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Thursday, March 28, 2024 - 05:15 PM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

2021 America Gary Varvel

What, you may ask, is a social “faux pas”?  Two dictionary definitions should suffice to explain:

  • An embarrassing or tactless act or remark in a social situation;
  • A significant or embarrassing error or mistake—a blunder”

To which we might add my definition of a “political ‘faux pas’:

  • Any verbal statement, political act, principled stand, support of the U.S. Constitution, defense of Christianity, or admitted vote for the ‘wrong’ candidate that offends the easily offended and brain damaged vermin of the left that have infested and infected the so-called ‘social media’.

So we know what a “faux pas” is.  First, the phrase comes from the French: false or wrong step.  It happens all the time in human interactions with other people.  It has happened to me, and to you I’m sure, in the past.   No big deal, right?  Just apologize or explain, and get on with your life with no questions asked or no further consequences, because sane and rational people with functioning brain cells realize that occasionally the tongue “sees” what one’s mind does not.  Apologies or explanations accepted, and let’s move on.  Would that it was that simple in today’s “land of the timid and home of the easily offended”.

Unfortunately, the sane and rational among us are increasingly surrounded, bullied, observed, spied upon, attacked, despised, castigated, ridiculed, fired from our jobs,  and generally considered to be conservative/Americanist/Christian/patriotic imbeciles, worthy only of being shamed, ostracized, hated, and if they could—tarring and feathering of us—by the “woke”, brain dead, loathsome, mal-educated, and maggot-infested (to use one of the late Rush Limbaugh’s favorite terms from the past) creatures who pose as human beings, the ever watchful and ever ready pond scum eager to pounce upon a politically or socially incorrect “victim”, like giant poisonous scorpions in constant search of new prey!  You who have become addicted to the verminous and progressive-controlled “social media” are especially vulnerable!

How did things get this way in this land that used to value varying opinions, and whose mantra for many generations were the words originated by an English author, Evelyn Hall, in her 1906 book, The Friends of Voltaire, in which she wrote the famous phrase: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  (Often misattributed to Voltaire himself as an illustration of his beliefs, and in defense of free speech.  However, he himself was an anti-Christian socialist).  On a recent cable opinion show, the host told the sad, but true, story of a decent, hard-working professional man who took his family out to a nice restaurant.  While enjoying their meal, a group of noisy young partiers (teens or early 20’s), came in and became rowdy and caused great irritation amongst the other diners.  One young “couple” in this group consisted of two young men—one dressed in a suit and the other in a red DRESS.  This professional man finally had enough, and went and asked these young rowdies to “tone it down”, whereupon they took great umbrage at his request.  Yelling and harsh language ensued, during which this professional man observed to the young “man” wearing a red dress that “men don’t wear dresses”.  Which was, of course, 100% correct, even if somewhat injudicious to comment upon under the circumstances.

Apparently these young people vowed to seek revenge against this man.  I don’t recall how they discovered his name, but within two days he had been attacked and ‘shamed’ on social media, several verminous Hollywood ‘celebrities’ had joined in the attack, and the top management of his company, in which he, himself, was in the top management group, had caved to the threats of violence and of bad publicity against it, and fired this man from his top job.  At the time of this report he was jobless, without an income, and had been socially shredded by the mob of human debris that inhabits much of ‘UNSOCIAL’ media!  Sadly, his story is one of untold numbers who have suffered the same social ‘cancellation’.  (This is just one of several reasons that I refuse to ever be a part of any social media, other than email and the internet). 

“Cancellation”, of course, is nothing new.  It just depends on what is the final result.  Back in 212 B.C. the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang “cancelled” 460 scholars in his kingdom by burying them alive.  Their “social” crime was ‘owning forbidden books’.  This emperor justified his harsh treatment by claiming, “We don’t want to hear people criticize the present by referring to the past.”  Concerning this event, Harvard University Chinese history professor Peter Bol commented to the BBC back in 2012:  “The past is irrelevant.  History is irrelevant.  And so you have the burning of books, you have the burying of scholars, of scholarly critics.”  Indeed, in our time here in America the past—the true history of our civilization—of the good and the bad—is purposely becoming ‘irrelevant’, because as that Chinese emperor believed, those who run a country—a government—do not want their “subjects”  to use the lessons of the past to criticize and control them, or to oust them from their positions of power and influence.  Above all else, they don’t want “citizens” with rights, but only fearful  and cowering “subjects”  terrified of offending their “masters”. 

