Even More of the Way We Are Now
For quite a long span of history America was admired and loved by the world because it was a good country for us common folks. This won’t be so much longer. The future America will resemble Brazil—with one difference: Its rulers are nuclear-armed and crazed by delusions of omnipotence.
The New York papers and magazines have been straining themselves to understand why Giuliani seems to be leading the field for the South Carolina presidential primary. They know why enlightened Northern folks adore the Mayor, but South Carolina? They have at last decided it must be that Giuliani is admired in these regions for his authoritarian tinge and demeanor. The real explanation is much simpler: South Carolina Republican leaders, like their colleagues everywhere, are principleless opportunists who hope to get on a winning team.
Why are so many Americans so afraid of silence? If we knew the answer to that, we might have a clue to the decline of our civilization.
John McCain's popularity as a Presidential candidate seems to have waned recently. Some say it is because of his support for illegal aliens. Others blame his support for Bush's warmaking. I have another explanation. The revelation has got out to the voters that McCain's middle name is Sidney. Nobody named Sidney can ever be President. It is even less likely than an honest man being nominated. In this context Sidney is even worse than Gerald, although not as bad as Adlai or Hubert Horatio.
"Our" President has launched an unconstitutional, illegal, unprovoked, preemptive war of foreign aggression on his own whim or from a conspiracy of unelected courtiers. Do you really think there is any constitutional or democratic government left? The Rubicon not only has been passed but has been wiped off the map.
Your benevolent government will spend $1 billion next year to encourage children to eat more fruits and vegetables. A medical expert complains that this will be useless or even counter-productive. It depends on what you mean by useless. Some people will make a lot of money, which is the real purpose anyway.
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In South Carolina, Giuliani indeed has a lot of the GOP "faithful" riding the crest of the wave along with him. Such knaves are always to be found among the powerful or those who seem to be so. Yet, in South Carolina and in the South there is something to the nature of the wave on which they are riding which is disturbing and ominous.
The dispensationalist/rapture version Christianity has spread across the once orthodox and/or covenant-based South like kudzu, also an alien which has ironically become a hallmark of the South and has smothered and distorted the old Christian landmarks which pointed the way to the Prince of Peace and not to the god of war. It would seem that if the name "Israel" can be uttered in the context of some policy, no matter how immoral, unlawful, unconstitutional and impractical it might be, said policy becomes sacrosanct and idolized. Giuliani plays this sentiment very well.
Also, we Southerners have become the willing Janissary of the very empire which vanquished us. Our willingness to defend our homes and hearths has been turned into a willingness to offend the homes and hearths of others thousands of miles away as we serve the beast which took so much from us. The spirit of Lee who would draw his sword no more only in defense of his country -Virginia - has been replace by the spirit of Sherman who would loot, burn and rape in blood lust with war as his desired pretext. Giuliani knows how to conjure up Sherman's unclean spirit.
Finally, that evil, blasphemous and heretical song "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" reverberates in Southern churches. We have come to believe that we belong to the chosen and that our armies are "ordained of God" to carry the gospel of democracy through the means of war across the globe. The very spirit of all that was and should be anathema to the South is carried in that song and that song and its malevolent message have embedded itself in our souls. Giuliani sings the song well in sonorous voice.
If my Southland is so far gone, and so it appears, is there any hope for America herself. Yet, I hope that we Southerners can break the spell of the fatal attraction with which we have beset ourselves. I suppose the writing of these meager paragraphs is a part of my attempt.
Mr. Peters, very well said! I really enjoy your comments! In addition to the mass media, I believe the greatest damage was done to the South when we lost control of our local institutions (primarily our schools and churches) to outsiders who taught alien and false doctrines. As Frank Conner pointed out: when, after a hundred years of trying, they couldn't chage us from without, they changed tactics and began to work from the inside.
I think we Southerners should take pride in our gardens again as a first step. Then we must once again acccept simplicity and independence over wealth and power as our way of living. Atlanta, as she exists today, is as Northern as Chicago. She didn't deserve burning by Sherman, but she seems to have learned all her subsequent lessons from him. The other thing we could do is quit trying to apologise for not being "with it" whatever "it " is . In these times of plastic plenty, less is more -- unless your sitting on your porch drinking iced tea with fresh ment (or bourbon) or watching it rain from inside your barn or tending a garden of some sort --- more of this is less of Atlanta.
Mr. Peters,
You write about the evil "Battle Hynm of the Republic". The only place I have ever read a balenced discussion of the origins of the ballad are by one Dr. Revilo Oliver. Can you post another link or article discussing the insidious origins of the Battle Hymn? Thanks.
Yes! So true.
By the way, do you think Gresham Barrett will run for Graham's seat?
The presidency might be going to a demon, but perhaps Graham will at least be thrown out. Folks say to think positively, be like Reagan, so I say Barrett would help slow America's joyride into Hell.
MJT,
Here are some of the links which you requested on the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance84.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/twain4.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/008742.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/anderson/anderson132.html
One notes that in the politically correct version of "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah," the words "as He died to make men holy, let us DIE to make men free" have been changed to "as He died to make men holy, let us LIVE to make men free." We post-moderns have become a bit skittish about dying, although it is definitely in our future; we, however, do not shrink from cheering on our "professionals" who kill and die for the empire.
Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant!
"We have come to believe that we belong to the chosen and that our armies are “ordained of God” to carry the gospel of democracy through the means of war across the globe."
Unfortunately, this may well be true, but I do not think it is true that your average evangelical voter would overlook Giuliani's position on abortion and gay marriage because he is the best for Israel. Where is the polling that supports that?
Right now Christian voters are just another ill informed constituency of the GOP, and their support for Giuliani reflects that. Once we are closer to the campaign, his support among Christians will fall.
BTW, did you hear SC may move their primary up to 19 Jan?
