Teofilo became emotional. “My grandfather fought against that liberal contagion 100 years ago,” he exclaimed. “And in 1936 three generations of my family dropped everything and went to war against the communists and socialists, to a crusade for Christ the King—that He might reign in society.” And then, he turned to me, took me firmly by the shoulder, and said: “And now, if it were just you and me—and we were on God’s side—once again we would be victorious, for even if we are only two, nothing is impossible to men if they fight on God’s side!”

I have remembered that incident constantly over the years, especially when things appear dark or despairing.  For not only did Grace and Salvation and the Healing for sin come into the world in a humble Cradle in Bethlehem a little over 2,000 years ago, but Hope came also. And it buoys us up, gives us balance and equilibrium, and acts as “Faith’s Sentry” to protect our Faith from harm and the threat of despair and apostasy.

In the year 312 A.D., facing an immense military challenge, the Emperor Constantine prayed to the Christian God, asking what he should do. As related in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, he had grave doubts about the traditional Roman gods. He prayed earnestly that the Christian God would “reveal to him who he is and stretch forth his right hand to help him.” His prayer changed the course of human history. The answer came in a vision of a cross emblazoned across the noonday sky, and upon it the inscription read: “In hoc signo vinces”—By this sign you shall be victorious. The emperor then ordered that his soldiers have the Christian cross inscribed on their shields.

Victorious at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine then issued orders that the Christian church was to be fully free in its mission and the exercise of its functions. Although he did not make Christianity the official religion of the empire, Constantine bestowed favors on it, built places of worship for Christians, and presided over the first general church council. He became the first emperor to embrace Christianity and was baptized on his death bed. In less than 300 years the faith of Christ born in humble surroundings in remote Judaea and persecuted mercilessly and ruthlessly, nourished by the blood of martyrs, now emerged from the catacombs, triumphant, a light unto the pagans, to continue its salvific mission.

Is this not the power of Faith supported by Hope? That even if we be in the catacombs, even if we see our civilization and culture coming apart at the seams, even if we see the Church subverted and false prophets in positions of immense authority preaching false doctrines—even in these circumstances, we hold “fortes in Fide,” firm in the faith, bolstered by Faith’s Sentry.

So, then, as we approach the Holy Day of indescribable joy, we know with assurance that the ineffable Gift from God of salvation and forgiveness is ours, and that no one can take our Faith from us, buoyed, as it is, by the unbreakable assurance of Hope—which came to us that Christmas so long ago.

“Even if it were just you and me—and we were on God’s side—once again we would be victorious, for even if we are only two, nothing is impossible to men if they fight on God’s side!”

Saving Grace entered the world two millennia ago, and with it the Hope we possess.  And there are broad smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts.

Merry and Blessed Christmas!

                                       November 30, 2022

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

The Oncoming Second American Civil War:

Donald Trump and the Failure of Conservatism

Friends,

Much of the talk recently among the “conservative chattering class” has been about how the “movement” must somehow “move on” from Donald Trump (without overly alienating his base) and take a serious look at alternatives, most notably Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, with lesser—and far less distinguished—papabile such as the incredibly ambitious Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, and even the discredited buffoon Chris Christie of New Jersey, in tow.

Building up to President Trump’s announcement of another run for the White House on November 15, and then with a crescendo effect afterwards, Republican politicos, consultants, congressmen, and the Murdoch media (through its voices the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, with less strident flurries on Fox News) echoed the same mantra: “Trump is not the man for the GOP in 2024!” And it was up to the “party” (read=elites) to select someone more—how should we say it?—more smooth and agreeable, less confrontational, less likely to “shoot-from-the-hip,” and more apt to bring over those brainless soccer moms, while reducing the unrelenting attacks spewed forth by the legacy media. In other words, what the Republican Party needed was a nicer, quieter, better groomed and mannered figure who could essentially get us back to more halcyon times. Essentially, the GOP needed to go back to its now traditional role of perfunctory opposition to the Leftist tsunami, while, in effect, only slightly impeding the Left’s inevitable advances in and capture of all our social, cultural and political institutions.

