Filling the Void, with Dr. Michael Hill

At one time any revelation of the slightest moral offense would cause a man to withdraw from public service, if he were guilty. For example, as recently as 1973 Spiro Agnew plead no contest and resigned as Nixon’s vice president for one charge of felony tax evasion, and although in 1980 he was still claiming his innocence, the claims are doubtful. Of course, Nixon himself resigned a year or so later, upon the revelation of offenses committed by his staff which he was accused of covering up. But more recently, nothing came of claims and evidence that the Obama administration had committed similar offenses against a political opponent, using false evidence as a pretense for a criminal investigation during the 2016 Trump campaign, and the media has been accused of willful blindness.

Today, in comparison, we also have Hillary’s email scandal, Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal, and the glaring violations of law are suppressed or ignored solely for political reasons. Unless you are the opposition. So Donald Trump’s house got raided and the FBI carted off all of his papers, which is unprecedented, and now in a speech delivered yesterday, Joe Biden bordered on declaring as criminals and enemies of the State millions of so-called “MAGA Republicans”, as he called them. Even the liberal progressive news agency NPR reported this morning that "Biden’s speech walks a fine line in its attack on MAGA Republicans".

The gulf between left and right continues to widen, and the political center certainly seems to be deteriorating. Like Rome in its last centuries or the papacy in the years before the Reformation, America is being run by gangs competing for power and looking for ways to hold onto it at the expense of all rivals. This is a time when political dissidents and the disaffected should be looking for tried and true leadership, and not the latest YouTube fad.

But while the Left demonizes “MAGA Republicans”, Trump and his Republicans have also failed us miserably. Trump never drained the swamp as he had promised, turned his back on many initiatives which he had proposed, he accepts much of the progressive social agenda, and many of the things which he did accomplish were pro-Israel rather than pro-America. So even though “MAGA Republicans” are demonized by Biden, he is really only trying to move what remains of the political center even further to the left, and maintain a congressional majority by instilling a climate of fear. At the same time he also plays up the Republican challenges to his own election, which is startlingly hypocritical since there were even more severe challenges to Trump’s election by Democrats in 2017, where cries of “not my president” were heard even in the halls of Congress.

After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, pro-abortion activists attacked at least 80 Christian churches, and probably zero mosques or synagogues. In October 2021, leftist climate activists rioted at the offices of the Department of the Interior. They stormed the entrance to the building, and there were 55 arrests as the leftists fought with police outside the building. In January, 2021, The Federalist published an article documenting at least ten incidents where Democratic politicians in Washington actually encouraged their followers to commit public acts of violence against Trump supporters. Then of course there were the Black Lives Matter riots and lootings and the actual burnings of several American cities just two years ago. There was not one word of any such Leftist violence in Biden’s speech, but only that of “MAGA Republicans”. Notice that although black criminals are still being shot by police officers, there have been no BLM riots since Biden’s election. According to a database maintained by the Washington Post, there have been 243 fatal police shootings of negros, opposed to 420 of Whites. The actual numbers in both groups may be much larger since the race of an additional 970 such “victims” has not yet been identified.

The Democrats continually use this January 6th incident, which was actually a set-up, to play up that fear. I must also add that between that and Charlottesville, it has made any organization activities or membership prospecting for our own cause very difficult. At the same time, while the government ignores the organizations behind all of the Leftist violence of the past several years, apparently any Leftist cause has no problem organizing and growing in membership. This is what gangs do, they ignore their own crimes while exacerbating and seeking to avenge the perceived crimes of their rivals. So Joe Biden is demonizing millions of rather mainstream Republicans, and it won’t stop with him or with them.

Southerners need to secede from the American political circus. That is the only way that they may ever be able to continue in their own beliefs and traditions without being forced to accept all of the progressive agenda which is so contrary to their traditional way of life. Doing that, they also need to divorce themselves from all of the federalist and globalist groups and politicians who are actually working against their interests. The midterm elections, or the 2024 elections, are not going to save America, but rather only perpetuate the ever-increasing tyranny.

If White Christian Southerners do not build communities of associates in relationships based on trust, cooperation and mutual interest, for at least many of us it may become quite difficult to survive the future which the princes of this world are planning for us all. This is the same pattern of virtual self-governance which was deployed by the apostles of Christ in the first century, in the depraved and hostile pagan environment of that time.

Here we have our good friend Dr. Michael Hill with us once again, and I would like to discuss what sort of man people should seek when they look for a leader. In my opinion, many people today do not even know what a true leader should be, or what constitutes leadership.