I concur with you completely, Mr. Peters. The Southern clergy used to be our backbone. Now, in their ignorance and bad character, they have succumbed to discarded New England heresies. But then, the South has suffered a drastic failure of leadership in every domain.
"The future America will resemble Brazil—with one difference..."
This is unfair-- to the Brazilians. They take a limited number of immigrants, speak one language (probably not "official"), and can still make listenable music, something Americans haven't done in 50 years.
And when the Supreme Court of the United States threw out a federal handgun law as unconstitutional a few years ago, it was the Supreme Court of the United States of Brazil.
Mr. Wilson,
Could you please elaborate a bit more on your comment about the U.S. resembling Brazil in the future?
Mr. Kyser has a very fair point though about the quality of the Brazilian music.
Portuguese, however, is the official language of the country.
Born in 1950, I have witnessed many astonishing changes in our country, perhaps none more astonishing than the complete disappearance of principals. The novel ‘Gone With the Wind’ (which, despite what we are told, contains far more fact than fiction) would serve as a perfect parallel to the present. After the war and during Reconstruction, the people adamantly refused to accept foreign rule. Through an obligation to duty and honor, they chose to starve and do without rather than submit. There were certain principals that they would hold to, no matter the consequences. That is, all but Scarlett. She lacked the integrity and values that drove the rest and placed money and position above everything. And that is what we have become, a country of Scarletts. We place nothing above money, position, and material possessions. But, also like Scarlett, we find no real happiness there, because it lacks any real concreteness, like that found in friends, loyalties, and convictions. To borrow someone else’s term: it has less meaning than a dog chasing its tail. Therein, I believe, is the sickness of our misguided age. We are urged to live on the surface, with a void for depth.
I have made similar comments to Dr. Wilson's re: the U.S. becoming Brazil. My reference (and I assume his) is not to culture or ethnic makeup (I have no reason to disagree with Mr. Kyser, as I know little of Brazil culturally), but to her large economic disparities. While Brazil has further developed a middle class, she still has vast number of very poor (in the notorious, drug-gang run "favellas") outside her major cities. She also has a small elite of the extraordinary wealthy (I recall a Washington Post article from several years ago recounting how the wealthy fly around Rio in helicopters out of safety concerns).
While Brazils vast poor are native, and we are importing ours, the result would be the same and is seen increasingly in CA. Large numbers of poorly-educated, very poor, unskilled people amongst a small number of very wealthy with the middle class fleeing. Perhaps you have not seen the reports out of Brazil lately, but their EMTs have to travel in armored vehicles with military police escort to enter the Favellas in order to treat wounded soldiers/police. Worse, a prison gang has engaged in a war against police in Sao Paolo state (the economic center that one would expect is more stable than Rio). It has engaged in regular bombings in Sao Paolo against police officers.
While nude women at carnival may be Brazil's tourist image, her reality is quite different. I, for one, don't view good food and good jazz as an adequate tradeoff.
Right now, Brazil is booming economically, alleviating some of these social pressures (as is CA and the US in other areas). When another currency crisis or recession (a la 1981-82) hits, the environment may be very different.
Dr. Wilson is quite right to be concerned.
"Minorities closer to becoming a majority"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080802358.html?hpid=topnews
While we may not want to imitate Brazil economically, Brazil shows us just how absurd the neoconservative claims that terrorists hate us for "our way of life" are. Brazil is at least as Christian (Christ the Redeemer) and at least as decadent (Carnival) as modern American culture, yet on a recent trip I observed wealthy and poor families alike enjoying carefree evenings and weekends together on the beach. There was no threat of Islamic terrorism hanging over Rio. Unless hard-core terrorists like Osama Bin-Laden have a foolish, interventionist foreign policy to seize upon(ours), they are unable to muster enough support to attack countries whose culture they do not like.
Daniel,
They hate us for many reasons. One, being that we export our vile, disgusting, and decadent "culture" around the world. I don't believe that Brazil does that.
I got the message,and it’s time to go. Paleoconservative politics – as all politics – remains the “systematic organization of hatreds”, and those who decry this New England tradition are now seem to be its practitioners.
With respect to political platforms: The Republican main plank is stupidity. The Dimmykrat main plank is evil. The Palecon main plank, so it appears, is farcical: To attribute political ineptitude to men named Sidney.
I am not personally offended by this, since it cannot have been a reference to me, and take the larger picture: And it’s a very sad picture to see a movement with such potential now bite the dust. Have I wasted 7 years of my political life? In the fall of 2000, I joined one paleoconservative organization; in the fall of 2006, I began closer association with an additional one. In both I had hope that I might find at least SOMEONE who had read at least a few pages in Real Conservative counter-revolutionary tradition (“conservative” was coined by Chateaubriand, so let his movement own the word) of Burke, Möser, de Maistre, Bonald, Chateaubriand, Friedrich Schlegel and Co, Adam Müller, Fusel de Coulanges, Taine, even Maurras, or any of a number of lesser figures, or even Karl Mannheim’s essay – and thus someone who knew this movement’s strong points. I had also hoped to find men willing to revive the Jeffersonian Party, a party Wilson destroyed. These hopes now have to be put into cold storage.
Well, what DID I find? I found a movement, Paleoconservatism, with three unbridgeable and fatal splits:
The first is the one between Hard Shell Calvinists who think Cromwell in Ireland was peachy (and who don’t practice pedobaptism, an omission that would have been literally incinerated in Geneva) and traditional Catholics. One organization has increasing become under the sway of the former (though to date the leadership has been able to keep Orangemen at bay and welcome Catholics, I’m happy to say). The other is controlled by traditional Catholics who don’t talk much about _Rerum Novarum_ and the _Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching_. The Paleolibertarians at least know their tradition chapter and verse, and they preach it.
