How long will you torment my soul, and break me in pieces with words? These ten times you have reproached me; you are not ashamed that you have wronged me. And if indeed I have erred, my error remains with me. If indeed you exalt yourselves against me, and plead my disgrace against me, know then that God has wronged me, and has surrounded me with His net…Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has struck me! Why do you persecute me as God does, and are not satisfied with my flesh? Oh, that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved on a rock with an iron pen and lead, forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! If you should say, ‘How shall we persecute him?’ – since the root of the matter is found in me, be afraid of the sword for yourselves; for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment. – Job 19:2-6, 21-29
Are You not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, You have appointed them for judgment; O Rock, You have marked them for correction. You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. Why do you look on those who deal treacherously and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he? Why do You make men like fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler over them? They take up all of them with a hook, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their dragnet. Therefore they rejoice and are glad. Therefore they sacrifice to their net, and burn incense to their dragnet; because by them their share is sumptuous and their food is plentiful. Shall they therefore empty their net, and continue to slay nations without pity?
– Habakkuk 1:12-17
The joy of our heart has ceased; our dance has turned into mourning. The crown has fallen from our head. Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this our heart is faint; because of these things our eyes grow dim; because of Mount Zion which is desolate, with foxes walking about on it. You, O Lord, remain forever; Your throne from generation to generation. Why do You forget us forever, and forsake us for so long a time? Turn us back to You, O Lord, and we will be restored; renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us, and are very angry with us!
– Lamentations 5:15-22
The protests and riots over ‘blue’-on-black violence which have swept across this country, shaken many of its cities, and taken on a revolutionary life of their own, are, I fear, the tipping point which will wipe out our monuments once and for all. Even worse, the destruction of these symbols shows that the memory of the men and measures which they symbolise will be wiped out as well.
Although the public has consistently opposed the removal of Confederate statues by 2-1 margins or more – where I live in Florida, it was 58% to 27% in the summer of 2017 – the mob has always overruled democracy. (Indeed, although the county commissioners initially voted to keep our 106 year-old monument but supplement it with a mural to diversity, after the rioting of ‘Black Trans Lives Matter’ and the ‘Tampa Maoist Collective,’ the lobbying of ‘Woke Capital,’ and the opinionating of journalists-cum-activists, they re-voted to remove it.) Even worse, now that the mob has a taste of ‘anarcho-tyranny’ – having seen that the authorities will neither prevent nor punish them for vandalising and even overthrowing these monuments themselves – there is nothing stopping them. ‘Heritage defense’ groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy must disabuse ourselves of the notion that legislation or litigation can keep these monuments safe in public spaces – that cause is lost – and rescue these irreplaceable works of art while we still have the freedom to do so. Some are sure to disagree, but the UDC was wise to remove its 131 year-old monument in Alexandria, Virginia, and should continue to be proactive in taking back our monuments before it is too late.
When it comes to blue-on-black violence, all I shall say is that without any intention of mine to marginalise real victims, the extent, causes, and solutions to the problem are far more complicated than the protests and the rioters believe. An anonymous open letter, purportedly authored by a black person within the History Department of UC Berkeley, puts this mass-movement over in perspective. ‘It’s really worth reading, in a time of widespread panic,’ commented Wilfred Reilly (a black professor of political science at Kentucky State University). UC Berkeley has, ironically, denounced the letter and denied that it originated from its History Department, but even if the provenance of the letter was faked for publicity’s sake, that is less important than the content of the letter itself. Indeed, there is nothing in the letter which preeminent black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele (who are senior fellows at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution), Glenn C. Loury and Jason L. Riley (experts at the Manhattan Institute who contribute to City Journal and The Wall Street Journal), or Walter E. Williams (who is an economics professor at George Mason University) have not been arguing throughout their careers. Many of these black intellectuals and more have united at ‘The 1776 Project’ (in opposition to ‘The 1619 Project’), which however conventionally conservative is at least a sign of life somewhere.
