Purple Haired Harpies and the Decline of the Historic South

I found the following article of interest, so I am passing it on.  It symbolizes for me, in iconic fashion, another major reason that the millennia-old inherited society around us is collapsing, to be replaced by a monstruous, dystopian Gulag, a counter-reality where our tried-and-true verities are unceremoniously dumped onto the ash heap of history.

Just the other day I caught a portion of a public access broadcast of a Raleigh (NC) City Council meeting. Several dozen protesters were present and proceeded to testify…that is, rant and rave and threaten the council members if they did not, that very moment, pass a resolution condemning Israeli occupation of Gaza.

Now, let it be said, that I tend to be sympathetic to those who urgently seek negotiations and a withdrawal of the IDF, which, no doubt is wrecking Gaza beyond recognition and causing immense human suffering. While I condemn the vicious Hamas attack on Israel, the only way—the only solution, so it seems to me—is for rational members of the parties involved to sit down and negotiate an internationally-guaranteed two-state solution. This would necessarily entail full Palestinian sovereignty in Gaza and on the West Bank (with the requisite departure of zealous Zionist “settlers” who have seized the better land there from Arab inhabitants).

But back to the protesters at the Raleigh City Council: Almost all of them were identifiably women (?), and they were some of the ugliest, foulest looking creatures I’ve ever seen—anywhere: Purple stringy hair, 300 lb. female monsters, bulging out in all the wrong places, downright nasty, their noses festooned with ringlets, their mouths spilling out threats and imprecations and demands. If anyone—any rational person, that is—were sympathetic to their position, just their presence there would have probably quashed that sentiment and discouraged a sympathetic response.

Yet, the council members—like most mind-in-the-cloud liberals—appeared staid and polite, intently listening, as the loathsome harpies seized the microphone during the comment session.

That set me to thinking: How did those women become such foul harridans? Certainly, they weren’t that way as toddlers or young girls. And my thoughts centered on two causes which I believe have gotten us to where we are today here in central North Carolina: First, our perverted educational system, abetted by the collapse of the nuclear family and the church, and, second, a massive in-migration to the Tar Heel State since Governor Luther Hodges back in the late 1950s had the idea of establishing what became known as the Research Triangle Park centered around the three major universities in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. This, in turn, began a six-decade process of attracting highly-paid technocrats, who brought with them their neoteric beliefs on everything from politics and morality to child rearing…. But very little of the Southern “rootedness” and “social bond” communitarianism (to use the late Richard Weaver’s term) that had characterized my neighbors when I was growing up.

Many of those women at the Raleigh City Council went through our educational system, and most likely had parents who forked over thousands of shekels to make certain their daughters got a “good education.”  And, no doubt, that is a major part of the problem. For several decades we have permitted—in many cases, enabled—the total miseducation (I should call it as it is—indoctrination and cerebral infection) of our children by a corrupt public education system (which the GOP feeds almost as badly as the Dems). That miseducation is coming back to haunt us with a vengeance, culturally, politically, and religiously.

Mind you, the Raleigh City Council is now made up of an assortment of leftists and other n’er-do’wells of progressivism. The influx of population in recent decades, mostly techies from California and from “up North” attracted by our growing Carolina electronic industry, low taxes and hospitable business environment, has turned this area from a cordial, mannerly, old fashioned Southern region, into a foul copy of Silicon Valley. I now hate to venture into our state’s capital city—it is not the town I remember as a boy.

Automobile traffic is ruthless and becoming impossible. Genuine courtesy, whether on the steadily-expanding and changing road grid, or in dealing with a new and aggressive commercial class, has all but disappeared. Chatting briefly with a cashier while standing in a check-out line gets you nasty looks, if not nasty comments “to hurry up” or “move on” from impatient shoppers.

Surrounding the city and chewing up thousands of acres of once serene farmland, new multi-storied apartments rise in fields that I recall used to cultivate tobacco and soybeans. It’s becoming almost impossible for small landowners and farmers to hold on to their property given real estate sharks circling round, paying inflated prices for their homesteads. How incongruous to be driving out my way, passing beautiful countryside, only to be struck suddenly by ugly high-rise apartments which now are replacing it. As Howard W. Smith (d. 1976), the late conservative Democrat who once represented formerly-conservative northern Virginia in Congress, commented, observing the new faceless, impersonal apartments erected in his district: “And to think, that people actually live in those ant-hills!”

As my late friend and mentor, Dr. Russell Kirk, once said: “It is hard to love the strip mall where the honeysuckle used to grow.”

Thirty-five years ago Raleigh elected a very conservative mayor, a protégé of the late Senator Jesse Helms. That would never happen today. Since then Raleigh and the county of Wake, in which I live, have seen a sea change—in demographics, in voting habits, in the destruction of old neighborhoods, in the once largely unspoiled environment, and in the kind of population—the people—who inhabit the area.

Whereas I grew up in a community which celebrated our traditions and revered the nuclear family, valued the role of the church, where divorce was a rarity, where abortion was practically unknown, and where public education was considered an extension of parental guidance (not some secret lab for “woke” teachers to push six year old boys to have sex mutilation operations, without the knowledge of their parents), that sense of community has largely disappeared.

Again, my thoughts returned to those foul witches with purple hair….They were an appropriate symbol, a primary illustration, of what the best laid plans of our unweary and grasping political and business leaders had produced…secular and barren modernism run rampant, in search of the almighty dollar, and if traditions or heritage or old fashioned courtesy and belief should stand in the way, then let them be damned.

So, when I stumbled across the following article by an “out” and “proud” lesbian, boasting that now some 30% of Gen Z women identify as LBGTQ….well, given the choices we have made, or have allowed to be made on our behalf over the past half century, is it really surprising?

Our national decline can be traced to a number of factors, including the infiltration and perversion of our educational and entertainment systems, massive immigration (and not just from overseas), the nefarious results of the “civil rights” bills of the 1960s, and, yes, the long-range effects of the 19th Amendment. Humanly speaking it may be impossible at this point to reverse it. Yet, we must continue to try. And may God help us!

Boyd Cathey

Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in intellectual history from the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years he served as State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. He has published in French, Spanish, and English, on historical subjects as well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical organizations.

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