The other spit is between Jeffersonians one side, and on the other The Filth of racialists, Judeophobes (Drumont-esque), Germanophobes (as bad as Goldhagen), Habsburg-phobes, ultranationalists (e.g., The Black Hand), and Francophiles who speak no French, who have spent little time there save as a tourist, who never have read any Symbolists poets, who don’t know Monet from Manet (or simply hate both), and who know nothing of the French Conservative tradition. Forget for a minute that neither Jeffersonianism (a good tradition) nor The Filth is conservative. Until just two weeks ago I had been telling folks that paleo’s were having an awfully hard time cleansing themselves of The Filth, or of even realizing that The Filth is alien to their tradition. Now I wonder, Is in fact Paleoconservatism simply a front organization for The Filth, hiding under the name of a respectable political movement? Thank goodness the IRA and The Red Hand saw sense.
I took hope last Oct at the convention of one of these two organizations. When in a workshop I raised the question what one ought to do if it were simply dangerous to have The Stainless Banner or the 3rd National on one’s windshield, I was told, in polite but clear language (by someone who is not in the leadership, I should add) that I was a coward. But a young man in a baseball cap and T-shirt – he could not have been more than 25, clearly a blue-collar rural Georgia white – took me aside. Put up the Stars and Bars (the 1st National), he suggested; not only was it our first official flag, not only was it the flag flown over all our victories through Chancellorsville, not only was it NOT flown by the Aryan Nation or The National Alliance, but also people would ask what it was, upon which one could inform them of the truth. He also, even more wisely, told me this: “It’s stupid to hate a man because of his race. You might hate a man because he slept with your wife or robbed you on the street. But not because of his race”
Midge Decter told Buckley and Allan Bloom that the common folk had preserved wisdom and academic standards better than many of the university and scholarly elite.
The 3rd split is between smart politics vs grumpy old men who have a personal ax to grind because they didn’t get a job in the government, the press, or plum academia, or if they did, they found their departments highjacked by Cultural Marxists and then decided to blame Neocons. Captain Ahab sails again. (Captain Delano and Captain Vere are sailing again too, an equally lamentable fact)
These splits are fatal. Paleoconservatism is thus a terminal case, with life support removed. In the process of this realization and this estrangement, I have made a detente with the Paleolibertarians, have joined the local Ron Paul group and the local SCV, and have discovered a new tradition: European Christian democracy. For years now I have been more a European rather than an American anyway.
That I now go into inner exile, into the great silence, and down to the deep underground may be wise, and I invite others to join me now, for it is a question of sooner rather than later. Come Nurse Ratched as President of the Coo-Coo nest – an advent about which the Paleoconservatives not only will do nothing to prevent, but also with suicidal longing will aid and abet -- The Reign of Terror will commence: My name will go on a data bank list because of my postings, my magazine subscriptions, my memberships, my religion, even my foreign travel, and the result will be harassment by the IRS, by the AFT, by the “Patriot” Act, and at airport check ins. I will be silenced by Nurse Ratched for hate speech, if not the subject of an arrest warrant without habeas corpus. What is more, nothing will be done about the Hispanic takeover, and I’ll have to adapt to this too by lying low, and learn to like eating their version of cornbread.
Now the time has come to say Adios. I have memories to treasure. The joy of meeting with and learning from Thomas Fleming and Christopher Check last January in Rome cannot be taken away from me, and I recommend the same experience to others. The admiration and gratitude that I owe to Clyde Wilson for his participation in our Lincoln Reconsidered Conference in Greensboro a few years back I shall not forget. Dr. J. Michael Hill remains for me the ultimate model of a Southern scholar and gentleman, and he will continue to have my ear.
One of Newman’s best sermons is “The Parting of Friends”. A movement in which he had been a member was now lost, and he had to go another way. The sermon has been my spiritual reading today. I should add: I shall still count among my friends, friends not parted, fellow members of the League. As for the rest of my political friends, I wish you the best, and with dolor
Ave Atque Vale
Mr. Cundiff,
Your posts will be missed.
I didn't realize Chronicles was a movement or, for that matter, that paleoconservatism was a movement. I thought it was a disposition.
"It’s stupid to hate a man because of his race."
Sid, if you are reading this,where are all these race "haters" you worry about? I see very little evidence of hate. I do see people who refuse to toe the PC party line, but that is a MUCH different thing than hate.
The problem with the First National is precisely that most people don't really know what it is, so it doesn't make a statement to a broad audience like the Battle Flag does. In Georgia we changed our State flag from one that incorporated the Battle Flag to a blue abomination to one that incorporates the First National. Some Southern Heritage folks acted like we had won some sort of silent victory because we snuck in the First National. But the fact that it is a silent victory is what makes it not a victory at all. If the PC Gestapo isn't protesting it, then it is not making the statement we need.
"The dispensationalist/rapture version of Christianity has spread across the once orthodox and/or covenant-based South like kudzu..."
Speaking of organized hatreds, Mr. Peters I have been round and round about this on this site before and have no desire to repeat that, but I can assure you that dispensationalist, other than maybe Hagee, fret a whole lot less about Israel than the anti-dispensationalist fret about the dispensationalists.
Can we go more than a couple of threads without someone bashing dispensationalists even when it is not in the context of the thread?
Sid, I was just kidding, Stay with us. We need every good man we can get.
I'm an Ulsterman of Orange sympathies. Discovering American Paleoconservatism has taught me to appreciate Catholicism as well as my own tradition, and broadened my mind. It's a uniter not a divider!
MJT:
Here are three articles from my files.
Celebrating Might Makes Right, BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC
Mike Scruggs
http://brocktownsend.forum5.com/viewtopic.php?t=734&mforum=brocktownsend
The Battle Hymn Of The Republic Unmasked
Land of the Golden River, Vol. 2, Lewis P. Hall, Hall’s Enterprises, 1980, pp. 83-85
http://brocktownsend.forum5.com/viewtopic.php?t=651&mforum=brocktownsend
Should Southern Christians Sing This?
