The Resurrection of History - Donald Trump And The Demise Of Cancel Culture Revisionism

Arthur Kreis had read about the Nazi purges of the 30s; but he like many of his generation thought that the days of pogroms, Kristallnacht, and concentration camps were a thing of the past; and that the German Reich and Soviet Russian autocracy would never again appear, but he was wrong.  The legacy of intellectual purification was alive and well in America.  The cancel culture - the pseudo-intellectual movement to remove any and all taints of assumed incivility - had gained in relevance and potency with the rise of the far Left.  

For four years, the Biden Administration oversaw the dismantling of Richmond's Monument Avenue, a remembrance - not an elegy - of the Confederate South.  It approved of and encouraged the renaming of all streets, schools, and public buildings that acknowledged Southern history and summarily dismissed anything that smacked of a racially oppressive past.  Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis both had to be consigned to irrelevance, the one a miscegenist and brutal plantation grandee, and the other the leader of a movement to institutionalize and preserve slavery. 

 

In so doing, the right and proper legacy of these men was cancelled.  The genius of Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights was deemed irrelevant given the concubinage of his slave, Sarah Hemmings, a consensual droit du seigneur at worst. The South's principled defiance of the North's hegemony and sanctimonious censure of an economic system dating back well beyond ancient Greece  was demonized and dismissed. 

Arthur Kreis was a man of rectitude, principle, and honest commitment.  He was a follower of Adam Smith, Hayek, Friedman, Ronald Reagan, and William Buckley - an intellectual conservative who understood the cultural centrality of the philosophy.  He was determined, undaunted, and forward thinking in his vision of a freer, more independent, more culturally dynamic society than that proposed and promoted by the liberal Left.  He was no street corner preacher, no wild-haired hysterical Cassandra.  He was a man of historical legacy, an inheritor of Enlightenment principles, Jeffersonian vision, and Hamiltonian objection. 

 

And yet, one by one he was cancelled, dismissed, marginalized and sent to an intellectual gulag.  The Utopian dream cannot be sullied by deniers, said his friends, family, and colleagues who insisted that his view of the world had been corrupted by anti-secularist, deep state monarchists, and that his opinions were ipso facto insignificant and irrelevant. 

Arthur had grown up in an earlier age, one whose political differences were no less pronounced but equally acceptable. He wore an 'I like Ike' button while his classmates touted Adlai Stevenson as the candidate for the little man; yet they all played baseball on the Green and drank sodas at Waverly's.  Politics was serious but not a be-all and end-all. 

Now, thinking in the same vein, educated in the philosophies of the English and Scottish Enlightenment, familiar with Time on the Cross and other disquisitions on the economics of slavery, and a student of Russian and Chinese Communism, he had become an eloquent advocate for historical relevancy and philosophical integrity. 

And yet, he had been dismissed, cancelled, and relegated for his views.  A supporter of Donald Trump who despite his histrionics and vaudevillian genius was a sound, republican conservative, Arthur was ceded no ground.  Anyone supporting such a racist, misogynist, predatory capitalist could not be trusted around children; and so it was that Arthur was told to stay away, keep his noxious distance, and steep in his own bilious broth. 

Arthur was an admirer of Cavalier gentility, the sophistication of genteel, high society, and the appreciation for manners, respect, and social dignity of the antebellum South.  Not a racist or pro-slavery advocate, he was a student of slavery, its persistence, its longevity, and its many incarnations.

Slavery was by no means only black and African, but universal.  Paleolithic tribes took slaves as booty and traded them along with cowrie beads as wealth.  Greeks and Romans kept Nubian and Eastern European slaves. Anyone who conquered anyone else exacted tribute, often in the form of slaves. African tribes profited from the sale of their slaves to Europeans. 

A review of the cultural antecedents of slavery – Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character  – provides the context for life in the modern South.  Pilgrimage Balls, celebrations of the grace, style, and genteel manners of past generations of Southerners are historical reminders.  Not only are the restored antebellum homes and dress balls testaments to the Old South, but more importantly a given sense of regional identity.

Yet Northern liberals are quick to dismiss this very regional phenomenon which, like everything else Southern, has to do with some form of congenital ignorance.  They conflate fundamentalism with racism – both are products of insular thinking and perpetuated by the same retrograde absolutism.  To make matters worse the so-called ‘faithful’ are the dupes of venal pastors who prey upon ignorance and backwoods belief.

While Southern fundamentalism – like any other phenomenon – may well be a product of regional isolation, a stubbornly agrarian society, and a social conservatism bred in the defiant days of the antebellum and Reconstruction periods; it would be wrong to dismiss its spiritual dimensions.  Whether for profound spiritual reasons, the need for community and belonging, or a sign of status and public image, religion in the South cannot be dismissed. 

Southern evangelicals are far more open, proud, and expressive of their belief in God and Jesus Christ than most Northerners ever will be.  Religious faith can be felt in the South. When put all together – racial harmony, discord, and the legacy of the Civil War; religious fundamentalism, social and political conservatism, persistently low socio-economic rankings, and a continuing proud regional identity -  the South is a very complex place. 

All of which does not exclude slavery from moral discussions nor exonerate it, but simply includes it; Arthur felt that no true intellectual historian should ever take sides - a position for which he was castigated and cancelled for giving succor to the enemy.  A traitorous apostate, an unbeliever, a social heretic. 

His 18th century originalist views of free market capitalism were excoriated as backward, socially insensitive and abusive.  His Biblical views on sexuality, marriage, and procreation were immediately challenged, dismissed, and ridiculed. 

 

In short his belief in the conservative canon was laughed at, an impossibly ignorant avowal of discredited theories of human behavior.  Accordingly, he was dismissed from Christmas, grandfatherhood, and Thanksgiving.  He was a pariah, a street pie dog, an unwanted political supernumerary.  

Never in his life did Arthur ever consider limitations on free speech.  The restrictions, censure, deliberate cloture of debate of today would have been heinous and unconscionable in the Fifties, and traitorous in Hamilton's time.  And so he took his cancellation and marginalization with a bit of indifference - history is tale of the ruled and the ruling and the preeminence of the latter - but still was angry and vindictive. 

Joining the Trump juggernaut helped assuage the frustrated sense of political insubstantiality, and gave him a renewed sense of purpose; but he would not get his family back any time soon, so inextricably bound as they were to the progressive canon. 

His censuring, cancelling daughter-in-law had been caught on camera channeling the Red Brigades, shouting, 'Death to America' and calling for the overthrow of the unholy imposter, Trump; so Arthur would have to wait until the dust cleared, his and all speech was admitted, and the country reverted back to first principles before he would be readmitted to his family; but ignorance always disassembles if given time and persistence, and he would have his day.