The resignation of Dr. Ann Hunter McLean from her Youngkin appointment to the Virginia Historic Resources Board is of seismic consequence for the Governor and his administration and for the Commonwealth.
The Governor and his team were on the ropes in a very tight race in which the electoral outcome was in the balance. His low-key campaign worked to draw in the Northern Virginia left-leaning moderates and particularly working moms to vote Republican, but avoid the RINO moniker. His team presented a clean-cut image of a Democratic diversity and inclusion storefront whose underpinnings were lashed together with the sinews of the current hardcore right-wing Republican talking points of antiabortion, support for the police, law and order, second amendment rights, fiscal responsibility, the advancement of corporate capitalism and the creation of jobs, strung together by evangelical fervor. The former image was presented to the general public and the later reserved for the Republican elites.
Much was made of the race, ethnicity, and bootstrapping second-generation immigrant qualities of the team’s Lt. Governor and Attorney General candidates, to undercut the Democratic Party’s new agenda and definition of “people of color”, whose objective is to expand their cornerstone voting block – the black population. This well-thought-out political strategy of the Democrats is nothing less than a racist agenda to magnify America’s black voting population (roughly 12%) by incorporating immigrants and anyone not white (approximately 70% of the population are white) into a class of “oppressed” peoples who they attract to their Fabian dream of egalitarian world order.
This new proletariat they posit will gain political control of a nationalistic socialist society. It will be dominated by the fringe collectively brought together, but no longer representing “diversity” but one subsumed in their “inclusion” as mongrelized American mutts. Their only similarity will be their universal disdain for European culture and their hatred for the oppressive white race, and its historical accomplishments in this nation and the world. This globalist vision is not new. Such amalgamation was also the agenda of the communist internationals led by Trotsky and Lenin.
The Governor and his team are still in campaign mode but seem to have forgotten that they actually won! If campaigns continue to run on and on and the victors don’t exercise the power they have in their hands, the public can only conclude that there is a continuing need to retire unpaid campaign debts; or that those campaigning are looking to position themselves for bigger things in the future, by constantly raising more donations; or they actually don’t have any real plans or agendas on which they are willing to take a stand. The constituency that puts a leader in power can turn on those who fail to deliver in a heartbeat.
“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”
(G.Washington, attrib.)
The inclusive coalition that put the Governor in office and brought in new Northern Virginia suburban working moms to the Republican party is not what ultimately won the election. What tipped the scale was when Glenn Youngkin began attacking CRT, a rarefied target that the average voter had no idea or comprehension of its meaning. But this was an encapsulated acronym that could be developed into expansive meaning and hopes, particularly among the countless “red” counties all across the Commonwealth whose populations are composed of the sons and daughters of twice over rebel patriots. To this forlorn and abandoned constituency, CRT resonated with great expectation. The wavering and disillusioned main core of the Virginia Republican Olde Guarde were drawn to the polls. But the reality of that expectation has not been felt, nor satisfied by this backbone of the Republican Party in Virginia – the vast numbers of rural county and small town Republicans. Victory is not enough, tangible change was expected.
It’s time for our Lt. Governor to stop telling the people of this state that she is black, treating her constituents as if they were all blind. Nobody cares about her race, but they do want to see her stand up for Southern and Virginia values. Her doing an NAACP “cleanup walk” was something right out of the Democratic Party playbook. It is the NAACP and its “Take em Down Movement” begun over fifty years ago, tied to the revisionist history of the American communist and polemicist Howard Zinn, which serves as the nexus of all the black racism, monument and memorial destruction, anarchy, looting and burning that has rampaged across our nation, and particularly in Virginia. Showing that you support the Second Amendment by broadcasting a photo sporting an M-16 is a stale campaign ploy. Real courage is for a black veteran to stand up and firmly express opposition to the taking down or attack on any Veteran’s memorial. Chuck Smith, a Navy veteran, did just that when he ran for Attorney General, and he is just as black as the Lt. Governor.
Our Attorney General talks of replacing Commonwealth Attorneys that fail to prosecute criminals, and he is pushing this agenda in Northern Virginia, but what has he done concerning the Portsmouth Commonwealth Attorney or the members of the Portsmouth Public Defenders, who led the desecration and destruction of the the city’s Confederate Memorial? In Portsmouth, Norfolk, Charlottesville, and Richmond public officials of a high order have committed felonies, caused and encouraged riots, stole or permitted the desecration of monuments, disregarded Federal Court orders, and encouraged false history and slander against Virginia veterans. The monuments to those heroic veterans, who are no longer walking this earth but who were certainly some of our bravest citizens, once stood their ground and gave their all to protect their families and the Virginia Commonwealth from foreign invasion. Virginia is waiting for our Attorney General to really take a bite out of the apple.
Governor Youngkin replaced his predecessor who reigned over a Maoist Cultural Revolution, which destroyed the respect, heritage, honor, and dignity of our Commonwealth inch by inch, and day by day with a racist agenda of public slander and liable. Governor Youngkin has a moral and political obligation to lead a counter-revolution and not hold a tea party of back-slapping consolidation of the Democratic Party’s Fabian dystopia. Unless, of course, he wants to lose all respect from those Republicans in the red districts that constitute the majority of Virginians today and he desires to drive the party into dissolution. Does he want to leave office with the reputation of having been the last Republican to ever hold the position of Governor? Effectuating change and reform do not always, nor should it always be telegraphed or shouted out over a bull horn. Power is often best carried out by silent purges and policy changes made smoothly and steadily. The Socialists understand this for it is the Fabian wolf hiding under a sheepskin that is their model, which they have slowly and effectively employed for decades, all across America.