Roland Mann
http://brocktownsend.forum5.com/viewtopic.php?t=545&mforum=brocktownsend
Mickey,
Very true. Exporting our decadent pop culture causes big problems. Dinesh D'Souza is one of the few people outside of the paleoconservative movement making that point, and he takes a lot of flak for it:
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780385510127
Red Phillips,
I do not hate dispensationalists. Were I to hate any one and not repent of it, and sometimes that is quite necessary, then I would not be a Christian.
Were I to hate dispensationalists, I would be alienated from most of my family and most of my friends. I would certainly have to leave the current congregation of Southern Baptists whom I dearly love.
So, let us not speak of hate in my case. Simply put, I view for sound theological reasons that dispensationalism is an error, a particularly and peculiarly American error.
Generally, I find it to be benign; but it has its malignant moments, such as when its proponents confuse the end times with the end of this empire, and when the political manifestation of their notions is pro Israel to a fault; and within that context, they will to promote war.
Mr. Peters, I wasn't suggesting you hate. I was just playing off Sid's words. I agree hate is too strong a word. Organized grievances might be better.
I honestly don't have any idea what the correct end times scenario is. I don't think the Bible is clear enough on the matter to be dogmatic about it in any way other than there will be a Second Coming. I actually think it is intentionally vague because you could make an argument that it is unhealthy for people to know the future.
I just detect a lot of condescension regarding dispensationalist that I do not detect regarding other disputed issues. That is what I object to. No one is on here railing about all those darn infant baptizers.
Daniel,
Our cultural perversity is only part of the equation, but it is a large and largely ignored part. Parents in Middle Eastern cultures do not want their daughters growing up to be whores and their sons growing up to be drug addicts, as glorified by Hollywood. And surprisingly to many apathetic Americans, they are willing to die for it.
Daniel:
Do not make the mistake of calling the products of Hollywood and Madison Avenue filth factories "ours". Not all of the American commoner population is a collection of consumerist sheep. Not all parents in America (in fact, very few of them) want their daughters growing up to be whores or their sons growing up to be drug addicts. I am perfectly willing to concede that most parents do not feel powerful enough to enable their children to resist the blandishments of so-called "popular" culture", but it would be a mistake to assume that the commoner populace is monolithic in that regard.
One of the first prerequisites of successful resistance to "popular culture" is a recognition that it is NOT "ours" and that it is being foisted upon us by the New York/LA elite with support from the central State apparatus in the Throne City. To acknowledge that, and then to reject it in favor of actual culture based on personal experience and personal action, is necessary in order to start the drive towards its overthrow.
The first practical action to take in resistance---and by all means, call it that !---to that imposed culture is to turn off the television. In this degenerate age, that is practically an act of treason. May many such acts take place, and may they prosper.
We are the Remnant, and we may prevail.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
Mr. Phillips,
Your points are well taken; it is, however, in my opinion, certain aspects of the dispensationalists' understanding of eschatology which give them a fatal attraction to the agenda of the Republican Party and the neo-conservatives who set the agenda for that party. Were it not for this unique nexus that actually constitutes an alliance most unholy, then the doctrines of dispensationalism would not be an issue for me on these fora, the fact that I believe that those who hold to dispensationalism are in error notwithstanding. Citing your counter example, I do not believe that those who baptize infants thereby have a fatal attraction to the agenda of some godless political party. Were that the case, then I would have a bone to pick with them as well.
Dispensationalism is both a fatal noose and a spider's web for Christianity. The obsession with "helping" Christ usher in his second coming by promoting war with the Muslim Middle East will be it's undoing as a faith. The ceaseless warring and the impending economic collapse that will surely follow will be blamed on these Dispensationalist Christitan Zionists and Christianity will be discredited as a result. Already Christianity is taking a hit as atheism is now the fastest "growing" religion in the US. The absolute hypocrisy these Christian Zionists are displaying, doing a 180 against the teachings of Christ will effectively kill off any Christian influence left in the US. The good news is that a lot of the faithful in the US are starting to have the scales fall from their eyes with regards to this horrible development of the last 20+ years. The bad news is, it might have come a bit too late to save not only lives, but the future of real Christianity, not this false Christianity, which is just hyper capitalism/ state worship wrapped in a facade of spirituality.
Lord Karth,
Perhaps attending a leftie college makes me exaggerate the situation. There IS a great deal of good left in our society. While many people my age embrace the trappings of a decadent culture (gangster rap, hooking up), most return to the lessons of their parents when they get a real job and start having kids of their own. It is odd that in our "democracy" we are essentially fighting an elite game. The remnant's culture, grounded in the wisdom of the past, is pitted against the new culture being produced by the elites in our major cities.
As far as resistance, I will take your suggestion and turn off the TV this Saturday. Instead, I'll take my girlfriend to the horse races and drink some beers. It's not exactly cultivating virtue, but hey...
Best,
Daniel
"I’m an Ulsterman of Orange sympathies. Discovering American Paleoconservatism has taught me to appreciate Catholicism as well as my own tradition, and broadened my mind. It’s a uniter not a divider!"
You know, just over a month ago in Belfast I found the same thing in the opposite direction: that an Integralist frame of mind helped me, a Roman Catholic, to feel somewhat touched by the Loyalist murals on Shankhill Road. If I'm anything in that conflict (which, several generations removed from Ireland as I am, is probably none of my business), I'd be a Jacobite, but the mural to Queen Mum, misguided though it was, spoke of a real, undying loyalty to the British apparatus. And I was almost saddened, because I knew that that loyalty was no longer reciprocated: the British could not give a damn about Northern Ireland, regardless of how British her Protestants consider themselves. A victory for the Irish, but a defeat for organic loyalties. It's a heavy price.
