About the Author

Patrick Buchanan has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He has written ten books, including six straight New York Times best sellers: A Republic, Not an Empire; The Death of the West; Where the Right Went Wrong; State of Emergency; Day of Reckoning; and Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War.

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The Fruits of Intervention

by Patrick J. Buchanan

October 30th, 2009 • Related • Filed Under

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If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation?

Would we invade Iraq?

While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or we risk “mission failure” in Afghanistan. At present casualty rates—October was the worst month of the war —thousands more Americans will die before we see any light at the end of this tunnel, if ever we do.

Pakistan, which aided us in Afghanistan, now has a war of its own to fight. Its army is in a battle in South Waziristan, while the country is wracked by terror bombings, the latest in a Peshawar bazaar that specialized in women’s clothing and jewelry and toys for kids. So horrific was the toll even the Taliban and al-Qaida denied any role in it.

The 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are, after almost seven years, to begin pulling out two months after January’s election. But a hitch has developed. Iraq’s parliament missed the deadline for setting the rules. At issue: Will voters be allowed to choose individual candidates, or will they be allowed only to vote for slates of candidates?

Gen. Ray Odierno implies that postponement of the election may mean postponement of U.S. withdrawals.

Ominously, in August, terrorists bombed the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad, and last week blew up the Justice Ministry and Baghdad Provincial Governorate. And the Kurds are now claiming their control of oil-rich Kirkuk is non-negotiable, which crosses a red line in Baghdad.

Next door, a terror attack by Jundallah (God’s Brigade) in Iran’s southern province of Sistan-Baluchistan killed 40, including two senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard.

An enraged Tehran pointed the finger at the United States, as there have been charges the CIA has been in contact with Jundallah as part of President Bush’s destabilization program to effect “regime change.”

But Barack Obama has been in office for nine months—and he would never authorize such an attack on the eve of a critical meeting on Iran’s nuclear program. Moreover, the State Department condemned the Jundallah bombing as terrorism and offered public condolences to the families of the victims.

But if we didn’t authorize this, who did?

Was the timing of this attack coincidental? Were these just freelance secessionists on an operation unrelated to the U.S.-Iran talks? Or is someone trying to torpedo the talks and push Iran and the United States into military collision?

For this was a provocation. And whoever carried it out and whoever authorized or abetted it wishes to dynamite the U.S.-Iran negotiations, abort a rapprochement and put us on a road to war.

Speculation is focusing on the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis, who have been accused, as has the United States, of aiding PJAK, a Kurdish faction that has conducted raids in northern Iran.

If we have any control of these organizations, we should shut them down. With U.S. armies tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America conducting Predator and cross-border attacks in Pakistan, provoking a war with Iran would be an act of madness.

Looking back, how has all this fighting advanced U.S. national interests? We have a “democratic” Iraq that is Shia-dominated and tilting to Iran. We have an open-ended war in Afghanistan that will likely do for Obama what Iraq did for Bush. But we can’t pull out, it is said, for if we do, Kabul falls and Afghanistan becomes the sanctuary for an Islamist war to take over Pakistan and its nuclear weapons.

And if that should happen, it would indeed be a crisis.

And so, how has all this intervention availed us?

We ran Saddam out of Kuwait and put U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia. And we got Osama bin Laden’s 9-11. We responded by taking down the Taliban and taking over Afghanistan. And we got an eight-year war with no victory and no end in sight. Now Pakistan is burning. We took down Saddam and got a seven-year war and an ungrateful Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Turks, who shared a border with Saddam, have done no fighting. Iran has watched as we destroyed its two greatest enemies, the Taliban and Saddam. China, which has a border with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, has sat back. India, which has a border with Pakistan and fought three wars with that country, has stayed aloof.

The United States, on the other side of the world, plunged in. And now we face an elongated military presence in Iraq, an escalating war in Afghanistan and potential disaster in Pakistan, and are being pushed from behind into a war with Iran.

“America rejects the false comfort of isolationism,” said George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union. And we did reject that false comfort. And now we can enjoy the fruits of interventionism.

Comments

There Are 80 Responses So Far. »

1 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 30 October 2009:

Don’t worry America. Little Smoking Barry of Hyde Park has assured us our lads will not be placed in harm’s way unless it’s absolutely necessary. Necessary to protect the Turkish-Israeli heroin-smuggling diplomats, that is.
2 Comment by Matt on 30 October 2009:

We had troops in Saudi Arabia well before the first Gulf War. I was there in 1984 and the largest overseas American base was outside of Riyadh. This stuff about Osama Bin Laden attacking us because he was offended by the presence of US troops is hog wash. The person who was offended by the presence of US troops was then Crown Prince and now King Abdullah. Please do a Google search and you will see a Worldtribine.net about a Missle base in Saudi Arabia stocks with 57 North Korea missles that no one know about only until the Iconos Satellite showed it. When I was there, I met the US military attache. He told me that we signed a treaty with Saudi Arabia that the Landsat sattelite would not photograph the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, so he had to ask people like me what was going on in the country. Figure that one out.
3 Comment by Matt on 30 October 2009:

Hey Mr. Buchanon – You claim in your book, “The Unecessary War” that Hitler didn’t want war with Britain or America. What about his second book which was unpublished, featured on the BookTV Channel about his ultimate enemy and target being America?
4 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 30 October 2009:

I agree with Mr. Buchanan, but would like to ask one question that seems to me the unacknowledged heart of the matter. Who is the “we” mentioned in the first three paragraphs?
5 Comment by Brock H. on 30 October 2009:

Matt @3: Buchanan’s tome is imperfect, but the general thesis is correct. The war to defeat Hitler did nothing but make the world safe for a much greater evil and threat than fascism: the iron communist fist of Stalin and his puppets in Eastern Europe. Not to mention bankrupt Britain and empower the already-corrupt American Empire.

Dr. Wilson @4: Good point. It is an offense to what remains of the American people, such as ourselves, to confuse “us” with the imperial state which rules over us.
6 Comment by Matt on 31 October 2009:

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t Gestapo Muller hang 100 Czechs in the town square of Prague and soon as Hitler took over the remaining part of Czechoslovakia? Did not the SS immediately go about rounding up the leading member of Polish society upon overrunning Poland and killing them all off, including priests, nuns, lawyers, intellectuals, government leaders, etc.? In fact, in his harange to his generals upon commencing the war, he told them “Be hard, be merciless, all Europe must tremble in horror!” and also,”First will kill all the priest.”? In fact, was not the Nazi plan, that after killing off all of the Jews, the Nazi’s were going to exterminate the Slavs?

In fact, how many conservatives and America Firsters cheered the Nazi’s on when they attacked the Soviet Union?

In fact, did a Nazi or Fascist defector in China in the 1930’s warn the world about the premeditated plans of the Nazi’s & Jap’s to start another world war? Didn’t these warning collaborate Hitler’s statment in Mein Kampf that he and his fellow minions conspire to plan a new war as set forth in the Nuremburg trials?

Although I agree with Mr. Buchanon in most matters, Hitler and the Nazis were a greater evil than Stalin and his minions at the time. It is to Western Civilizations enternal credit that it almost sacrificed everything to stop them. Even it overseas colonial empires which had become immoral.

From tone of many authors on this website and it contributors, America is the greatest evil in the world. The fact of the matter it this attitude is reflective infantile temper tamturm than serious intellectual discourse and the worse features of pre-Pearl Harbor American Firstism, which at heart, like the 1960’s hippyism and pacifism, is only an elaborate justification for narcissistic cowardice.

This out look on America is like stating there should have never been and American Revolution because it did not immediately bring the end of slavery. The Second World War brought about the vision of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt of a world of democratic states that were consumer economies basin peace on world trade and an international legal order.
7 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 31 October 2009:

@6 Matt
And the communists laid their hands against God’s anointed as they committed regicide at Yekaterinburg — shortly before they rounded up 100,000 priests and monks in order to slaughter them wholesale. Furthermore, Stalin starved millions of kulaks by appropriating their seed corn. Will you please stop flogging the nazi dead horse? Anyway, since when did deaths in Prague concern the US? Murders in Baltimore and South Central Los Angeles barely raise an eyebrow these days.