Examples of this pusillanimous political posture within the GOP abound plentifully, most recently in the vote on the absurdly-called Respect for Marriage Act to enshrine same sex marriage nationally requiring the federal government to recognize a marriage between two people if the marriage is valid in the state where it was performed and guaranteeing that such a marriage is given full faith and credit, regardless of the couple’s sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin. Leading up to the US Supreme Court’s outrageous and unprecedented Obergefell decision in 2015, the Republican Party supposedly opposed such an aberrant constitutional view. Indeed, various GOP elected leaders pledged that they would strongly support the traditional moral view of their constituents, the overwhelming opinion of a majority of Americans. Thirty states had already adopted constitutional amendments defining marriage as between one man and one woman, including my home state, North Carolina, in 2012, where the vote was 61% to 39%.

But since Obergefell, not hardly a peep. Mostly just acceptance.

And indeed, in the recent vote, twelve Republican senators crossed over and insured easy passage, with such unprincipled chameleons like Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) defending staunchly his vote by declaring ingenuously that the act “maintains the status quo with respect to same-sex marriage that was set forth by the Supreme Court….”

Same sex marriage is just one such issue; there are countless others where “conservative” opposition has proven to be little more than a paper tiger, engaged in shadow boxing, while ceding the way clear for an advancing, all-encompassing radicalism.

Public education? It has been taken over, literally, by the radically “woke” left, as have most colleges and universities. And the reaction of conservatives? Complain and grouse about, talk and write about the insanity which has captured academia and our children. And the solution? In addition to remaining motionless as if blinded by headlights, maybe just throw more money at the problem! Here in North Carolina where the General Assembly is dominated by Republicans, just name a few more political/financial cronies to the board of governors for the university system who will…do nothing!

Where are the fearless Republicans to at last arise and state the obvious: that our public education system has failed miserably, and that the schools (physical plants) need to be sold off to consortia of parents and private organizations, with the appropriate tax monies going directly to the parents who must have complete school choice? Such a program would, certainly, require time to implement, but can anyone think of a better way to stanch the destruction of public education?

Where are the conservative/Republican voices advocating radical reform? Again, mostly silence.

Illegal immigration? Republicans promise to do something, perhaps even impeaching Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, for his utterly disastrous “open door” approach and his de facto support for porous American borders. But does anyone think that Kevin McCarthy and congressional Republicans will actually go through with that threat? After all, this is the same party that desperately attempted to find a compromise with the radical Dems over “dreamer” citizenship. Does anyone seriously believe “conservatives” will, once in power, actually begin to expel illegal aliens now situated here in the US? Oh, yes, Governors DeSantis and Gregg Abbott have staged a few highly publicized transferals of a few illegals to places like Martha’s Vineyard, which were, of course, experiments in symbolism. But where is the firm promise to remove those several millions who have come in since Donald Trump left office?

The silence is deafening.

The list of conservative promises, followed then by conservative collapse and full acceptance of those very positions once so strongly denounced is appalling.

What more evidence do we need to confirm the verdict, rendered nearly 150 years ago, by great Southern writer Robert Lewis Dabney on the “conservative” party:

“This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn.

“American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it he salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious, for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its ‘bark is worse than its bite,’ and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent rôle of resistance.

“The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it ‘in wind,’ and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip….”

Which brings me back to Donald Trump and 2024.

I have a friend who is fairly-well acquainted with GOP politics. Although he supported Trump in 2016, like some establishment Republicans he is dead set against another Trump campaign. When I questioned him, he responded with the usual complaints:

“Trump is a walking time-bomb.” “He shoots from the hip and says crazy things.”  “His mannerisms and language will not attract ‘independents’ and suburban voters.”

Then, the clencher from my friend: “Trump’s endorsed candidates lost big in 2022, and he will carry the GOP down to defeat in 2024.” Yet, as Bloomberg admitted on November 15, 2022: “The record of Trump’s endorsed candidates who were on the ballot last Tuesday was 236-38, with eight races still being decided….” Not a bad record at all for a walking time-bomb!