In my own country I'd scarcely consider myself part of a "Northern" or "Southern" tradition, inasmuch as both have Calvinist and Protestant roots that predate my forebearers' arrival here by several hundred years. Call mine the "white immigrant industrial proletariat" tradition. The reason I balk at the idea of a neo-secessionist South is not because I like the "Northern" cause, but because it would rip apart the only nation my ancestors or myself have ever known.
Besides, looking at economic and demographic realities, Confederacy is probably a lost cause at this point. We can go on about whose fault that is, but it won't do a lot of good.
Sid,
I would prefer you did not leave. I am a Traditionalist Roman Catholic and a Distributist, very appreciative of Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno and as anti-Capitalist as I am anti-socialist. Yet, in the short term, it is necessary to work with people we don't agree with in order to attain a more immediate goal, some kind of sanity in government, limited government, no more useless wars and a way to prevent the American worker from being enslaved as our brothers in Asia are. To do that I am quite willing to work with Calvinists, agnostics, even libertarians provided they have many of the same goals.
In my opinion the greatest mistake is to disappear. When the French Third Republic slipped down the slope of anti-Catholicism and began forming another commune for the extermination of Catholics, virtually all Catholics boycotted the government, which meant that the anti-clerical atheisits ran it, and nary a Christian voice was to be heard let alone a Catholic one. We can't just disappear because of the faults or shortcomings of our colleagues, real or perceived. And lastly let's not worry about race. Race is a leftist boogie man, designed to stifle all debate and put people in jail they don't like. Same thing with Israel. I'm sure there are some in the paleo camp who are anti-jew, but good grief we all agree that the US needs to stop funding Israel's socialist government and hope they start making smarter decisions, right?
Mane Nobiscum.
Curiosity killed the cat; I’m back all the same. “It’s not eaten as hot as it was cooked” (it sounds better in German).
Clyde, I thank you for your kind words. I knew that you didn’t mean me. I’ll offer a cure for my own humorlessness at the end of this post.
Red Philips: I too salute the 3rd National, and as a candidate for membership in the SCV, I expect soon to be doing it a lot. Yet unlike His Royal Majesty Henry V the comte de Chambord, the young man from Georgia with whom I talked took a practical view of flags. His concern was, What gets one’s foot in the door so that we can then start talking to the curious? I suppose this is your concern as well, and about tactics and political effectiveness one can take different views. I've just see to many men of principle get nowhere, and men of pragmatics lose principles.
Simon Newman and Philip Candido are correct that the Paleoconservative movement (and if it ain’t no movement, let’s make it one) ought to unite. With respect to Calvinists (pedobaptist or no) and all believers in the Synod of Dort’s T.U.L.I.P, I’ll gladly work with such folk for common political goals, provided they will NOT impose ONLY THEIR religious vision on a political movement and run “bead-clickers” out on a rail. I CERTAINLY will welcome a Calvinist chaplain, even if on rare occasion his invocations, heaping maledictions “on our foes”, make in comparison Jonathan Edwards sound as tame as Ronald McDonald. (Granted, there too many of such in my own Christian persuasion.) Perhaps I worry to much about a Latter-Day Titus Oates, The Red Hand and the more ultra/extremist nationalists among the Orangemen.
To bring up the Dispensationalist issue is quite timely. I made a study of this and Darby 25 years ago. It is worth noting the shift in the Evangelical wing from Fundamentalist to Pentecostal leanings, well underway in the 1970's, and then from Pentecostal to Dispensatonalists in the last 10 years Seen from the point of view of religion, I am (to say the least) not all that impressed with Dispensational Scriptural exegesis. Yet more importantly, seen from the political point of view, The Rev. Hagee’s gospel that the Almighty wishes our children (not his, I suspect) to die in the Near East, I find appalling. Why such people wish to be the “useful idiots” (to coin a phrase) of the War Party is beyond me.
Alas, this is nothing new in Ciudad de Gringo. I am sorry that my own persuasion, The Catholic Church, had a role in the Vietnam war; how large a role I can’t say. Yet it could not have been as big a role as Liberal/Social Gospel Protestants had in getting us into WOODROW Wilson’s War, and Richard Gamble (a student of CLYDE Wilson), in his _The War for Righteousness_ documents this, and right on time. For these types are still with us, maybe in spades. They are often in churches with “United” in their name; they are the useful idiots of the Cultural Marxists; and they’re roaring for Nurse Ratched, and for good reason, since she is one of them, she having swallowed the Social(ist) Gospel moonshine bottle, stopper, label, and testimonials. Indeed, I find it remarkable that we have not had a so religious a zealot run for the White House since Bryan. She certainly thinks she’s running for state prosecutor, Salem MA. I have read Gamble’s book with the dread that I might just be reading about the future.
I beg Paleoconservatives to take seriously my warnings regarding not only religious bigots but also racialists, Judeophobes, and ultra/extremist-nationalists. A movement (sorry, that word again) is best judged by how it polices itself. I rejoice that Gringoburgh has no Brown Shirt party, myself having been assured by a local League and SCV member that the total membership of the National Alliance (the American bunch, not the Italian) can fit into a telephone booth. Yet the absence of such a party means that The Filth judges it has nowhere to go but to us Paleoconservatives. Let’s at least not put out a welcome mat. And let’s, on occasion, get out some industrial strength Mr. Clean and wax the floor.
(Telephone booth: I might have lost some of you younger folk there. This was a tiny little closet or box where one could go in, close the door, and talk on a provided pay phone without everyone in the airport overhearing your conversation. Maybe they’re now banned by some clause in the Patriot Act or by some corollary to the regulations of the Dept of Homeland Security, Alexander Mitchell Palmer, director. If not, then the Cultural Marxist version of George Creel and his Bureau will make the use of such “unpatriotic” come 20 Jan 2009.)
