Standing Against the Totalitarian Horde, At Home and Abroad

A few weeks ago a close acquaintance of mine wrote an impassioned letter intended for publication in a South Carolina newspaper. Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, his letter was not printed by any media source in the state….Not because it was crude or appeared to incite violence; not because he employed foul language or insulting attacks against opponents. Indeed, the letter was well-written, well-argued, and based on widely-available facts.

But in the contemporary USA, intelligent, well-expressed presentations, even those factually based are no longer guaranteed a hearing if they come from someone who is not suitably “woke” or who does not buy into the constantly-advancing and society-altering Leftist tsunami. In fact, what we see and have experienced here in America in the last several decades has been a dedicated, largely successful effort to shut down, neutralize, or buy off any dissent from or disagreement with the actions and goals of the DC elites, the entrenched Managerial State and its engorged tentacles which now extend inexorably into the lives of nearly every American. The First Amendment be damned, if it doesn’t support those ideological aims.

Richard Hines, the author of the letter, is a long-time political player, not only in the Sandlapper State, but also on the national level. Over the years he has served in the South Carolina legislature, co-chaired a Ronald Reagan for president campaign, and was then appointed to various White House administrative posts in the Transportation Department and General Services Administration. After Reagan’s tenure, Richard formed a consulting firm to represent a diversity of clients in Washington.

But it is his role as a steadfast and outspoken defender of the old South, its history, its culture, and its symbols and monuments which has strongly characterized his subsequent years. As a fearless champion of Southern heritage he has expended tremendous energy and his own fortune in support of those ideals. He and I were both contributing editors to the old, and much-lamented, Southern Partisan Magazine. That is where we first met forty years ago, and our friendship since then has been based on our shared commitment to the traditions and culture of our native region.

Indeed, he has been bitterly attacked precisely for his positions and effective activity. In 2005 The Nation, perhaps the country’s pre-eminent far left journal, launched a vicious attack on my friend, terming him “Lobbyist for the Lost Cause,” parading its shoddy attempt at opposition research before its fanatical readers. But such assaults have not deterred him or his efforts.

Most recently Richard co-authored with Dr. Paul Gottfried in Chronicles Magazine an eloquent piece on the historic and artistically impressive Confederate monument in the Arlington National Cemetery (“The Fate of Moses Ezekiel and His Memorial to the Confederate Dead,” Chronicles, November 2022). The monument is surrounded by the graves of hundreds of Confederate veterans, buried with honor on the grounds of what once was the home of Robert E. Lee. No matter that the sculptor, Moses Ezekiel, was an internationally famed sculptor and that the monument is intended as a symbol of national reunification. The Feds, with bi-partisan support, decided that symbol of reunion and honor to the dead was a symbol of racism and “white nationalism” and had to go.

But Richard is also keenly aware that issues such as the survival of a Southern culture and heritage are inextricably bound up with the direction the American nation seems to be taking globally. Not only in the United States with its grassroots MAGA movement, but also in most European and other countries, there is a rising tide of popular opposition to this increasing control by unseen, unaccountable elites and bureaucrats, whether in the myriad of offices and agencies in Washington, DC, or in faceless buildings in Bruxelles and Geneva.

One uniting position for the various popular opposition movements is the return of power and authority to the people and, as well, to the historic regions which compose those countries—the application of the old principle of subsidiarity—that what can be done on a lower level of society should not be the responsibility of a higher level of governance. The modern state has become a Behemoth, unanswerable to the populace, incapable of being dislodged, as if an unapproachable cocoon of wealth and privilege. This “new aristocracy”—or better said, oligarchy—is far more venal, far more vicious, far less visible, and far more effective in forcing its iron will on society than any older form of aristocracy based on inheritance and family and rooted in service to the commonwealth.

Not just the various attempts to remove the leading Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, from the ballot in several states—all in the name of “our democracy”(!)—but recent calls by members of this elite that perhaps we have too many elections, illustrate that the intentions of the ensconced Managerial Class have far more to do with a globalist “great reset” and the retention power than with their hollow paeans to “democracy.”

In the United States the enablers of this Leftist march towards totalitarian globalism are the “neoconservatives” and a coterie of Republican “insiders” who have traditionally controlled the party and dominated GOP politics out of Washington. Their blinkered internationalism and desire to impose a Pax Americana on the rest of the world fit comfortably with the zealous Leftist goal of bringing “our democracy” (by force if necessary) to the most remote desert and the furthest jungle in the world.

Richard Hines understands this. He understands that if this country shall survive we must return to the wisdom of the Fathers of our country and to the constitutional, America First principles that once made this country great: decentralization, respect for our inherited rights, non-intervention globally, and the defense of our borders and not those of some faraway land that no one can find on a map.

Wise counsel, indeed.

Boyd Cathey

Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in intellectual history from the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years he served as State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. He has published in French, Spanish, and English, on historical subjects as well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical organizations.

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