We Report; You Decide

by Scott P. Richert

September 27th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

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The 18th Annual Meeting of the John Randolph Club was perhaps the most successful in its history, with the exception of the bad behavior of one invited speaker, who, not happy that a majority of the audience favored the other side in the debate on Saturday night, has made common cause with the ex-communist David Horowitz to attack his longtime allies.

The debate question was “Resolved: America Should Immediately Withdraw Her Armed Forces From Iraq,” and the affirmative team featured Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, Peter Brimelow of VDare.com, and the well-known leftist author Kirkpatrick Sale, who these days devotes himself to furthering the cause of decentralism through his Middlebury Institute. The negative team featured regular Chronicles contributor R. Cort Kirkwood, Chronicles‘ foreign-affairs editor Srdja Trifkovic, and William Hawkins of the U.S. Business and Industry Council.

You can find Mr. Hawkins’ account of the debate here. Mr. Hawkins raises questions about the people we associate with (and whom he voluntarily associated with by accepting our invitation), but we’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether our associations are less desirable than his.

As for the outcome of the debate, you can decide for yourself. Thanks to Antiwar.com, which is providing the bandwidth, you can listen to the entire debate by clicking here.

Comments

There Are 106 Responses So Far. »

1 Comment by PcH on 27 September 2007:

So our men ought to stay in Iraq because the Left wants a withdrawal?

And if the Left agree with me on an an issue, I should change my position to be contrary?
2 Comment by Thomas Miller on 27 September 2007:

I have a hard time sharing Mr. Hawkins enthusiasm for the Iraq War, but he and his organization have done great work documenting the foolishness of our disastrous trade policies. And he is right about the libertarian twerps being the bain of organizations like this one. I give Mr. Sid Cundiff as Exhibit A.
3 Comment by dylanwaco on 27 September 2007:

What is really interesting is that Mr. Hawkins says virtually NOTHING about the arguments Sale and Raimondo made. It is the typical Horowitzian mode of attack via guilt by association and borderline psychotic theories (sometimes implied, sometimes overt) about a monolothic Marxist fifth column that hasn’t existed in this country in a meaningful way for years.

That said, I think his nonsensical rant is a great example of why the term “conservative” is virtually meaningless. Where I come from conservatism is at its very root about a respect for tradition, decentralized government, localism, prudence as a guiding principle, et. While Kirkpatrick Sale is certainly a leftist, he also meets all of the above criteria..given the rantings of Hawkins there is little evidence that the same can be said for him. The allegedly “left-libertarian” Raimondo also stacks up pretty favorably to Hawkins.

One of the most telling parts of Hawkins screed is the implication that Sale is engaging in conspiracy mongering by pointing to the development of the Pentagon system and military state economic planning as a major negative turning point in the “development” of the American Republic. That this is a leftist talking point now may be true. But it was the very man Hawkins cites as the General responsible for freeing Western Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, who is most often quoted by leftists when making this argument! Furthermore it is hard to see how an argument against the mass centralization of the economy in a quasi-socialist, unaccountable, beuracratic, federal empire building, machine is a position conservatives should regard as the height of treason…unless of course the term means little to nothing at this point.

I am sure there are people affiliated with this site and the Rockford Institute who will still feel some kinship toward Hawkins and there is no shame in that. Loyaliy is a virtue. But after reading that piece, written in the typical Frontpage propaganda factory style, I have to question how serious an intellectual he could possibly be.
4 Comment by dylanwaco on 27 September 2007:

Also, Sale recently wrote a very favorable and admiring review Mark Leier’s biography of the Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin for The American Conservative magazine. As anyone who has studied the history of the Left at all knows, Bakunin was Marxs primary rival for years and the two men had widely divergent views on economics, governance, pragmatic political arrangments, revolution, et. While I do not know Sale personally, and cannot speak for him, I find it quite unlikely that an admirer of Bakunin, fully aware of the failings of Marx from a LEFT perspective, would in fact qualify himself as a Marxist. Moreso, I fail to see how a decentralist, primitivist of Sales ilk could be reasonably seen as inspired in any meaningful way by the work of Marx.
5 Comment by T. Chan on 27 September 2007:

Perhaps Sale is a post-Marxist? Can one be a Marxist without also being a believer in industrialized economies?
6 Comment by dylanwaco on 27 September 2007:

I would argue that you cannot be a Marxist and primitivist at the same time.

I have read virtually everything Sale has written and even in his history of SDS, written thirty plus years ago, there is simply no serious evidence of a Marxist mentality.

If anything Sale is a PRE-marx Leftist in ideology
7 Pingback by Eunomia · A Shame on 27 September 2007:

[...] Via Scott Richert [...]
8 Comment by Leon Hadar on 27 September 2007:

Why is hawkins so shocked about the views on Iraq and related issues expressed in the JRC meeting. Isn’t he reading Chronicles on a regular basis?
9 Comment by Simon Newman on 28 September 2007:

I think this is the core of Hawkins’ argument:

“It is the defection from the goal of American preeminence by some on the right since the Cold War that marks a change. Those who want to see other powers rise as America retreats, in order to create a “multipolar” world (the term was actually used by several people), are the ones who have defected from the right. ”

He believes it is unpatriotic, un-American and un-Conservative to oppose America’s role as global hegemon or world empire. He equates rejection of this God-given manifest destiny with hating America. The idea that other great powers should be treated as peers rather than as rivals to be subjected to American dominance, is anathema to him.
10 Comment by Frank on 28 September 2007:

Hawkins is a US nationalist, he favours pro-American immigration and trade policies. So, I’m not surprised to see he favours pro-American foreign policy as a realist. I too wish for America to enjoy a powerful position, and I too question whether those who wish for anything less are conservative… – conservatives want their nation to thrive, but I am mostly an isolationist.

I’m unaware of any good that is coming out of America’s involvement in Iraq, but Hawkins did oppose the Iraqi War to begin with didn’t he?

I agree with Hawkins that libertarians are a nuisance, but I like some of what I’ve read by Sale. Anyway, if Sale views Western Civilisation as his enemy, then he’s probably little different from the US federal government which pushes mass immigration, free trade, affirmative action, and leftist culture on us.

Most US nationalists I meet have trouble reconciling that the US nation is to be defended and promoted while the US federal government is to minimized. Can foreign policy realists trust the federal government’s foreign policy when they can’t trust its domestic policy? Tancredo, who is the best candidate running, is similarly caught up in this dilemma. Are the anti-Western revolutionaries in power in America to be trusted?
11 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

I first met Kirkpatrick Sale 11 years ago, at the first E.F. Schumacher Society Decentralist Conference. He was co-president at the time, and, at the opening event, he held dueling speeches with the other co-president, John McLaughry, a putative conservative. Sale won the debate easily, not through leftist rhetoric, but by putting forward the truly conservative position on the Civil War, the 14th amendment, and modern civil-rights legislation, all of which McLaughry defended.

Sale’s <i>Human Scale</i> is a modern masterpiece. Yes, there’s much that Sale and I would disagree about, but there’s far more that we hold in common today.

Earlier in the day at the JRC, several hours before the debate, Sale delivered a masterful speech denouncing the tactics of the politically correct left, especially the SPLC. It’s sad to see that a putative conservative would use those very tactics to denounce a fine gentleman. It just goes to show what many of us knew all along: Far from being “conservative,” the extreme nationalism of men such as Hawkins is actually a leftist phenomenon–and has been ever since it emerged during the French Revolution.
12 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Kirkpatrick Sale is a traitor as is anyone else who tolerates and supports the colonization of large tracts of US territory by mexico,china,iran pakistan and india.

Kirkpatrick Sale is sympathetic to the reconquista movement in the American Southwest. He also doesn’t seem to mind that China is taking over the technological infrastructure-this includes the California State university system now 40 percent asian-of California.