And I find your line of questioning to be like that of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, “Did God not say …?”
8 Comment by Brock H. on 31 October 2009:

Ah, how delightful to have a good Marxist neocon (but I repeat myself!) as a guest. Our friend Matt sure is a good little servant of the American imperial establishment. At least half of the goals of the Communist Manifesto have been realized here on our shores, their ranks have killed several times more people than the buffoon Hitler did and the body bags are still piling up in North Korea and Cuba, here at home the U.S. Constitution is a dead letter and the warnings of our Founding Fathers to resist the forbidden fruits of imperialism are laughed at on the Beltway . . . but Matt and his friends Bush and Obama are worried about the dangers of “isolationism.” Not a surprise, of course. For those captured by the imperialist ideology such as good little Matt are quite threatened by barriers to ultimate power, such as written constitutions that governments are sworn to protect and obey. Oh and Matt, I would not expect one such as yourself to know any better, but there WASN’T an American Revolution. There was an American war for INDEPENDENCE. Keep serving Marx, Hegel, and Rousseau if you wish. We at Chronicles prefer to serve God.
9 Comment by robert on 31 October 2009:

#4 Clyde Wilson question :”Who is the “we” mentioned in the first three paragraphs?”

Why, Professor, it is folks like Matt @#6, who illustrate why a little learning is a dangerous thing and why buying their magazines,tuning into their talk shows or electing the candidates from the party they support, is worse than dangerous, it is utterly suicidal and destructive of all things human and divine. Matt is smart, quick, crafty and shallow. He probably graduated with distinction in his university class and is always in a hurry to make or remake history and save civilization as he knows it. Maybe a yankee, maybe not, definitely not a lover of the South. A man of our times and the “we” of Pat’s people.
10 Comment by Matt on 1 November 2009:

Dear Mr. Wilson, Brock H. & the late Etienne Gervaise – I am a lawyer in the Cleveland Metropolitan area. Cicero said, when in trial if the facts are against you, argue the law. When the facts and law are against, attack the opponent.

First Mr. Wilson – You are obviously a professional Confederate irridentist. I have news for you. The Confederacy lost the war! All of mankind, except certain swathes of the third world have arrived at the conclusion that slavery is evil. In other comments regarding Lincoln that we have made to each other, you and your ilk refuse to state that slavery is evil and a sin against God. You and your ilk wax poetically about the Homeric valor of the confederate soldier. Whenever others of your ilk have been asked about slavery being evil, you call me a Marxist and a Yankee. Well, half of the confederate states that left the Union were hijacked out by the Southern equivelant of the Wall Street Robber Barons – the Southern Planter. A guerilla war was waged by the pro-Union natives in the South on behalf the legitimate government in Washington, D.C. Jefferson Davis was at his wits’ end because the Confederate Army desertation rate was sky high. During the Vietnam War, it was only 2%. During the Civil War, the Confederate rate was probably ten times that amount. That’s why the Southern cause, that was so glorious, had to institute the draft first. Most people didn’t want to fight. To conclude, the negro slaves originally spoils of war in Africa. When the Yankees prevailed, the South got a taste of its own medicine.

Mr. Brock H. – Obviously you attended an intercity public school, since you are evidently unaware that the reason the US entered the Second World War, was because it was attacked at Pearl Harbor, and then two days, later, despite the American people not wanting to go to war with Germany, your beloved Furher, Adolph Hitler, declared war against the USA. Did you know that Mr. Brock? As for all this garbage about US Imperialism, etc., as is apparent to anyone but peopel with hysterical opinions, such as you and your friends, US Imperialism has brought about what may described as the Golden Age of mankind. Never in history has mankind in general had such a high standard of living or freedom. This is because of the vision of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and in the end, the efforts of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder. Please recall that even Ronald Reagan was a democrat until the Berlin Crisis in 1962. As for the Constitution, being a scrap of paper, why have the Feds come by an arrested you while watching Dynasty or Savannah in your bomb shelter, still wondering why Jesus did not fly over on December 31st, 1999, and Rapture your brainess carcass up into heaven?
You also exhibit historical Boole-ism. Boole was the Irishman who dreamed up base two numbers on which computers run. Everything in base 2 numbers are either a 1 or a 0. So in your world, either agree with your narrow opinions, or they are are commies. From my viewpoint, your opinions are like one of Salvador Dali’s Surealist paintings, at least some things are recognizable, but your still out there in the Twilight Zone. As for there being no America Revolution just a war for independence, the revolutionaries at the time were fighting for their rights as Englishmen. Althought there was slavery in most, if not all the colonies, which subsequently became states, they were fighting their individual liberties as well. After the revolution, no where in the world, with the possible exception of some Cantons in Switzerland, were political freedoms so great at the time. In fact, in New York State, blacks and women were allowed to vote in the 1800 election. [Women's right to vote in that state, sadly was subsequently revoke.]

Finally – As to Mr. Etienne Gervais, who are you really? You comment all over the internet. People I know, don’t even thing you are a real person, but front name for various foreign organizations. Didn’t the real Etienne Gervais die several years ago and this is some collective’s nom de plume, nom de internet? It’s time for your people to come clean.

Since none of you counter facts with facts or reasoned opinion, but crack pot rants, you will simply remain wolves baying in the wind.
11 Comment by Matt on 1 November 2009:

Please forgive the numerous mistakes in grammar and diction in the above missive. I do have a question for Mr. Wilson on a separate historical subject.

Do you think that Robert E. Lee should have been subjected to court martial for Pickett’s charge? How impaired was the Confederacy’s command at Gettysburg by Stone Wall Jackson’s absence because he was killed previously? I believe there is a novel, which I have not read, entitled “The Court Martial of Robert E. Lee”.

Do you share the opinion of a recent work that the Pickett’s charge was to be a co-ordinated assault with an end around attack by Jeb Stuart’s Calvary, which was foiled by Custer’s defeat of Stuart at Harrison?

Do you think that there was a possibility, that since Stone Wall Jackson was such a disciplinarian, that he was in fact deliberately murdered by the sentry rather than accidently? In other words, in Vietnam War terminology, he was fragged by his own men?
12 Comment by Brock H. on 1 November 2009:

Matt, while some of my friends here on this website might feel a little too afraid to state outright that no, they do NOT believe slavery is or ever was evil in any way, I don’t. Consider it said. Don’t recall God ever saying otherwise. My God is the One in the Bible by the way, not Marx or Lincoln or Trotsky. It is typical of the Yankee mindset to believe that they are the enlightened half of the American people, that all stodgy old unprogressive segments of the population must have guns and bayonets pointed at them to make them comply with all the new revelations they have concerning what old customs and institutions need to be torn down. Those silly uneducated Southerners want to leave our revered government as the 10th Amendment allows them? No problem! We just trash that silly old consti-whatcha-ma-call-it and invade their country! They won’t amalgamate other blacks and other races of people with themselves? Well, we just roll our tanks and guns back down there and make them do it!

Oh and by the way yes I knew each of the things you claimed I didn’t know about WWII. On the subject of freedom, do American families have the freedom to educate their children using whatever methods they wish, or has the federal government almost completely taken over that area of life? Do we have the freedom to operate our institutions like businesses and churches by admitting whoever we want into them, or are we legally obligated to associate with certain people? How about our financial house? Is it in order? Or are we forced to pay taxes to pay off $10 trillion of debt? That last little tidbit would have gotten the guilty parties such as Messrs. Bush and Obama convicted of treason against the Republic and perhaps the death sentence, were this a real country.

If freedom is bringing about Marx’s world social democratic revolution, then yes Counselor Matt, we have freedom today. No, I don’t immediately think you are a communist just because you are glad the empire fought Hitler and sided with Stalin – but it speaks volumes about your ideology. Between a tyrant who wishes to expand a revolution to destroy Western civilization eventually across Europe and beyond, and one who is simply a misguided uber-nationalist fascist, I’ll take the uber-nationalist. But that’s just if I had only that choice. Personally I believe we should have stayed true to our Founding Fathers’ advice and stayed on our own turf, not to mention look at our OWN government and institutions to make sure it was free of the influence of wicked ideologies, God rest Sen. McCarthy’s soul.
13 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 1 November 2009:

Matt @10

“A guerilla war was waged by the pro-Union natives in the South on behalf the legitimate government in Washington, D.C. ”

‘Legitimate’ government? Do you believe the US is some kind of monarchy, with the God-President being anointed from heaven?