And most recently, of course, the meal with Ye and controversial activist Nick Fuentes, which the news media, including the so-called conservative media, was quick to pounce on. Here was the “smoking gun” (to paraphrase the leftover Bushite Karl Rove) that would “sink” Trump. Yet few proceeded to unpack the facts of case, that as even NBC News admitted, Trump had been in a way set up and did not realize that Ye was bringing along Fuentes, about whom Trump had no real knowledge. As reporter March Caputo wrote:

“Trump was walking into what may have been a trap in Mar-a-Lago’s gilded halls…. Trump has since said he didn’t know Fuentes or his background when they dined together, a claim Fuentes confirmed in an interview…. One longtime Trump adviser, who didn’t want to go on the record criticizing his preferred candidate, said it was clear that Fuentes’ presence was part of a headline-grabbing setup. ‘The master troll got trolled’….”

Without hesitation GOP elites, from Mitch McConnell and the loathsome Mitt Romney to Mike Pence, jumped up and down and denounced Trump, either by name or implicitly.

My friend did the same, as if this was some sort of kiss of death. Yet, I reminded my friend that the very same types of situations abounded in the Republican primaries and general election in 2016. Who does not recall the infamous “Access Hollywood” story with Billy Bush (October 7, 2016), which was supposed to sink the Trump candidacy? Or, how about the Donald asserting that “thousands of Muslims celebrated 9/11” on roof-tops across the Hudson River in New Jersey back in 2001. Reports finally made public in December 2015 confirmed Trump’s position: “Just a couple of blocks away from that Jersey City apartment the F.B.I. raided yesterday…there is another apartment building, one…was swarming with suspects — suspects who…were cheering on the roof when they saw the planes slam into the Trade Center.”

Oh, yes, and the epithets and nicknames that Trump applied to his GOP opponents—remember “little Marco,” “lying Ted,” “sleepy Jeb”—each of those was supposed to be a self-inflicted dagger wound which should have or would have ended Trump’s momentum.

Then there were the condescending neoconservative plutocrats at National Review and the DC think tanks, the ex-Bushite Never Trumpers, the pitiful epigones of Bill Kristol, George Will, Max Boot, and others. Remember them? They have never gone away. A few of the less principled ones, for example a Nikki Haley—once staunchly anti-Trump, then cozying up to him and cooing into his ear, and now once again steadfastly standing up against his “vitriol,” are back at their workbenches devising plans how to stop him.

Now these termites come out once again, employing the same tactics and same invective, in which the legacy Leftist media is more than eager to join in and cheer on.

The latest “golden boy” to appear on the scene is Governor Ron DeSantis, and already the campaign war drums are beating on his behalf. My friend Dr. Brion McClanahan of the Abbeville Institute rightly cautions (November 28, 2022) against jumping on a DiSantis bandwagon. As he writes:

“DeSantis would be something entirely different, and when National Review starts making the case, you need to be worried. You see, when people like Jack Geraghty think a President Ron is a good idea, that can only mean one thing. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. DeSantis is a great governor, arguably the best in the United States at the moment. But Geraghty likes him because he would be more like George W. Bush than Donald Trump….”

As I told my friend there are some worrying aspects to DeSantis which need to be aired.

Consider Geraghty’s headline (his article appeared in The Washington Post): “DeSantis would pave the way for a post-Trump GOP return to normal.” Are we allowed to question his definition of “normal”? Is it not a return to the old, defecated, totally bankrupt policies and philosophy that have only confirmed Robert L. Dabney’s acute understanding of American “conservatism” nearly 150 years ago?

Geraghty praises DeSantis as a “non-threatening” politician, who would make “moderates” and independents feel better, “not fearing that he’d burn the country down in a fit of rage because he thinks someone wasn’t being fair to him.”

But that was Trump’s original point, and one I emphasized strongly in a previous essay I authored back on November 4, “Will Donald Trump Bring on the End of History?”

We do not need at all a “return to normal,” that is, a return to the no-longer-viable political culture that existed before Trump…a system that has become truly noxious and poisonous for any devotee of older American traditions, a system now which only enables and advances a thorough and feculent Leftist agenda in every aspect of our lives.