As part of the inquisition against ‘systemic racism’ in this country, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ mobs[1] have defaced and even destroyed classic works of public art around the country, such as those which have stood on Richmond’s Monument Avenue Historic District for well over a hundred years. These great men – Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, and Jefferson Davis – have always been my heroes since I learned from my grandparents who my people are, where we come from, and what we have done. I confess that while a part of me hates those protesters and rioters who dishonour their memory, another part of me pities those same people who have been so poisoned by racial resentment and suspicion that they cannot see that they were so much more than just ‘some racists,’ as someone I know crudely phrased it. To paraphrase the great British historian Edward Gibbon, ‘their imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; their virtues were their own.’
Richmond’s Confederate monuments were defaced with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda – ‘AmeriKKKa,’ ‘ACAB’ (gang slang for ‘all cops are bastards’), ‘Blood On Your Hands,’ ‘‘Cops Are Creepy,’ ‘Cops Are Simps’ (slang for), ‘Defund The Police,’ ‘Die,’ ‘End Wage Slavery,’ ‘End White Supremacy,’ ‘F—k 12’ (gang slang for ‘f—k the police’), ‘F—k Racism,’ ‘F—k You,’ ‘FTP’ (gang slang for ‘f—k the police’), ‘F—k Pigs’ (gang slang for ‘police’), ‘F—k This Statue,’ ‘Freedom,’ ‘Hold Cops Accountable,’ ‘How Much More Blood?’, ‘Justice For Floyd,’ ‘Love,’ ‘Love Not War,’ ‘Lynch Trump,’ ‘No Cops,’ ‘No KKKops,’ ‘No Más,’ ‘No More White Supremacy,’ ‘No Justice, No Peace,’ ‘One Love,’ ‘Racist,’ ‘Racist AmeriKKKa,’ ‘Solidarity,’ ‘Stop Being Racist,’ ‘Stop Killing Us,’ ‘Stop White Supremacy,’ ‘Suck A D—k,’ ‘War,’ anarchist, communist (the Soviet hammer and sickle), and peace signs, and even more that was illegible/illiterate. A mob too impatient for the formal removal of the art and architecture which put those city blocks on the ‘National Register of Historic Places’ and one of the ‘Ten Great Streets in the Country’ tore down the statue of Jefferson Davis, tied a noose around its neck, and dragged it through the street while the police stood by and waited to pick up the pieces. The statues of Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart have been formally removed, and now only Robert E. Lee is the last statue standing. It is not just Lee, Jackson, Stuart, and Davis who are facing the figurative gibbet or guillotine, of course. The Confederates may have been targeted first, but they will not be the last. To borrow a phrase, they will come for whomever is left when there is no one left to speak for them.
It is Christopher Columbus, too. Monuments to Columbus in Boston, St. Paul, and Richmond have been mobbed, vandalised, and demolished. One was actually burned and beheaded in effigy. Why? It is not just because Columbus conquered the aboriginal/indigenous tribes of the Caribbean. (The pre-Colombian empires were, after all, conquered by the Spanish in collaboration with other aborigines/indigenes whom had been treated as fodder for cannibalism and sacrifice, yet the descendants of those victims now perversely identify with the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans who victimised their ancestors.) It is because, as Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt stated in his ‘Columbus Day’ speech from 1940, he inaugurated ‘the early movement of European people to America.’ According to FDR, ‘Out of the fusion of all these national strains was created the America to which the Old World contributed so magnificently.’ (He might have added that the profound issues raised by the Old World’s encounter with the New World caused a philosophical and theological debate among Spanish Catholics from which the Western ideals of international law and universal human rights originated – ideals which have existed nowhere else in the world and which those Lilliputians destroying the monuments of Western Civilisation now take for granted.)[2] Columbus is so offensive to the protesters and the rioters because he is a symbol of Western colonisation and civilisation in the Americas, which to them was and is a crime against humanity. Mobs of ‘indigenous activists’ in Los Angeles and San Francisco have also torn down monuments of Saint Junipero Serra, the Franciscan friar who established the California mission system (hence why so many Californian cities have Spanish and Catholic names).