“US Imperialism has brought about what may described as the Golden Age of mankind. Never in history has mankind in general had such a high standard of living or freedom”

Do you worship the US Federal government?
14 Comment by Matt on 1 November 2009:

Mr. Brock – Thank you for denouncing slavery. Others on this website have refused, claiming that my request that they do so makes me a commie,Yankee etc.

Mr. Daniel Maxwell – I do not believe that the Federal Government created the universe, was responsible for the miracles at Lourdes, although an agent of the Federal Government, such as the IRS, may have to audit me to make sure that I paid all of my taxes before letting me pass into Heaven. No. I am not a Scientologist.

Another Question Mr. Wilson – It stated on a documentary on the History Channel that in his march from Atlanta to Savannah and then up north through the Carolina’s, Sherman only suffered about 475 dead. That means the resistance that he encountered was about as meager as the US Army’s initial run up to Bagdad in the recent War in Iraq. What happened to the Confederate Army?
15 Comment by Brock H. on 1 November 2009:

Matt, you misunderstand. Read the sentences in my comment carefully. I said I am not afraid or intimidated to say to you that slavery is NOT evil or wrong, because I DON’T believe it is evil or wrong. God never had a problem with it, so neither do I, not as an economic institution, anyway. I would not want to own a slave, though, because yes, I PERSONALLY have a problem with owning another human being. That slavery is morally wrong and should be abolished from the world by force, however, is a product of secular humanist ideology such as yours. I will have no part of it. You and your friends can comfort and congratulate yourselves for being the gods of humanity who had the knowledge and foresight to know better than those unprogressive Southerners what was good for them. Take it to a Democratic Socialists of America meeting, or ACLU or SPLC, whatever vile and wicked clubs you frequent, and away from here.
16 Comment by robert m. peters on 1 November 2009:

Brock H. @ 15

Slavery, racism, gender bias and homophobia are constructed manifestations of the faux fall foisted on us by the modern gnostics trying, as the late Eric Voegelin said, to immanentize the eschaton, i.e. to create a “utopia” in history by offering a faux salvation from their construct of the faux fall. They want an artificially produced fall from which man can save himself through government intervention and force. They also want, in that context, to have a group who can claim to be “good,” i.e. having practiced no slavery, no racism, no gender bias and no homophobia, so that they can lord over the rest of us. They cannot accept the Biblical truth that we are conceived in sin and that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Ultimately, they want God out of the picture.

Slavery, racism, gender bias and homophobia are also weapons with which they continually and continuously attempt to overthrow the order of being, engendering a perpetual revolution against the established order of God, family, Church and local commonwealth.
17 Comment by Lone Racer on 2 November 2009:

Brock:

You are more solid than I had thought. You’ve said what needed to be said to the brainwashed neocon “Matt” (who needs to take a breather from his PC-ventilations – how challenging the necessity of the War of Northern Aggression and the Crusade to Save the Soviet really upsets the pseudo-cons!! – and, if not learn a bit of history, at least engage in a bit of proofreading).

Of course, you’re still fooling yourself if you think that traditional Americans can somehow survive the coming savagery, or at least the onrushing of socialist democracy, without an effective political voice, and united within a political party (and that party, friend, will be the GOP, like it or not). There can be no retreat to any private sphere of family, church, profession, and community, because the Federal Govt is progressively invading and coopting what little private ’space’ is left in those institutions (as you should well know).

In the 80s and 90s I used to inveigh against what I called ‘libertarian retreatism’, the ridiculous notion that somehow one could find ‘private liberty’ (ostensibly to be based on anonymity and concealment) within the belly of the state socialist regime. In recent years I find myself inveighing against ‘paleoconservative quietism’, the equally ridiculous notion that somehow minding our own business, abjuring the political realm, and “leading good lives” will stop or slow the accelerating annihilation of America and the West. It will not. There is no neutral observer place where one might sit out the world-struggle. Men of the West must become totally (c’est le mot juste) politicized – but obviously in a radical traditionalist cum racial nationalist direction. We must gather up however many of our people, wherever they are to be found, as we can, inculcate within them a hard ideology of Occidental survivalism, and then set about confronting and we hope dismantling the hegemonic, globalist regimes which have attained rule in every Western society. We must be ideologized, radical, and militant, and we must persevere in that politicization for at least one generation AFTER the traditionalist reconquest and politico-ethno-cleansing of Europe and North America.

I know that’s not the world that you or most paleos would want, but “them’s the cards you been dealt”. How we play them is what matters in life. To reiterate my earlier comment (until it sinks in): THERE IS NO ESCAPING THE HARD BURDENS OF POLITICAL CHOICE.
18 Comment by Lone Racer on 2 November 2009:

I should have added at the end: AND OBLIGATION.
19 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 2 November 2009:

Why has “Matt” brought up the War to Prevent Southern Independence and attacked the late Confederate States in a discussion of the present-day interventionism of the U.S.? Surely only for a chance to malign better people. Most of his comments about The War amount to ignorant drivel unworthy of attention. The level of his knowledge is indicated by the comment about the “sentry” shooting Stonewall Jackson. That shows total ignorance about what happened during the night after the first day of the Battle of Chancellorsville along the opposing lines in the Wilderness. I fear if Matt is really an American and really comes from Cleveland he has confirmed my distaste for that unfortunate city.
20 Comment by Allen Wilson on 2 November 2009:

Lone racer, just how do you expect to accomplish this amazing feat with an already deracinated people and a corrupt GOP that is evil beyond redemption?

How many years would it take, how much life wasted only to find the GOP still in the clutches of the power elites and perhaps also find your entire movement betrayed by a manipulative leader? How many years of senseless effort wasted until you find your grand schemes bogged down or diverted into sideline causes, or producing results you never anticipated? How long until the next crop of sociopathic politicians move their way up in the movement and use it for their own shortsighted personal ends? How many agents provocateur can you unknowingly entertain and not get burnt?

I have no faith in the white race. Just look at how they have let themselves go. My, what superior humans they are! They dont even have enough sense to preserve their own land for their childrens’ sake if they dont abort them anyway, and you want to use miserable creatures such as these to save the ruins of an already dead civilisation? Go and do your worst, Lone Racer, but spare us the insults and GOP redemption nonsense you have been throwing out.
21 Comment by MAP on 2 November 2009:

Dr. Peters @ 16, great post! It sums up perfectly our elite’s whole, absurd, sick source of power. But I wonder: When do the ‘commoners’ wake to the reality of the pathetic charade? I mean, when someone deliberately creates problems for no other reason than to suddenly, magically appear with the solution, how long can this continue before those being duped catch on? It has already exceeded beyond anything I would have imagined possible. And it grows more and more absurd by the day. A case in point: pornography was made legal because the suppression of it was considered in violation of the First Amendment; yet, on Friday, our benevolent leader can sign into law a hate-crime bill that will limit what a preacher can say. This obvious contradiction is impossible to understand from anything but an anti-Christian perspective. It also tells us that the meaning of the First Amendment (or any other law for that matter) is a case of interpretation and can mean anything you need for the retention of power.
22 Comment by robert on 2 November 2009:

Matt: “US Imperialism has brought about what may described as the Golden Age of mankind. Never in history has mankind in general had such a high standard of living or freedom. This is because of the vision of Woodrow Wilson, FDR and in the end, the efforts of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder.”

It is the obvious things you cannot see. The high standard of living, (like eating fast food soaked in catsup with your hands?) reading history backwards (shouldn’t Lee have been court martialed for Picketts charge?)and moral superiority ( I hate slavery!!! Boy, I really hate slavery!!! Slavery is evil, evil, evil!!!! Oh, excuse me I will be right back, my boss is irritated and I must go and see what he wants and try and satisfy him as I own nothing of my own —car, home,and credit cards are all borrowed, I need a job, I mean I gotta keep this job, my wife needs to work too just to keep the kids in clothes, cell phones and Ipods, etc.. But I hate slavery, those planters were beast of men, I am so happy the South lost and goodness entered the world through the North, through good men like Sherman, total war, the total destruction of a million of our people to be sure, but they were the worst of people, etc. etc, etc,
23 Comment by Matt on 2 November 2009:

Dear Mr. Brock – If slavery is OK as an institution in the Bible, then isn’t OK for others to enslave you?