Silicon Valley has been colonized by China and India. I don’t accept this. How bout you?

Kirkpatrick Sale is trying to make common cause with paleoconservative secessionist pinheads. And pinheads they are.

In an earlier era,Peter Brimelow defended the neo-con Jew traitor Elliot Abrams, the architect of the Israeli controlled Bush administration plans to murder Iran.

I will never forgive Peter Brimelow for defending Elliot Abrams.
13 Pingback by Conservative Heritage Times » Raimondo-Hawkins Debate Continues on 28 September 2007:

[...] Raimondo at the neocon FrontPageMag, to which Raimondo replies, and about which Scott P. Richert reports. I think it is rather distasteful that Hawkins would choose FrontPageMag has his venue to denounce [...]
14 Comment by Bede on 28 September 2007:

Sale has produced some very acerbic denunciations of Western man and his ancestral traditions, whereby he seems to side with the “noble third-world native” against the “evil Westerner.” I disagree with him on many things. I did not know that he allegedly supports the third-world invasion of the U.S. and, if he does, I’m disappointed. Nevertheless, his denunciation of the SPLC was masterful, and his argument for human-scale economies is in the same vein as Wilhelm Roepke, by whom Kirk was influenced.

As I understand it, Hawkins was only chosen at the last minute because Tom Fleming lost his voice. Isn’t this correct?
15 Comment by Red Phillips on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Wheeler,

“Secessionist pinheads.” As Dr. Donald Livingston has stated, secession is a “litmus test” of authentic American conservatism and you just failed. As Mr. Richer just said, nationalism is a post French Revolution leftist phenomenon.

Mr. Richert,

It is too bad Mr. Hawkins’ had to take his gripe to Front Page Rag. Talk about sleeping with the enemy. Horowitz and crew have gone out of their way to slander paleos. It is one of their very reasons for being.

Do you know if he tried to shop his objections to Chronicles or Taki Mag or somewhere else first, or did he just go straight to Horowitz’s Rag because he knew he would find a sympathetic audience?

If libertarianism is a cancer cell, extreme nationalism is a huge metastasizing tumor.

Frank,

Any patriot would want America to enjoy a prominent position in the world. But we should hope we achieve that through our prosperous economy, our virtuous and industrious people, our favorable system of government (Ha!), etc. not by our willingness to throw our weight around. I am not saying you are suggesting that, but I think Mr. Hawkins “American preeminence” is at least as much of the latter as the former.
16 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Secession, in this day and age, is a litmus test for treason. I prefer a very large ocean between China and America, Iran-over one million at present count in California- and America.

Also, the America Southwest belongs to America not Mexico.

Secessionist and extreme decentralist are incapable of runnning technoligical and scientifically advanced societies-among other things.

Also, Miami is a spanish speaking foriegn city on US soil. Any one who suports thjs state of affairs is a traitors.

I can tell you from first hand experience that the leftist traitor Kirkpatrick Sale supports the racial transformation of NYC into a spanish speaking foreign city.
17 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Bede

He does. I have spoken to Kirkpatrick Sale many times. I saw him in person endorse the reconquista rantings of a NYC hispanic activist at Saint John the Divine in NYC. This occured at an environmental conference. Kirkpatrick Sale is also a phony environmentalist.

I am very curious to know what historian Roger Mcgrath thinks about Kirkpatrick Sales view that the American Southwest should be handed over to several non-white nation states(mexico,iran,pakistan and india)

Sales does romanticize the Ameridians. Romanicizing the savage,genocidal environmentally destructive Ameridians goes hand-in hand with an intense hatred of Euro-Americans.

I’m sure that any day now kirkpatrick Sale will make a post over at Counterpunch about this debate over at counterpunch. Counterpunch provides a huge platform for hispanic racial politics.

Kirkpatrick Sale is another leftist cockroach. Kirkpatrick Sales intentions towards Euro-Christian Americans are not benign.
18 Comment by Christopher Check on 28 September 2007:

Bede–

I don’t know where you heard that, but it is false. We invited Bill to make up one of the debate teams weeks before the event (and weeks before Tom lost his voice.)
19 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 28 September 2007:

Secessionist and extreme decentralist are incapable of runnning technoligical and scientifically advanced societies-among other things.

Singapore, the U.A.E., The Netherlands, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, etc. So verrrrrrrrrry primitive, unscientific, backward, and poor countries! So were Athens, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice. So would be Free Flanders, Free Scotland, Free Wales, Free Quebec, Free Corsica, Free Catalonia, Free Bavaria, Free Padania, and the Free Republic of Texas. Tisk, Tisk.
20 Comment by Bede on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Check,

Thanks for clearing that up. Someone at the debate told me that he was a last-minute pick.
21 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Sale is selling a sound product. Lefty? So what. Let Free Vermont be socialist, Free Maine Green-Distributionist, Duce’s New York Corporatist, North Dakota Social Credit, Alabama Austrian free trade and gold standard, and Illinois (”land of Lincoln”) have high tariffs to keep affordable goods and immigration walls to keep out all those pesky Asia Ph.Ds in math and engineering.

Then let’s see who survives economically, and who doesn’t.

Consider Sale sold. Long live the Vermont secessionists! Long live the League of the South!
22 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Wheeler, if you’re going to attack someone, you might at least try to find out where he stands. Yes, Mr. Sale is sympathetic to Chicano secessionist movements in the Southwest. That’s one point on which we disagree.

But Mr. Sale is also against immigration. He agreed with his team member, Peter Brimelow, when Mr. Brimelow suggested that the way for the United States to avoid the fate of the British Empire is to withdraw to the homeland and to close the borders. He also agreed with the negative team that Islamic immigration to the United States should be ended.
23 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

“Do you know if he tried to shop his objections to Chronicles or Taki Mag or somewhere else first, or did he just go straight to Horowitz’s Rag because he knew he would find a sympathetic audience?”

I’ll give you one guess, Red. And in case you get it wrong, I’ll just say this: Mr. Hawkins didn’t even have the courtesy to let us know once it was posted at FrontPageMag.com.
24 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

“Secessionist and extreme decentralist are incapable of runnning technoligical and scientifically advanced societies-among other things.”

O…K… And since Mr. Sale is a confessed Luddite, I’m not seeing the problem here. If I had to choose between the nationalism and centralism that you’re advocating, Mr. Wheeler, and a decentralist but technologically less advanced society, I’d have no problem in choosing the latter.
25 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

“I can tell you from first hand experience that the leftist traitor Kirkpatrick Sale supports the racial transformation of NYC into a spanish speaking foreign city.”

If you’re going to tell us from “first hand experience,” please do so. Anyone can claim to have secret knowledge. The one example you give above doesn’t justify your statement.
26 Comment by Red Phillips on 28 September 2007:

“Secession, in this day and age, is a litmus test for treason.”

Spoken like a true statist.

I find myself uncomfortably agreeing with much of what Sid is saying today. Please don’t throw me into that extreme decentralization briar patch.

I would add that we should not frame it in terms of cultural relativism. If the City State of Boston wants to be militantly secular and have gay marriage abounding, I don’t think that is a good thing. But if they are doing it in their city state, it is not affecting me down here in the traditionalist, Bible Belt South. They will have to live with their own folly.
27 Comment by Sean Scallon on 28 September 2007:

Someone explain to me why it is these JRC debates produce such nasty splits within the broader paleo movement? I can’t think of any other ideological groupings or conclaves, and maybe I’m wrong, where such splits occur to the point to where people who used to be friends and allies are viciously attacked during the debates and afterwards. Maybe it should not have them.

