Category Archives: Political Philosophy

The Universality Of The Confederate Cause

Boyd Cathey, Christianity, Democracy, Europe, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Political Philosophy, States' Rights

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey’s
SPEECH for CONFEDERATE FLAG DAY, LOUISBURG, March 19, 2017

Thank you. I appreciate that kind introduction. I always like being over in Franklin County. You see, my mother’s was a “Perry,” and although my branch remained up in Perquimans County for about eighty years after the first Perrys came to this part of North Carolina, I have been assured by family genealogists and by  my own research that I’m kin to most of the folks with that last name in this area. So, in a way, I’m a Franklin County boy, and I also count many good folks out this way as dear friends.

Today is a special day, and it is special not just for the citizens of Franklin County. It is special because here—right here in Louisburg—156 years ago, the first Confederate flag was designed and flown. Here, on this spot, began the epic of Americans attempting not only to keep and preserve the republic handed down to them as a legacy by their grandfathers, but also the effort by force of arms to repel the broader attempt by what Europeans have called “the Revolution,” or, what I call global progressivism, to overcome and defeat one of the last remnants of true Western Christian tradition. That remnant was the Confederate South.

Let me explain with some historical context.

I begin with the French Revolution. The intellectual currents that produced that upheaval were already percolating during the early 18th century. In its eventual aims that revolution was not just a violent effort to destroy the French monarchy. No, its intellectual leadership and its practical executors were intent on dethroning the power of religious tradition and, in effect, rejecting the belief in a God Who was Lord of all Creation. In His place they would enthrone what they called “the goddess of Reason” in the heart of Paris, in Notre Dame Cathedral.

Of course, these were the extremists; not all the revolutionaries would go quite so far or advocate such radical measures.  But all of those who soon denominated themselves as “liberals” would accept the primacy of reason and place man at the center of the universe, in effect, displacing God. I think we should keep that fundamental point in mind as we look at subsequent history on into the 19th century.

It is true the Founders of our American republic were familiar with the French radicals, and, although a few read them and expressed a mild enthusiasm for a few of their ideas, most of the Founders of our old republic rejected the radical democracy and the extremely destructive ideas of that revolution.  In a real sense, the formerly loyal colonists left Great Britain and declared their independence to vindicate their traditional rights and duties as patriotic Englishmen. That is, to use the words of the great historian, Bernard Bailyn, ours was a “revolution averted, not made.”

Our Constitution was configured as a very conservative document.  The paramount rights of the various states were fully recognized. And what we might call “liberal democracy” and across-the-board equality were avoided.

What do I mean by that?

First, the Founders set up a system that was balanced, based deeply in English law. Three branches of government were established as check-and-balance safeguards against tyranny. Only those citizens who really had an interest in the new commonwealth would have a real voice in its governance.  It was up to each state to decide the qualifications for voting and for holding public office. And most states had a religious qualification for elected office holders.  For instance, in North Carolina up until 1868 you had to be a Christian to hold elective office.  As for voting, most states required voters to hold some kind of property—that is, they had to have some actual and real interest in the country. Our forefathers figured that only if you had an interest—an involvement—could you be truly trusted to cast a vote.

Let me point out, parenthetically, that the Supreme Court never declared such conditions and qualifications illegal or unconstitutional in the 19th century. Only in our benighted modern era have such decisions been made. But it is equally evident and clear that the Founders had no intention whatsoever to in any way impede religion or the states’ establishing Christianity in their respective territories. To make that assertion is to reveal an abysmal ignorance of history.

Let us jump forward to 1860. Up until that time the general consensus had been that the old republican system established by the Constitution of 1787 was and should be the basis for American life. But beginning early in the life of our republic there were a few voices—not many, but a few—that advocated greater centralization and more radical changes. Even in the Northern states, those voices were a minority for most of our ante-bellum period. Yet, those voices who thought that way were loud and boisterous.

