Category Archives: Conservatism

‘Conservatives’ Fail Litmus Test As Defenders Of ‘Western & Christian Tradition

America, Boyd Cathey, Britain, Christianity, Communism, Conservatism, Constitution, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, States' Rights

By Dr. Boyd Cathey (who, as is his wont, has covered it all—except for one other defining issue on which conservatives have failed miserably: Their gushing support for Mandela and his ANC).

You can tell a lot about a person by the friends he cherishes, and you can intuit much about how a writer thinks on one topic by how he thinks on another, related topic. This surmise is not always true in every case, but, I think it applies in a great majority of situations. Tell me what a person—a distinguished author, a political leader, a cultural icon—believes, his perspective, on this or that significant historical event, and you can usually gather a valid impression of his world view and overarching philosophy.

A few years back I created my own measure, my own test, as it were, to determine on which side of immense and fundamentally unbridgeable divides various writers and authors, politicians, and others come down. It seemed to me that we could take, historically, several major conflicts and wars, that fundamentally shaped not only subsequent history, but also, indelibly, the consciousness, thinking and cultural outlook of succeeding generations, and utilize them as markers.

I came up with the following five:

1) The English Civil War, 1642-1651;

2) The French Revolution, 1789-1799, also including the Napoleonic Period, 1799-1815;

3) The War Between the States, 1861-1865;

4) The Communist Revolution, 1917-1920; and

5) The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.

I won’t dwell at length on my reasons for selecting these conflicts as measures—I will save that discussion for another time. But I will say I believe how we think about them clearly illustrates where a person stands in relation to the accumulated inheritance—that great continuum—of Western and Christian tradition. Respond correctly on all five (as I see it), and you are a staunch defender of that heritage and most probably have been able, in some fashion, to understand the fundamental connection those conflicts have in the context of our civilization and our willingness to defend it.

Obviously, for most self-described “conservatives,” there are at least two “giveaways” in my list, that is, two of the five questions they would very likely answer correctly: about the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution. Most “conservatives,” if queried, would have certainly opposed them.

It becomes harder after that, and, I suggest, even more critical to a determination. Not that many current “conservative” writers or politicians are intimately familiar with the history, causes, and issues surrounding the English Civil War. Yet, I would state most vigorously that issues debated then were, in microcosm and incipiently, some of the issues we continue to debate today, and that a faithful and thinking defender of the continuity of Western tradition must, necessarily, come down on the side of the Royalists, as opposed to Oliver Cromwell’s authoritarian experiment in democracy. King Charles, for all his mistakes and bad decisions, nevertheless, represented the traditions of his country and, as he stated at his famous trial, represented “more the people of England” than the rump “democratic” dictatorship of the Cromwellians and Roundheads.

Back in the 1960s, back when William F. Buckley’s magazine, National Review and Russell Kirk’s journal, Modern Age, were arguably truly conservative, the question concerning the Spanish Civil War would have, likewise, been a giveaway. Almost all conservatives would have viewed that conflict in the light of a much larger, universal conflict between international Communism and those forces opposed to it, and this despite the fact that the anti-Republican Nationalist forces led by Francisco Franco did receive some support from Fascist Italy and Hitler’s Germany (while the Soviet Union not only supported the Republic, but eventually via the Spanish Communist Party eliminated most of its opposition in Spanish Republican ranks). But not today; indeed, many of the dominant “conservatives” of 2017—the Neoconservatives—come down passionately on the side of the socialist Republic, and, employing the linguistic armor of the Left, they attack the Nationalist, Catholic and traditionalist forces that fought against the Republic, as “fascists.”

Finally, there is the War Between the States, and it is here, in this case, where we indeed can separate the true traditionalist conservatives who comprehend and accept the continuum of Western Christian civilization, its virtues, and its authority, and those who have, in reality and to varying degrees, severed themselves from that continuity. It is here that we can range on one side those who accept and participate in that “great chain of being”—that fundamentally religious and hierarchical structure of all matter and life, decreed by God, Himself, and present in our historical consciousness, and those who do not accept it. For support, in some form, of the Confederacy becomes that crucial measure that determines not just a political outlook about states’ rights and the original meaning of the American Constitution. It also demonstrates a vision of reality and of our existence as human beings created by and subservient to God as part of an organic whole, a Creation which must continually be protected and defended against those who would seek to puncture it, or distort its meaning, if not, eventually, to subvert or destroy it.