As Selwyn Duke so cogently observed in the April 19, 2021 issue of The New American magazine:  ‘cancel culture’ “reflects a truth: You can’t reprogram a computer so it performs as  you wish without first eliminating conflicting programs.  Likewise, to really change the hearts and minds of man, you must change his foundational beliefs.  As Orwell said, he ‘who controls the past controls the future.’  And our cancel cultists control the present well enough so that they’re delivering a Year Zero—a remaking of our culture—by a thousand cuts.” 

There have been other, earlier “victims” of this despicable “cancel culture” mentality (or lack thereof).  For example, when I was a pre-teen and even into my teenage years, back in the 1940’s and 1950’s, one of the MOST popular of the old radio, and eventually TV, shows was called “Amos ‘n Andy”, which presented the daily lives—the victories and the defeats—of black people in Harlem.  It was hilarious and always family friendly.   But most of us know that wonderful show was ‘cancelled’ in 1953 due to pressures from the NAACP, and others, who reviled it by claiming that it “stereotyped” black people.  Then there was the high profile CFR member Larry Summers, a well-known economist who was forced out of the presidency at Harvard University in 2006, being ruthlessly attacked on social media and in the print press for daring to express the TRUTH that women were relatively rare in elite science and engineering jobs because “most of the highly gifted in these fields, and most people with genius-level IQ’s , were male.”  Which was a FACT.  Even being a member of the treacherous Council on Foreign Relations didn’t save his job.

Even the developers of high tech haven’t escaped this “cancel culture” pogrom.  We all recall that Brendan Eich, who CO-FOUNDED Mozilla Corporation, was forced to resign as its CEO in 2014 because in 2008 he dared to donate $1,000 to the proponents of California’s pro-marriage “Proposition 8”.  The virulent cancel culture warriors and the vermin of the left apparently don’t believe in forgetting and forgiving!  Ever!

Over the past couple of years we’ve all watched news reports that showed this “cancel culture” mob of brain damaged misfits attacking the statues and monuments of noble people from both our past and from earlier eras.  Not only monuments to the great of the past have been attacked and destroyed, or forced to be removed, but even famous entertainers of the past, long since passed away, have been attacked.  A singer that we often heard in our home, the late, great Kate Smith, one of the greatest voices of the 20th century, and the lady who FIRST sang “GOD BLESS AMERICA” on her radio show on November 11, 1938, has been disrespected by having her statue removed from the stadium used by a cowardly sports team because she sang supposedly “racially insensitive songs” over 90 years ago.  Even our noble National Anthem has been attacked last year by the Los Angeles Times, which called for its “cancellation” as our national anthem.  Other hate-filled leftists have attacked our anthem because it is “elitist, sexist, and racist”.  And just this month the statue of one of America’s greatest generals, and one of my genuine HEROES, Gen. Robert E. Lee, had his statue removed from “Monument Blvd.” in Richmond, and destroyed, courtesy of the craven leftist cowards who now run the once-noble State of Virginia.

And who can forget the attack on one of our great cultural “American Heroes”.  Let me tell you what Selwyn Duke wrote:  “Then there’s the Duke…. John Wayne might have often played a man of few words on screen, but some he uttered in a 1971 (magazine) interview expressing opinions that were later slammed as ‘racist’ and ‘homophobic’ have sparked a movement to remove his name from Orange County, California’s airport.  Of course, saying ‘A black man should be killed if he’s messing with a white woman’ is pretty extreme.  Only, Wayne DIDN’T say that.  Boxing legend Muhammad Ali DID—as a 30-something man in a 1975 (magazine) interview.”  Don’t I recall that some government types named their Louisville, Kentucky airport after Ali in 2019?  I believe I do.