Dear Mr. Wilson – Please tell me how Stonewall Jackson really died. I’d be interested to know. I very re-assured that you believe me to be an American and from Cleveland.

I call upon all you true believers against the evil Federal Government to stop collecting or availing yourselves of you Social Security Checks and Medicare coverage, and start to crusade against the evil government subsidies to farmers which surpasses aid to the auto industry by several times.

It is also gratifying that some of your readers of this beknights website know who Eric Voegelin is. However they need to re-read “The New Science of Politics” to accurately understand what the man really said.

P.S. – Start a campaign with your local counties to send back the aid they received to establish a functioning 911 system in your area. Please boycott 911 until they do. Yes – if your house go on fire or there is a medical emergency, don’t use the fruits of the marxist federal government’s aid and become dependent upon the government, thus assisting in the demise of Western Civilization.
24 Comment by Matt on 2 November 2009:

The true reason that I elicit such irrational, if not violent reactions from the other readers of this website, is that none of you have resolved your Oedipus complexes. You wish to murder your father figure, the federal government and marry Oprah Winfree.

Then you wish to guide your lives by following a collections of stories put together by the Roman Catholic Church in the 300’s AD at the behest of the Emperor Constantine and ratified by the Pope, called the Bible. Although some of you follow the Jewish version of the Old Testament, put together by fanatics in 138 AD that murdered 6,000 christian, which excluded seven books,[including the book that recites the story about Hanekak] but was included in the Roman Catholic Bible.

But do any of you really follow Jesus? I doubt it. When the rich young man was told by Jesus to give away all his belongings and follow him, the young man refused. I am sure none of you have. Jesus and St. Paul also expressly told people that they must pay their taxes to the the Roman Government. Do you? I would be surprised.

Jesus in the Book of Revelation, St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans, St. Peter in one of his Letters and St. James all state that you will judged by your works. Beware the coming of the Lord!
25 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 2 November 2009:

What a ridiculous character this “Matt” is. Why is anyone responding to this drivel?
26 Comment by MAP on 2 November 2009:

My mother has long been a firm believer in the system, trusting everything she’s told through the T.V. as though the gospel truth. But this has changed in the last few months. Now she sighs and says, “We’ve lost our country.” She fails to understand this isn’t recent. It happened long ago when Lincoln and the Radical Republicans destroyed the Constitution and reordered the very nature of the Republic, all under the phony pretense of ‘freeing the slave”. As Lee predicted, we have long since become a nation despotic at home and aggressive abroad.
27 Comment by Lone Racer on 2 November 2009:

Allen Wilson:

Again (sigh), you, like all others defending defeatism here, fail to address my points. I’m starting to get a bit embarrassed for you people (well, perhaps really for myself, as I have purchased several gift subscriptions to CHRONICLES, touting the magazine as the best rightist opinion journal bar none, and am concerned that some of my recipients might be reading the inane comments of so many of you, and not just those of the mentally disintegrating neocon called “Matt”, and would be unimpressed with the intellectual quality of the magazine’s readership).

Our civilization is dying, but it is hardly dead. That is the statement of someone who doesn’t wish to roll up his sleeves and do the hard work of preserving it. Please don’t try to mask your laziness, foolishness, and perhaps cowardice with alleged ‘realism’. You and others of your ilk seem as though you’re looking for excuses for political passivity. Your meager strategy is to exaggerate the hopelessness of our situation. You remind me of that arch-”realist” Kissinger vis a vis Reagan. The K-man thought the communists would maintain their grip on power forever. Reagan had a different perspective: “We win, they lose.” Who turned out to be more realistic?

Oh, well, it takes all kinds. Perhaps you’re a conservative, but please don’t pretend you’re a patriot. And stay out of the way of the real fighters for the West.

You might also wish to reflect upon the fact that despair is a mortal sin for Christians.
28 Comment by Jeremiah Whitmoore on 2 November 2009:

Matt,

What’s Hanekak? Do you have any idea what your talking about?
29 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 2 November 2009:

Maybe Matt was right after all to bring up the War to Prevent Southern Independence in a discussion of U.S. interventionism. That was the first example. The U.S. government intervened,committed a lot of “collateral damage,” overthrew the legal governments of 15 states, and replaced them with puppet governments during ten years of military occupation. Until you understand that, you will understand little about the subsequent history of the U.S. government.
30 Comment by Eagle on 2 November 2009:

I think Professor Wilson is accurate. Are there statues of Lincoln in the South? I saw a rather humorous news story today. Our former War Criminal in Chief was in Pristina to be honored with a statue of his likeness. The 11 foot tall monstrosity of Clinton could only be described as Soviet in style. (One envisions a future news story in which Serbs are toppling it much like the East Germans toppled similar looking markers of Lenin.) The curious thing is that while Abe’s war was ostensibly to end slavery, Bill’s was to continue the Albanian trades in slavery (and organ harvesting, and heroin, and etc.).
31 Comment by Tom Piatak on 2 November 2009:

Prof. Wilson,

I am sorry to read that you don’t like my hometown. I like it quite a bit, and would not want to live anywhere else. In addition to being the home of family and friends, Cleveland has an outstanding cultural infrastructure, thanks to the foresight of the industrialists who made their fortunes here. Cleveland in fact is a wonderful city, if you can find a job here. That’s the rub, since the manufacturing economy that used to sustain us has been badly hurt by our nation’s foolish embrace of free trade.
32 Comment by Lone Racer on 2 November 2009:

Cleveland wonderful? Hardly. My business partner and very close friend is a born and bred Clevelander (is that what they’re called?). Grew up in “Red River” (does that sound familiar? something like that; I’ll have to ask him), where his parents and sister still live, attended Baldwin-Wallace college, started his career at 3M, first wife was a local girl, etc.

I’ve never been there, but from what my friend has told me, the suburbs of Cleveland are filled with good Middle Americans – but the city proper is basically a violent if contained black ghetto. When was the last time you elected a white mayor? And isn’t Cuyahoga County a paradigm of Democrat corruption?

I know the paleo crowd has this weird fetish for “localism”, but when Mr. Piatak says he “would not want to live anywhere else” (anywhere?!), that’s really carrying the pre-approved script past all bounds of credibility!
33 Comment by robert on 2 November 2009:

Tom,
I liked the old blue collar Cleveland too. The Browns when Marty Shotenhiemer was coaching them and the dog pound was full of amateur fans and people still had jobs, if very little culture, was by no means a “golden age” but was a helluva lot better than what exists today after decades of Republican “pre-emptive wars and free trade.” They have done the same to my home town. The B. F. Goodrich comapany shut their plant down here, sold the equipment to the Chinese, opened a new plant in Mexico, etc. On the other side of the equation is the fact the plants most productive week in decades was after the company announced it was closing. The union fellows though that if they worked better and were more productive,maybe they would keep it open. They did but no way they could compete against wage slavery down south and acroos the pacific. T’is all in pieces now.
34 Comment by Tom Piatak on 2 November 2009:

Lone Racer,

By Cleveland I am referring to Greater Cleveland. And no, I would not want to live anywhere else.
35 Comment by Josh Cooney on 2 November 2009:

#32 What large American city is not a violent ghetto or paradigm of Democratic corruption?
36 Comment by Tom Piatak on 2 November 2009:

Robert,

I had season tickets in the Dawg Pound in the now demolished Municipal Stadium. It was a fun place to watch a football game. Unfortunately, the Browns haven’t been fun to watch for a while.
37 Comment by robert on 2 November 2009:

It was a fun place to watch a football game. ”