Certainly, there are those of good will and, let us call it, “invincible ignorance” who have been educated to think that the primary issue in 1861 was slavery, and that Abraham Lincoln was simply reacting to those “rebels” who wished to destroy “the sacred bonds” of Union, while advancing the great humanitarian cause of “freedom.” So much for the caliber and character of our contemporary educational system, not to mention Hollywood’s ideologically tendentious (and mostly successful) attempts to influence us. Yet, that mythology surrounding the Southern Iliad of 1861-1865 will not stand serious cross-examination.

Consider these popular myths and shibboleths:

“The War was about slavery!” Not really accurate: the war aims cited repeatedly by Lincoln and Northern publicists were that the War was to “preserve the Union.” Indeed, if abolition of slavery had been declared as the principle war aim in 1861, most likely a great majority of Union political leaders, not to mention Union soldiers, would have recoiled, and the Northern war effort would most likely have collapsed. It was difficult enough to gain wide support in the North, as it was. Remember, Lincoln was elected with less than 40% of the vote in 1860, and barely gained pluralities in most Northern states.

“Lincoln freed the slaves!” Not so; Lincoln freed not one slave. His Emancipation Proclamation, issued first on September 22, 1862 and finalized on January 1, 1863, supposedly “freeing the slaves,” only applied to those areas not under Union military control or occupation, that is, territory of the independent Southern states. It did not apply to the “slave states” within the Union or controlled by the Union military, including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Thus, Lincoln’s proclamation “freed” slaves where his action had no effect, but left it untouched where he could have “freed” them. Not only that, exactly one month prior to his initial proclamation he had been interviewed by Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune, where he forthrightly stated: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it… What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union….” [August 22, 1861] The amendments to end slavery came after the conclusion of the war and after the death of Lincoln.

And most recently this charge: “Robert E. Lee and other Confederate military leaders who had been in the US Army committed treason by violating their oaths to defend the Union, and Confederate leaders were in rebellion against the legitimately elected government of the United States.”

It is this accusation that has become the ultimate weapon of choice—the “ultima ratio”—for today’s fierce opponents of the various monuments that honor Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, P. G. T. Beauregard, and other Confederate military leaders, and for the belief that they should be taken down. And most especially, it is spewed forth as unassailable gospel by many Neoconservative writers, publicists, pundits, and their less distinguished camp followers in much of the NeverTrump elites of the Republican Party.

Most recently, we have witnessed the spectacle of Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, apparently “channeling” (!) Robert E. Lee and declaring that if Marse Robert were alive today he would gleefully join in the chorus to bring down those monuments honoring Confederate soldiers and leaders. Tell us, Rich, so the great general would be there right beside the “antifa” Marxists and Black Lives Matter vandals, that is, those “new” friends you have made over on the extreme left?

Even more obtuse views come from Mona Charen, a long time Neocon publicist and NeverTrumper, who fears that the GOP is “being taken over by Trumpists and Neo-Confederates”! Perish the thought, Mona!

But it is from the foul mouths of “conservatives” Andrew Bacevitch and Max Boot that the worst venom emits, and, fascinatingly, it could have just as well come from a member of the communist Workers’ World Party as from Bacevitch (who writes for The American Conservative, but voted for Obama twice) or Boot (who was John McCain’s foreign policy advisor during McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign).

Just a few quotes from Bacevitch:

“My complaint about Lee—I admit this to my everlasting shame—was not that he was a slaveholder who in joining the Confederacy fought to preserve slavery. It was that he had thereby engineered the killing of many thousands of American patriots who (whatever their views on slavery and race) wished simply to preserve the Union. At the beginning of the Civil War, Lee famously remarked that he could not bring himself to take up arms against his home state of Virginia. This obliged him to take up arms against the very nation that as a serving officer he had sworn to defend? No less than Benedict Arnold, Robert E. Lee was a traitor. This became, and remains, my firm conviction.”