Whether he realized it or not (and there is substantial evidence that he did not), in 2016 Donald Trump ran to not just overhaul our morally decrepit and virally dangerous system, but to replace it, essentially returning to the wells of our past, discarding the farce which is modern “liberal democracy,” and actually returning power and authority to a citizenry that has been progressively castrated at the behest of the Behemoth conglomerate of big government/big corporations/big tech dictatorship, itself part of a massive globalist reset.

That he failed in many aspects—terrible appointments and horrible advisors, a belief that somehow he had to placate the GOP establishment, a lack of political acumen—yet nevertheless he scared the bejesus out of the elites, out of the Deep State, out of the dominant progressivist controllers over things like education, immigration, and an asinine globalist foreign policy. That was—and is—something that a Ron DeSantis is not most likely to do, nor for that matter, any of the pygmy-brained wannabees such as Haley or Christie.

The final verdict may be out on DeSantis, but we know that a Trump presidency in 2024 would bring our enemies out into the streets even more frenetically and violently than ever before. And that event would result in the complete disappearance of their veils obscuring their obscene hatred for what the late Sam Francis called “middle Americans,” AKA MAGA Americans.

As I wrote on November 4, bringing all the various issues to a perhaps violent head finally may be, tragically, the best (and only) way to undo the infectious and fatal dross which has converted the American nation into a veritable cesspool of ungodly evil and moral turpitude, both at home and in its dealings abroad. It could force American citizens to finally do something, take a stand, arm themselves, protect their communities against wanton rioting and violence and decay. Communities, perhaps states, would be forced to act. And in the process perhaps Americans would discover an older America, with its older Constitution, its ingrained and protected rights and duties derived from God, its defense of the liberties guaranteed to us by the Framers.

I employed the case of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, previously. Certainly, no one wishes for full-fledged civil war. But Spaniards learned eighty-five years ago that some things—religious Faith, heritage and tradition, rights guaranteed to us by natural and Divine law—are more precious than Jack Geraghty’s deceptively attractive but fatal “return to normal.”

So, I repeat: bring it on, sooner when there still may be a chance to succeed, not later.

                                                November 4, 2022

 

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

 

Will Donald Trump Bring on the End of History?

Friends,

It now seems probable that former President Donald Trump will announce his candidacy for president of the United States in 2024, perhaps as soon as after the 2022 elections are completed.

Back in 2016 I was a staunch Trump supporter. And I would still support “the Donald” if he ran again in 2024, but for different reasons.

Let me explain.

I fully acknowledge that Trump is not the calm, studious, dignified statesman which many Americans have tended to associate traditionally with the nation’s highest office. He comes across at times like a bully, a man lacking certain social graces and gravitas, which are seen to be a prerequisite for the position. I have a couple of friends for whom that brash, bull-in-a-china shop quality really grates and disqualifies a candidate. As one friend expressed it: “He’s a Yankee ruffian!”

But even more off putting, perhaps the greatest failing of Trump (for me, at least) was his disastrous appointments in his administration of persons who acted almost directly contrary to the general emphasis that he seemed to stress during his 2016 campaign.

There was sabotage from within and, although apparent in some of his domestic policies, it was perhaps most glaring in his foreign policy initiatives. His vaunted Make America Great Again campaign, his opposition to foreign American adventurism, and his desire for better relations (and an understanding) with Russia were undercut by a range of advisors, from Mike Pompeo, General “Mad Dog” Mattis, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, and others, as well as many permanent Deep State professionals, sinecured into the government bureaucracy (especially at the State Department and DOJ). His appointments were, in some very significant instances, disastrous and ended by nearly destroying the prominent MAGA promises of his campaign.

Whether due to the influence of a Jared Kushner, or of the Republican National Committee, or of the Mitch McConnell-types in GOP congressional leadership—or of all of these—Trump’s “come home America” platform and resistance to an evangelical American global overreach, were dashed soon after taking office by his miscues on Syria and acceptance of the John McCain/Neoconservative globalist template.