Let’s see, there was 1996 where libertarian Hans Herman von Hoppe tore after Pat Buchanan, then called Sam Francis a racist. There was the 1997 split when Lew Rockwell and his crew decided they would no longer attend such gatherings, basically destroying the whole meaning of the JRC in the first place. Several years later Bill Kauffman was ripped by E. Michael Jones to the point to where he no longer attends these functions.

Can’t we all get along here?

One can have an honest disagreement of views without getting personal. What I like about the JRC and Rockford is that they are willing to have libertarians and leftists like Raimondo and Sale as speakers or members not because they agree with them on everything but because they fit a certain attitude and style and culture that are outside convention ideological labels. Yes, Sale may be a leftist, anti-human kook, but unlike his fellow New Left hypocrites who sold out to the Democrats, he actually believes in “power to the people,” not power to Nancy Pelosi. Thus, you can say he and Thomas Naylor are paleo-liberals in that sense.

Maybe I’ve answered my question then. How can you not have disagreements within paleoism if you have liberals, conservatives and libertarians within the same movement?

That’s fine but we can still be civil about it. What Hawkins did was disgraceful and dishonorable. He went to a notorious neocon website edited by a Black Panther “white kitten” and other Trotskyites (talk about company of ill repute) and submitted his piece because he knew they would publish it. They love crap like this that supposedly tars paleos as being anti-patriotic. This was not an honest appraisal of the debate, this was a diatribe. A prissy Hawkins doesn’t want to associate with people he thinks are anti-American. Fine. But instead of keeping this private, he goes to the neocons and says “Guess what happened at the latest JRC meeting? You’ll never believe this!” Indeed, it seems Hawkins has not been Chronicles for the last decade.

William Hawkins started out as the director of a Tennessee think tank funded by Roger Milliken and textile interests devoted to trade issues. He supported Buchanan because of his protectionist ideology (Gee isn’t it interesting Raimondo and Rothbard didn’t mind associating with protectionists. Who’s being petty here?). Notice that he lives and works in the imperial capital now. There’s no doubt in reading his little screed he’s been moving away from paleoism for some time because it conflicts with his extreme nationalism. This is the downside of protectionism. No doubt if you asked Hawkins and his ilk they would want to go to war with China because of its economic policies and because they view it as a threat to U.S. power. What a coincidence! The neocons feel the same way about China too. Not that they care about economics, because they don’t. They can tolerate a protectionist like Hawkins because he’s a nationalist just like they are. He believes the U.S. should be a global empire. He believe in the war. Ergo, he’s not going to be paleo for much longer if he feels this way.

Still, though it’s embarrassing to have your dirty laundry aired like this. Hawkins may have engaged in smear attack but if he can do it, who’s going to be next JRC member to write a FrontPageMag piece about the next JRC conclave? If you feel you have to check your ideological baggage at the door before entering, maybe you shouldn’t be a member.
28 Comment by Red Phillips on 28 September 2007:

Reposted from Taki Mag, because I think this part of Hawkins’ objection is contrived or not-picking. Scott, is there any feeling that there was some forethought here on Hawkins’ part? His part of the debate seemed disingenuous to me. Where did he think he was? If the neocon money starts to flow his way, you will have an answer.

I think that Hawkins’ objection that immediate pullout is not politically feasible misses the mark. Of course it is not politically feasible at present. We can’t get the gonadless “anti-war” Democrats to step up. How are we going to get enough Democrats and Republicans to agree? But if debate was limited to what is presently politically feasible, then the JRC and paleos in general might as well pack it up and go home. Very little that we support is “politically feasible” at present.

My impression was that this debate was about which side had the better moral and philosophical argument. Not who had the better wonkish political plan. Otherwise you could just play the “not politically feasible” trump card to shoot down any idealistic proposal.

Justin made the best point and made it over and over again. The longer we are there trying to fix what we broke, or stabilize the region, or whatever, the more likely we are to end up in a disastrous conflict with Iran. Serge even conceded the likelihood of a conflict with Iran is 6.5/10.

I am not convinced that the longer we stay there it helps even marginally. The sides are going to fight when we leave whether we leave tomorrow or in 2 years. We are not fixing what we broke. We are simply moving the pile of ruble from one place to another. They will fight when we leave regardless because anything we help establish over there will have no legitimacy in their eyes.
29 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Scott Richert

It happened. You know, you can always ask Kirkpatrick Sale directly. Go right ahead.

Red Phillips

You go ahead and get lost in your political abstractions. In the mean time, I want a very large ocean between America and China. The American Southwest belongs to America not to Mexico. What do you think Kirkpatrick Sale?

Kirkpatrick Sale will never stand up to a Reconquista.

I’m not opposed to inviting Kirkpatrick Sale to conferences. And there are things I agree with him on such as the criminality of the iraq/iran war and oposition to the idea that corporations should have the rights of sentient beings.

Hawking and his paymaster David Horowitz ought to be very carefull. If Bush nukes Iran, the American people may very well rocket into a very high level of political conciousness over night. They may very accuse Horowitz and Hawking of treason and deal with them accordingly.

Hawking is a weed of a man.
30 Comment by Red Phillips on 28 September 2007:

“In the mean time, I want a very large ocean between America and China.”

And decentralization shrinks the size of that ocean how?
31 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Wheeler, if only we secessionist pinheads had succeeded the last time, we secessionist pinheads would not now be enjoying any of the problems you mention—problems created by you government-worshipping nationalists.
32 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 28 September 2007:

“Several years later Bill Kauffman was ripped by E. Michael Jones to the point to where he no longer attends these functions.”

What was this about? I never understood why E. Michael Jones and Thomas J. Herron (whom I view as a much less scrupulous polemicist) had something against the “crunchy-cons.”

Also, re: Scallon, hasn’t David Horowitz publically recanted for his associations with the Black Panthers? If so, should he be forgiven? Or do you bring that up because he’s involved in this smear campaign (bricks and glass houses, etc.)?
33 Comment by Frank on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Wheeler,

A nation ideally wants the power to defend itself. If the ring can just be wielded and made to do good… A nation that offers nothing for ‘the powers that be’ to want might be safe, but then again it might not be safe. And, yea, who wishes to be at another’s mercy?

However, I fear technology to be sure, and it’ll be technology that provides us with the power to destroy ourselves and perhaps the planet too. A similar argument can be said with centralisation and the general concept of progress: similarly we lose our humanity, our connection to reality, our tie to our nation, our sense of community, etc.

These are all like gambling: there’s a small chance the nation will be destroyed, at least in the long run, but short term it will catapult out ahead of all the others. If we dig up the oil out of the last nature reserve or historic district, will we lose a part of our humanity or a tie to nature and to our ancestors? Also, if build a nuclear power plant, will it explode in 100 years? If we allow gene therapy today, will it creep into designer babies and nihilism? If we design the plants and animals around us, will they lose their holy essence as works of the Creator? The points I’m raising here couldn’t be more right wing. If the right is anything, this is it. You can take steroids and win a few races, but 30 years later or perhaps sooner you may pay the full price. The goal of conservatives should be the preservation of their nations for another 1000 years and even longer.

Dr. Phillips,

I can understand the realist position somewhat that if we don’t grab the oil someone else will, but as you say it’s not moral. I’m isolationist with reservations only because I hate the absolute nature of it though. However, if Britain is attacked by a common foe, e.g. Islam, then we should consider coming to its defense. We should have stayed out of WWII, but Islam is a greater threat than was Nazism. Coming to Europe’s aid could be akin to a modern Crusade.

I hope that doesn’t put me out of the paleo realm, but I’ve begun to view the world as a conflict of civilisations. There are times when nations must come to their civilisation’s aid and defend it. Hitler certainly wasn’t Christian though…

Hawkins writes:

Those who want to see other powers rise as America retreats, in order to create a “multipolar” world (the term was actually used by several people), are the ones who have defected from the right.