And then this from Boot:

“…what is it that we are supposed to be grateful to the Confederates for? For seceding from the Union? For, in the case of former U.S. Army officers such as Lee and Jackson, violating their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”? For triggering the most bloody conflict in American history? For fighting to keep their fellow citizens in bondage?”

Now, these individuals are, supposedly, well-educated, with valuable university degrees, writers of some (I would submit, undeserved) repute. I do not believe they fall into the category of invincible ignorance; I do not believe that will suffice as an explanation or excuse for the hatred-laced and furious animus they demonstrate against a Lee or any other faithful military leader of the Confederacy. Rather, they fall clearly on that other side of my unbridgeable divide—they implicitly, through this major indicator and precisely because they are educated, reject the continuum of Western Christian civilization. They may protest not, but, in effect and through their views, they effectively do so. And, as such, they are the enemies of those who do defend that great chain of being, that European inheritance of those who went before us, the legacy of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome. Thus, they must be called out and their vision denounced for what it is: the “Fifth Column” of the progressivist Revolution that seeks to radically remake the world and man…and that remade image is not one that comes from God.

Two years ago, in 2015, in response to the hysteria (including the actions of the invincibly stupid Nikki Haley) concerning the display of Confederate flags after the criminal acts of Dylann Roof, I authored a long essay, first published in the Confederate Veteran magazine, and then picked up by the Abbeville Institute. Much of the ludicrous reasoning offered by Bacevitch, Boot, Lowry, and Charen (and other Neocons) I attempted to answer back then, in particular the utterly ridiculous charge that General Lee somehow violated his oath to defend the Constitution as a member of the US Army. Accordingly, I reproduce portions of that essay today.

Lastly, Dr. Lee Cheek has written a shorter, but fine, defense of General Lee, and I pass that on as well.

Once again, I ask your indulgence: there is much here, but in these critical times, it is incumbent upon us to be informed…and prepared for the battles ahead.

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~ DR. BOYD D. CATHEY is an Unz Review columnist, as well as a Barely a Blog contributor, whose work is easily located on this site under the “BAB’s A List” search category. Dr. Cathey earned an MA in history at the University of Virginia (as a Thomas Jefferson Fellow), and as a Richard M Weaver Fellow earned his doctorate in history and political philosophy at the University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain. After additional studies in theology and philosophy in Switzerland, he taught in Argentina and Connecticut before returning to North Carolina. He was State Registrar of the North Carolina State Archives before retiring in 2011. He writes for The Unz Review, The Abbeville Institute, Confederate Veteran magazine, The Remnant, and other publications in the United States and Europe on a variety of topics, including politics, social and religious questions, film, and music.

Charlottesville: The Facts vs. The Fiction Of Fake News By Jack Kerwick

BAB's A List, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Propaganda, Race

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Particularly disappointing were “conservative” commentators and showboating politicians who appeared every bit as immersed in the Big Media bubble that they accuse their “liberal” counterparts of inhabiting.—JACK KERWICK

As everyone who cares now knows, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that was held this past Saturday “turned violent.”

It “turned violent” just as did so many of Donald Trump’s campaign rallies, the “free speech” rallies that have been held over the last seven or so months, and Trump’s inauguration.

Of course, it is only within the fantasyland of the Fake News media that any of these rightist (or pseudo-rightist) events “turned violent.” The latter is one of the many stock phrases that Fake Media trots out whenever it is leftist “counter-demonstrators”—another of its terms of choice—crash the events in question with every intention of stopping them by whichever means necessary.

The happenings that unfolded in Charlottesville on Saturday fall all too neatly into a pattern stretching back for the better part of two years, a pattern that has become nearly an ironclad law.