Not only that but at certain times of the year it was a tough place to watch, given the weather. Climate has alot to do with a people and their character. That Nort wind is a sobering experience in itself yet, you folks go, live, paly and work in it as just another fact of life. Heat and Wind is what we are famous for down here and it has its charcter building aspects as well. Keep up the good work that you are doing here and over at TAki MAg. I always enjoy and read your columns.
38 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 2 November 2009:

I also live in Ohio, but in the more Kentuckian-dominated southwestern part of the state. Cleveland is a classic rust belt city with much decay, but alot of charm as well. It also unfortunately has a long running Yankee streak, an attitude which our dear matt exhibits so well.
39 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 2 November 2009:

“I know the paleo crowd has this weird fetish for “localism”

Great Scott. Please go back and read your posts, Lone Racer. Do they not read to you like the rantings of an insufferable bore? If you don’t understand the importance most of us place on the people, traditions, places and institutions that are nearest and (therefore) dearest to us, if you find the idea “weird”, then I cannot guess what you are trying to conserve and why you’re here, of all places, trying to conserve it.
40 Comment by robert on 2 November 2009:

Toddard,
Lone Racer is an old aggravated racist and fallen away Catholic that is mad at God. I admire his courage and willingness to stand up for his own folks and can even excuse his pre-judgement that most of them are better than the rest on average. What I don’t like is his contempt and condescenion to the habits and customs of those very people he pretends to represent. He is like the incarnation of the dream of August Comte who loved humanity and hated individuals. Or he is like the man visiting Chartres Cathedral on a cloudy day and stomping home murmuring that he didn’t see what all the big deal was about color and light. He hates poloticians and therefore wants all his friends to be political. He is disguted with religion and wants all his friends to join him in isms of race, he hates Free Republic and silly blogs, so he drifts over to ours to disrupt and poke fun, etc. He is harmless, quite intelligent, repetitive and easily ignored. He is the one trick pony at the local carnival that kids just love and the adults wish would take a rest.
41 Comment by Tom Piatak on 2 November 2009:

Lone Racer,

There is no such place as “Red River” in Greater Cleveland. My wife has two degrees from Baldwin Wallace, a lovely college near where we live. We recently got to hear “Anonymous 4″ at B-W for the price of ten dollars a ticket. It was a great concert of medieval Church music, but great music is readily available here, with the Cleveland Orchestra, an outstanding baroque orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, and several first rate conservatories, including Baldwin Wallace, Oberlin, and the Cleveland Institute of Music.
42 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 2 November 2009:

“He is like the incarnation of the dream of August Comte who loved humanity and hated individuals”

Indeed. Or like a man whose son can’t read, but instead of teaching his son to read he leaves his home and family to campaign nationwide against illiteracy, all the while berating those at home teaching *their* sons to read: “Quit lazing about and come help me fight illiteracy!”
43 Comment by robert on 2 November 2009:

Toddard @42
You got it!!I once knew a man who refused to pay his taxes because they funded abortions. He went to prison for failure to pay taxes while leaving a large family to fend for themselves for two years. I knew another woman who put her kids in daycare while she campaigned for W. Bush of all people!!!! The list is endless and restless because folks nowadays are beginning to realize that something must be done, they just don’t know what it is. So what we have is an endless chorus of “Well, this is something so let’s do this, that or the other … We forget the words of Plato (and since echoed by St. Benedict and other wise men) “it is no chance topic that engages us, for our subject is: How shall a man order his life?” Thank God for men like Tom Fleming, Clyde Wilson and the other brave paleo souls who have spent a lifetime pursuing the authentic answers instead of the vapor trails of hype,silliness and shouting heads.
44 Comment by Eagle on 2 November 2009:

As a one-time resident, I will second Mr. Piatak’s assessment of Cleveland. It is remarkable what the industrialists of a by-gone era funded and left Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit. The average American has been conditioned to sneer at these once economically distingusihed centers of industry as rust-belt ghettos. But the museums, art collections, universities, symphonies, and other cultural markers still in many ways exceed what some of the country’s bigger metropoli have to offer. Yes, the cities have deteriorated in many ways, but do not judge what their true underlying character is from afar.

I don’t know if it is still the case, but during my years there Cleveland’s symphony orchestra was almost universally acknowledged by the experts and afficionados as the best on this continent. Even so, on Saturday mornings I could take my young son to join a raucous group of pre- and primary-schoolers to watch select members of the orchestra demonstrate instruments for children. High culture combined with affordable family access.

Whatever else these industrialists may have been, the Fords, Carnegies, the Mellons, et al were concerned about leaving a positive cultural influence on the cities in which their industries were centered. Today’s entrepreneurs and financiers – wealthier many times over than the mentioned predecessors – have left their mark also as they’ve moved production and engineering overseas.
45 Comment by John Seiler on 2 November 2009:

Eagle, #44: “As a one-time resident, I will second Mr. Piatak’s assessment of Cleveland. It is remarkable what the industrialists of a by-gone era funded and left Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Detroit.”

I was raised in a Detroit suburb and sometimes wish I had never left, despite 75 degree weather out here in Southern California today. (You have permission to be envious; also to pay my record high state taxes.) The industrialists did a lot of great things, such as, in Detroit, the Symphony, the Museum or Art, hospitals, research institutes, and many beautiful buildings.

But they also funded the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, dozens of other left-wing foundations, left-wing universities, and left-wing think tanks — all of which have assaulted America for decades, and continue to assault us. Somebody should write a book on how the Ford Foundation destroyed Detroit, the city Henry built, with its support for “urban renewal.”

Meanwhile, the Christian churches, which should have upheld the culture and been a bulwark against the foundations and universities, themselves became left-wing, or took off on tangents such as supporting wars in the Middle East so as — they believe — to provoke God to bring on Armageddon, leading to the believers’ instant rapture.
46 Comment by Tom Piatak on 2 November 2009:

Mr. Seiler:

Yes, but John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford would not have approved of the uses to which their money has been put by their foundations. Their mistake was in failing to attach enough strings to their gifts.

Eagle’s assessment is correct. The industrialists in places like my native Cleveland laid the foundation for a remarkable cultural infrastructure, and their sagacious philanthropy in this area puts the efforts of today’s billionaires to shame.

I am also grateful to Cleveland’s old leadership class in another area. Thanks to their foresight, the city is ringed by an excellent park system, a veritable “Emerald Necklace.” Scarcely a weekend goes by that I don’t take advantage of those parks.
47 Comment by Jeremiah Whitmoore on 2 November 2009:

Instead of denigrating Mr. Piatak’s hometown, perhaps we should all take a breather and listen to Jim Reeve’s wonderful voice or something along those lines. Ferlin Husky might work too. As Christians and traditionalists we should not be attacking one another for silly reasons.

I will leave you fine gentlemen with a scripture from 2 Timothy 2:23-25 “Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kindly to every one, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth.”
48 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 2 November 2009:

@10 matt
Etienne Gervaise is my given name. I do not comment “all over the internet,” only on this site since Takimag accepts no more comments.

But there you go with the questions again. Are you some sort of sayan gathering infromation for your masters? And furthermore, I assure you that I’m still alive. Perhaps you’d better check your facts, as well as your grammar, from now on.

In truth I know Dr. Piatak is a Cleveland-based attorney so I think I’ll have him check you out.
49 Comment by Lone Racer on 3 November 2009:

Toddard @39: No, I’m someone you might actually learn something from, or, at least, with whom you could have an intelligent conversation about matters of genuine importance. I am ideologically serious; let us say, a ‘non-infantilistic’ but also non-defeatist conservative. Looking back over some recent posts, here is one you might wish to consider (of course it was in response to another thread’s meanderings, but, yes, some things cannot be repeated too often):

19 Comment by Lone Racer on 28 October 2009:
Robert and Chris @15-18:

I actually agree with both of you, and that is no contradiction. The West is indeed the product of the white race (biology), with, now, the overlay of the Christian, especially Catholic, faith (being Catholic myself, I admit to being biased here; I really do believe, however, that Protestants are deeply wrong, even – especially? – the ones with whom I am in general political agreement; I include here both the strict Calvinists, whose views I consider monstrous, even as I have friends amongst them, and the evangelicals, who are just silly to me). Of course, we need to be careful about overemphasizing not race (as most Chronicles writers and blog commenters strangely might aver), but faith, as The One True Faith is a potential gift for all men, but the pre-Christian ancients, undeniably part of our civilization (just ask this site’s editor), are ours alone. Indeed, I argue there would be every bit as much deep psychological compatibility between an ancient Roman, and at least a paleoconservative white man, as between two contemporary Christians of different races.