This is the quote I was referencing with my statement “and I too question whether those who wish for anything less are conservative…”

If we want a multipolar world, it’s only to balance the globalist power the US has become – that is it’s with the view that the US federal government is somewhat foreign. But ideally we should want the US nation to be in a powerful position I think even if it empowers the evil emperor. Ideally we should wish for the restoration of the republic to act with restraint in such a position though.

But if they are doing it in their city state, it is not affecting me down here in the traditionalist, Bible Belt South. They will have to live with their own folly.

hear him, hear him!

Mr. Wheeler can agree to such subsidiarity I’m sure, provided immigrants are kept out.
34 Comment by robert reavis on 28 September 2007:

Concerning Pinheads

Secessionist pinheads :

Pinhead Lee
Pinhead Davis
Pinhead Jackson
Pinhead Forest
Pimhead Johnston
Pinhead Longstreet

Globalist Pinheads :

Pinhead Bush I ?
Pinhead Clinton I ?
Pinhead Bush II ?
Pinhead Ms. Clinton II ?
Pinhead Guliani ? Kerry ? Mit ?

Chronicles : A blog where
you decide. rr
35 Comment by Frank on 28 September 2007:

I think Mr. Wheeler’s point is that centralised power is needed to repatriate the nonwhites in America and reclaim the South West?

A response would at least clarify some of the disagreements I think.

Also, a large state enjoys an economy of scale, greater resources, and a larger military generally. All of which can provide defensive capabilities without which China would walk over us. My previous post related to this.

However, I wonder how any federal government could be made pro-Western considering America’s diversity. Secession might well be the only way to create a healthy Western nation. Burnham mentioned something about this I think that a dying civilisation could shrink back to regain its identity.
36 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Professor Wilson

I do do not worship any goverment or intellectual-especially the highly intelligent slave owning ones such as John C Calhoun and Andrew Carniege and his German friend Fricke

I am a socially conservative independent thinker with a populist political steak larger than a mile. There are good goverment policies and bad goverment policies(fugitive slave act) We can have an intelligent discussion about which ones you an I like and dislike. I’m open to libertarian/free market solutiions on a case by case basis.

It is 2007 in America. I believe the life and death issue for White America is post 1965 immigration policy. This is not to say that there aren’t other serious issues. But this is the overiding one.

In 2007, Secession=handing over large tracts of American territory to Mexico and seveal other non-white nations. Kirkpatrick Sale understands this obvious point. And this is why he is fanatically in favor of it.

Like I wrote previously, I want a very large ocean between China and America. Ditto for India and Pakistan.

The American Southwest belongs to America. Do you agree with this professor Wilson?

Here a some good goverment policies I would like to see implemeted as soon as possible:1)tough anti-bullying workplace laws2)strong OSHEA laws so White workers aren’t maimed by the Southern Plantation owners..I mean factory owners in the right to work states in the South and by their counterparts in the Northeast, the American West and American Southwest.

I despise both Southern aristocrats and Northern aristocrats past and present.
I’m not intersted in refighting the Civil War.
37 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Very good Mr Reavis. It could easily pass for a Alan Ginsberg poem.
38 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Bill Kauffman. Rants a lot about the Interstate Highway System. Very weak on local community destroying post-1965 immigration policy. Uses way too many big words. Writing style very flacid at times. Vapid intellect hidding behind a very large Thesaurus(did I spell this right?) Details are very important. Otherwise bridges will collapse and planes fall out of the sky.

So Bill, what do ya think of the 1965 immigration refrom act
39 Comment by Sean Scallon on 28 September 2007:

Tobias, why should neocons, gven their crooked past, be given a pass for their previous association and views while paleocons are dragged through the ringer because somebody knew such and such somebody allegedly said or did that 30 years ago or you attended a meeting with so and so. Its all a bunch of rubbish but since Horowitz usually engages in such childish debate, then he has a lot to answer for.
40 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Scallon, I don’t hold that neocons should be given a free pass while paleocons should be dragged through the ringer. I asked above: do you hold against him the errors he has recanted (I think he’s done so), or are you bringing it up to point out *his* hypocrisy for doing what we both agree he did: smear others for past errors, real or alleged. I was just curious to know if you brought up his notorious past in order to demonstrate why he, least of all men, should cast stones, or do you regard it as a live issue that makes for valid criticism of the man today? Or do you find something faulty with his apologies? So, no, my question was not meant to propose a double standard.
41 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 28 September 2007:

Ah, maybe you answered me: since he engages in childish debate, Horowitz’s self-acknowledged past errors are free game.
42 Comment by Marty on 28 September 2007:

Scott, I am disappointed with the way and the forum that Mr Hawkins used to comment on the debate. I enjoy his work on trade and his colums in Chronicles. I do hope that someday he can return to the pages of Chronicles.

I also can’t stress how much I respect the work of Justin and Antiwar.com, even though I woudl disagree with much of his libertarian thought.

I am concerned, as a paleo-conservative, that we work hard to build alliances that are not necessary. I don’t think libertarians try as hard. It will happen, as in the case of Ron Paul supporters but all too many times we don’t have all that much in common.

Kirk agreed with Rothbard on issues but, he did not try and ‘get along” he wrote some articles that were pretty harsh on libertarians.
43 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

@Sean Scallon (27):

Sean, you’ve got some errors in your history. In 1996, there was no debate, because the libertarians refused to have one. After refusing, they had H-H Hoppe attack Pat and Sam, as you mentioned.

In 1997, there were no libertarians (unless you consider Bill Kauffman such). Lew and company never returned after 1996. There was a debate, over the question of nationalism versus secession.

You’ve got the details about the situation with Kauffman and Jones completely wrong. Bill objected to Jones’ repeated reference to a Jewish name. What he failed to realize (and, I believe, fails to realize to this day) is that Jones was referring to a famous eminent-domain case in D.C. And the Jewish gentleman was the one who was having his property taken from him. And Jones was defending him.

Jones never attacked Bill; Bill attacked him. There was a debate that year, over abortion. No nasty split occurred.

Coming back to this year, Sunday morning, I was walking down the street with Cort Kirkwood and Justin Raimondo, who were on opposite sides of the debate. There were no hard feelings at all. Earlier that morning, Justin had apologized to Srdja for going a bit too far in the debate. In other words, people who want to get along can get along.

Hawkins, apparently, is tired of getting along with us.
44 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 28 September 2007:

Sean Scallon is right. Those on the Right shouldn’t be at swords like Tybalt and Mercutio just because we disagree on this or that matter. Otherwise, to use Thomas Fleming’s joke of a few years ago, we paleos will end up making faces at ourselves in a mirror and accomplish nothing.

And Bill Kauffman is right. The Interstate Highway System is a corrosive of local life and is another black mark of Dwight Eisenhower’s wretched record as president. When Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, Mississippi, Columbus, Georgia and Columbus, Nebraska evolve into the same homogenized stew called Pop Culture America 2000, you know that the interstates have worked to rip out the heart of traditional America.

As an aside about Ike, conservatives who still treasure his presidency(Pat Buchanan?), remember that it was Ike who sent the 101st Airborne with fixed bayonnets after his own countrymen in Arkansas(the 50th Anniversary of this shameful event reverentially celebrated this past week), refused to cut the high taxes he inherited from Roosevelt and Truman, set Ezra Taft Benson to wrecking agricultural America in the name of efficiency, and appointed two of the most repellant justices in Supreme Court history. There is a reason why liberal historians have revised his presidency in his favor.
45 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

@Red Phillips (28):

I don’t think there’s any need to speculate about Mr. Hawkins’ motives. He’s become increasingly nationalistic over the past several years, and I think he was expressing his true views. No one needs to pay him to do that.
46 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

@Brian Wheeler (29):

What happened? The incident you related, as you related it, does not suggest, as you claimed earlier, that Mr. Sale wants to swamp the United States in Third World immigration.

