The Gathering of Sovereigns, Part 1

A Solzhenitsyn Reminder

This is a re-write of a prior effort to deliver these words through a less utilitarian forum. I must thank Patel Patriot for providing the nudge that I should explore writing on Substack. After taking a look around the place, he was correct.

Now, Part 1 revisited.

I am reminded these days of a June 28, 2018 article I noticed three years ago written by Herbert London in the American Thinker titled Solzhenitsyn 40 Years Later.

I invite you to go read it, the words written are certainly worth your time.

As is its subject, Solzhenitsyn’s June 8, 1978 Harvard commencement address.

On that date I had just begun my second year of service in the United States Army. As a newspaper junkie in high school, I vaguely recall the notoriety Solzhenitsyn received after he was arrested and charged by the Soviet Union with treason on February 12, 1974 and exiled the following day.

Later, as a student at the University of Florida in the early 1980s, I also vaguely recall him becoming more controversial – although now firmly residing in and traveling freely around Western locales – in the liberal circles I inhabited.

It later became clear to me he had made the mistake of deviating from the accepted narrative. I didn’t give a damn about that. The guy was still interesting to me.

So, as a graduate student in Tallahassee in the early 1990s I distinctly remember insisting to the woman who would later become my wife that she *had* to include some excerpts from Solzhenitsyn to bolster her Ph.D. dissertation.

Her research centered on an African American standard bearer, a female pioneer in educational theater – Irene C. Edmonds – a woman who, along with her husband, led the first contingent of African American college students to ever officially represent the United States of America abroad.

On behalf of our nation, they did a remarkable continental tour of Africa in 1958. I believe Florida A&M was the first Black American college to represent the United States abroad in this manner.

Tall, regal, and extraordinarily beautiful, Mrs. Edmonds was the epitome of a standard bearer. Take a look at her here shopping in the capital of Ghana, Accra, with a local Ghanaian dignitary:

https://digital.library.emory.edu/catalog/948sbcc2ms-cor

To help my future wife drive home an essential theme in her research (standards are of crucial importance in artistic endeavors), I insisted she make strong use of the words of Solzhenitsyn.

She was initially doubtful but acquiesced.

Like the documented work history established by Mrs. Edmonds, Solzhenitsyn’s words have stood the test of time.

Standards matter.

In a time of irregular warfare being fought at home (and abroad) at this very instant, warfare that will determine the continued existence of our constitutional republic, an adherence to standards is laudable. Exceptions are warranted, however. Just as irregular warfare confuses the hell out of anal retentive individuals who cannot think outside the box, my freely speculative writing can do the same.

But doesn’t the art of war require a creativity that employs speculation?

Many Americans, in my honest opinion, underestimate the value of confusion to the enemy – disinformation and chaotic nonconformity play to our American advantages, if only Americans are willing to employ such tactics – but in the political realm it appears only the adversaries of patriotic believers in American exceptionalism have realized this truth.

Until Donald Trump came along, that is.

THE FIRST SOVEREIGNS

He, alone, in the 2016 presidential election tapped into the exasperation of the Republican base with their elected officials. He, alone, recognized the final test the base – the first sovereigns – were giving in 2016 and responded to their call. He, alone, among the double-digit campaigners in the Republican primary, spoke to the need to maintain confidence among average, patriotic Americans in our efforts to keep the faith and continue supporting those fighting the good fight.

He, alone, did so in a conventional manner *and* on the irregular battlefield.

Including on social media.

While thinking of social media, I’ve come to the realization that anyone who does *not* recognize the inherent value of employing a wide range of actions, including speculation, especially that of the prudent variety, something that tends to engage our citizenry on the central question of our time – the stolen 2020 elections – evidences a certain unfortunate professional pride.

One that has been easily played by the Democrat and Republican UniParty for decades. Look no further than the output of National Review, for instance.

As President Trump has repeatedly asked, does someone who stole diamonds get to keep the diamonds once they are caught?

Obviously not.

Rights *and* responsibilities come with citizenship, that’s the American way. But some people have become *so* frustrated . . . and demoralized *so* effectively . . . they now stare into the abyss on a daily basis as an un-American feeling of being, that of helpless serf, engulfs their very being.

Giving in to such emotions are merely examples of UniParty success.