It is the Alamo and the Texas Rangers, too. The Alamo’s Cenotaph (erected in 1936 on the centennial anniversary of the legendary battle) has been defaced with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda (‘Down With White Supremacy,’ ‘Down With Profit Over People,’ and ‘Down With The ALAMO’) and at the Dallas Love Field Airport, a statue of a Texas Ranger was removed. Why? It is not just because they are protesting the Texas Revolution and the Mexican-American War, although there is also an irredentist/revanchist and ethno-nationalistic movement among Mexicans north and south of the border. Just like Columbus, the Alamo and the Texas Rangers are symbols of Western colonisation and civilisation in the Americas (specifically of the American frontiersman and pioneer), which to the protesters and rioters was and is a crime against humanity. They attack the Alamo and the Texas Rangers to attack our very right to live here on this continent – or, according to their slogan, ‘stolen land’ built by ‘stolen labour.’ To them, ‘Manifest Destiny’ is a form of ‘Lebensraum.’
It is the National Mall, too: The Lincoln Memorial, the World War II Memorial, and other monuments have all been the victims of petty ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ vandalism. Are they protesting the fact that, as Joe Sobran put it, Abraham Lincoln’s dual goal was ‘to prevent the political separation of North and South while promoting the racial separation of black and white’? Or the fact that in order to defeat the Axis Powers the U.S.A. had to ally with the Communists under Stalin, whose evil was so terrible that H.L. Mencken quipped that ‘Hitler is hardly more than a common Ku Kluxer and Mussolini almost a philanthropist’? No, what they are protesting is the very existence of the U.S.A. – or what they now label ‘AmeriKKKa’ – as symbolised in our monuments in the heart of Washington, D.C.
It is the Union, too. Outside Colorado’s capitol building in Denver, a monument to Union soldiers was defaced with ‘Down With DPD’ (Denver Police Department) and a Nazi swastika. In Colorado Springs, a monument of the city’s founder, William Jackson Palmer (a Union general who won the Medal of Honour and a major philanthropist to black causes) was vandalised with ‘Black Lives Matter’ graffiti/propaganda. Are they protesting the imposition of martial law in Maryland and Missouri? The disease, starvation, and torture of POWs in Camp Douglas and Elmira Prison? The sacking and razing of Atlanta and Columbia? The besieging and bombing of Charleston and Richmond? The looting, raping, and killing of black and white Southern civilians? The damage that destroying the Southern economy and society did to the black people living there whom they were supposedly liberating? No, they are protesting any and all American symbols, which to them symbolise ‘400 years of racism.’
Underscoring the idiotic iconoclasm of whatever this movement is, during the riot at the state capitol building in Denver a monument to the victims of the Armenian Genocide (a traditional memorial stele known as a khachkar, or ‘cross-stone’) was defaced with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda such as ‘Cops Are The Evil’ ‘F—k 12,’ a smiley face, and even just the words ‘Sample Text.’ The intricate stonework on the face of the memorial stele was also covered in red spray-paint.
It is the National Anthem, too. In San Francisco, California, a mob defaced a monument of Francis Scott Key (the Marylander whose poem, ‘The Defence of Fort McHenry,’ which he wrote after witnessing the bombardment of Baltimore as a prisoner aboard a British ship, was adapted into ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’) with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda – ‘ACAB,’ ‘F—k 12,’ ’Kill All Colonizers,’ ‘Kill Whitey,’ ‘Slave Owner,’ ‘Slaveowning Pig,’ ‘Stolen People, Stolen Land,’ and more that was illegible/illiterate. When they had spray-painted all they had to say on the statue, they tore it down and stomped on it. The American national anthem offends the protesters and rioters because the American nation offends them.