Yes, he’s in favor of the Southwest seceding, if those who live there wish to. And right now, those secessionists are Chicano activists. We disagree. We agree, however, on the need to limit immigration drastically.
47 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 28 September 2007:

@Marty (42):

I’m not sure what you mean by “work[ing] hard to build alliances that are not necessary.” It’s not as if anyone here is compromising his beliefs by being on friendly terms with Justin–or with Murray, back in the day. In fact, the reason that the JRC held debates from the beginning was that both Murray and Tom thought it important not to gloss over our differences.
48 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 28 September 2007:

Mr. Wheeler, I take a back seat to nobody in the width of my populist streak, as a lifetime of writing has proved beyond a doubt. There is not the least doubt that if the Confederate States
had become independent, we would not today see Texas and Florida occupied by foreigners. Those states would still be occupied by the descendants of the people who settled and founded them. Southerners were the ONLY political group in the U.S. Congress to vote AGAINST the 1965 Third World Immigration Act. Unfortunately, our fate is in the hands of a federal government owned and operated by aliens from Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Iowa, and California who despise us and are ever ready to sacrifice us for their slightest advantage or even whim. It is now a close thing as to whether Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia can get out from under the national government in time to save themselves from the fate of Florida and Texas. Yes, the Southwest belongs to America—to the Americans who settled it, not to the U.S. government owned by Massachusetts and New York. Deo Vindice.
49 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Shutting down post-1965 immigration policy is much higer priority than ripping out the interstate highway system. I don’t see a political movement to do this. But with each passing year, there are more and more White Americans actively opposing post 1965 immigration policy. I just thought I put things in perspective. Kauffman is silent on the local community -White Christian variety-destroying 1965 immgration reform act.

Scott Richert

That isn’t bad enough? The loss of large tracts of American territory? It is not just Mexicans that we have to worry about in California. There are the Chinese,hindus,pakistanis and iranians to worry about also.

The bigger isue is the ethnic cleansing of Euro-Americans out of California. This doesn’t seem to bother Sale.

Keep this in mind. I think you are disturbed by my charge of treason. Sale is guilty of treason.

The American South is filling up real fast. If Euro-Americans start to increase their fertility- which I beleive they eventually will-The American South is going to feel a lot more crowded. It will also be a lot more expensive to live there. The American Southwest and California will be a ecological catastrophe area . Non-Whites are comming here to expand and expand and expand some more.

Where I live, central american forest pygmies can be seen walking down the street pregnant in addition to two other children. Legal asian immigrants are having above replacment level families.

Secession is not the solution. Expulsion of a large post-1965 non-white population is the only way to ensure the long term survival of the Euro-Christian population. Kirkpatrick Sale is not interested in the long term survival of the Euro-Christian within the borders of America. Neither is Kauffman.
50 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 28 September 2007:

Clyde Wilson

Your point about Northern politicians is 100 percent accurate. I hate them.

Lincoln was a cockroach homosexual degenerate.

Secession in the 21 century will lead to Euro-Americans being surrounded by a raidly expanding non-white population. They will in possession of very lethal military infrastrucure. Only a Euro-American solidarity movement can save Euro-Americans from complete economic and racial dispossession at the hands of hispanics,asians,africans amd muslims.

I want a very large ocean between America and China. Mexico’s borders south of the Rio Grande, not thousands of miles into the interior of America. In 2007, secession is concession. I for one will not concede a goddam inch of American territory-secession- to mexican,chinese,iranian,korean and nigerian colonizers. Repel invasions, expell the invaders.
51 Comment by Marty on 28 September 2007:

Scott,

True, I guess I am wrong about the origins of the JRC. And, I am not sure why the libertarians no longer attend. I guess my point is that there is less debate these days with libertarians. Not all the time! Chronicles writers do a great job at pointing out some of the mistaken ideas of Libertarians, which is why I subscribe and read online daily.
52 Comment by Sean Scallon on 28 September 2007:

Scott, if I am wrong in my history about previous JRC debates, my apologies. A lot of that information has come about second hand or from internet articles and books or just from conversation, although Bill Kauffman has written he was “victim of some haymakers” at a JRC event so his interpretation of what happened, as you might expect, is a little different. But since I wasn’t there, I won’t comment further on it.

My point is paleoism, I believe, stretches the gamut of ideologies from conservatives to libertarianism to liberalism. You could argue that paleoism is a style, an attitude, a sense of belief, a culture if you will that lends itself to support that which is local, that which is family, that which is traditional, that which is authentic, that which is grounded in the West with an emphasis on decentralism home and abroad. It’s more than an ideology, which is a good thing.

But given that, it would be wise for those who are paleos to remember that since paleoism cuts across many ideologies, not to let disagreements on various issues blow up into serious schisms, and having heard (again, maybe not so accurately) of what has happened in the past at such debates, it worries me that such blow ups can happen again whenever there’s a JRC meeting. The last thing we need to be doing is sniping at each other, especially when one uses the neocons as a weapon to do so as Mr. Hawkins has done.

But that has to come, as Scott said, from the individual involved in the debate. He can either agree to disagree and shake hands when its all said or done, or become a bastard like Mr. Hawkins and run off to the other side and pen articles with jucy details of the latest JRC meeting just to get his “revenge.”

Its my earnest hope, one I think that has come some fruition, that Ron Paul’s candidacy reminds us paleos of what we have in common rather than what splits us.
53 Comment by Nicholas G.P. MOSES on 28 September 2007:

“Secessionism is a litmus test for American conservatism”

The integralists in other countries don’t necessarily push for secessionism or even necessarily “limited constitutional government,” though many of them support regional cultural and economic autonomy.

And this isn’t 1859. Practically speaking, breaking off a chunk of the United States at this moment would give at last the visible reins of world power to China. As bad as things are here, I’m not sure I would consider that situation preferable.
54 Comment by dylanwaco on 28 September 2007:

Sales opinion on immigration is most likely a byproduct of his luddism and enviornmentalism. What I mean by this is that Sale, like myself, believes that there are too many people on the planet period and that we need to curtail immigration not just for cultural reasons, but also to protect against resource wars on our soil, massive sprawl, and enviornmental degradation of sacred spots. If memory serves, this point has been made by Chilton Williamson in the pages of this magazine, and it has certainly been a staple of the enviornmentalist left and quasi-left via the works of Edwad Abbey, Dave Foreman and others (all of whom were more sensible on issues of decentralism, prudence, and localism than Hawkins by the way).

I would suggest that while Kauffman may not be as “extreme” as Sale on this he has come to similar conclusions. It is true that in America First! he tepidly aligned himself in a footnote as an unethusiastic “open borders” “Americanist”. But much has changed since then, and Kauffman is if nothing a man who is willing to adapt and rethink conventional wisdoms that reveal themselves to be conventional fallacies with time.

Furthermore if anything Kauffmans work and thoughts on the Interstate Highway System should be a fine resource for paleos and other opponents of open borders as the carving up of the American West is directly linked to this federal territorial incursion, which is in modern times indisputably linked to the massive population growth in the region.

As for Horowitz..Horowitz is the worst sort of intellectual fraud, in that he is a very smart man, who consistently pretends to be stupid to further his neocon views, most of which revolve around the alleged moral perfection of Israel next to any other state INCLUDING the United States. It is hard to imagine how Mr. Hawkins would label men like Sale and Raimondo left wing, terrorist sympathizers and then jump into the waiting arms of a man who literally belives his own country should be a subservient partner in its relationship with a foreign state who has an antagonistic relationship with every other country in its region, routinely spies on his country and has committed an unprovoked attack on his country. Treason is not the right word for that, but it certainly is not patriotism.