Listening to the coverage of Charlottesville, one could be forgiven for thinking that those in Big Media, whether “liberal” or “conservative,” were oblivious to the existence of this phenomenon. Commentators struck the unprejudiced observer as either scandalously ignorant or just as scandalously (but predictably) dishonest. Particularly disappointing were “conservative” commentators and showboating politicians who appeared every bit as immersed in the Big Media bubble that they accuse their “liberal” counterparts of inhabiting.

First, while there were indeed some self-styled neo-Nazis that were present among the rally’s attendees, they were, by all appearances, a tiny minority. And they constituted a far smaller fraction of the totality of the group than, say, that which on multiple occasions comprised the totality of Black Lives Matter demonstrators that marched through busy city streets shouting such murderous slogans as, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” and “Pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon!”

Second, the Charlottesville demonstrators organized their rally months in advance of its occurrence. Their application for a permit to march was initially denied. To its eternal credit, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a left-leaning organization, came to the organizers’ defense and helped them to appeal this decision. A federal judge eventually ruled that it was illegal for the city of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia to prevent people from exercising their Constitutional right to peacefully assemble.

And this is a crucial point: Those in attendance at the “United the Right” rally did peacefully assemble. They had speakers lined up to speak at Emancipation Park (formerly known as Lee Park).

Hordes of “Anti-fascist” (Antifa) and “Black Lives Matter” agitators assembled to “bash the fash.” As always, it is they who initiated the violence. Even the Washington Post admits that it was the fear of leftist violence that provoked Governor Terry McCauliffe’s State of Emergency. Yet it was this move legitimizing the “Heckler’s Veto” that rendered a lawful event unlawful.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

Third, but even then, it wasn’t the rally attendees whose rally was being sabotaged who unleashed the violence. According to reports of those who were on the ground, police turned violent upon some of those who, evidently shocked upon hearing that before things even began they were ended, didn’t leave the area as quickly as the officers—and their superiors—would have preferred. The boys in blue sprayed mace at rally-goers and kicked them.

Then, the police, upon breaking up the group, redirected them out of the park through the sea of Antifa and BLM terrorists who proceeded to besiege them with an arsenal of weaponry, from bricks and bottles filled with cement to baseball bats, bows and arrows, urine, feces, bear mace, and—this is no lie—a “makeshift flame thrower from a spray can.”

A flamethrower.

Fourth, a life was indeed lost on Saturday. A counter-demonstrator was killed when someone who was allegedly one of the demonstrators plowed his car into a mob that had filled the street. The suspect has since been identified as James Alex Fields, a 20 year-old white man from Ohio. About 19 or so others were also injured.

This is the one event of the day on which the media have fixated. No doubt, it was the most serious of events, given that a person was killed. But insofar as it is abstracted and isolated from the context of violence that, to repeat, the Antifa and BLMers had been unleashing long before it happened, it is Fake News in the extreme, a tactic by which the day’s violence can be dropped exclusively upon the shoulders of those who exhaustively pursued legal measures to express themselves.

Confessedly, when I initially heard that “counter-demonstrators” had been struck, I immediately assumed that the motorist’s car was surrounded and his life imminently imperiled. This was the most reasonable assumption given that Antifa and BLM regularly block thoroughfares and subject to violence those who they regard as “fascist” and “racist.”

If the driver is guilty of malice, then, being the proponent of capital punishment that I am, I submit that Fields will deserve nothing less than death for his crime. Yet there is evidence that my initial suspicion is correct. Although he is being blasted as a homicidal neo-Nazi, what we do know for sure of Fields is that he was an active duty service member of the United States Army. Until Saturday, he worked in law enforcement as a security officer, and he has no history of violence.

And, according to a writer for the The Hill, those Charlottesville police officers who she spoke with think that Fields may have not acted with malice, but from fear for his life. Video seems to show a pedestrian hitting Fields’ car with a bat.

The point, though, is that no one knows for sure, at this point, all that happened.

Yet none of the moral exhibitionists who unleashed the tsunami of denunciations of the “white supremacists” (there were some unsavory characters in attendance, to be sure, but many present, and certainly the event’s organizers, explicitly disavow this moniker), uttered a peep concerning the brutality of those who started the violence.

