Presidents’ Day this year, February 20, passed uneventfully.
There were few violent protests and fewer “repeal history” parades.
George Bernard Shaw, a Fabian socialist whose empathy
towards the murderous Joseph Stalin ran fathoms deep, used to say, “Patriotism,
if you must, but please – no parades,” knowing all the while that patriotism is
a parade. Shaw’s quip is pretty much the anthem of the postmodern progressive woke
era now upon us.
Wokeism is, at bottom, an anti-Americanism too prudish and
subtle to display itself in parades as a sort of inverse patriotism. Bourgeois
sentimentality has never set well with social anarchists. Gratitude is an
emotive force that still, beneath the Woke incubus, stirs the hearts of the
majority of Americans disposed to celebrate Patriots Day. These are easily
dismissed by Wokeists as patriotic – ugh! – yahoos.
Wokeism, if you will, and please -- no patriotism.
Wokeism is not a political credo. It is a political posture,
a pose, an attitude very much encouraged by postmodern pedagogues who are
always willing to bend the knee to the loudest squeaky campus rebel with a
cause.
Wokeism is best understood as a kind of residue of the Silly
Sixties put to political use in the present age of leftist intimidation, medical
panic, our seamless political campaigning, and a politics in general that has
nothing to do with abiding principles, and everything to do with the unchecked
ambitions of lusty politicians. It would be a mistake to suppose that such
politicians lust after pretty women – though some clumsily do in broom closets.
No, the chief political desire of the postmodern progressive politician is
power. And, as a famous caricaturist once said of his stingingly satirical
portraits of the famous and near famous – “What’s the point in having absolute
power, if you are not willing to abuse it?”
A recent abuse of political power having little or nothing
to do with former President Donald Trump – sorry! -- has now lifted its hoary
head above a mob of journalists never kindly disposed towards orthodox
Catholics.
The Orthodox Catholic as an Enemy of the People
Arthur Schlesinger
Jr., the Virgil of John Kennedy’s Camelot, used to say, though not loudly
enough to wake the dead, that anti-Catholicism was the oldest virulent
prejudice in the United States. It had come over on the Mayflower and
flourished during the Revolutionary period among the country’s enlighten
founders, until the back of anti-Catholicism was broken by the elevation to the
presidency of John Kennedy, a Catholic who promised on the campaign trail that
he would never place the dictats of the Pope above the welfare of the United
States. Kennedy kept his word, some say, on both points. And he was not above
hustling women in broom closets.
Over in England, G.
K. Chesterton, a convert to Catholicism and a vigorous defender of the faith,
joked that, given the virulent opposition to Catholicism in Great Britain,
orthodoxy was becoming almost as delicious as a vice. And when his friend, candidate
for Parliament Hilaire Belloc, was called a “papist” by a woman in an audience
he was addressing, Belloc reached into his pocket, pulled out a rosary, shook
it in the air, and said, “Madam, do you see these beads? I pray on them every
evening when I go to bed, and every morning when I wake. And if that offends
you, Madame, I pray God He spare me the ignominy
of representing you in
Parliament.”
It was not a Kennedyesque
performance.
And now, here in the
land of the First Amendment, what Winston Churchill called, in a different
context, “a wolf in wolf’s clothing” is prowling the anti-Catholic precincts.
Again and always, Catholics in the United States are being invited to show they
are not, unlike Chesterton and Belloc, disposed to defend Orthodoxy.
It is extremely
unlikely that any of Connecticut’s heterodox Catholic politicians would dare to
put their fingerprints on Orthodoxy.
Better to be prudent
than to be seen attending a Latin Mass, prudence being the better part of a disappearing
political valor, according to most cowering Catholics.
“The FBI’s Richmond
Division,” we are told by Kyle
Seraphin, a Former FBI Special
Agent and federal whistleblower, “would like to protect Virginians from the
threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within
Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. An intelligence analyst within the
Richmond Field Office of the FBI released in a new finished intelligence
product dated January 23, 2023, on Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists
(RMVE) and their interests in ‘Radical-Traditionalist Catholics’ or RTCs. The
document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of
Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic
Church.”
Hey, FBI, when
infiltrating and recruiting sources at Latin Masses, you want to be sure to
fill your pockets with rosary beads. Latin Mass attendees subject everyone to
Orthodox body searches.
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