I guess I need to lighten up. For starters, I pass on witty observation by Franciscan Fr. Benedict Groeschel, a favorite spiritual writer. He quipped in reference the recent deluge of atheist tomes: "I am deeply insulted that atheism can be so badly represented. I am tempted to write a book defending atheism in response."
Well, it’s not a thigh-slapper, yet I got a chuckle out of it.
Hope you visit, please, our Web site, a REAL Christian site, NOT Republican Party cheerleaders. Thank you. John Lofton, Editor; Recovering Republican; JLof@aol.com.
Mr. Lofton, you are not suggesting that Chronicles is a site for "Republican Party cheerleaders" are you?
A lot of us on here support Ron Paul, hardly a Republican Party regular. Many of us supported Peroutka. Many of us will likely support the Constitution Party nominee if anyone but Ron Paul (or maybe Tancredo) gets the GOP nomination.
How do you feel about Baldwin? He seems the most likely CP nominee at this point.
Mr. Bruce,
I have been raised my whole life in evangelical and "fundamentalist" circles, and I came to paleoconservatism via the religious right. I have never once heard anyone say they want to help along the second coming. That primarily happens in the over active imagination of the anti-dispensationalists. Dispensationalism may well increase its proponents' political sympathy for Israel, but anyone who is suggesting that we start a war to help usher in Armageddon has much more significant theological problems than dispensationalism.
Sid,
"A movement (sorry, that word again) is best judged by how it polices itself."
To some degree, perhaps. I see paleoconservatism as one part of a potential counter-revolutionary coalition. Who you count as "in-group," for lack of a better term, vs. who is a coalition partner but clearly distinctly different is an important matter and worth discussing. I agree with you that the nationalist are a problem vs. localist paleos, so we work with them when we can (immigration), but we don't when we can't (secession).
But with all due respect, I see vigilant anti-racism as much more of a problem than the "racism" you are bothered by. Because the anti-racists (on the right) are making common cause with the PC thought police. Racial realism and some degree of overt racial consciousness, (such as rejecting Proposition Nation dogma) is an essential component of any serious opposition to the left.
I really don't get where you are coming from. Help me out. For example, do you think Steve Sailor and Jared Taylor are problems? As an example of making the kind of distinctions I mentioned above, Steve Sailer is a problem because he is a dogmatic evolutionist and Taylor is probably more nationalist than paleo, but a discerning person takes the good and leaves the bad. Sailer is not a problem because he documents that Blacks generally run faster (sorry Roger McGrath) and Whites do better on the SAT and that is almost certainly at least partially genetic. Taylor is not a problem because he documents and discusses differential crime rates.
Who would you boot out on the grounds of racial wrong think?
Red,
The Cultural Marxists are anything but anti-"racists", if by that McCarthyiate term we mean "anti-racialism". Real anti-racialism, to coin a phrase, aims for judging folk "by the content of their character" not the "color of their skin". Put in terms (and in more precise terms) of distributive justice, we're to judge and to treat people differently (to each his due) by (i) need, (ii) merit, (iii) ability (flutes to flute players), (iv) position with respect to the common good (i.e., the sheriff's deputy in a school may have a gun, and no one else), and (v) to each according to the risk taken (important in economics) -- and NOT to each according to the color of his skin, which has nothing to do with these things.
These matters are put best of all in terms of Continental Personalism:
1. Persons are wholes of their own and never mere parts of some vast societal machine.
2.Persons are ends in themselves and never mere instrumental means, nor are they merely ancillary to another’s happiness.
3. Persons are incommunicably their own and never mere specimens (the most powerful argument, from Boethius,the Schoolmen, and the Neo-Thomists).
4. Persona est sui iuris et non alterius iuris: each person belongs to himself and not to any other. Thus Persons are subjects of rights
(John Crosby. _The Selfhood of the Human Person_, chap. 1.)
-- and not race.
Cultural Marxists -- rejecting all of this, are racialists in spades, judging people by the membership in some "identity group", including race (and thus violating 1-4 supra). As a result
our society is even more race-oriented than in 1963. For Cultural Marxists, all groups without power take the place of Marx's exploited Proles; all groups with power are said to be exploiters.
This art of fraud is nothing new to Marxism, Classic or Cultural. Marx preached the withering away of the State; Marxism made the state even more divine than Mussolini's Fascism. Marx hated the Lumpenproletariat vastly more than the bourgeoisie; Cultural Marxists celebrate the Lumpenprole as "the authentic man". Lenin preached an elite who would liberate the Proletariat; that elite made the proles and peasants the serfs of The State. Trotsky preached the continual revolution; we got continual rivers of blood. The Frankfurt School preached "the authentic, anti-authoritarian man"; Cultural Marxists are phonies and ultra-authoritarian. For all their poesy about "diversity" and "multiculturalism", they in fact believe in no such things. Their raging campaigns against "race, class, gender, 'homophobia' are only ruses to veil their real program: power, power to destroy, and for no other purpose.
We need to ask the Liberal (the European meaning of this word), "Freedom for what? For just doing as one likes?" (Arnold). Well, before we let people do as they like, we ought to ask first what they like to do. (Burke). We need to ask the Cultural Marxist, "Power for what? Power to do as one likes?" Well, before we give people the power to do as they like, we sure as hell better ask what they like to do with their power!
Want proof that Cultural Marxists are racialists? Let's turn to Madama Suzanna Domenica: In "What's Happening in America (1966)," "[America]deserves" to have its wealth "taken away" by the Third World. "[T]he truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history." (Susan Sontag, "What's Happening in America (1966)"
Now let's forget for a moment that the late Susan was never west of 5th Ave or east of Gstadt. Let's forget that she didn't rent an apartment in the "black" and Hispanic ghettos of NYC, or not even in Chinatown, and more likely had a beach house in the Hamptons. Let's forget that she probably ate in the best restaurants and spent a lot of time in Parisian cafes. Instead, let's use the statement supra as a test: ANYONE who abominates this statement, AND who follows the rules of Personalism and distributive justice supra (which means ignoring race), we can work with. Fair enough?
