Kudzu and Equality
It may be a fool’s errand to claim the same ideals as those espoused by the Left but call for one’s own interpretation of them, as the theoretical and rhetorical kudzu continues to spread.
Amid what looks like a return to the Harry V. Jaffa-Mel Bradford debates of the 1970s with a new cast, it may be useful to clarify my own position about what are proper conservative principles. I am expressing my views as an independent scholar but one who has obvious paleo leanings. The present debate with Michael Anton began when
Chronicles magazine (of which I am editor-in-chief), published an article by Brion McClanahan critically dissecting the 1776 Commission created by President Trump as a response to the
The Federalist Society has a problem. It’s a condition that characterizes and infects almost the entirety of the present national conservative movement. This hit home for me on May 31, in an essay by Leslie McAdoo Gordon, which appeared at thefederalist.com. I read their Webzine almost every day, and occasionally it is the source for items of value and good information. But Gordon’s ill-informed attack on Confederate iconography was not one of them. Peddled as a defense of retaining “Antietam” as the name of an American naval vessel, she begins her piece: “There is a move these days to revisit our monuments and … Continue reading →
What Do Confederate Monuments and German Composer Richard Strauss Have in Common?
Readers of these occasional pieces will know that in addition to political issues, I also sometimes take a look at cultural questions, especially the role that film, music, and the arts play determining the direction of our civilization. The arts are both the natural product and the creative work of our culture, a kind of essential gloss which more than most anything else expresses our values, our innermost beliefs, and, yes if within the Christian tradition, our devotion and thanks to our Creator. Thus, mankind from the earliest times has demonstrated its innermost convictions and understanding of who it is in the scheme of things and its place in that creation by artistic activity.
Lincoln, Chronicles Magazine, and the Disappearance of Southern Conservatism
Abraham Lincoln has become, for most mainline conservatives, an icon, and, along with Martin Luther King, Jr., no opportunity is lost it seems on Fox News or in the establishment “conservative press,” to stress just how much conservatively-minded Americans owe to these two canonized martyrs. Any demurer, any dissent or disagreement, brings forth condemnations of the complainant as a “racist” or “reactionary,” or worse, maybe some Southern redneck hick who hides his old Klan robe but keeps it at the ready.
During the past fifty or so years the old Southern Democratic Party has virtually disappeared, died out, as millions of conservative Southerners, many motivated by their sincere religious faith and resistance to radical and unnatural change, migrated to the Republican Party. The GOP, beginning in the Nixon years, employed what was called a “Southern strategy,” largely elaborated by consult
Liberty or Equality: You Cannot Have Both
Occasionally I will write and publish longer, more detailed articles and essays for
The New English Review. These essays are normally about classical music, philosophy, even a short story and a poem or two. They are not keyed necessarily or directly to specific current events. They usually differ from the shorter pieces of political and social commentary that a reader will find here at
My Corner by Boyd Cathey.
Last night I went back and reread one of those longer essays. And I thought given the Harris/Biden administration’s insane emphasis on what they call “equity,” and the dogmatic imposition of “equality” (which is whatever the progressivist Left currently defines it as) that I might dust it off and offer it here. I think it gets into and explores the rickety structure, the utter egalitarian fakery that is being imposed on us and on our society, and, in fact, the slogan behind which all sorts of unnatural and devastating