I won’t stand for it.

Frustration and demoralization is pitted against support for action among a self-selected group of Americans, all of whom desire a fundamental change back to an emphasis on standards. Unfortunately, too many have become too demoralized. Too defeated. Only some group members are moving forward, possessing an abiding faith that action combined with belief brings results.

For me, here is where the words of Solzhenitsyn from decades ago come into play.

FIRST SOVEREIGN, DEFINED

As I previously indicated, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn matters. His disenchantment with the intelligentsia among Western society once exiled from Russia matters. He was an internationally renowned advocate in his day for the power of words, and the arts in general. He was used in my wife’s dissertation to assert, in part, that artistic style and a commitment to standards are still important in our modern world.

Donald Trump and his team of competent professionals are doing precisely the same thing today.

I have to believe Trump, quite important in New York City affairs between the time Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia in the 1970s to his eventually disillusioned return in the 1990s, was quite aware of the source of Solzhenitsyn’s disillusionment with American and European intelligentsia.

Trump likely was aware of Solzhenitsyn’s January 1993 address before the National Arts Club in New York City where he said that “every work of a skilled musician, artist or writer is shaped by an absolutely unique combination of personality traits, creative abilities and individual, as well as national, experience.”

Absolutey unique.

Individualistic yet simultaneously nationalistic.

Sovereign.

Although artists the world over have ignored his warnings, this is what provided me with the centralizing theme for my series over what might be several weeks. Because this form of understanding nationalism is proving to be quite effective against the atheism of the Chinese Communist Party and its top-down authoritarian approach.

In response to this suffocating you shall comply approach, there is a growing phenomenon in America and there are evident expressions of it globally: the gathering of first sovereigns.

I want to return to Solzhenitsyn’s 1993 address. Written nearly 30 years ago, it could have been written yesterday because it is even more applicable now than it was then.

His speech was titled “A Dangerous Cult of Novelty.”

Hmmmmmmmmmm . . . .

Early in the speech, he made the case for a balanced respect for the past and what has been built from experience by mankind. He warned:

it is equally true that a healthy conservatism must be flexible both in terms of creation and perception, remaining equally sensitive to the old and to the new, to venerable and worthy traditions, and to the freedom to explore, without which no future can ever be born. At the same time the artist must not forget that creative freedom can be dangerous, for the fewer artistic limitations he imposes on his own work, the less chance he has for artistic success. The loss of a responsible organizing force weakens or even ruins the structure, the meaning and the ultimate value of a work of art.

As he began to close out his address, he hinted an acknowledgment that freedom isn’t free, that it must be balanced with other realities, and that the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice of action is a recipe for disaster. Solzhenitsyn wrote:

However, some writers have emerged who appreciate the removal of censorship and the new, unlimited artistic freedom mostly in one sense: for allowing uninhibited "self-expression." The point is to express one's own perception of one's surroundings, often with no sensitivity toward today's ills and scars, and with a visible emptiness of heart; to express the personality of an author, whether it is significant or not; to express it with no sense of responsibility toward the morals of the public, and especially of the young; and at times thickly lacing the language with obscenities which for hundreds of years were considered unthinkable to put in print, but now seem to be almost in vogue.

We see this often today with people insisting they know their rights but evidencing no comprehension of their responsibilities.

Solzhenitsyn lamented the fact that 20th‑century artists from all fields have, in his opinion, obediently submitted to a downward slide away from values grounded in reality, and in doing so slid away from standards and ideals.

Remember now . . . this is 1993, nearly two decades ago! Think now of our national drift away from the concept of duty, or a fundamental respect for (and demand of) the equal application of the laws.

The enduring genius of America, however, resides in our protection of individual rights balanced alongside our steadfast refusal to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Our refusal to countenance anarchic absolutes to the detriment of law and order.

FIRST SOVEREIGN, DIFFERENTIATED

Perspective and context matters most in a world where the first sovereign is the adult individual, a man or woman having attained the age of majority.

Ours is a world where rights carry responsibilities, and individual responsibilities far outweigh governmental responsibilities.

A world where government stands as only a second or third sovereign.