Sid,
No way, my friend. This is not a club, it is an exchange of thoughts, not quite a conversation -- certainly not a teacher student relationship. You should stay and contribute , unless you simply can't stand the company. And besides, a little of this stuff goes a long way about taking offense. Afterall, what exactly is sacred ground these days that has not been painted with elephant dung, soaked in urine and vinegar, harped upon like jihadists, or spat upon out of hate and discontent ? Part of me wants to say you're right ( because you are ) and part of me wants to say, " so why leave ? or better, Where are you going ?" Cheers rr
Sid,
First of all, I think your statements 1 through 4 are actually an expression of a sort of liberal individualism. I don't think that states what paleos believe which is that people are, in fact, a part of the larger whole. (Family, neighborhood, community, Village, etc.) I would appreciate it if Dr. Fleming would chime in, since this is his area. (See the Necrotyranny thread.) I think we should certainly reject the notion of self ownership and rights, unless you are speaking only of legal (not natural) rights. If you are trying to emphasize the worth of the individual, OK. But if this is an expression of a philosophy of individualism, then I think you are off track.
Second, Cultural Marxists are at base universalists and levelers. They focus on the group rights of the "oppressed" and celebrate "cultural diversity" as a way to undermine the dominate culture, race, ethnicity, religion, morays, sexual orientation, etc. They are disingenuous about this because they do not allow the recognition or celebration of the dominant race, religion, culture, etc. Those who want Native Americans or Blacks to have an ethnic consciousness go ape at the idea of White consciousness or Christians asserting the Christian identity of America, etc.
I hate to be self referential but read this.
http://etherzone.com/2006/phill051906.shtml
"AND who follows the rules of Personalism and distributive justice supra (which means ignoring race), we can work with. Fair enough?"
No, not fair enough. Ethnic and racial consciousness are an entirely natural and proper part of the human condition. (Who "ignored race" 200 years ago? Who ignored it 60 years ago? Does Japan or Mexico ignore it today?) Yes bad has come of it, and it has been misused, but it is also protective against centralization and homogenization and a logical extension of preference for close kin. Surely you don't reject the idea that one should favor his kin? So where do you draw the line? Consider an analogy. The desire to acquire is natural and proper. It helps you take care of yourself and your family. Sure bad things can come of it (greed, theft, wars of conquest), but the underlying impulse is entirely appropriate and understandable. The anti-racialist can no more stamp out that natural human impulse than the Commies could stamp out greed. What they have done is simply vilified it and made it taboo to think. But people think still think it and act on it every day.
Your arguments against any racial consciousness strike me as entirely liberal.
Persons are incommunicably their own and never mere specimens (the most powerful argument, from Boethius,the Schoolmen, and the Neo-Thomists
This is a metaphysical definition of personhood transformed into an principle of ethics--taken as an absolute, it might be problematic, since by itself, it doesn't take into account final causality.
Mr. Cundiff, would you say that 1-4 are shared by all [Catholic] personalists? I have been looking for an account of Catholic personalism that would differentiate it from traditional Catholic moral theology.
Red:
1. Personalism isn't liberalism. Read some Crosby, Maritain, and then Max Scheler before opining about it. Try also a little Josef Seifert and Realist Phenomenology. There was also a dude in Poland named Wojtyła worth reading.
The liberal/rousseauan concept is the isolated, atomic, rootless and free "individual"; in contradistinction, "person" by definition is open to other persons, supremely expressed as caritas (to say nothing to the openness of The Persons of the Blessed Trinity). And caritas rules out any racialism as well. One cannot be a Christian and a racialist. (to be fair, you, Red, are not claiming to be a Christian) Also: That a person is sui juris isn't the same thing as Hobbesian and Lockian rights -- not by a long shot.
You've got some reading to do. Sadly the Wikipedia qv "personalism" is worthless. Try the German Wiki q.v. "Personalismus". The French Wiki q.v. "Personnalisme" neglects the German-Polish tradition and Maritain while emphasizing Emmanuel Mounier, but it does discuss the distinction from Liberalism in "Le refus de la société libérale".
2. Sorry, race is an invention of 19th century wackos. Ditto eugenics. And for too many "genetics" is just a code word for such racialism and eugenics. "Race" is largely an invention of Gobineau, and invented to justify "white man's burden", itself a euphemism for imperialism. Even if there WERE three "races", (or any races at all), no proof is offered that race determines culture. (And to offer such proof, you better be damned good in organic chemistry, and then find some "culture" genes. _Ethnos_ also isn't a racial concept. To say that race is natural is just like Whigs, Socialists, and Social Democrats trying to tell us that The State is natural and has always been with us, and that the Romans and the Greeks had The State (Mommsen). (The State is an invention of an Italian proto-Fascist, Machiavelli by name.) Such people are only interested in propagating fiction to advance there own filthy programs. (nothing personal (so to speak), Red.
And don't tell me my views are "counter-intuitive"; it's also counter-intuitive to say that the earth revolves around the sun.
3. "Your arguments against any racial consciousness strike me as entirely liberal."
Well, Red, name-calling is a game two can play. Your ARGUMENTS (not you yourself, please) for racialism strike me as entirely and utterly Nazi. If you wish to stick around and, sadly, to be known as a Brown Shirt, there's not much I can do about it; just don't call yourself "conservative" -- or don't try to tell folks I'm not.
All I want is truth in advertising.
T. Chan:
1. Personalists being more Realist Phenomenologists rather than Perennial Aristotelians, final causality may not be their trump card. Put into Aristotelian terms Person is a kind of essence and substance, of which there is only one example. Boethius is where philosophical definition of person began:
"Person is an individual substance of rational nature. As individual it is material, since matter supplies the principle of individuation. The soul is not person, only the composite is. Man alone is among the material beings person, he alone having a rational nature. He is the highest of the material beings, endowed with particular dignity and rights."