Mike Cernovich, a Jew who reportedly declined an invitation to speak at the Charlottesville rally, reminded his followers this weekend of when he attended a White House press briefing some months back and called out leftist journalists for refusing to disavow Antifa. They still refuse to do so.

Nor do they dare to wax indignant over the violence of BLM.

To those who object to any of my assertions, I challenge you to present the video footage of “white supremacists” initiating violence against the thousands of masked agitators who came to greet them with weapons. In this day and age, when everyone has a camera, it shouldn’t be hard to find—if it exists.

That there are plenty of reasons for objecting to both this rally and the ideology that is associated with it is grist for another mill. The purpose here is to establish that the consensus among the “respectable” folks that “white supremacists” are responsible for the bloodshed in Charlottesville while the “counter-demonstrators” are victims or bystanders is a Gargantuan Lie that every lover of truth, decency, and, yes, Constitutional liberty must expose for what it is.

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Beliefnet columnist Jack Kerwick has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master’s degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. He teaches philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.

UPDATED: Kippah Or Hijab, The Statue of Liberty Is NOT A Symbol Of Immigration Or Immigrants

America, Conservatism, Free Speech, History, IMMIGRATION, Liberty, Logic

Some Democrat, Rep. J. Luis Correa, hung a painting in his office of the Statue of Liberty wearing a hijab.

Conservatives are outraged. Some, like Ms. Pamela Geller, say the “Painting Is Offensive to Every Immigrant Fleeing Sharia Oppression.”

But consider: Would the Statue of Liberty wearing a kippah be more correct, less offensive? What about the Statue of Liberty draped like a Buddhist monk?

The philosophically correct point should be that the Statue of Liberty isn’t a symbol for immigrants or of immigration; it’s an American symbol. It should take on no foreign garb, however philosophically appropriate an immigrant may think his traditional dress is.

Of course, freedom of speech means you draw whatever floats your boat.

This students art shows the #USA is her country too. https://t.co/hmkeSkUjNP

— Rep. Lou Correa (@RepLouCorrea) August 9, 2017

UPDATE (8/11): Facebook thread.

With 2 Exceptions, Fox News Is A Filter For Deep-State Orthodoxy

BAB's A List, Christianity, Conservatism, Government, Media, Military, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy

As are Modern Age and National Review, once flagship publications of classical conservatism, writes Dr. Boyd D. Cathey

As we have seen now for the last seven months something approximating a massive, multi-faceted, “soft” coup d’etat has been underway against President Donald Trump and, most especially, against his agenda. That attempt to depose, or, at the very least, “tame” or control the president is feverish, virulent and visible. Those involved in this coup effort are termed the “Deep State,” that is, those groups and their allies who have been entrenched in this country’s seats of political and economic power for decades, and who have hitherto controlled its politics, it economy, its culture, and serve as “gatekeepers” for anyone who hopes to actually “succeed” on a national level.

The late Dr. Samuel Francis identified these forces as “managerial elites,” largely unelected power brokers, financiers, life-long politicians and permanent bureaucrats ensconced in government agencies, lobbying organizations, consultants, and now, prominently, those who dominate the media, Hollywood, most of academia and the educational establishment. As he details in his posthumous magnum opus, Leviathan, we now live in a “managerial state,” where largely unseen managers and unelected elites dictate our politics, control our economy, and set the standards for our popular culture.

The Deep State is bipartisan and incorporates not just the raving mad Democrats, but also Republican leadership and many of its Congressional representatives, as well as much of the leadership of what euphemistically is labeled “the conservative movement.” The significant characteristic about the so-called establishment conservative and Republican “opposition” to the more leftist elements of the Deep State is that while these “conservatives” generally offer different approaches to national issues, which they claim are, variously, based on “free enterprise” or “individual choice,” in fact, their goals, whether in domestic policy and civil rights (e.g., acceptance of same sex marriage, gender equality, support for “moderate feminism,” etc.) or in foreign policy (e.g., imposition of American-style liberal democracy, equality, economic control, etc.), are essentially and eventually the same as those of the traditional Left.