Yet, as others have noticed, his usual first instincts, his intuitions, not borne or influenced by the corruption of the established and congressional GOP or the so-called “conservative” think-tanks inside the DC beltline, were generally correct and perceived by many newly-awakened voters, those “MAGA” folks so long ignored and despised by condescending Hilary Clinton-types and the legacy media.

Some friends have suggested that Governor Ron DiSantis of Florida would be a much more palatable candidate. For them DiSantis might be a kind of “Donald Trump without the extra and undesirable personal baggage,” someone who could enunciate and enact the same programs, certainly domestically, that Trump has advanced, but with less viral and frenzied hostility from the legacy media and an increasingly radical Democratic Party—a political organization which makes old-school Stalinism seem conservative in comparison.

I disagree, and for a number of reasons.

Each morning I read the literally hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces, from varying perspectives, which show up on MSN Edge. Increasingly I have noticed a tsunami of items which not only hysterically denounce MAGA folks and anyone fearless enough to express any sympathy (much less support) for President Donald Trump, but demand their total “canceling,” exclusion from the franchise, even imprisonment or physical execution.

Academics (and their brain-dead students), broadcasters, and writers at such publications as The Atlantic, Salon, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times lead these virtual “MAGA search-and-kill death squads,” but a huge number of political leaders, and not just Democrats, echo these raging attacks.

The unleashed, unbridled hatred for Trump and his supporters is there for anyone to see and digest. It is visceral, violent, and very real. Those anti-Trump folks possess and are possessed by a demonic desire to destroy and liquidate their opponents. There is a palpable fierceness about them and their expressed rage, whether in the words of politicians like a Rep. Jamie Raskin, or written and spoken in the words of dozens of “journalists” employed and handsomely paid by MSNBC, CNN, or by The Washington Post.

There is also an unmistakable condescension directed at the mass of the “great unwashed,” the MAGA folks, whose role in “our democracy” is to keep quiet meekly and just keep working as virtual slaves of a super-elite of political leaders, corporate executives, tech bosses (with their fascinating algorithms which inevitably exclude any opinions which differ from the official line): an increasingly global Deep State.

What Donald Trump did in 2016 was double-fold—he awakened millions to the fact that we were not masters of our own destinies, that we were under the heel of the Deep State elites; and he also unleashed a frenzied and, in fact, satanic reaction from those who understood the significance of his victory, even if Trump actually did not. He had roused millions, and they were hearing things which no politician had hitherto actually discussed with them in any degree of seriousness or truthfulness for decades.

And that was dangerous—dangerous to their worldview, dangerous to their control over what ridiculously is called “our democracy,” and most egregiously, to their continued authority and power. It had to be stopped, it had to be squelched. 

Thus, came the transparently bogus charges of “Russian collusion”—Russiagate, which continues to fester in the fevered minds of Leftist lunatics—then, the impeachments (how many now? Who’s counting?)—the questions about the 2020 election (just raising legitimate questions gets you labeled an “election denier” and an “enemy of democracy,” and thus a candidate for exclusion and canceling)—and most recently, the completely ideological and political “January 6 Commission,” created with one purpose in mind: to, if at all possible, prevent Trump from running in 2024, and at least discredit him enough with loads of Pelosi-Cheney fecal matter so that “respectable” folks will shy away from him—I mean there are always those don’t-rock-boat, Establishment-approved papabile like the ambitious, unprincipled Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo waiting in the wings, who might well get the endorsement of various NeverTrumpers and GOP party bosses.

And that is precisely why Trump should be the GOP candidate in 2024. For his re-appearance on the ballot could indeed make the riots and mayhem of the “summer of rage” in 2020 seem like a Sunday school party. Above all, Trump would likely produce an utter raging madness from the Leftist insaniacs, and not only would heads explode at MSNBC and CNN, but frothing-at-the-mouth, wild-eyed academics would lead their lemming-like students out into the streets. Dozens of American cities would go up in flames, again, but this time with a ferocity and abandon which would hopefully force Americans to make some very serious choices.