It is ‘The Great Triumvirate,’ too – three out of the ‘Famous Five’ Senators. In Charleston, South Carolina, a mob defaced a monument to John C. Calhoun (by any historical standard, not just one of the greatest Southerners ever but one of the greatest Americans ever)[3] with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda – ‘1312’ (gang slang for ‘All Cops Are Bastards’), ‘Abolish CPD’ (Charleston Police Department), ‘Abolish NCPD’ (North Charleston Police Department), ‘Defund The Police,’ ‘Enough Is Enough,’ ‘F—k 12,’ ‘F—k Racist AmeriKKKa,’ ‘F—k Calhoun,’ ‘F—k The Police,’ ‘F—k Racism,’ ‘F—k Relocation,’ ‘F—k White Supremacy,’ ‘It’s Time To Atone For Injustice, Take The Slaver Down,’ ‘No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police,’ ‘No Monuments To Hate,’ ‘Racist Statues Are Not Tourist Attractions,’ ‘Rip It Down,’ ‘Say All Lives Matter If You Have A Small D—k,’ ‘Socialist States Have No Racism,’ ‘Suck Our C—ks,’ ‘Take It Down, Melt It Down,’ ‘Take This S—t Down,’ ‘Throw It In The River,’ ‘White Silence Is Violence,’ and even more that was illegible/illiterate. To appease the mob, the Charleston City Council voted unanimously to remove the monument, thus sending the message that rioting is effective. After 124 years standing in Marion Square, the statue and plaques have been stripped from the pedestal, leaving nothing behind but a barren obelisk – idiotic iconoclasm that passes for progress today. In New Orleans, Louisiana, ‘Take Em Down NOLA’ (an activist group which lobbied successfully over public opposition for the removal of historic Confederate monuments in 2017) is demanding the removal of a monument Henry Clay of Kentucky. (They also threw a bust of educational philanthropist – but ‘racist!’ – John McDonough in the river.) In Manhattan’s Central Park, a monument to Daniel Webster was defaced with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda – ‘ACAB,’ ‘F—k 12,’ ‘F—k NYPD,’ ‘F—k Racism,’ ‘Racist!!!’and ‘Racist B—h.’ Clay and Webster were once revered by Americans for making compromises between the North and the South over the issue of slavery and saving the Union for their time,[4] but now that very statesmanship is their crime.
It is the Presidents, too. NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that the monument of Theodore Roosevelt (the great conservationist and progressive of his time) outside the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan will be removed. In San Francisco, California, a mob defaced a monument of Ulysses S. Grant (who defeated the Confederacy as a general and defeated the Ku Klux Klan as a president) and then demolished it. In Washington, D.C., a mob spray-painted the words ‘Killer’ all over a monument of Andrew Jackson (the great populist of his time and founder of the Democratic Party), but for once the police intervened and stopped them before they could demolish it.
It is the Founding Fathers, too. In Portland, Oregon, mobs defaced monuments of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda –‘Big Floyd,’ ‘Damn White Men,’ ‘Defund White Men,’ ‘F—k Cops,’ ‘George Floyd 846’ (a reference to the amount of time that he had a knee on his neck), ‘Murder,’ ‘Slave Owner,’ ‘White Fragility,’ ‘You’re On Native Land,’ and ‘1619’ (a reference to The New York Times’ racial agitprop) – and then demolished them. For good measure, they draped Washington in a burning American flag. The symbolism is right in our faces and needs no further explanation. Three years ago, when the monuments of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were targeted in Charlottesville, Virginia, Pres. Trump was uncharacteristically articulate and intelligent – downright Socratic, in fact. ‘I wonder: Is it George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?’ he asked at a press conference. ‘You know, you really have to ask yourself – where does it stop?’ When journalists complained about the comparison of Washington and Jefferson to Lee and Jackson, the President asked them some questions they could not answer. ‘Was George Washington a slave owner?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ answered the press. ‘So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues of him?’ he asked. ‘How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?’ he asked. ‘I do love Thomas Jefferson,’ answered the press. ‘Okay, good, are we going to take down his statue, because he was a major slave owner?’ Nevertheless, the media class collectively denounced the President for the comparison and assured the public that there was cause for concern. Late-nite comedians Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers appeared on ‘Saturday Night Live’ as Washington and Jefferson to joke about slavery and mock Lee and Jackson. Where are all these ‘smugnorant’ celebrities now?