Raimondo reviewed Radical Son in the pages of this magazine years ago and basically got Horowitz right, but Justin did not touch on the fact that Horowitz career from left to “right” IN HIS OWN WORDS was very much about the changing social status and material wealth he received the more his views “moderated”. Read the book it..it is a remarkable indictment, not so much of the Black Panthers, but of the author himself, who never did convert on the road to Damascus…he just found a different set of enemies that could help him make more money.
55 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 29 September 2007:

The interstate highway system issue is part of a larger issue. If Euro-Americans didn’t have the option of fleeing the blessings of post-1965 diversity, post-19965 immigration policy would have bee shut down a while back. The building of an infrastructure-road systems and cheap mcmansions-is the safety that make escape possible. The day of reckoning is comming.

Eventually all non-white immigratin will be completetly shut off. This wil be the first step in reclamimg America
56 Comment by Frank on 29 September 2007:

Mr. Wheeler, there were still roads connecting the states.

I’ve little problem with homosexuals by the way provided they accept that it isn’t normal and attempt to resist their urges. We all are mere humans with many flaws, but we can nevertheless strive to rise above them and to serve our people and our Lord.
57 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 29 September 2007:

@Sean Scallon (52):

“Bill Kauffman has written he was ‘victim of some haymakers’ at a JRC event so his interpretation of what happened, as you might expect, is a little different.”

You’re referring, I presume, to p. xvi of Look Homeward, America. If so, you’ve done Bill Kauffman a disservice. Go back and read it: He says nothing about being a “victim” or about being involved in said haymakers.

As I mentioned earlier, Jones didn’t attack Kauffman; he didn’t even mention him. Bill objected to something that he thought Jones was saying, which was, in fact, the opposite of what Jones was actually saying. Some of us tried to explain it to Bill, as he stormed (loudly) out of the room; he didn’t want to listen.

Still, give Kauffman some credit. Whatever his disagreements with the rest of us, he’s at least man enough not to whine about being a “victim” in the Introduction to his book (especially when he wasn’t one). If you’re going to write even off-the-cuff histories of Chronicles or JRC or paleoconservatism, please don’t rely on “second hand [accounts] or from internet articles and books or just from conversation.” You’ve always got access to those of us who were there.
58 Comment by Christopher Check on 29 September 2007:

Yes–And next year all of you should attend the JRC (location TBA) so that you can observe first-hand more history being made.
59 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 29 September 2007:

The tone of the Iraq war debate was deplorable. There were far too many personal digs and attacks. Such debate tactics are childish. Perhaps they have been influenced by the tone of many of the posters at this site (you know who you are!).
60 Comment by Bede on 29 September 2007:

I just posted this question at TakiMag, but thought I’d post it here too. I’m curious what people have to say.

It seems to me that the biggest threat to the Western way of life is globalism / internationalism. It has become a religion at schools of foreign policy, MBA programs, law schools, etc. And its dogmas include unbridled free trade, open borders, massive “legal” third-world immigration into the West, the democratization of the World (whether Iraq or Darfur), multiculturalism, self-hatred of Westerners, et al.

What is the best strategy to oppose these forces? It seems to me that some form of nationalism might be necessary, especially to combat things like free trade, which even Paul Krugman confesses is harming the first world but insists that it must be continued for “humanitarian reasons,” thus making it another “white man’s burden” (according to J.G. Collins).

And immigration? Perhaps it will come to the point when the proud citizens of a particular state will have to take it upon themselves to deport the unwanted and instill sanity and order. Are we yet at this point?

The real threat at this point in time is not nationalism, but internationalism / globalism. In short, is regionalism or a modified form of nationalism the best avenue to combat this threat?
61 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 29 September 2007:

@Bede (60):

The answer, to me, seems obvious, and it’s the reason why such men as Mr. Hawkins have been part of the acceptable range of opinion at Chronicles (a rather wide range compared with that of other “conservative” publications).

What’s needed is subsidiarity. We tend to think of subsidiarity only in terms of moving from lower to higher–that which cannot be handled at one level can be moved on up to the next. But we can look at it from the other direction, as well: defending the proper prerogatives of each entity at each level. The nation-state should be defended against the forces of globalism. Regions/states should be defended against the intrusions of the nation/state (as well as against globalism). Localities should be defended against the overweening power of the individual state in which it resides (as well as against the powers above that). And families should be defended against the intrusions of them all.

Still, properly understood, all of those defenses are patriotic, not nationalist. Can common cause sometimes be made with those who are more nationalist, and less patriotic (such as Mr. Hawkins)? Yes. But, as this unfortunate incident shows, such alliances are always limited and can be destroyed when the nationalist is engaging in unpatriotic activity–such as imperialist expansion.
62 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 29 September 2007:

Of course, Mr. Richert’s distinction between patriotism and nationalism testifies to the other side of the coin of subsidiarity: universal natural law and the Catholic Church cannot be subverted in favor of the nation-state, which is what nationalism attempts. And could not the same model be used to rule out secessionism, when a province or federated state/canton unjustly attempts to usurp the sovereign or federal power?
63 Comment by Leon Haller on 29 September 2007:

Where is the great Sam Francis when you need him? He, and apparently he alone, came down on the correct side of every issue, from immigration to isolationism, from capitalism to Christianity.

I was not at the JRC this time, though I have attended in the past on several occasions.

There are many correct views being bandied about, both in the debate as well as in the comments above, but what is fascinating is how often they are joined to idiocy – in the very same persons!! Each of the parties seems to grasp some essential aspect of the truth, but no one is able to put it all together.

This probably in part reflects the total domination of the Left in the 20th century (and continuing today). So entrenched is their hegemony that a group like the JRC becomes a home to all authentic radicals of the Right, despite the Right’s being composed of ideologically conflicting factions. From the vantage of the ruling liberal-Left, both a nationalist (but apparently not a racial one, at least not anymore) like Hawkins, and a non-Christian, non-racialist, ‘libertine’-libertarian like Raimondo, are on the Far Right, despite these writers having nothing in common ideologically beyond their mutual resentment of Left-liberalism itself.

Someone very knowledgeable in these taxonomic matters (like Paul Gottfried) needs to provide some sort of definitive model of how to classify someone as Right or not. Of course, people will still dispute his conclusions, but it could help to clear up many of the confusions observable above.

A few random comments on these matters.

First, while the locus of conservative concern shifts over time, depending upon which existential threats are predominant, it should be noted that conservatism is neither coincident with Christianity (or even religiosity), nor with mere tribalism of one sort or another, nor with liberty or capitalism, nor with any single issue, but rather is informed by all of these concerns and influences.

I would argue, roughly with Russell Kirk and Sam Francis, that the true conservative is the man with the disposition to defend his own culture and that culture’s settled way of life, provided that such are neither violative of Christian natural law, broadly understood, nor demonstrably inferior to some other mode of existence (as Burke reminds us: “A state without the means of change is without the means of its conservation.”). Put another way, the conservative seeks to defend both that which is a permanent part of a moral order thought either to be a product of God, or best suited to a substantially unchanging (genetic) human nature, as well as what is particular to his own politico-cultural community.

Thus, conservatism’s non-ideological character. It does not offer any specific, ‘timeless’ policy prescriptions because all depends upon historical context. Simultaneously, conservatives are not merely relativists because they will defend the general principles necessary to the maintenance of humane civilization itself, and they will defend the particularity of their own communities.

Second, the chief issue today is nothing less than the survival of Western civilization – that organic unity which has been demonstrably superior to all other human communities in all significant ways, and which is OUR civilization. In other words, this civilization is defensible by conservatives because it is good, and because it is ours (and we would not be who we are without it: it molds our minds, and determines our larger identities).