Simply because someone may have a higher-than-average IQ, likes to talk, and perhaps even talks well, that does not make him a leader. Endless memes and talking points do not make one a leader. Dissidents today are continually falling into this trap. While I do not want to beat dead horses, Matthew Heimbach is a primary example, and so is Jeff Schoep. Both of these men turned their own organizations into circuses, and both have completely betrayed the values they once claimed to represent. But those two names only scratch the surface.

Just this week, as it was posted in the Christogenea Forum as an item of interest, I listened to an interview featuring James Allsup, who was one of the speakers scheduled at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville five years ago. He is basically still a child, having been born in 1995. He was being interviewed by Michael Knowles, who works for the news media website The Daily Wire, and calls himself a conversvative. Knowles began the interview by criticizing Allsup for appearing at Charlottesville with so many openly White racist groups. So Allsup was being badgered by Michael Knowles, a smarmy New York Jew, for his positions on pro-White advocacy groups, and Allsup could not justify those positions. He could not provide a simple statement defending pro-White advocacy. All he could say, essentially, was that “other groups do it”, naming for his examples groups such as BLM and La Raza.

Most of the so-called “leaders” who were on trial at Charlottesville were much like James Allsup. When the carpetbagging Jewish lawyers pressed them on their beliefs they shrunk back, capitulated, retracted, claimed they were joking, or did anything else they could to make excuses for themselves so that they could attempt to disclaim their own words. This is what happens when men choose “leaders” who have not yet developed character. Or perhaps, when men follow “leaders” that the media has appointed for them, as most alt-right and even more traditional right wing leaders these past several decades have been made notorious by the media, and have been created by the media for the attention given to them, for which reason men have flocked to them. We cannot believe that the Jewish media would give a serious, capable dissident any real notoriety if the viable alternative is to ignore him.

I don’t think anyone could have known how pitiful some of these men were before the Charlottesville trial, when they were put to the test, and they could not be ignored since some of them had quite significant numbers of followers and supporters, so I realize that when the events of 2017 and 2018 developed that there had to be some cooperation. But while it certainly may one day happen again, I pray we don’t have to suffer those same mistakes again. You never know a man until he is tried, and it is much better to rely on one who has seen and survived trials.

But if we look at leaders of the past, especially before the age of television and movies, most of the more successful of those leaders which have our respect had developed their character and abilities over many years of experience, both good and bad. True character is only developed and proven over time, and no man can claim to have character who hasn’t been tested.

George Washington was a licensed surveyor, a draftsman and a map-maker by the time he was 17. He had a family connection which got him into the Virginia militia as an officer, but had soon after served in a dangerous capacity as an envoy to French forces and Iroquois Indians on the Oho frontier in the 1750’s, as the British and French were fighting for control of the area. His father and grandfather had both served as officers in the British military, and his grandfather led a militia which also fought with the Indians. An incident called the “Jumonville affair” where Washington led a 300-man detachment that slaughtered 50 French troops, including a diplomat, set off the French and Indian War. Then after Washington had lost an important battle at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania, having been forced to surrender, he resigned his commission in 1754. After being recommissioned and having had a few more tumultuous years from 1755 to 1757, Washington finally earned military respect while leading the Virginia militia in 1758, where it had successfully defended against twenty significant Indian attacks in a ten-month period. During that time, the size of his militia regiment increased from 300 to 1000 men. Later, his life as a political dissident began when the British crown started oppressing Americans with taxes and other restrictions, in 1763. Washington developed his character in both victory and defeat, among both friends and political opponents, and must have learned many lessons along the way as he went on to greater accomplishments. But this character development was a process which began in 1752, and it was another twenty-three years before he was appointed head off the revolutionary army, and thirty-seven years before he became President in 1789.

Andrew Jackson was born in 1767, educated as a lawyer, and served in the US House and Senate, from which he resigned. Then he served as a Tennessee Supreme Court justice from 1798 to 1804. In 1801 he was appointed a colonel in the Tennessee militia, and became its commander in 1802. He defeated the Creek Indians and forced them to cede all of their lands in Alabama and Georgia in 1814, he defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, and led US forces to victory in the First Seminole War, whereby Florida was annexed from Spain. But not everything went well for Jackson. In 1806 he fought a dual with a man who was an expert shot. His opponent shot first and put a bullet near Jackson’s heart which at that time could not be removed. Jackson then finished the duel by shooting and killing his opponent, and from that incident had a reputation for cruelty which was probably not deserved, as the rules of dueling were not broached. Then a few years later he was almost caught up in the conspiracy of Aaron Burr to conquer New Orleans for himself and start his own empire, for which Thomas Jefferson had Burr arrested and tried, without success. In 1824 he had the largest share of the vote for President against John Quincy Adams and other candidates, but not having a plurality Congress elected Adams instead. Finally, he ran again in 1828 and won in a landslide.