Let me offer some examples.

Fox News enjoys a reputation as a “conservative media outlet.” Yet, increasingly, on Rupert Murdoch’s news network there are examples that a Deep State framework enjoys growing influence. The methodology and approach to issues may seem, at first, to differ from the extreme leftist nostrums; but, then, take a closer look. Turn the television remote to Fox News at certain times of the day (afternoons), and watch Shepard Smith, or, later in the day, behold the Fox All-Stars. Smith, openly gay, is an outright “Trump hater” who has on several occasions while doing the news called the president a “liar” (in his news “reports”).

Charles Krauthammer and A. B. Stoddard among the All-Stars in the early evening are notorious semi-NeverTrumpers, and even if they appear occasionally to offer faint praise and plaudits for the president in the name of “fairness,” their presence represents the Neoconservative strategy of essentially demanding the president conform to their template and, thus, to their filtering. And so, the recent announcement that the Trump administration was cutting off its training and aid to those vaunted “Syrian moderates” (who have been identified as actual terrorists), has been met with screams of horror and condemnation from several Fox “military analysts”—foaming-at-the-mouth Colonel Ralph Peters and retired general Jack Keane, both zealous advocates of sending American boys to fight to impose liberal democracy and equality in every backwater desert oasis or impenetrable jungle on the face of the globe.

Of course, Fox continues to offer more pro-Trump coverage earlier in the mornings, or on Tucker Carlson and Hannity later at night. But the trend—and the balancing act—should be a cause of concern: just how long will Rupert Murdoch permit Tucker Carlson to invite Professor Stephen Cohen onto his program to puncture holes in the “Russians Did It!” canard and advocate a more rational, positive and cooperative approach to the Kremlin? Hannity has not gone that far, and seems to partake in the dominant anti-Russian narrative (but with the Russkies aiding Hillary and not Trump), but how long will Fox permit him to criticize fellow Fox personality, Smith, as he has recently done?

An even more indicative example comes in the recent pages of the Modern Age quarterly. I have mentioned this esteemed conservative journal previously, making comments about its apparent lurch to the cultural and political left. I began subscribing to it more than fifty years (!) ago when I was still in high school, and I have waited expectantly for each issue since then (even when overseas in university or teaching). Founded by my mentor, Dr. Russell Kirk, in the late 1950s, Modern Age was to be the intellectual journal for American conservatives. And what was refreshing about it was that it was open to the various strands of conservative thinking: you would turn its pages to see a long-running, vigorous debate between the great Southern, pro-Confederate writer Mel Bradford and Claremont professor Harry Jaffa over the anti-egalitarian nature of the Declaration of Independence and whether or not Lincoln was a true conservative (Bradford, in my view, won that debate hands down). You would read traditionalist Catholic Frederick Wilhelmsen on public orthodoxy and the inherent problems of a “secular establishment.” Whole issues were dedicated to a defense of Southern tradition and critiques of industrial capitalism (from a traditionalist viewpoint).

But, concurrent with the take-over of the older conservative movement by those unrepentant refugees from the Marxist Left, the Neoconservatives, Modern Age, too, began, it appears, its own slow turn, its “apertura a sinistra.” Writers like Bradford no longer appeared in its pages, and my friend Professor Paul Gottfried, arguably the most significant “old Right” author (with twelve books in multiple languages) in the world today, was dropped from its masthead.

The most recent issue, Summer 2017, arrived in my mailbox yesterday. It is dedicated to higher education and the assault by the Left on free inquiry at the collegiate level. There is, of course, much of value in the several articles on that topic, including a piece by Sir Roger Scruton; but there are also more of those “red flags” that I noticed in the past several issues. Leafing through, I noticed that author Thomas S. Hibbs, in his essay defending the liberal arts, praises black revolutionary and zealous abolitionist Frederick Douglass (pp. 45-48). Of course, his object is to illustrate the importance of a well-rounded education, but the use of Douglass as an example is troubling, or should be, to traditional conservatives who understand Douglass’s revolutionary activities 155 years ago. In summing up Hibbs’ essay, the now deceased editor of the quarterly Philip Augustine Lawler writes of “the wholly exemplary Frederick Douglass as evidence that skills themselves are unrealistically empty when artificially detached from questions of character.” (p. 74) This about a man who, although married, engaged in various extra-matrimonial sexual liaisons, including with extremist British suffragette Julia Griffiths and German Marxist activist, Ottilie Assing, who certainly had an influence on him.