Philosophical speculation on person did not stop with Boethius. And he is a bit too materialistic, since Angels are also persons. And in the modern development of person, following Crosby principle #3, every person is one of a kind, each his own species and genus. There are six million homo sapiens; there is only one T. Chan, in essence and substance.
Using Crosby's principles ## 1&2, it would seem that persons themselves are their own final cause, or telos. And person, as discussed in replying to Red, is open to other persons.
2. I don't know about Emmanuel Mounier, but most Personalists (save Max Scheler) tend to be Catholic. Other readers of this blog doubtless are better able than I to discuss the connection to traditional Catholic moral theology. As for reading, I began with Crosby. I've suggested additional authors and Wikis in my reply to Red. Thanks for your remarks and question.
"Sorry, race is an invention of 19th century wackos." Sorry Sid, but that is an insupportable assertion. No it isn't an invention of anyone! It is a real, describable, quantifiable biological entity. Can forensic scientists not tell the race of an assailant by their DNA or the race of a victim by the bone structure? Do people not with an amazing amount of consistency correctly identify their own race? Do people not with an amazing amount of consistency correctly identify the race of others?
Are subspecies in zoological nomenclature an invention of 19th century wackos? Do red wolves not differ from grey wolves?
If you have read the stuff I have written on here you would know that I claim to be a Christian of the evangelical/fundamentalist variety much to the chagrin of some on here. One can not be a good Christian and hate another man based on his race, but Christianity does not require denial of reality or the rejection of the age old and as I said potentially protective concept of group loyalty.
That anything I have said makes you conclude that I am a "racialist" whatever you think that means or that the words “Nazi” and “Brown Shirt” would flow from your keyboard is absurd. You spout obscure references, but you are unable to make basic distinctions. You hear race and you automatically think "eugenics," "Nazi," and "Brown Shirt." Who the heck said one word about eugenics? You seem to have this fear that if one foot is allowed in the door then all will be lost. Where is your discernment and nuance?
I agree with you about the State, but how do you think countries were organized before the modern nation state? Were we all happy little hand holding multicults before 19th century wacko came along and ruined us, or did people perhaps organize along ethnic/cultural/religious/linguistic lines?
The true racialists miss the point as well. Race is a best viewed as a supra-category. Until modern travel the races very seldom came into contact with each other. Long before most Euros had ever seen another race the Saxons were slaughtering the Celts or whatever. Protestants were warring with Catholics before either thought boo about race. That American today must think more than many about race is because we artificially imported Africans here who we otherwise would have never laid eyes on. So the racialist who wants to erase all ethnic/cultural/religious distinctions in favor of the supra-category of race and assumes that all whites have essentially the same interests in common elevate race to the level of ideology. But on the other hand, the white person who worries that immigration is going to change the fundamental ethnic balance of America is no racialist to be condemned.
I also share your concern about the genetic reductionism that wants to reduce every aspect of culture to a gene. Some things are probably genetic, but some things are probably just learned group behaviors/strategies. But the broader culture has to be influenced by what its people genetically bring to the table to start with.
I would be happy if someone would like to step in here and moderate. Both of us accusing the other of wrongly conceiving conservatism is not necessarily productive. But dogmatic anti-racism is clearly modern and from the left. Spout all the obscure references you want, race denial is sky green, grass blue territory.
Red wins. He was called a Nazi first.
Sid, I take back my invitation for you to continue. You have resorted to the lowest and most dishonest name-calling in the domain of controversy.
As well as being spectacularly irrelevant to my editorial.
Sorry, Clyde. Racialism's logic leads to naziism, even if it's the kind of Leonard Jeffries and Frances Cress Welsing (two people to whom some here on this blog maybe should pay their respects). I should think a historian would be the first to know this. Or prove me wrong rather than lose your cool. You are a man of the academy. The events of the past 80 years, or even since the onset of jingoist nationalism (cf. Carlton Hayes' work) place the burden of proof on those who would argue that racialism's logical consequence isn't naziism.
Read carefully what I have said. I've called NO ONE Nazi. I've said that ideas and arguments are, or logically lead to it. I know perfectly well that race has been discussed in the USA during the past 60 years in a highly charged atmosphere.
I also know perfectly well that "Nazi" and "fascist" and "racist" are McCarthyite terms said to silence opponents, and have no foundation (unless we give them one). Some libertarians are pretty quick to cry "fascist" as well. Well, I've seen real McCarthyism, in my youth. Robert Welch and his bunch, by calling Ike and his brother Commies had three unintended effects: (1) it legitimized illegitimate movements (Marxism), (2) drove some people into those illegitimate movements (believing that one really is what you're called), and (3) delayed the final defeat of Stalinism. I fear the Left's own McCarthyism has had the same effect.
I'm not Robert Welch. I just don't wish to give the enemy ammo.
I've said it before: Racialism is the great American vice (and not just among "whites"). It blots and blights everything it touches. It kills art, it kills schools, it kills community, it kills honest discussion and scholarship, it kills politics, it kills business, it kills love, it kills friendships, it kills respect, and now Clyde wishes it to kill me. Sad. Europeans, by the way, don't consider race a category (any more), to their credit. And now I drop the subject.
Thanks for having my back, Dr. Wilson.
Dr. Phillips said nothing that is not universal observation and common sense. To imagine that this leads to totalitarian criminality is flawed thinking and bad faith. We properly seek out philosophers and theologians to assist in our comprehension of
reality. Dilletantes and leftists seek out philosophers and theologians for theories and terms to IMPOSE UPON reality. And such efforts are seldom helpful among citizens who are conscientiously discussing the health of re publica.