The first question, then, is what aspect of our civilization is under greatest attack, and second, what is the most efficacious means of repulsing the threat?

Conservatives, depending upon their varying ideological predispositions (Christian, racialist, or libertarian), will disagree on the answers to both of these questions, but I think that the racial threat is undeniably the greatest one. My belief is not simply a product of my own committed racial nationalism.

Western civ was created by white people (I trust no one here disagrees). To paraphrase Sam Francis, there is no evidence that this civilization (or any other) could have been created apart from the genetic endowments of the founding (white) race, nor is there any reason to suppose that it will be continued by persons of other racial backgrounds. Indeed, if the manifest failure of America’s experiment in racial integration to assimilate non-whites to Anglo-European American cultural norms is indicative of the future, then there is no hope that Western civ will be preserved in places where whites will no longer comprise demographic majorities.

Thus, we must stop the non-white demographic and cultural and even psychic conquest of the lands historically associated with the West. THIS IS THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY FOR CONSERVATIVES TODAY – not ending the Iraq debacle, stopping abortion, eliminating the capital gains tax, or any other secondary or tertiary matter. ALL other issues of conservative concern must, first, be subordinated to the overriding issue of white racial survival, and second, must be judged only in light of whether and to what extent they aid or harm the primary racial objective.

Keeping this in mind, it now becomes possible to judge who is, and is not, a true (or at least clear-headed) conservative.
64 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 29 September 2007:

And I meant when a province usurps sovereign power, or when a federated state or canton usurps federal power. So my comments were not slanted toward any particular theory of federal or state sovereignty.
65 Comment by T. Chan on 29 September 2007:

And I meant when a province usurps sovereign power, or when a federated state or canton usurps federal power.

And what if sovereign power lies with the province but has been usurped by the central government?
66 Comment by Sean Scallon on 29 September 2007:

Scott,

Again, if I’ve gotten the all the details wrong I apologize. You were there, I wasn’t. You trump me on that point.

However, I’ll post the passage from the introduction to Kaufmman’s latest book that I didn’t quote exactly right but not totally wrong either:

“The paleos ranged all over the political lot, from Port Huron New Leftists to John Birchers, and American politics staggered from the shock when a former Nixon polemicist and fierce Cold Warrior, Pat Buchanan, adopted isolationist paleo themes in his presidential campaigns and shocked the GOP in that redoubt of flintiness, New Hampshire. It couldn’t last. The paleos dissolved—or rather, they erupted—in bile and drunken haymakers. Yet the anti-globalist, Little American tenIntroduction xvii dency to which they gave voice and shape is likely to grow (perhaps even burgeon) as the most intellectually rigorous and sentimentally appealing electoral alternative to our two-for-the-price-of-one parties. At its best, it embraces the gentle, amusedly tolerant and neighborly anarchism that makes small-town America so sweet./

Okay, “The paleos dissolved – or rather, they erupted – in bile and drunken haymakers.” I can’t say exactly what this means but it doesn’t sound good. You said yourself Bill walked out of the room in a huff. Obvioulsy he was upset. And you’re right he’s not a whiner claiming “victim” status like Hawkins is. But it just goes to show these debates can turn ugly and that’s my point. That’s not the fault of the JRC, as we both agree it comes down to the individual involved and whether the angels of our better nature allows him to overcome what differences there are between himself and another member.

But we have to realize things have changed. We have a broader movement now than one just focused from just a “conservative” standpoint. After all, this was the best attended John Randolph Club event as you say. We must be careful that debate does not turn into division when you have broad range of backgrounds and viewpoints. As much as I despise Hawkins for what he has done, it is a little sad to see a writer’s whose work you’ve read for the past decade in Chronicles let a debate turn him so viciously against his former collegues and friends it seems, without so much as a thought of what he was doing.
67 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 30 September 2007:

@Sean Scallon (66):

Read the passage again, carefully. Kauffman is not talking about a particular event; he’s making a general statement. I don’t know why you insist on trying to make this passage refer to that JRC meeting when Kauffman makes no reference to that meeting whatsoever.

First, Kauffman doesn’t say that the JRC dissolved; he says that the paleos dissolved (an untruth; we’re still here, but we’ll leave that stand). Second, he refers to “drunken haymakers.” That, in itself, is proof that he’s NOT talking about this incident. Jones is a teetotaler. The incident took place in the morning. No one in the room had had anything to drink.

Finally, you keep referring to this as a “debate.” There was ONE debate at that JRC. It wasn’t between Kauffman and Jones.

I really don’t understand the point that you’re trying to make. You start with this year’s debate, then you discuss three others, none of which actually occurred (though you keep conditionally apologizing–”if I’ve gotten all the details wrong”–as if you might still be right, and I’m–what? Lying?). On the basis of those errors, you then generalize to a broader point that–what? You claim that you don’t mean to say that we shouldn’t hold debates, but that would seem the only prudent action if your description of events were correct.

Fortunately, it isn’t, and attendees at future JRCs can look forward to further debates.
68 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 30 September 2007:

By the way, Sean, if I seem a bit impatient or testy, please don’t take it personally. It’s just that the history of the JRC, and of The Rockford Institute, and of Chronicles, and of paleoconservatism generally is so interesting that there’s really no need to create conflicts where none existed or to embellish events where conflicts did exist. Let the history stand on its own–it’s exciting enough.
69 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 30 September 2007:

Leon Haller

You have nailed right on the head. However, there is no way of avoiding the War issue. If Bush Nukes Iran…We become a a nation that destroyed the human species. We may that closer to WW111 than amyone realizes.

Hawking is aniother retarded Evangelical Christian Zionist who worships the corporation. Species:cockroach

Kauffman should not be let off the hook on the non-white LEGAL IMMIGRATION issue. It was his choice to marry an Armenian. Look,I think Kauffaman is a fraud.
70 Comment by Mark Depré on 30 September 2007:

Mr Wheeler,

Aren’t Aremenians white Europeans ?
71 Comment by Rodney King on 30 September 2007:

While Haller recycles Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts and Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts, Mr Depré displays fine fencing skills!
72 Comment by Bede on 30 September 2007:

Scott Richert,

I agree. I actually just posted something a couple days ago saying that need more discussions on subsidiarity, a concept that should be appealing to traditionalists, and Catholics and Protestants alike.

I also think that this is a better approach than the complete rejection of any form of government. I think that lurking below the paleolibertarian critiques of nationalism is the complete rejection of any form of legitimate government.
73 Comment by Sean Scallon on 30 September 2007:

Scott, I’m not trying to pick a fight. I’m just puzzled as to why seemingly rational people have done irrational things at some particular JRC meetings. Why did the Rockwellians decide all of a sudden decide not to participate any longer in a club they helped to found and leave with a blast at Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis? Why did Bill Kauffman storm out of the room if what Jones was saying was neither directed at him nor anti-Semitic? Why does Bill Hawkins act as though this was first JRC meeting and was suprised to find Justin Raimondo and Kirkpatrick Sale there and then act so suprised at the negative reaction to the war in Iraq from many JRC members that he runs into the open embrace of David Horowitz?

It just seems so strange. You would think JRC members and Chronicles readers would know their collegues are not all of the same mind on many topics and what disagreements there are should be overshadowed by what we all agree on. Yet because such irrational incidents have occured is my concern and my point

I just hope I don’t see another JRC meeting make Frontpage Mag.com. for the wrong reasons.
74 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 30 September 2007:

Sean, I understand your puzzlement, and I know that you’re not trying to pick a fight. The answer is that there’s no single answer to all of the questions.

The Rockwellians left because, after Murray died, they could no longer tolerate differences of opinion. That’s not irrational. Childish, perhaps, but not irrational.