Robert E. Lee was born to a Revolutionary War Officer and cavalry hero named Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, who had a successful but sometimes controversial military career which did not end until James Madison refused him a commission at he start of 1812. After that, Henry Lee made some bad investments, fell into poverty, spent some time in a debtor’s prison and in 1812 when Robert was only about 5 years old, left the family and moved to the West Indies. The family was supported by a relative of Lee’s mother, a Virginia landowner and politician, who later got Lee an entry to West Point, from which he graduated in 1829 as an engineer. Lee spent the first seventeen years in the army working his way up to captain in various engineering posts, until he had an opportunity to distinguish himself in the Mexican-American War in 1846. During that war, engaged in reconnaissance as a staff officer, for his outstanding service he received brevet promotions to major and lieutenant colonel. In 1852, against his wishes, In 1852, Lee was appointed Superintendent of the military academy at West Point. In 1857, his father-in-law died an his wife was his only heir. Lee was named executor of his estate, and immediately had to deal with slave revolts and years of mismanagement of his plantation. In 1858 he was publicly attacked by New York newspapers after some runaway slaves were captured and punished. In 1862, according to his father-in-law’s will, all of his slaves were freed by Lee. In 1859, Lee returned to more active duty wherein he was sent to put down the John Brown slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry, which was done on the same day that Lee had arrived. After that he was sent to Texas, where he remained in confrontations with the Mexicans until the time when Texas voted to secede.

So my point is that this is how true leaders are developed, by facing many years of both victory and defeat, or sometimes many years of boring drudgery, and maintaining a sound character through all of it, wherein they become experienced leaders having valuable knowledge and experience, and not simply smart-asses with big mouths. All of today’s so-called metapolitical influencers are merely entertainers or smart-asses with big mouths, who sound good on their own talking points but who know virtually nothing.

It takes decades to develop a sound character, to learn and develop a consistently sound worldview, and there are no easy shortcuts. Only very few men have had any opportunity to do that by starting out as a king, and certainly not as a president or a general. The vast majority of men who became great leaders started as privates, or with a proper education, perhaps as lieutenants. None of these men in our heroic past simply stepped out of college, received massive media coverage for some trivial debate where they made a controversial statement or two, and decided to begin their own political parties whereby they gained power or notoriety in a short season. But today, these are the types of people who seem to easily attract large groups of followers. It almost always ends badly, in some sort of scandal. Childhood heroes and feminist wonder warriors are a Hollywood fantasy. As a digression, Joan of Arc may have been able to rally the feminist French troops for a time, but after several military defeats she was captured and rather appropriately, she went down in flames.

Discussion points. Of course, Dr. Hill added a few of his own:

A leader who has never made a mistake is really only a psychopath who has never admitted a mistake, and often such psychopaths even blame others when they are confronted with mistakes which they cannot deny.

A leader who admits his mistakes can take responsibility for them, and also relate what he has learned from them, and avoid repeating them. Doing that he would retain much more respect from his colleagues.

A leader would never surrender his cause. He should be able to defend it in an articulate manner, and withstand reasonable scrutiny without capitulation.

But being unsuccessful, even in despair if he ever did give up, he would retire quietly rather than ever betray his cause.

A man who has developed true character based on experience should have developed an unshakable worldview before ever seeking to become a leader, and would naturally maintain his cause no matter the result of his own involvement.

A good leader recognizes the areas or capacities where he himself should not lead, and trust those areas to others who do have the appropriate abilities or knowledge, so that the objectives have a better chance of success. If a cause is worthy, then it is always more important than the individuals involved.

A leader who leaves a failure in place long beyond the time when his inabilities are brought to light is failing his own cause. Having a friendship and running an organization are two different things, and they must be separated.

Failure should not drive any man away from the cause, but an honest man should realize that he must find someone else to help him do better, or let someone else more capable do the task.

When a man commits himself to a cause, he should remain committed, whether or not he himself succeeds as an individual. Otherwise, he has betrayed his own commitment. If a man is not good in a particular capacity, or if someone else is better, then he must realize that and relinquish the task, so that the cause may succeed.

Sometimes a cause can succeed in unintended ways. The cause of Secession may still seem like a lost cause to some, but along the way it brings enlightenment to many people. However history also shows that a worthy cause can often be a lifelong struggle.