Earlier, in Solzhenitsyn’s 1970 Nobel laureate address, an address that stands as something of a manifesto on the unique importance of art, Solzhenitsyn said that:

“Archeologists have uncovered no early stages of human existence so primitive that they were without art.  Even before the dawn of civilization we had received this gift from Hands we were not quick enough to discern.  And we were not quick enough to ask: WHAT is this gift FOR?  What are we to do with it?”

Caryl Emerson, in 1995 a professor of Slavic languages and comparative literatures at Princeton University and now Professor Emeritus there, noted in an article for Georgia Review that Solzhenitsyn would go on to say in his address that human beings inhabit such different worlds, with varying standards of measurement, that individual humans and their collective cultures “can only be confused by--and thus indifferent to--each other’s experiences and sufferings.”

The globalist elite have taken serious advantage of this factoid in their extreme efforts to enforce identity politics and divide us, one from another.

Emerson said that for Solzhenitsyn:

“Only one means exists to communicate experience across the barrier of nationality and generation, and that is art.  Only art, Solzhenitsyn insists, cannot be based on an error and a lie; politics, philosophy, official history can all lie with elegance and impunity, but a lie in art will invariably be sensed as false and ruin the work.  The ancients were right:  Beauty, the aesthetic principle, is an inalienable aspect of Truth and Goodness.”

Hmmmmmmmm . . . politics and philosophy and official history can all lie with elegance and impunity. Don’t we now see it, friends, don’t we now see it?

I think they’ve been working extremely hard to make art lie as well. Standard-less art.

Reflecting again on his Nobel address, Solzhenitsyn also remarked that it was fashionable to talk of the leveling of nations and the disappearance of various peoples of the world into the melting pot of contemporary civilization. 

He added:

“I disagree with this, but that is another matter; all that should be said here is that the disappearance of whole nations would impoverish us no less than if all people were to become identical, with the same character and the same face.  Nations are the wealth of humanity, its generalized personalities.  The least among them has its own special colors, and harbors within itself a special aspect of God’s design.”

Indeed.

“The least among them” – though these egghead Marxist, Socialist, and Communist ProgressiveRegressives have worked very hard to obscure this fact, *the least among them* is the revolutionary fact found within America’s 1776 miracle.

Ben Carson, rising up from the financial bottom tier is perhaps an extraordinary outlier, admittedly, in the sense of his remarkable heights of achievement, but he is nevertheless a walking, talking example applicable to millions of the “least among them” attaining their American dream through hard work and faith.

CONCLUSION

In this writing I hope I have provided a window into the importance of the interplay between art, the individual, and the nation-state.

Solzhenitsyn saw it, Trump sees it. In fact, I suspect people miss something very important about the rise of Donald Trump and it, too, has links back to the Solzhenitsyn critique of what he found lacking during his two decades in the Western world: Trump is bringing back a legitimate return to the aesthetic of beauty.

One based on time-tested standards. To hell with all of this avant-garde shiznit. I hope to write more about this return to beauty at a later date.

As this Gathering of Sovereigns series evolves, and more posts are drawn up, I hope to be providing a window into the importance of the interplay between our military, the individual, and the nation-state.

It is through just such an interplay that Team Trump discovered a path back to American greatness.

Pathfinders provided the way.

Actively traversing that path no later than the day Donald and Melania Trump rode down that escalator to announce his run for the Presidency, breadcrumbs have been provided to us, the first sovereigns, by competent professionals. Civilian and military. Religious and secular.

All we have to do is keep the faith, and act on that faith.

This is war. Total victory is our goal.

Also, though not explicitly stated, don’t miss the Judeo-Christian underpinning of the first sovereign concept. It illuminates how a Russian like Solzhenitsyn can be so relevant today. It shines light on a global commonality that stands in contrast not so much to the Chinese people but to their atheistic Chinese Communist Party. It whispers, in admiration, how such a concept allows for the incorporation of the writings produced by that Chinese master strategist, Sun Tzu.

It also begs the political, cultural, and social media question: why so much Russia, Russia, Russia !!! nonsense amidst a concerted effort to hide the CCP, CCP, CCP !!! hand?

In Part 2 I’ll discuss America’s General, Michael Flynn, through the use of his own words, as he reminded us — the first sovereigns — pre-election 2020 and still reminds us post-election 2020, that we must gather up *and* mount up, and then charge hard into the battle that must be won.

Until then . . . faith, patience, and vigilance.