One wonders what the fate will be of Alexander Hamilton, whom despite Lin-Manuel Miranda’s enthusiastic attempt to retcon as a woke hip-hopping Caribbean immigrant, was actually one of the most capitalistic, elitist, militaristic, and nationalistic (one might even shudder to say ‘Republican’) of all the Founding Fathers. (Fans of ‘Hamilton’ are encouraged to read his anti-immigration editorials addressed to Thomas Jefferson in The New York Evening Post.)
It is even other African-Americans, too. In Boston, Massachusetts, a monument to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment (the first African-American volunteer regiment in the Civil War) was defaced with ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ graffiti/propaganda – ‘ACAB,’ ‘F—k 12,’ ‘No Justice, No Peace,’ ‘Police Are Pigs,’ ‘R.I.P. George Floyd,’ and even more that was illegible/illiterate. The ‘Emancipation Memorial’ in Washington, D.C., (funded by freedmen and dedicated by the abolitionist Frederick Douglass) has been targeted for destruction because it depicts Abraham Lincoln as a paternalistic figure. ‘We’re tearing this motherf—r down!’ a ringleader bellowed to a roaring mob. This is all beneath our comprehension and our contempt.
Who will be next? Shaun King (a prominent ‘Black Lives Matter’ activist) has made some startling demands:
Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down.
Yes, all murals and stained-glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form of white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.[5]
I apologise for the repetitive obscenities and profanities, but it is crucial that we have no illusions about what this vocal (and increasingly violent) minority thinks of us and what they want to do to us. We have been urgently warning our fellow Americans about this militant movement’s onward march for over five years. Rest assured, not one of us takes any satisfaction whatsoever in our manifest vindication.
The list of monuments that have been spray-painted, smashed, and sentenced for removal over the past couple months is lengthy and is lengthening. ‘Call Them The 1619 Riots’ quipped The New York Post. ‘It would be an honor,’ retorted the editor of The 1619 Project, ‘Thank you.’[6] They are just the most prominent examples of countless acts of erasure, however, ranging from the petty (taking down flags and statues, renaming streets, etc.) to the absurd (e.g. rebranding ‘Uncle Ben’ and ‘Aunt Jemima’ or renaming the bands ‘Lady Antebellum’ and ‘The Dixie Chicks’). These ‘identity politics’ of pandering and preening may make white liberals feel better about being white, but how will they improve black lives?
If it were not already undeniable, these ‘politically correct’ hate crimes have nothing to do with the historical legacy of this or that historical individual or this or that historical event. The protesters and the rioters neither know nor care; they are as indifferent as they are ignorant. Judging from their gibberish and graffiti, many of them probably could not distinguish between George Washington (the Father of His Country) and George Washington Carver (the Father of Peanut Butter). They are targeting our monuments as a form of domestic terrorism and cultural genocide meant to dishearten and threaten us.
America is more than just an abstract ‘proposition’ to us; she is an organic ‘given’ of which we are a part. America is more than just a ‘creed’ to us; she is in our blood. America is more than just an ‘idea’ to us; she is our identity and our inheritance. America is not just our birthplace and our homeland, but the birthplace and homeland of our progenitors and what we hope shall be the birthplace and homeland of our progeny. James Johnston Pettigrew (a North Carolinian polymath and Confederate officer who was killed in the retreat from Gettysburg), in his philosophical travelogue of Spain and Sardinia, expressed exactly what ‘patriotism’ means to us. ‘Local attachments are pronounced, by the modern school of social philosophers, to be relics of barbarism, ignorance, and prejudice, forgetting that prejudices are given us by the all-wise Deity, as well as reasoning faculties, and equally for some beneficent purpose,’ explained Pettigrew. ‘Patriotism, an attachment to, a preference for one’s own home, is still a virtue prolific of measureless good, and for its foundation rests upon enlightened prejudice.’ We Southerners identify with Edmund Burke’s definition of a society as ‘a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born,’ more than other individualistic Americans. Indeed, we Southerners identify with Alexis de Tocqueville’s description of the ‘aristocratic’ societies of Europe (where ‘all generations become as it were contemporaneous’) than ‘democratic’ where (‘the woof of time is every instant broken and the track of generations effaced’). Like de Tocqueville, the Southerner ‘knows his forefathers and respects them,’ ‘sees his remote descendants and loves them,’ and ‘willingly imposes duties on himself toward the former and the latter, and will frequently sacrifice his personal gratifications to those who went before and to those who will come after him.’ All of the above is why the destruction of our monuments is so demoralising and even traumatising to us: It is the destruction of that mystic link between the past, present, and future.
