About

Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors.
Do you understand that you are alone?
You are outside history, you are non-existent.

—O’Brien, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part Three, Chapter 3

WHO IS ROBERT BELVEDERE?

The name Robert Belvedere is a nom de plume I have adopted for the following reason…

I adopted it when I worked for a state government entity where the overwhelming number of my fellow co-workers are Leftists — be they Masterminds, Apparatchiks, Dupes, True Believers, or Fellow Travellers.

Further: my superiors were all Leftists.  And, as a Senior Manager, I was an ’employee-at-will’ with no protection against firing. If my views were known, I would be hounded-out and/or fired.

So, here I was: wanting to be involved in the effort to Restore our Freedoms and Ordered Liberty, yet unable to speak-out in my own name. What to do?

My solution was…

1) Speak-out under a nom de plume; and

2) For Moral reasons, never comment on the branch of government I work for because it would be Unfair to do so anonymously.  And this I did.

I look forward to the day when I can use my real name, which should, Good Lord willing, happen within a few years now that I am retired.

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The following list should give you an idea where I’m coming from…

PHILOSOPHY:

I like to describe myself as an 18th Century conservative. I am not an Ideologue and, therefore, do not subscribe to any ‘ist’ or ‘ism’.

I want to be left alone by the Government. I believe the Federal Government should not be allowed to take any actions not permitted by The Constitution. State and local governments should, likewise, be bound by their Constitutions and Charters.

Life is absurd.

Do not take counsel of your fears.

‘Be not afraid’.

Any man who does not have at least one vice should not be trusted.

The 17th Amendment should be repealed [and possibly the 19th].

Thomas Jefferson was a blackguard.  Vlad The Impaler was a hero.

MOST INFLUENTIAL THINKERS:

Russell Kirk, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Edmund Burke, Samuel Adams, John Adams, George Orwell, The Founding Fathers, Saint John Paul The Great, Pope Benedict XVI, J.R.R. Tolkien.

RELIGION:

I am a fallen Catholic who believes that The Catholic Church has been, and still is, a force for good in the world.  I consider myself a warrior for Saint Michael The Archangel.  I consider Francis to be an Anti-Pope.

AREAS OF HISTORICAL STUDY:

Leftism, Western Civilization, Russia from the reign of the last Tsar through the fall of the Bolsheviks and until the present day; American history up to the fall of the Federalists; the decisions of John Marshall; Dark Age/Medieval England; the Roman Republic and Empire; the military history of World War II; the American Civil War; the Cold War.

ADMIRED FICTION WRITERS:

Fydor Dostovevsky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Trollope, Bernard Cornwell, James Ellroy, J.R.R. Tolkien.

ADMIRED NON-FICTION WRITERS:

Mark Steyn, Whittaker Chambers, Edmund Burke, Quin Hillyer, Robert Stacy McCain, Jeff Goldstein, Andrew McCarthy, Michael Ledeen, Roger Kimball, Victor Davis Hanson, John Derbyshire.

FAVORITE FILMS:

The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Lord Of The Rings, 1984, A Night To Remember, Damn The Defiant!, Ben Hur, Patton, Dirty Harry, 1776, My Fair Lady, The Lion In Winter, The Last Waltz.

FAVORITE TELEVISION PROGRAMS:

Upstairs Downstairs, The Pallisers, Mannix, Baretta, Deadwood, Inspector Morse. Midsomer Murders, Inspector Lewis, Miss Marple, Rome, I Claudius, Churchill: The Wilderness Years, House Of Cards [original, English version], Dragnet, Adam-12.

FAVORITE COMPOSERS/MUSICIANS:

Frank Sinatra, Led Zeppelin, Joy Division, Richard Wagner, Bill Haley And The Comets, Social Distortion, Black Sabbath, Muddy Waters, Bunny Berigan, Robert Johnson, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Rainbow, Rush, Deep Purple, Dean Martin, Benny Goodman, Harry James, Lynard Skynard, The Clash, The Rolling Stones, J.S. Bach, P.D.Q. Bach, Pre-1990 Bruce Springsteen, Louis Armstrong, Julie London, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, New Order, Bauhaus, Ultravox [with John Foxx], Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, The Allman Brothers, The Band.

TITLES BESTOWED:

By Capt’n Smitty over at The OtherMcCain: Sir Bob of Belvedere; by someone who, for good reasons, wishes to remain anonymous: Lord Fatheringay von Whoopsie of the Dung Heap Hooter.

ANCESTRY:

-Father’s side: Italian

-Mother’s side: Scots-Irish, English, German, American Indian. My great, great maternal grandfather served in the Union Army Company F, 5th Missouri Voluntary Calvary; his brothers and father served in the Confederate Army.

I have been involved in the music business as a composer, musician, and producer. I have always fancied that there is a great writer within me waiting to burst forth. This remains to be seen.

As Evelyn Waugh wrote of Kipling, so it applies to me: He was a conservative in the sense that he believed civilization to be something laboriously achieved which was only precariously defended. He wanted to see the defences fully manned and he hated the liberals because he thought them gullible and feeble, believing in the easy perfectibility of man and ready to abandon the work of centuries for sentimental qualms.*

I am a Renaissance Man striving to be A Man For All Seasons.

I am currently at work on a projected multi-volume, unauthorized autobiography [Make Then Think You’re Stupid… (…And They’ll Leave You Alone)].

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*The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, p. 625, 1983 edition [discovered via a posting by John Derbyshire in The Corner at NRO]

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‘I wanted to be in the arena because some things matter,
some things need to be said, some things need to be defended.’
—Charles Krauthammer

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