Certainly, the issue of slavery entered this discussion, beginning in 1820 with the debates over the Missouri Compromise. But even then, the issue for most members of Congress was not slavery itself, but the power, both economic and political, of the states. It was the great Nathaniel Macon, North Carolina’s only Speaker of the House of Representatives, who saw clearly what was brewing.  For him the issue boiled down to the power of the Federal government to dictate to the states the disposition of their property.  If the Federal government could do that, he said, then a war between the states—that is, between those who believed in states’ rights and those who did not—would be the eventual result.

In 1861 North Carolina very reluctantly left the Federal union, but only after the Lincoln administration had demanded troops to invade South Carolina.  As members of the North Carolina Secession Convention declared, if a free state, a former colony, had freely entered the Federal union, then it could, with justice, freely leave that union if there were serious and grave reasons.  Indeed, many of the original thirteen colonies actually said so in the acts of joining the union.

When North Carolina seceded on May 20, 1861, it did so on the anniversary date of its 1775 Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. Our state declared that the bond of union was dissolved and that as a free people we were re-vindicating our rights as citizens under the original American Constitution and not the one abused and scorned by the Lincoln administration.

Now let us return to my earlier discussion of what I termed “the Revolution.” And let’s examine how the actions taken in 1861 and our Southern crusade were viewed worldwide. The efforts of the Southern Confederacy on the battlefield, 1861-1865, were seen by many traditionalists in Europe as part of a global counter-revolution—the resistance—against the revolutionary poison unleashed by the French Revolution.

When I studied in Spain for my doctorate and later in Switzerland, I began to read and examine documents in various archives detailing the enthusiastic support that many persons, writers, even sovereigns, in Europe gave to the Confederacy. Thousands—yes, thousands—of volunteers came to the South to fight for the Confederacy.

Let me give some fascinating and incredible examples.

First, probably very few Americans know anything about the old Kingdom of Naples.  It ceased to exist in early 1861, after the forces of the liberal Kingdom of Piedmont-Savoy defeated it, thereby establishing the modern Kingdom of Italy. The Kingdom of Naples was hated with a passion by European liberals. For them it was backward, too bound to tradition and custom, too undemocratic, too hierarchical.  After an heroic fight the last Neapolitan army was defeated in February of 1861.

And then, guess what happened?  As many as perhaps 2,000 of those soldiers of the old, traditionalist Kingdom of Naples got on boats and sailed for New Orleans to volunteer to fight for the new Confederacy. Many of them formed the Italian Brigade that fought valiantly in Louisiana, along the Mississippi, and most notably at the Battle of Mansfield. Many lie buried in Southern soil, honored by our SCV compatriots down in Louisiana and Mississippi. Some returned to Italy.

Back in 1977 I visited a museum and revered historic site outside the city of Naples. There, over the hallowed memorial to Neapolitan Confederates, flew side by side a Third National Confederate Flag and the Royal Standard of the old Kingdom of Naples—gone maybe, but not forgotten.

That story is not well known, but it is not unique. In Spain I discovered that as many as 1,000 Spanish Traditionalists, or Carlists, who rose up against Liberalism in their own country under the motto, “God, Country, our Regional Rights, and our King,” came to Texas to volunteer for the Confederacy. They came by way of Mexico and fought in Confederate ranks at Sabine Pass and at other battles. According to Spanish military historian, David Odalric de Caixal, some enlisted in the Louisiana Tigers. Others found their way as far afield as the 34th and 41st Tennessee regiments. A few even ended up in the Army of Northern Virginia, where General A. P. Hill called them “his rough, tattered lions sent by Providence.”

In Spain one of my dearest friends, the Baron of Montevilla, had an ancestor who traveled to Texas to fight for the Confederacy. When his ancestor returned to Spain, an acquaintance asked him: “How can you justify fighting for two lost causes?” To which my friend’s ancestor replied: “A lost cause is never really lost if the fight is for what is true and what is right.”