Back in August 2019 and February 2019 I wrote pieces, published at the Abbeville Institute and elsewhere, advocating the peaceful (if possible) separation of the United States into regions (maybe even subdivisions) of divergent views. It was my belief then that not just radically different and extreme political opinions, but also basic cultural, historical, and, yes, intractable religious and moral divergencies made the survival of the United States as one harmoniously compact country not only impossible, but inadvisable and impractical. The best and potentially most peaceful means to resolve differences which I argued then were irreconcilable, was separation, a kind of re-imagined secession.

Since then, I have altered my view somewhat. While separation might be potentially a peaceful way to address the unbridgeable divisions in our society, too many impracticalities and unresolvable difficulties present themselves, and asteroid-like events continue to destroy whatever comity that once existed between the increasing polarities afflicting the American nation.

Indeed, would any federal government, no matter under which party’s tutelage, countenance a break-up of the American union? Would Republicans, so enamored with the language, imagery and heritage of the Lincolnian revolution against the Framers’ original vision of America, if in power, enable a disaggregation of their creation and its history which they continue to glorify and canonize?

They would not.

And of course, America’s official authoritarian party, the Democrats, would never go along.

So barring a mass conversion of those arguably insane fanatics who currently control our government bureaucracy, our educational system, our media, our entertainment, and much of what remains of our culture—and who work feverishly like demons not only to separate us from our millennial inheritance, but to destroy it and us—the best alternative for us might actually be a real conflagration in our cities and streets, a real state of anarchy and civil war, through which with the grace of God we might emerge victorious.

Nationally, Trump again in the White House might well cause a major upheaval in Washington. I can visualize the possibility of members of Congress immediately demanding his removal; perhaps massive demonstrations organized by the Left would occur in Washington and other cities. Very likely violence would break out on a scale unequaled in American history. Possibly certain armed forces generals would refuse to take orders, while others did.

Most of our larger cities are governed by Leftist insaniacs. The total breakdown in law and order, riots by crazed Leftist minions, would force the mayors of those “blue” cities to decide. Certainly, depending on how widespread and grave the anarchy was and how lackadaisical the government response was, locally-organized citizens’ militia could be organized to protect homes and businesses. In “red” states there would perhaps be more of a willingness to use the National Guard.

There are interesting parallels with what occurred in Spain during the first few months of 1936 leading up to the Rising of July 18-19. Throughout the 1930s and with rapacity during the first six months of that year, Communists, Socialists, Trotskyites and Anarchists ravaged the entire country, burning churches and convents, raping, assassinating, and executing thousands of citizens considered “too conservative” or right wing. Finally, after the assassination of prominent conservative leader Jose Calvo Sotelo, order disappeared. Portions of the army, local police and militia forces, middle classes, and the significant Catholic Carlist traditionalist movement had had enough.

Despite Leftist and Marxist criticism, the rising back then by conservatives and traditionalists, and their willingness to fight for what they held dear, saved Spain from control by the Soviets and from a fate more vicious and terrible than the Gulag.

No country—no nation—can withstand for any length of time disorder, chaos and internal violence on such a scale. Either order must triumph, or the country, the society, must disintegrate. We have seen that far too often in history.

This is my reasoning for desiring a Trump victory in 2024. For he would undoubtedly provoke and release even more the frenzied, fanatical demons, those vile militants of a counter-reality who bid well to extinguish all which we hold to be good, wholesome, and true—to rupture our connections and linkage to our past and to history and to memory—and to replace them with Evil Incarnate. And just perhaps a previously somnolent populace would be forced to take action.

This could give us perhaps the one and only real opportunity we might have to reverse the abject descent into the Inferno which we now experience. It might well be our last opportunity to beat back what poet William Butler Yeats called (in “The Second Coming,” 1919) the “Spiritus Mundi,” perhaps the Antichrist itself, “a shape with lion body and the head of a man, gaze blank and pitiless as the sun.”

Far too many American conservatives, in the face of such evil, have yet to realize the depth of our predicament. As English Catholic author Hilaire Belloc described it 110 years ago:

“We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.”  (This and That and the Other, 1912, p.282)

I say bring it on, and sooner is probably better than later, for each succeeding month, each passing year, yields more power to Evil and less to the defenders of our civilization.