Our one consolation is that the ‘Cabaret’-style ‘Weimerika’ into which America has degenerated does not deserve to have monuments to such heroes as Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, and Jefferson Davis anyway, but that is a very bitter consolation. That may be an argument for giving monuments due process, but it is not an argument for tearing them down, trying to set them on fire, beheading them, and then urinating on the ruins. They do not deserve that cruel and unusual punishment.
The purging of Confederate monuments is the harbinger of the broader and deeper demographic reconstruction of the American South. Diversification and suburbanisation have been a form of ‘gentrification,’ turning many Southern cities (like Richmond) and even a few Southern states (like Virginia) into the ‘nü-South’ – a Southern-flavoured knockoff of hipster meccas like Brooklyn, Hollywood, and Portland, or bourgeois enclaves like North Caldwell, Scottsdale, and the San Fernando Valley. As Fred Hobson observed, the assimilation of the South into the American mass replaced the historic qualities which had made her unique (for better or for worse) with generic American materialism. ‘The South in 1981 feels it has the best of both worlds: Pleasant and comfortable, but possessing at least a mild sense of its traditions and heritage,’ he explained. ‘But is it,’ he asked, ‘a South to which one can really be committed, which one can regard as distinctly different from the rest of America, which one can love or hate?’ The nü-South is, as Hobson predicted, merely a ‘Southern chic’ version of any other American metropolitan area, but what he could not have predicted is that the ‘love-hate relationship’ would not die so much as be perverted into pathological self-hatred.
The nü-South is an effect of ‘The Great Replacement’ (a term for the population trends in North America and Western Europe which has been poisoned as a meme on alt-right Internet subcultures)[7] and ‘The Great Awokening’ (a term for white liberals’ shift so far to the left on ‘social justice’ issues that they alone now exhibit a pro-outgroup rather than pro-ingroup bias). When Virginia went blue in the state elections late last year (Virginia had been blue before, of course, but today’s identity-politics Democrats are nothing like the civic-nationalist Democrats before 1993), the media class openly exulted in the outcome with headlines like ‘The Demo-craphic Tide Washes Over Virginia’ and ‘Tuesday’s Election Paints Picture of Changing Demographics.’ In ‘How Voters Turned Virginia From Deep Red to Solid Blue,’ The New York Times explained how the demographic changes from diversification and suburbanisation have reconstructed the state:
South Riding, Va. – Not long ago, this rolling green stretch of Northern Virginia was farmland. Most people who could vote had grown up here. And when they did, they usually chose Republican.
The fields of Loudon County are disappearing. In their place is row upon row of cookie-cutter townhouses, clipped lawns, and cul-de-sacs – a suburban landscape as far as the eye can see. Unlike three decades ago, the residents are often from other places, like India and Korea. And when they vote, it is usually for Democrats…
Once the heart of the Confederacy, Virginia is now the land of Indian grocery stores, Korean churches, and Diwali festivals.
It never seems to occur to those at the Times that replacing the American South’s unique Tidewater culture (not just in Virginia but in Delaware and Maryland as well) with mass-culture and multi-culturalism is actually the opposite of diversity. There are plenty of places for people to celebrate Diwali in the world, but there is only one Delaware, one Maryland, and one Virginia (though not for very much longer).