Just recently, we all know that poor old Dr. Seuss had six of his wonderful children’s books “cancelled”—withdrawn from sale—because these insipid cancel insects claimed he drew “racist and insensitive imagery” in them.  Even the (honest) liberal Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was ‘cancelled’ on social media in early February of this year because he dared to TRUTHFULLY question the safety of the COVID-19 “non-vaccine” vaccine.  And what these leftist twits did to our former President, Donald Trump, by virtually “cancelling” him from the internet, is well known to all patriots.

So why do patriotic and relatively concerned Americans “put up” with these “cancel culture” attacks on us?  Quite obviously, this evil societal pressure is somewhat successful in its war against those who dare to venture an opinion not approved by the MOB because it (the disgusting mob) ENFORCES LIES, NOT TRUTH!  It enforces left wing ideology, not independent and moral and patriotic thinking, which is the archenemy of leftism/collectivism/socialism.  But WHY is it seemingly so successful in its attacks against the mores and values of western civilization, despite its being so unpopular among traditional and decent Americans?  The answer is not complicated, according to Selwyn Duke:  “…Just as 10,000 armed and organized men can control 50 million disorganized…people, so can a powerful cultural oligarchy control a nation’s social sphere.  Such an oligarchy is what we have, too, with leftist ideologues controlling the mainstream media, academia, entertainment, most of big business, and Google, Twitter, and Facebook.” 

This disgusting “cancel culture” is nothing more than “extreme social pressure exercised in the enforcement of a social code via scorn and ostracism,” according to Duke.  Last March 19, the editor-in-chief of American Thinker wrote that conservatives “need to learn from our foes when it comes to forcing the major institutions of our society away from the Left’s agendas, back toward sanity.”  He then discussed one example of how conservative activists  forced Tufts University to ultimately expel the Chinese Communist “Confucius Institute” from its campus.  (ALL Confucius Institutes are Beijing communist propaganda outlets and all should be ejected from our shores). 

Finally, each one of us must do all we can to resist the moral decay of our society, decay that involves the belief that it is fine to “cancel” someone with whom one disagrees.  As Selwyn Duke reminded us:  “…The remedy for moral decay is moralization; to this end, STAND UP FOR TRUTH.  Never apologize for speaking it, especially since it won’t save you, anyway (cancel cultists don’t take prisoners—only scalps).  Be courageous, not conciliatory.  Remember that political correctness, now “wokeness”, is the ‘suppression of truth for the purposes of advancing a left wing agenda’.  Its goal is to get  you to lie.  And if its orchestrators can turn us into liars, we’ll have lost far more than a career.”  And that is excellent advice we all should follow.

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A native of Cleveland, Ohio, W. H. (Bill) Lamb is a graduate of Cleveland State University (Ohio); being graduated in 1960, he moved to South Carolina in 1964.  For many years he was an Industrial engineer, Chief Industrial engineer, and plant manager in the steel, electronics, and apparel industries in Ohio, South Carolina, and Alabama.  In his younger days, he was an avid hiker in the Southern mountains, a target shooter, and is still an avid student of both American history and ancient Egyptian history.

He is an avid and long-time writer, concentrating on political and cultural issues of concern to America's Christian Patriot community.  He was published in the Lancaster, S.C. "News" during the mid-to-late 1960's, and has been a Local Columnist published in the Greenville, SC The Times Examiner since 1999.  The late and great Christian Patriot, Col. Bobby Dill, was his first Editor. During those years he has had several hundred articles published in The Times Examiner, which he always refers to as "a great journal of truth"!  

He has had one book published, a 120-page novel set in our future, titled "The History of Our Future", and two unpublished  750-page sequels "Waiting in the Wings" to be published "someday".  Bill has been married to Barbara for 65 years, has two adult  (and aging) kids,  five grandkids, six great-grandkids, and a "feisty and opinionated" 80 lb. Pit Lab named Hayley, who admittedly runs the entire house.

A very long-time member, with Barbara, of The patriotic John Birch Society, he believes that it is the duty of ALL Christians to also be dedicated patriots and do everything possible to both resist the evil of collectivism that is smothering Western Civilization and to do his best to educate and motivate his fellow Americans in the preservation of our unique Constitutional Republic, and most importantly, to share the love of his Savior with others.