Additional volunteers for the Confederate cause came from France and other European countries. We all should remember the great Prussian officer, Johann Heros von Borcke, who rode gallantly with General Jeb Stuart and distinguished himself throughout the war. Returning to Prussia after the war, he continued to fly our flag at his estate until his death. And who can forget Major General the Prince Camille de Polignac, from an old and noble traditionalist French family, who came and on the death of General Alfred Mouton, assumed command of Mouton’s division at the Battle of Mansfield? Among his troops were Texas frontiersmen, and apparently many of them could not pronounce his last name. So they called him “Gen’ral Polecat.”  But they loved him just the same, and would have followed him to the gates of Hell. Interestingly, the Prince de Polignac was the last surviving Confederate Major General, passing away in 1913.

In recent years it has been our Battle Flag that has flown as the people of East Germany tore down the Berlin Wall.  And today in the centuries-old Russian-speaking area of Ukraine—the Donbas—as those valiant people attempt to secede from an oppressive, centralized and imposed Ukrainian state, they fly a replica of our Battle Flag as a sign of the defense of their liberties and their belief in their Christian and Russian heritage.

What I am saying, my friends, is that our cause, the cause of the Confederacy, the cause symbolized by that flag that flies here today, was and is a cause that has universal meaning.

In the eyes of European traditionalists the Southern Confederacy represented the finest of Western Christian heritage. They could identify with leaders like Lee, Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, Stuart, and others. Of course, most of those European supporters were Catholic, not Protestant, but they shared a fundamental world view of an order under God, a belief in Divine and Natural Law, an understanding that society is composed of families in communities, and an allegiance to the idea of states’ rights, which they called subsidiarity.  That is, what can be done on a lower level of government, very simply should be done on that level closer to the people, and not on a higher level.

But those Europeans also saw the heroic virtue of the South, and it was an heroic virtue based in the chivalry and honor of Christian tradition.  It was opposed to the growing Liberalism in the North.  That Liberalism advanced a progressivist view that history was an unfolding evolution of human perfectibility, throwing off older beliefs and what they called the “myths” and chains of tradition. Whether those boys in butternut and gray who sank deep in the cold mud trenches at Petersburg completely realized it or not, they were defending Western Christian tradition against Liberal Modernism. And thus they stood with their traditionalist brothers in Europe and elsewhere who also rejected the progressivist vision of history.

My friends, for 152 years we have watched as the results of Southern military defeat have metastasized like a voracious cancer. Sixty years ago many Southerners felt that we had reached a real understanding with the Progressivists. We were mostly left alone; we had a thriving literature with America’s greatest writers in our midst. Hollywood made films that treated us at least with some sympathy. Our colleges taught real history. Although still suffering the deep economic consequences of military defeat, our people had made giant strides of recovery.

All that changed beginning in the 1960s. Since then, not only here in our beloved Southland, but in America generally, the Progressivist revolution has taken aim, and the targets are many: our politics—-our entertainment industry—-our educational system—-and our churches. It is as if a giant infection and subversion have taken place. Indeed, I would assert that they have taken place, and, sadly, most of our fellow citizens have been lulled by the false victories by politicians who promise us one thing, but once in office, go along to get along with a powerful progressivist establishment.  And that establishment will accept no dissent.

We are at ground zero in this cultural and political war.  And although our particular conflict concerns basically our Southern heritage, our legacy, and our symbols, it also involves, as I said earlier, a broader battle for Western Christian civilization, itself.

When I was in Spain pursuing graduate studies, my good friend called the Southern soldiers who gave their lives at Gettysburg, Bentonville, and other battle sites—he called them “Paladins of Christian Civilization.” I think that is very true.

Remember fifty years ago when Raleigh’s Channel 5, WRAL-TV, would sign off by playing “Dixie”? The times have changed radically.  The Revolution has made a lot of progress since then. Now our flags and precious relics are hidden away in dusty museums, our songs are banned, our symbols are labeled as “hateful.”

So it is for us, under that flag, to redouble our commitment to those principles that our ancestors held dear and for which they bled and died. That may mean that we lose friends or even lose positions. It may even mean that we must spend years, perhaps decades, in a kind of dark catacomb. But if we are faithful to those principles and to that memory—if we are faithful to the precious inheritance that we have received—-if we are faithful to that flag and what it stands for—-then we shall have done our duty.