Both the West and Christianity are larger than each other.

Muslims are infinitely more dangerous immigrants than Mexicans, as my own mother has been saying for years, and for the very reasons above (true, she also says the same thing about all-non-Christian immigrants, including the Chinese – and Jews). The Muslims represent an alien and mostly antagonistic civilization, with a very strong and confident worldview in opposition to our own, both metaphysically as well as temporally (politically and culturally). They have a deep history (and historical memory) of conflict with us. Allowing them to immigrate en masse into Europe over the past half-century was a series of acts of world-historical treason on the part of European “leaders”, and someday, there must be Nuremberg-style trials and punishments for them.

Although there is a radical and racist fringe (”Aztlan”) to the Mexican ‘reconquista’ of the American southwest, I do not think that most Mexicans are either as profoundly oppositional, or as ideologically radicalized, as Muslims (though our own treasonous liberal multiculturalists certainly don’t help matters!). I’ve employed, worked with, etc, many of them, and most are just concerned with bettering themselves (though such betterment can be effectuated by welfare for many of them as much as by work). The point, though, is that, taken as a whole, they are racially inferior to whites – less intelligent, less capable, less entrepreneurial, less rectitudinous, and, of course, still racially mostly incompatible. I’m not sure Mexicans constitute a mortal civilizational threat, but they do lower what used to be called in saner times our “national quality”.
50 Comment by Lone Racer on 3 November 2009:

Mr. Piatak: Perhaps I meant to say “Rock River”? I’ll have to ask my friend. Anyway, my point was simply that Cleveland, like many old American cities, may have been founded by ingenious, disciplined, and at least reasonably God-fearing white men, but seems to have been ruined by postwar racial integration. Certainly this was the case with Detroit, which my family over several generations helped to build, but which is now a literally dying city (eg, they keep shutting down city services to formerly inhabited municipal areas). There is an obvious lesson to be drawn from these examples.
51 Comment by Tom Piatak on 3 November 2009:

Lone Racer,

Whatever lesson you wish people to draw is ill-served by ridiculing those of us with an attachment to our native place.
52 Comment by Tom Piatak on 3 November 2009:

Mr. Whitmoore @ 47:

I agree we should not be attacking each other on the basis of where we are from. But I have read literally hundreds of posts attacking “Yankees” and denigrating the North, and here I find my hometown is the latest target. I can well understand Southern annoyance at attacks on the South, but those who relish bashing “Yankees” and places like Cleveland should understand that there are people who read this website who live in the North and like our native region. Indeed, some of us even write for the website and the magazine.
53 Comment by robert on 3 November 2009:

You Yankees and Southerners all have it easy compared to border trash like myself and fellow Okies. We tried to help out Joe Johnson over there in the battle of Pea Ridge but he never called Stan Waitie, (also known as Degataga or “stand firm”) and his fighters up early enough. (One must always call Okies early for duty else they will always be accused like St Peter and the Apostles of “being full of new wine even though it is but the third hour.”)This isn’t true of course, it is just a fact that we must rise earlier than the rest of humanity to get any work done in the summer months –else we die from heat exhaustion, dehydration and wind burn — and our beautiful gardens and fields over-run with weeds. I think there is a symphony, ballet and opera house in Tulsa but we converted our local Opera house “The Coleman Theatre” http://www.colemantheatre.org/ into a music hall for invitation only performers such as Bob Will’s remnant of the Texas Playboys and the late great, Johnny Cash, etc.
54 Comment by Allen Wilson on 3 November 2009:

Lone Racer, exactly what are you doing to save the white race and the West, aside from throwing bombastic insults at people who have much better manners that yourself? What have you accomplished?
55 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 3 November 2009:

As a southerner, I would like to defend the many fine qualities of my wife’s home state of Ohio. Unlike my native south, practically every small town in Ohio has a Grade A non-corporate bakery providing many tasty treats. Small town Ohio delights in their local high school sports, providing a neighborly feel that is striking in its antithesis to atomistic suburban America, north, south, west and east. Ohio regional foods include pork loin with sauerkraut often crockpotted, and Cincinnati five-way chili, both which I recommend. The American foundry, long betrayed by the Democratic and Republican establishments, provided America its industrial might in hundreds of factories throughout Ohio. Ohio’s farms are as lush as its winters are cold and snowy.

The enemy is not the states of Ohio or South Carolina or Nebraska or even California and the regional cultures of each. The enemy is ourselves who continue to vote in the greedy two-headed establishment that betrays places like Akron, Ohio and Spartanburg, South Carolina for thirty pieces of silver. Sam Francis could have told you that and in fact did.
56 Comment by Matt on 3 November 2009:

I have lived in Cleveland since 1972,when my family moved here from Connecticut. It has the most beautiful suburbs in the country. If all of America’s suburbs were laid out as thoughtfully as Shaker Hts. and Cleveland Hts., our country would be the envy of the world.

Cleveland was the first oil city and its former wealth is reflected in its mile after mile of lovely mansions. It has many trees lining it streets and had the nick name “The Forest City”. Cleveland and the southern Lake Erie basin has had as much effect on world civilization as Athens, Paris, London, etc. And should receive credit for it. It was the source of much of New York City’s wealth.

Lake Erie’s contributions to world civilization affect the everyday life of every person in the world. John D. Rockefeller and John Flagler of Standard Oil were of Cleveland, Charles Hall was from Oberlin. He was the man who, in the USA figured out how to smelt aluminum at a low cost. John Goodyear and Harvey Firestone. The Wright brothers were from Indiana and did their work in Dayton. The was Henry Ford and John Kettering of the Detroit auto industry. The one towering figure that does come out of northern Ohio is of course Thomas Edison. We must not leave out Buffalo, New York and it power generating facilities at Niagra Falls, among its other contributions. And yes, John Steinbrenner of Lorain Ohio who is the owner of the Yankees.

Although originally from New York City, I am very proud to live in Cleveland. The only criticism I have of the area is that it frequently has a late summer. Russian friends I know say the winters last longer and can be colder than Moscow or Non-Siberian Russia.

I must say that the racial tensions in this City are less than other big cities in America. There are, I believe two reasons for this. After Dennis Kucinich was mayor, the city was really on its back. This not to say that all or most of the reason for this situation was Dennis Kucinich’s fault, but that was how it was when he left office. The City’s temporary revival in the 1980’s and 1990’s was of course due in large proportion to economic revival of the entire country during after Reagan’s presidency. But it was also do the leadership of George Voinivich, who was mayor in the 1980’s, but also due to the leadership of the City Counsel President George Forbes. He is black and very controversial in his own way, but nonetheless did tremendous things for the city. You may be interested to know that he endorsed President Bush the Elder for his second term, as did the local Black Newspaper, the Call & Post. The Black leadership in this city is not interested in rabble rousing, but in making money and getting the city to be properous.

So, the first reason was good leadership, but the second reason is that people say hello to strangers on the street in this city as a matter of custom. They speak to strangers routinely, such as in the elevators. People always say hello te each other and make small talk, such as “How are the Indians or the Browns doing?”. They also say hello to each other when whites and blacks pass on the street and in the elevators and corridors. There is no radical, bitter black leader or group in the area, that I can think of, that is out spreading hate. This is true, even though for a while, there was, for awhile, a vocal Nazi, racist party of about 50 – 100 people running around. On the day of the Rodney King verdict being announce, some nut in a Volkwagon van rode around downtown waiving a Nazi banner. To his his great credit, the black mayor at the time, ironically named Mayor White, kept the lid on things and there were no riots in Cleveland. This was so even though the Blacks I knew at the time were pretty livid about the matter.

In closing, I wish to say that every Black veteran that I have every met, was enormously patriotic and loved our country. Please remember, that the Blacks have fought, bleed and died in every war America has fought. I spoke to a black man who had been a paratrooper in the Vietnam War. He volunteered for a second tour. He lost his leg in that war to a landmine. When he filled out a mortgage application at my friend’s office, on the Form 1003, when he checked his ethnic background as African American, he said that he looked forward to the day when he was just called an American.