‘Virginia now stands as a fearful avatar for Republicans of what the nation’s unrelenting demographic and cultural changes mean for the party, as the moderate-to-liberal urban and suburban areas grow and more conservative areas lose ground,’ reported The Washington Post. ‘Similar shifts are starting to hit states such as North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and Texas, as minority populations increase and white college-educated voters continue to turn away from the Republican brand.’ (The death of the ‘Stupid Party’ would be cause for good cheer if it were not leaving the country in the hands of the ‘Evil Party.’) In one of the many other celebratory/self-congratulatory articles and op-eds published by the Post, ‘A Bright Blue Virginia Leaves the Confederacy Behind,’ a community organiser explained that ‘with the Democratic sweep in Richmond, protecting Civil War monuments won’t be high on the agenda in the town that was once the seat of the Lost Cause.’ As he triumphantly proclaimed, ‘The Confederacy is dead…That page of our history is about to turn.’ Simply put, Richmond, Virginia, and the rest of the nü-South are not purging their heritage because their people have been reconstructed, but because their people have been replaced. It is not their heritage.
Almost a century ago, the ‘Fugitive Agrarians’ warned that the Northern ‘Industrialism’ which promised to increase the Southern standard of living also threatened the Southern way of life in ways that markets could not measure. ‘It may be confidently said that the physical operations of agriculture will continue in the South, just as certain processes of industry are expected to continue in the South, but the human civilization now based on Southern agriculture is in no little peril, and industrial civilization under the capitalistic system does not offer a satisfying substitute in human values,’ argued Herman Clarence Nixon. ‘The South is no longer conquered territory, not quite conquered, but a protest, articulate and constructive, is needed against another conquest, a conquest of the spirit.’ Industrialism is no longer the imminent threat that it was in 1930, as there is little agrarian left for industry to destroy (and the country has since ‘de-industrialised’ what it industrialised by outsourcing industry to the Third World). Yet the nü-South is not much different from Industrialism in that it invokes the same ideology of ‘Progress’ as it deconstructs and reconstructs the South (though more thoroughly and permanently than mere machines did). Indeed, even though capitalism is no longer ‘industrial,’ the effects of Industrialism identified by Lyle H. Lanier – the consolidation of economic capital and political authority, the pathologisation of individuality, and the dissolution of community and family life – are worse today than they were back then. ‘It is not the machine, however, but the theory of the machine to which I object,’ remarked Lanier, ‘and if this theory, which we may call Industrialism, is a valid hypothesis of the course of Western civilization, all discussion of “progress” would do well to cease.’ Even as industrial capitalism undermined the American South’s traditional agrarian life, John Crowe Ransom admitted that liberal and progressive Americans were still sentimental about sympathetic toward the American South. Today we have the opposite of sentimentality and sympathy – self-righteous indignation – as gentrification finishes what industrialisation started. In the nü-South, an ‘unreconstructed Southerner’ like Ransom, ‘who persists in his regard for a certain terrain, a certain history, and a certain inherited way of living,’ will no longer be an eccentric and romantic ‘anachronism’ who is indulged but not taken seriously: We are ‘racists’ who shall be purged, just like our ‘racist monuments.’
[1] ‘You don’t believe that black lives matter? You’re not against anti-fascism? It’s literally in their names!’ Of course I believe that black lives matter (who really believes that they do not?) and am against fascism (who is really for it?), but any group can name itself after any truism that it wants. For example, so many of the worst oppressors of their own people have called themselves ‘people’s republics’ or ‘people’s democracies’ that it is now a joke. ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Antifa’ are to black lives and anti-fascism what the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the People’s Republic of Cambodia are to Congolese democracy and the Cambodian people. Are the Ku Klax Klan really ‘Christian Knights’ because that is what they call themselves? This is a schoolyard-grade argument.
[2] Catholic scholar Robert Royal’s book, 1492 And All That: Political Manipulations of History (as well as articles for the Catholic magazine First Things, such as “1492 And All That,” “Consequences of Columbus,” “Since Long Before 1492,” and “Columbus and the Beginning of the World”) are exemplars of what history should and must be.
[3] In 1957, when John C. Calhoun was voted one of the five greatest Senators of all time (along with his fellow ‘triumvirs,’ Henry Clay and Daniel Webster), Sen. John F. Kennedy summarised his character and contributions:
Senator John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, who served in the Senate 1832-43, 1845-50. Forceful logician of state sovereignty, masterful defender of the rights of a political minority against the dangers of an unchecked majority, his profoundly penetrating and original understanding of the social bases of government has significantly influenced American political theory and practice. Sincerely devoted to the public good as he saw it, the ultimate tragedy of his final cause neither detracts from the greatness of his leadership nor tarnishes his efforts to avert bloodshed. Outspoken yet respected, intellectual yet beloved, his leadership on every major issue in that critical era of transition significantly shaped the role of the Senate and the destiny of the nation.