For our principles are timeless and they only fall if we relinquish the field of battle. We cannot and must not.

As I grow older, the words of my Spanish friend’s ancestor resound constantly in my ears: “A lost cause is never truly lost if the fight is for what is true and what is right.”

That is our obligation before the long shadow of our ancestors and before the judgment of Almighty God. We can and should do no less.

Thank you, and God bless the South!

*****

References:

David Odalric de Caixal, in the Spanish journal, La Santa Causa. Accessed online at: http://www.geocities.ws/boinasrojas/impresa.html.

M. Estella, “Un historiador investiga la presencia de carlistas en la Guerra de Secession,” Diario de Navarra [Pamplona], December 9, 2011. Accessed online at: http://www.diariodenavarra.es/noticias/navarra/tierra_estella_valdizarbe/un_historiador

_investiga_presencia_carlistas_guerra_secesion_57393_1006.html

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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.

UPDATE IV (10/23): Bannon: ‘The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over’

Donald Trump, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Political Philosophy

“’The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,’ Bannon said Friday, shortly after confirming his departure. ‘We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.’”

… Bannon may have resigned, but it was clear from the time that Kelly became chief of staff that Bannon’s remaining time in the West Wing was going to be short. Kelly undertook a study of the West Wing’s operating system, and let it be known that he kept hearing about Bannon as a disruptive force and a source of leaks aimed at undermining his rivals. One of those, with whom Kelly is deeply in sympathy, is National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, who clashed forcefully with Bannon over such policies as strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

It is plainly Bannon’s view that his departure is not a defeat for him personally, but for the ideology he’d urged upon the president, as reflected in Trump’s provocative inaugural address—in which he spoke of self-dealing Washington politicians, and their policies that led to the shuttered factories and broken lives of what he called “American carnage.” Bannon co-authored that speech (and privately complained that it had been toned down by West Wing moderates like Ivanka and Jared)…

The writing’s on the wall, Deplorables. As Steve Bannon goes, so goes the promise of America First.

Bannon says that he once confidently believed in the prospect of success for that version of the Trump presidency he now says is over. Asked what the turning point was, he says, “It’s the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success on this. They’re not populists, they’re not nationalists, they had no interest in his program. Zero. It was a half-hearted attempt at Obamacare reform, it was no interest really on the infrastructure, they’ll do a very standard Republican version of taxes.

“What Trump ran on—border wall, where is the funding for the border wall, one of his central tenets, where have they been? Have they rallied around the Perdue-Cotton immigration bill? On what element of Trump’s program, besides tax cuts—which is going to be the standard marginal tax cut—where have they rallied to Trump’s cause? They haven’t.”

Bannon believes that those who will now try to influence Trump will hope to turn him in a sharply different direction.

“I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he says. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency—and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville—his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”

MORE: “Bannon: ‘The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over.‘”

UPDATE I (8/19):

UPDATE II (8/21):

Always Ivanka.


And Jared.

UPDATE III (8/22): Rationalization is a defense mechanism, in this case against disappointment. Steve Bannon said the presidency was over. Believe him.

“Trump has systematically elevated outsiders in his operation while alienating or firing allies like Bannon and Priebus.”


More ridiculousness from The Donald:

UPDATE (10/23): Stephen Miller Still Standing:

Comments Off on UPDATE IV (10/23): Bannon: ‘The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over’

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Yes To Calexit—And To Any Voluntary Exit From Lincoln’s Union

Federalism, Political Philosophy, States' Rights

Tucker Carlson interviewed a Calexit leader about California seceding from the Union.

Tucker: “Why would The Union let California go without a WAR?”

Heavens! Let California, or any state, secede. Political divorce!

A natural right is not nullified by force. From the fact that the Yankees won in 1865; it doesn’t follow that the right to peacefully secede evaporated. Might doesn’t make right.

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“Secession, Not Convention, Offers Salvation”

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’.”

*****

~ 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.