By Tho Bishop
The result is a long history of holiday celebrations being used as deliberate tools of the regime, often designed to undermine religious and regional cultural ties, with the intent to consolidate loyalty to centralized power.
Last year Congress officially nationalized Juneteenth Day as a federal holiday. While Very Serious talking heads attempted desperately to convince those that would listen that Juneteenth was a long celebrated American holiday, the reality is that the regional celebration was largely unknown by most of the nation prior to Congressional action. The episode is a useful illustration of how the state weaponizes secular holidays as a tool to promote a larger cultural agenda.
Prior to nationwide riots in 2020, Juneteenth Day was properly understood as a regional holiday celebrating the emancipation of Texas slaves. The day was understandably a time of celebration for freed Texas slaves and their descendants. Nationally, however, other states had their own days celebrating the end of slavery at times that correlated with their own history – such as Florida’s Emancipation Day which the state recognizes on May 20th. Jubilee Day, celebrated on January 1st, has also been a moment of celebration recognizing Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Of course, no matter the origins of Juneteenth as a particular regional celebration, its elevation to federal status has nothing to do with the history of slavery in America. There has clearly been no recent public debate over the virtues of abolition. Instead, the day’s modern political momentum was obviously the direct response to mostly peaceful protests that engulfed the nation following the death of George Floyd and other high-profile incidents of deadly force used by police during interactions with black Americans. Then-President Donald Trump has loudly taken credit for last year’s official declaration after pitching federal recognition as part of a federal response to deal with escalated racial tensions.
The end of the horrific, systemic violence of slavery is indeed a great victory for human liberty and a moment for celebration and recognition. Because of this, many libertarian-inclined politicians – including Senator Rand Paul – supported the Biden Administration’s follow-through of Trump’s campaign promise. Doing so, however, falls into the powerful trap of giving the federal regime another opportunity to shape the American narrative – and by extension the national culture – to its advantage.
The weaponization of holiday celebrations by authorities for the purposes of social control is nothing new. Ancient Roman triumphs were grand religious and state ceremonies celebrating a grand victory by the military of Rome. In Republican Rome, only the senate could sign off on triumphs, making it a political tool of political factions aligned or opposed to the victorious Roman general. Julius Caesar, who enjoyed an unprecedented four triumphs, famously utilized the public celebration of his military conquests to build up a base of support among Roman plebs.
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Cancel Culture Will Decimate Us…If We Let It – LewRockwell
Posted by M. C. on July 10, 2020
Consider that such “conservatives” as US Senators James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) now propose replacing Columbus Day as a national holiday with Juneteenth to celebrate the manumission of the last slaves in 1865. Tell me, please, what is the difference between these pusillanimous fake conservatives and those “woke” social justice warriors out in the streets who actually pull down monuments to Christopher Columbus? At least the rioters are honest about their designs.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/no_author/cancel-culture-will-decimate-usif-we-let-it/
By Boyd D. Cathey
Often as I work at my computer I keep on the Sirius FM Classical Music Service, “Symphony Hall,” with an occasional switch-over to a Bluegrass channel. Both, I believe, reflect at their finest superior elements of our Western cultural tradition with deep popular roots in our civilization, in the songs and compositions of people—our ancestors—which are inspired by their faith, their heroes, their tragedies and triumphs, events in their cumulative history.
Sometimes at night I try to catch a classic film on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) or on my preferred Encore Westerns Channel. Not so much on Encore Westerns, at least not yet, but TCM has begun bracketing certain politically-incorrect classics with “woke” commentary, usually by black and/or gay film critics. Some films, once shown on network television, will probably never see the light of day again. They are far too reactionary, mired in a time long ago, unable to be salvaged even by the most superficially talented social justice progressive movie maven.
Over recent years, certainly since the end of World War II and more aggressively since the momentous civil rights years of the 1960s, there has been a progressive and widespread effort to both “deconstruct” our cultural tradition and alter its expression, with a specific emphasis on the influence of women and minorities who, we are told, have been underrepresented. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Of course, women and minorities, especially racial minorities, have played a distinctive and important role in our artistic heritage and traditions. And there have been some significant and worthy contributions made by them. But always to be understood in perspective and in the context of two millennia of Western culture, with its roots in, to quote the late philosopher Eric Voegelin, “Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome,” and the predominate role of notable men who were uniformly white.
But increasingly cultural elites in literature, music, art, and film have attempted to treat the essential characteristics and aspects of our culture, those emanations and glories of our heritage by radically re-interpreting them, recasting them completely, and they have done so by excluding, even censoring or banning certain works long held to be of great value and grandeur. Indeed, a long festering anti-Western and anti-Christian animus, always present but for decades percolating just beneath the surface, now aims to reign supreme and totally dominate. Woe to anyone who would oppose it; to do so means you are a “racist” and partake of “white supremacy.” And once that death knell is sounded, once that fatal sentence is pronounced by some poorly educated “woke” lunatic on Twitter or in some corporate board room, well, there is nothing to do but subserviently crawl on all fours, beg forgiveness for everything your ancestors may have done, essentially for being white.
Especially since the death of George Floyd, a drug addict and convicted felon now apparently up for sainthood (by both Democrats AND too many Republicans), the madness we’ve witnessed in the actions of our political class now is also translated with a renewed vigour into the arts, into education, into religion, into sports, into practically everything that makes life interesting, varied and rewarding.
Ominously, the goal lines are advancing rapidly in all of those areas, as we see each day recounted by brain-dead Marxist apparatchiks on television. Outright censorship and banning are becoming the rule…and it seems that those who should be stoutly opposing them are giving in readily to the lunacy. Read the rest of this entry »
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