It is important to place capable and qualified individuals in places of decision-making on public commissions and boards, sometimes to give a public voice for change, or to gain control of policy. Sometimes it is not good to have firebrands in such positions. But one thing is certainly important. The executive should have a well-defined plan and timetable for reform and change and sometimes, particularly following a revolution, that plan needs to be definitive and 180 degrees in opposition to prior events. It is a given fact that the liberal press, in these times will distort and destroy all of humanity’s best efforts at prudence and moderation and will spin any words in opposition to their agenda as false, lies, reactionary, and dare I use the word Fascist. Therefore, articulation of facts, selection of venues, and reservation of what and when to say whatever, are critical to winning hearts and minds. More importantly, such changes cannot solely rely on government internal change but must be carried out in business, academia, and the media and to effect such changes requires a lot of politicking and re-education. This requires getting the right people into the right positions and places to effect substantial reform. Moreover, the executive cannot be equivocating and weak. In consideration of what has just transpired in Virginia’s governance, over the last few years, it is incumbent that Governor Youngkin ends his policy of “get along – go along” and “working with the other side” in the spirit of political accommodation. Otherwise, he will lose all respect and will drive the party and Virginia into a hole from which it will never climb out.
Dr. McLean spoke the truth, even if she seemed to do so with tepidness and apologetics. But the Governor not only did not support her, but instead bolstered and thereby encouraged and justified Governor Northam’s actions and that of the radical Democratic Party controlled legislature. He has given a free pass to the ignorant and spineless Mayors and Councilors in Charlottesville, Richmond, Portsmouth, Norfolk and various other smaller communities throughout the Commonwealth, who lathered and bathed in the slop of black racist propaganda that is used by the NAACP and the SPLC to stir up public division and social discord, churned up to attack the white population, and split the nation for pecuniary and political purposes. The fact that the Governor and his staff have put it out that they think that monuments that were taken down should not be returned to their place of honor in their former public spaces but plotted and shadowed away and contextualized in musty museums and cemeteries, he has indeed distanced himself from the truth spoken by Dr. McLean. That he no doubt encouraged her resignation, is beyond disappointment!
The Olde Guarde moderates and conservatives in the red counties of the Commonwealth did not vote the Republican ticket to see the party extending the Maoist and racist policies of Governor Northam and his Democratic minions. They voted for reform and counter-revolution and to experience dynamic change but did not vote in expectation of limp-wristed platitudes. The Governor should have appointed a hundred individuals like Dr. McLean to positions of public power and influence.
The Virginia Department of Historic Resources has too long been sitting on its soft pudgy hands and not doing the rough work necessary to protect Virginia’s battlefields, architecture, historic districts, and above all its monuments. They have the tools but do not deploy them, and they have played a bureaucratic game of namby-pamby far too long. A purge is called for in that department, but it won’t come if milk toast leadership is appointed to oversight commissions of that department or any other. Virginia has become a Southern embarrassment and Governor Youngkin is failing to reverse that perception. Tourism is Virginia’s biggest business and Americans come to Virginia from all over the United States and foreigners from across the globe travel to our state with great expectations just to touch and feel our great monuments, step into our historic homes, walk our old streets, and breathe in the history of our air that is filled with hope and promise.
Virginia has been known the world over for its historic leadership and for its strong leaders. Governor Youngkin appears to be working to assure that his predecessor will be placed on a memorial pedestal someday as a great leader, while Youngkin’s administration will be viewed not as one of counter-revolutionary reform and vigor that restored sobriety and “all things in moderation” to the Commonwealth. Instead, his tenure will be seen in the future as only a spineless afterthought, which propped up the radical excesses of the leftist revolution of black racism which was led by Ralph Northam. Are Governor Youngkin and his team willing to accept such self-effacing character assassination cloaked in a suicide of their own making? Virginia’s historic monuments and memorials to our Heroes and Veterans need to be restored to their places of high honor forthwith. There should be no equivocating about this matter whatsoever!
Cliff Page is a native of Charleston, South Carolina with roots in Virginia. He has lived, worked and traveled all over America and the world. As an artist, he was Sculptor in Residence at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, NH in 2015, during the 50th Anniversary of the site and the 150th Anniversary of the assassination and death of Abraham Lincoln. He studied at the National Institute for the Fine Arts in Mexico and was a Fulbright Fellow to Italy and was nominated as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar and Indo-American Scholar in the past. He holds degrees from Old Dominion and East Carolina Universities. Twice, he ran for Mayor of Portsmouth, Virginia, where he lives and maintains his studio. He has served on numerous public architectural design, urban planning, and civic planning organizations. He put aside his own work as a sculptor for six years to take up the pen and direct his energies and efforts towards preserving and protecting Southern heritage and patrimony, and its historic monuments and memorials honoring our nation’s forefathers, and the Confederate Veterans and the brave heroes of Dixie.