[4] Sen. John F. Kennedy, who chaired the special committee tasked with selecting the ‘Famous Five,’ summarised the character and contributions of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster:
Senator Henry Clay, of Kentucky, who served in the Senate 1806-7, 1810-11, 1831-42, 1849-52. Resourceful expert in the art of the possible, his fertile mind, persuasive voice, skillful politics, and tireless energies were courageously devoted to the reconciliation of conflict between North and South, East and West, capitalism and agrarianism. A political leader who put the national good above party, a spokesman for the West whose love for the Union outweighed sectional pressures, he acquired more influence and respect as a responsible leader of the loyal but ardent opposition than many who occupied the White House. His adroit statesmanship and political finesse in times of national crisis demonstrated the values of intelligent compromise in a federal democracy, without impairing either his convictions or his courage to stand by them.
Senator Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, who served in the Senate 1827-41, 1845-50. Eloquent and articulate champion of ‘Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable,’ he grasped in an age of divided loyalties the full meaning of the American Constitution and of the supremacy and indissolubility of the national government. Molding the symbols of the Union he cherished so strongly so that neither secession nor war could break them, his steadfast courage and powerful leadership in two of the Senate’s most historic and critical debates were brilliantly portrayed in orations attentively heard and eagerly read. Influential spokesman for industrial expansion, his dedication to the Union above all personal and partisan considerations overshadowed the petty moral insensitivities which never compromised his national principles; and his splendid dignity and decorum elevated the status and prestige of the Senate.
[5] Everyone knows that Jesus was Jewish and so would have looked Semitic (even more ‘Middle Eastern’ than modern-day Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews, many of whom have acquired European admixture since the first century A.D.). No one believes in ‘Aryan Jesus’ any more than they believe in ‘Black Jesus.’ Christianity is an evangelical and universalist religion, yet the human race is ethno-centric and tribalist, hence people of all colours imagine Jesus looking like them. It is as historically inaccurate as it is also innocent and irrelevant. Indeed, what does any of this have to with ‘systemic racism in policing’? Why is Shaun King endorsing violent vigilantism against churches instead of endorsing the police-reform bill of Sen. Tim Scott (the African-American Republican from South Carolina)?
[6] Many ‘neo-abolitionist’ historians (e.g. Allen C. Guelzo, James M. McPherson, James Oakes, Sean Wilentz, and Gordon Wood), who have spent their entire careers falsely arguing that everything that made the South exceptional came from slavery are now protesting as The New York Times makes the same false accusation about all of America in its ‘1619 Project.’ It is too late for them.
[7] One of many examples of the media class’ hypocritical coverage of and commentary of the issues around ‘The Great Replacement’ is an interview which CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper did with Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos. Mr. Cooper explained that while he personally finds ‘the idea that whites will not be the majority’ to be ‘an exciting transformation of the country’ representing ‘evolution’ and ‘progress,’ he added that ‘among white supremacists, white nationalists that is viewed as a horrific event.’ Mr. Ramos interrupted, ‘I do understand, but there’s nothing really they can do against this demographic revolution – and in 2044 everyone is going to be a minority.’ In those few sentences, Messrs. Cooper and Ramos unwittingly admitted to what CNN, Univision, and the rest of the press has collectively denounced as a ‘racist conspiracy theory’ – namely, that white people are becoming minorities in the countries where they live. Enough straw-man arguments: The migration of over one million people per year to the U.S.A. – and the obvious challenges which this poses to our cultural identity, economic equity, political unity, and social stability as a nation and a state – is a policy which deserves to be democratically debated, and not everyone who disagrees with Messrs. Cooper and Ramos is a ‘white supremacist’ or ‘white nationalist.’