Later in the summer issue we find a review by Eve Tushnet of a dystopian novel, Jerusalem, by author Alan Moore. But it is not so much the novel that catches my attention; it is Tushnet, who is identified (p. 92) as the author of Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith. I have not read the book, save for a blurb describing that it attempts to chart a “third way” between total acceptance of Church doctrine and open sexual rebellion. I do not propose to offer a personal condemnation here. Rather, I simply comment that under the editorship and aegis of Russell Kirk—of the older Modern Age—this would not have occurred, that the overriding purpose of the quarterly as an outright defender of Western tradition, would have not allowed for it.

But, then, this is the age when the “conservative movement” now fully embraces same sex marriage and “conservative” Jonah Goldberg touts same sex marriage as a “conservative” institution, and Guy Benson, James Kirchik, Milo Yianopoulous, and others include it as the latest and laudatory accomplishment of “equality.”

As in the past few issues of Modern Age, the summer issue includes the perfunctory sniping at the president, as “willful” and questioning whether the established “structures” can “restrain [his] power.” (p. 86) Of course, this only mirrors the even harsher comments of David French and Kevin Williamson in the (formerly conservative!) National Review and the NeverTrumpism of Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standard: “Listen, Donald, if you expect to get anywhere in DC, you had better listen to us, and mend your ways!”

The Deep State is not, thus, monolithic; it operates often with a wink and a nod, its adherents often competing among themselves, at times offering different routes and diverse solutions to problems—but, essentially, visualizing a more or less common goal. Those objectives are not those of an older generation of conservatives …. nor do they encompass the beliefs and values of millions of fly-over country Americans left behind by the “two-coast” establishment.

Last November, as if a sleeping force awakened from its deep slumber, millions of Americans—those deplorables and “bitter clingers”—arose and voted, as if their lives depended on it, for a radical course change. Intuitively, they understood that whatever real authority over their personal lives—much less over the direction of the nation—they still had, that it was slipping away ineluctably and perhaps irretrievably. They voted for a bull-in-a-china shop, someone to “drain the swamps,” someone unconventional. They understood that he was an imperfect and flawed vessel who operated outside conventions and approved Deep State norms; indeed, that was one of the major reasons they supported him. And down deep, they also comprehended that if he were elected, that the process to get his agenda and promises enacted, to even get a hearing, would be messy and extremely difficult…almost a Sisyphean task!

The results after six months are, admittedly, mixed. Some of the former NeverTrumpers have cloyingly clawed their way into various perches within the administration, intent on shaping its focus and outreach. Others of their ilk remain “chirping sectaries” on Fox and in the DC-New York punditry. And over on the Left wing of the Deep State establishment, the raving Democrats and the Mainstream Media carry on daily assaults, carefully massaging and then leaking via their embedded agents every bit of evidence, manufactured or otherwise, they can amass, in their unsavory effort to undo last November 8, with now the powerful weapon of a Special Counsel to insure that the attacks—even without any real evidentiary support—go on until, they hope, either Trump leaves office on his own accord, or is removed.

This, then, is the United States in 2017, the result of a century and more of acceptance of the Idea of Progress and of an historical and social progressivist narrative which shapes our outlook and dominates our politics, our schools, our entertainment, our religion, and admits no dissent. The open disaccord manifested last November cannot be allowed to interrupt its unstoppable advance. This is the notice we have received: “Accept our rule and our power, or be destroyed.” And it is up to us to say with the great St. Pius X:

“…that the great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Power which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer. […] Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.”

And we must answer, as did St. Pius’s predecessor, Leo XIII: “Christians are born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God willing, the triumph: ‘Have confidence; I have overcome the world’.”

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