I am white, but I too am also aflicted with prejudice. One time while waiting for a red light to change at East 55th and Euclid, a black man on the sidewalk called out and said “Get your White ass off of my street honkey!” Yes, I was a racist for about ten to fifteen minutes,afterwards, but we must all keep in proper perspective that the Blacks are part of our American family.

It is amazing in this day and age that we have men on this website who think that slavery is OK.

P.S. – I agree with every word that Lone Racer said in his comment No. 27.

P.P.S. Etienne – I went to John Carroll University and I am a lawyer too. If you want to have Mr. Piatak check me out, fine! I am sure he is fine gentleman. I’d like to meet him. I am a westsider.
57 Comment by Allen Wilson on 3 November 2009:

Alright, Matt, if you agree that I am so lazy and worthless, what exactly are you doing right now to save the glorious white race and the Western world, of which you seem to know and understand so little?
58 Comment by Allen Wilson on 3 November 2009:

Lone Racer, since you assume that you have the almighty power to judge me a sinner, you may wish to reflect that pride is also a sin, and you are full of it. You are also full of hubris.
59 Comment by robert on 3 November 2009:

“It is amazing in this day and age that we have men on this website who think that slavery is OK. ”

This is a calumny and a lie perpetuated by simple minds and newly weds who have only recently discovered Chronicles. The thesis is not that slavery is OK, rather that the modern man is blinded by his obsessions to fix the world and in doing so, creates far more death, destruction and indignity than he attempts to fix. The Chronicles reader is more concerned with understanding reality as it is before atempting to shape it in his own image, or your own image, or the next fellow’s own image. It is a much wiser course than the artist who invites a random mob to daub here and there on his canvas so he can produce a work of art. It is more important to understand the essence of slavery before imposing it anew in a different way, a different time and different people.
60 Comment by MAP on 3 November 2009:

What people think of slavery…? What a laugh! Slavery does not exist in this country; nor is it returning. Someone’s opinion of it is a non-issue except for its use as a political tool. And that’s all it’s ever been! I believe the practise is still prevalent with the native population of Africa, but we never hear of that – because it is of no political use, whatever. As a topic it only amounts to wasted pity, used for political gain. Please spare me. I try to keep to real problems.
61 Comment by Tom Piatak on 3 November 2009:

Mr. Leaberry @ 55:

Thanks for your kind words on the Buckeye State. As you know, I have always enjoyed your postings, and I quoted one of them in a talk I gave at the H. L. Mencken Club this past weekend. A version of that talk, with the quote, should appear at the Takimag website relatively soon.
62 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 3 November 2009:

#33–Your reference to “wage slavery down south” (read:”right-to-work”–a libertarian not conservative idea)ruining Cleveland’s economy rings a bell. Charleston and the legislature of South Carolina just last week used anti-union politics to steal a huge swath of Boeing’s airline production from my hometown of Everett, Washington (and thus from the whole economy of Puget Sound). I don’t fault South Carolina’s legislators too much for being in the maw of libertarian myths, which after all are wildly popular in the Doofus Party, nor do I blame them for watching out for their own. I do blame the Boeing executives who continue to lie about what they are doing. Businessmen are a worse lot, it seems, than legislators. But this is somewhat off topic–sorry.
63 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 3 November 2009:

Mr. Pitiak, I regret my comments, which were engendered by “Matt”’s nasty personal slander. Every man has a right to love his own country. There are good and bad people everywhere and I am sure Ohio (if not downtown Cleveland) has very many good Americans.

#62. I am really tired of rust belt complaints about the South stealing their industry. It is your own tycoons who are doing this, and doubtless for good reasons. The South spent a century in poverty and contempt while you people were living off the fat of the land. We are still relatively impoverished, and now that your tycoons are shipping jobs off shore we will never have the long opportunity to accumulate wealth that you folks have had.
Furthemore, in every case that I have ever observed, Northern emigres move in to take all the best jobs. We are merely exploitable labour and resources. And, of course, the emigres, for the most part, hold us in contempt and begin immediately to recreate the conditions they fled from up thataways.
64 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 3 November 2009:

addendum: I share your dislike of most of our New South businessmen. It is not true that the South is getting more prosperous from the relocation of industry. Bankers and developers are making money along with the transplanted executives. I once pointed out to a rich (harvard-educated) New South businessman that in the new industries he was bragging about in his town all the good jobs were held by outsiders, none by the locals. “When they move here they aren’t outsiders any more,” was the flippant response.
65 Comment by Tom Piatak on 3 November 2009:

Prof. Wilson,

I am gratified that you regret your comments. Thanks.
66 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 3 November 2009:

“New South”. What an offensive term. You can bet it never occurred to anyone that it might be offensive. Or perhaps that was considered – and it was agreed that it was offensive to just the sort of people it pays to malign in the our egalitarian, multicultural, PC nation of immigrants.

Either way it’s revolting.
67 Comment by Ken Zaretzke on 3 November 2009:

##63&64. I agree that the South was economically ripped off–to put it mildly–by Reconstruction and what followed. (Not to mention by pre-Civil War tariffs.) But that might only mean that Charlestonians are to Seattleites what Israelis are to Palestinians. Besides, the people doing the ripping off were politically-connected Northeasterners, not good Northwesterners. I don’t accuse South Carolinians of undue venality in the Boeing affair–they are just feathering their own nest, like anyone else. I was indicting the “race to the bottom” that capitalists and many federalists–in other words, conservative ideologues–are wittingly or unwittingly bringing about.
68 Comment by Lone Racer on 4 November 2009:

Allen Wilson @54: I give as good as I get; or, persons here (and even more so in the real world) should not insult me or belittle my true conservative view unless expecting something in return.

Incidentally, I did a lot of work in the 80s and especially 90s for my causes, from both volunteering and working for conservative candidates (including Pat Buchanan), to holding a full-time, analyst position for several years with a leading anti-immigration organization, during which I was prominently involved in one very big, nationally recognized and discussed immigration battle (one reason I must write anonymously here is that I am still writing for various publications, and may also get back into conservative political work in the near future). I also was a speaker/debater in CA working to win voter approval for Prop 209 (the anti-affirmative action measure, ostensibly still in force, though the enemy routinely ignores it). I could say more wrt the John Randolph Club and some other similar groups, but then I would definitely ‘out’ myself.

Finally, I am so arranging my affairs that I am going to be doing a LOT more for the Occidental cause in the coming years, both politically and intellectually. I am working on a book which when completed will at least begin the long intellectual process of reintegrating not only race-realism, but also racialism, into traditionalist conservatism (exactly as matters used to be pre-war). No, I have not done nearly as much as Wilmot Robertson or Revilo Oliver or Sam Francis or Jared Taylor or David Duke or many others for the cause of the white man, but I have done far more than most already – and I believe my days of maximum influence are yet to come.
69 Comment by Lone Racer on 4 November 2009:

Tom Piatak @ 51: Interesting that it took you several comments to get snippy. I wonder why.

As for putting my cards on the table, yeah, you sense right: I am a nationalist, not a localist. While I myself am guilty of an attachment to my native place (hell, I still live, after many decades, some spent away, in the same neighborhood I grew up in as a kid – how’s that?) I think paleos really go overboard in raising localism as some kind of, yes, weird, ideological, and even moral, banner. “Love where you’re from.” Why? The real genius of Western man (and a major character trait of traditional Americans – and maybe this should even be extended to our post-1965 newcomers) was his urge to move, to explore, to conquer. That restlessness produced both a great civilization, and a dynamism that once uniquely characterized our people, and was carried over into every sphere of our collective existence, usually to positive effect (less so in the recent decades or century of our racial psychosis). There is a faint whiff of what Sam Francis once long ago mocked as “bucolic toe-picking” in these various paleo-paens to the alleged supremacy of the local.

Your exaggerated miff at Prof. Wilson’s denigration of Cleveland, and subsequent role as Loyal Hometown Boy, was a reflection of this mindset, a form of what might be called (in all seriousness) “paleo-PC”. Small ideological communities always develop their own little codes and rituals and taboos and ‘received wisdom’, etc., and glorifying hillbillyism, and being oh-so-preciously attached to one’s native place, is what’s expected here (along with equally denouncing both political parties, being sceptical towards any institution of modern life that’s large and powerful (except the Catholic Church), complimenting the editor on his erudition, etc).

At least some rightists are more interested in defending the ultimate source of the West (ie our race), than merely its various manifestations in, say, the Louvre, or the Met, or the Cleveland Museum of Stainless Steel, etc.
70 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 4 November 2009:

No need to worry about “outing” yourself, Mr. Haller. We already know who you are. Your concern at this point should be to make sure that you don’t get yourself banned from the website again. And on that point, I’m afraid, you’re getting awfully close.
71 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 4 November 2009:

“No need to worry about “outing” yourself, Mr. Haller”

Oh – Leon Haller. I remember. Anyway, Mr. Haller, I’m personally not interested in your version of what you call “conservatism”, and I doubt you will find many converts here to your nationalist cause. My interest is in decentralizing our nation – one might say in “de-nationalizing” it. I think you make a mistake in focusing first on the largest, most abstract and remote bodies (the nation, the White Race) rather than on the closest, dearest and most immediate. And your disdain for those things near, dear and local (and for those who value them) demonstrates that in the end we have nothing, really, in common. We are on opposite sides.
72 Comment by Bruce on 4 November 2009:

How is physical, ancestral identity the most abstract body?
73 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 4 November 2009:

Perhaps I should have said “overarching”. Race is one component of ancestral identity. White southerners and Yankee Puritan abolitionist busybodies share that component, though they can hardly be said to share a common identity. The identity most Southerners (that I speak to, anyway) want most to conserve is more immediate, local and particular than The White Race.
74 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 4 November 2009:

Mr. Piatak,

I am sorry to have missed the Mencken meeting which is forty-five minutes from my house. However, my children required Halloween transportation Saturday so I could not attend. I always look forward to reading your essays in Chronicles and Taki and especially enjoyed your recent essay in Chronicles on Christianity which cut to a point many of us would agree upon- without Christianity, this culture will continue to decline.
75 Comment by robert on 4 November 2009:

Lone Racer,
You are a hard man to like but I do — even some of your posts. You have some pretty good invective when you are cornered, can fight like a sack full of bobcats, are apparently well read given the times, and a relentless old codger. I like all of that about you. You just need to be sorry for some of your old sins, make a good act of contrition and keep plugging away for the things you love — which to me are not quite clear at times. But I do enjoy some of your posts when they are hot so damned hateful. We don’t need you here, but it would probably be less of a discussion without you. God Bless.
76 Comment by Lone Racer on 4 November 2009:

To Mr. Richert @70:

Any website has a perfect moral (and for now still legal) right to ban (or refuse service? I’d assume so, but am not sure) whomsoever it chooses. But I am using “moral” strictly in the property or freedom of association senses. Those responsible for a product’s existence may do with it as they will, provided they don’t use it in a criminal manner (that sounds very libertarian, which I am not, either politically or philosophically, but I do think the libertarian understanding of property considered only in itself, not in relation to other, possibly superseding, goods, is correct). You are not under any legal or Biblical duty to host my comments (or anyone else’s).

But if I were banned, would it be wrong of me to object? I think not. This is an ideological website, hosted by an American organization. In America, you might recall, we not only have a tradition of free speech, we actually have a prescriptive protection for it in our founding documents. I realize that liberals have warped the concept of free speech into something that the Framers would have found unrecognizable, extending First Amendment protections to pornography, performance ‘art’, entertainment (but, curiously, not commercial advertising), and other areas of speech never envisioned as such by the Founders.

Surely you would acknowledge, however, that the free speech clause applies to political speech (which is all I believe it applies to), and that my various comments fall into that category (as much as any others’, at least; I may have some personal asides, responses to personal attacks, and the like, but so do others here, and in the real world of politics).

Now there is such a thing as rhetorical rules of order. People in a deliberative body, for the institution to function as intended, must suffer some behavioral regulations. Free speech, in the literal sense, cannot encompass endless interruption, or ‘monologuing’. Perhaps politically irrelevant obscenities, or even personal attacks (“Mr. Jefferson has a mulatto love child!”), can be banned, without infringing the speech principle. Certainly, we couldn’t be expected to have our leaders mouth corporate advertisements from their grandstands.

But if there is one single type of speech which, in the American system, even the most hidebound reactionary, or PC offense-monger, MUST abide, which must remain unregulated, it is that which directly addresses political topics. That is our way of political life (if you don’t like it, move to Saudi Arabia or North Korea).

My comments invariably address political or academic topics (with occasional autobiographical digressions, as with other comment-posters) and they do so without violating common forensic rules. I don’t copy and paste long and irrelevant outside material, which could interrupt the site’s visuals. I don’t make unsolicited personal attacks. I don’t hurl epithets, or lace my scribblings with obscenities. i don’t insert irrelevant, non-topical information into comments (“this reminds me of this cool movie where …”). So why would I be awfully close to being banned?

There is only one answer. The Powers That Be dislike the content of my comments, which, because my comments always pertain to political (or social, cultural, moral) issues, really means, they don’t like my politics.

An agent of an American website, affiliated with an American and self-designatedly ‘conservative’ magazine devoted to (mostly American) political and cultural analysis, operating under the aegis of an American foundation (which probably receives preferential tax treatment as some type of non-profit or quasi-public entity, serving a public or social purpose), thinks he has a moral right to ban the free expression of conservative political opinions he finds distasteful.

Why, that would be awfully close to un-American.
77 Comment by Allen Wilson on 4 November 2009:

Mr Haller,

‘I give as good as I get; or, persons here (and even more so in the real world) should not insult me or belittle my true conservative view unless expecting something in return.’

That’s an odd thing for you to say when you were the one insulting and belittling every one else who was posting on this website.

I would wish you all the best if it seemed that you might accomplish anything, but I doubt that you will, given your arrogance. In the end you will shoot yourself in the foot.

See that you do not become delusional.

In any event, I suggest you get on with it, and stop hurling insults at everybody here, but if your book has the same tone as your posts here, dont expect great success with it.
78 Comment by Miles Gloriosus on 4 November 2009:

Brock H@12 wrote: “Matt, while some of my friends here on this website might feel a little too afraid to state outright that no, they do NOT believe slavery is or ever was evil in any way, I don’t. Consider it said.”

Careful, Brock. Slavery may be upon us sooner than you think. With their effective pauperization of the middle class by supporting needless and expensive “patriotic” wars and outsourcing of our industrial base to enrich their own, duh-byah and the other neo-cons were marching along with the one-worlders of the left as they effectively reduced us to servitude while teary-eyed they continued to salute the flag, hum “The Star Spangled Banner” and protest their undying belief in liberty and the rights of man.
79 Comment by MAP on 5 November 2009:

Belloc in “The Servile State” predicted that slavery would be the ultimate equilibrium for mankind. He saw everything as leaning in that direction. Socialism he viewed as hastening the reduction to servitude. He was certainly correct that people in a capitalist society are not concerned with liberty or freedom, but only for the security of the scraps they receive from the table of the capitalist (thus socialism). PCR at Taki,s Mag states that 1% of the population of America possesses 80% of the wealth, the widest inequality on earth.
80 Comment by Gilbert Jacobi on 12 November 2009:

Although I’ve once again come too late to the thread, since the subject of banning a commenter has come up, I’d like to be on record about it.

I haven’t heard enough yet to know if I am in complete agreement with Haller/Racer on race, but so far, so good. His hard nosed insistence on the primacy of race, and its role in the decline of our country, without apology to the sophistries of the bio-ethnologists and anthro-apologists, is refreshing. And anyone who can so deftly put in their place the bluenoses in charge of museums, who have betrayed the public by charging admission, by re-naming one of their flagships “The Cleveland Museum of Stainless Steel”, should get at least a thirty day pass.

His political activism and nationalism merit discussion, and as for his insults and percieved arrogance, I think everyone on this site is quite capable of surviving them.

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