Bill stormed out of the room because he misunderstood what Jones was saying. (Why Bill would have found it necessary to storm out of the room if Jones had actually said something antisemitic is a different question, which would have to be answered if you wanted to determine whether it was a rational act.)

And Hawkins? Frankly, that’s just a mystery–not that Hawkins would have disagreed with Justin, Sale, and Brimelow, given his nationalist bent (that’s rational), but that he would act this badly, considering his long association with us (which, probably, has nothing to do with rationality, either way, but just bad manners).

As for the JRC making FrontPageMag.com, I can pretty much guarantee that it will never make it for the RIGHT reasons. : )
75 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 30 September 2007:

@Bede (72):

“I think that lurking below the paleolibertarian critiques of nationalism is the complete rejection of any form of legitimate government.”

Absolutely. Though I’m not sure it’s lurking–they tend to be pretty open about their absolute rejection of government of any kind.
76 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 30 September 2007:

Re: T. Chan. It depends on how long ago the “central state” usurped that province’s sovereignty, and how much it would cost to reclaim it. Should Aquitaine try to reclaim its “autonomy” and give its ducal crown to Queen Elizabeth? Should Quebec try to secede from Canada? Only if doing so will actually help things and not raise new problems.

But Mr. Chan, you do recognize that there are such entities as non-sovereign local and provincial governments, right? The Confederates complained, no doubt, when the western counties of Virginia seceded and formed West Virginia. What is to prevent individual counties from seceding from their states if secessionism lacks limits?

There simply must be boundaries as to which governments can break off from larger units and which ones cannot. Some govts. are too big, some too small. My small town back home would die if it attempted “autarky” or tried to secede from its county, let alone its state.
77 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 30 September 2007:

So I answer your rhetorical question with another one, what if sovereign power rests with the acknowledged sovereign state and not with the province? When I used the word province, I specifically avoided the American theory of states’ rights, as everyone admits at least in theory that a federal state is not a province. A province is a wholly subsidiary creature.
78 Comment by Rodney King on 30 September 2007:

Is Lew Rockwell Catholic? Was Francis writing for The Occidental Quarterly and American Renaissance when Rockwell pulled out of the JRC? Think Rockwell read this?:

“7 … Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who “Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly” (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.

“8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community – however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things – whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

“10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God’s sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception.

“11. None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are “as a drop of a bucket” (Isaiah xI, 15).

“16. Whoever wishes to see banished from church and school the Biblical history and the wise doctrines of the Old Testament, blasphemes the name of God …

“17. The peak of the revelation as reached in the Gospel of Christ is final and permanent. It knows no retouches by human hand; it admits no substitutes or arbitrary alternatives such as certain leaders pretend to draw from the so-called myth of race and blood.

“18 … The Church founded by the Redeemer is one, the same for all races and all nations. Beneath her dome, as beneath the vault of heaven, there is but one country for all nations and tongues …

“21… among the [German] leaders there is more than one whose official position is intended to create the impression that this infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a signal and meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State.

“22… Should men, who are not even united by faith in Christ, come and offer you the seduction of a national German Church, be convinced that it is nothing but a denial of the one Church of Christ and the evident betrayal of that universal evangelical mission, for which a world Church alone is qualified and competent. The live history of other national churches with their paralysis, their domestication and subjection to worldly powers, is sufficient evidence of the sterility to which is condemned every branch that is severed from the trunk of the living Church.

“23. You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, that religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and distorted to profane use. “Revelation” in its Christian sense, means the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the “suggestions” of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people’s history, is mere equivocation

“28. To discard this gratuitous and free elevation [of Grace] in the name of a so-called German type amounts to repudiating openly a fundamental truth of Christianity.

“29. No coercive power of the State, no purely human ideal, however noble and lofty it be, will ever be able to make shift of the supreme and decisive impulses generated by faith in God and Christ.”

Just asking.
79 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 30 September 2007:

Yes, Sid, Lew is a Catholic. And no, the Occidental Quarterly didn’t exist when the libertarians pulled out of the JRC.

And the racial views of members of the JRC–paleocon or paleolibertarian–had nothing to do with the libertarians pulling out of the JRC.
80 Comment by Bede on 30 September 2007:

“Rodney King,”

I agree that if one makes race the most important factor it would be a form of idolatry.

On the other hand, to deny race at all I find to be a form of almost utopian thinking, not unlike 1950s liberalism, which sought to produce a color-blind society (not government), through whatever means necessary. Peruse through the early issues of National Review and you will find conservatives like Buckley and Kirk opposing such fancy thinking.

And if such naive thinking did not work for 1950s liberals (they finally abandoned it), why will it work for neocons and libertarians today?

Ad minimum, there is the classical notion of race, like the Latin ‘gens’, in the sense of kith and kin and ancestral pride. But even in a modern Wittgenstein sense, there is a “family resemblance.” People tend to self-identify by their more prominent features, skin-color being one of them. And no matter now politically correct someone may try to be, this is not going to be erased from the popular memory.

I toured a prison a few years ago, and in the cafeteria all the inmates were not self-grouping by eye color, or height, or IQ or any other random factor. They were self-grouping by race. All the whites sat together, all the blacks, all the Asians, all the Mexicans, etc.

Regarding Christianity, it in no way requires one to relinquish his loyalties to family, kith and kin.

Thomas Aquinas said it best when he said: “after his duties towards God, man owes most to his parents and his country. One’s duties towards one’s parents include one’s obligations towards one’s relatives, because these latter have sprung from [or are connected by ties of blood with] one’s parents…and the services due to one’s country have for their object all one’s fellow-countrymen and all the friends of one’s fatherland.”
81 Comment by T. Chan on 30 September 2007:

Mr. Torgerson:

You write:
And could not the same model be used to rule out secessionism, when a province or federated state/canton unjustly attempts to usurp the sovereign or federal power?

and then this:

And I meant when a province usurps sovereign power, or when a federated state or canton usurps federal power. So my comments were not slanted toward any particular theory of federal or state sovereignty.

Then you write:

But Mr. Chan, you do recognize that there are such entities as non-sovereign local and provincial governments, right? The Confederates complained, no doubt, when the western counties of Virginia seceded and formed West Virginia. What is to prevent individual counties from seceding from their states if secessionism lacks limits?

You assert that there are such entities as non-sovereign local and provincial governments–do they lack sovereignty but potentially have it, or do they lack it absolutely? Don’t both suppositions depend on a “particular theory of federal or state sovereignty”? This is what I am ultimately getting at.

There simply must be boundaries as to which governments can break off from larger units and which ones cannot. Some govts. are too big, some too small. My small town back home would die if it attempted “autarky” or tried to secede from its county, let alone its state.

Boundaries as determined by reason–I don’t look at the size of the government, but the size of the community. A community may “die” if it is not self-sufficient and depends on a larger political unit for its survival. But I would argue that if it is able to regain what it should possess as a political community, then secession may be a possibility (setting aside the question of whether it would be “permitted” or not by the larger political entity)–and this is of course a conclusion dependent upon a particular understanding of sovereignty.

So I answer your rhetorical question with another one, what if sovereign power rests with the acknowledged sovereign state and not with the province? When I used the word province, I specifically avoided the American theory of states’ rights, as everyone admits at least in theory that a federal state is not a province. A province is a wholly subsidiary creature.

I would argue that a province is a wholly subordinate entity only because of human arrangements, which can be changed.
82 Comment by PcH on 30 September 2007:

Mr. Wheeler,

You make some excellent points about the pace of the ongoing white genocide.

I think, though, that the way you are using “secession” is actually alien conquest.

Dr. Wilson and many others write well on secession, a tool which populists worldwide have wielded successfully.

—–

And to set the record straight about the use of the alien invaders’ use of the term “reconquista.”

The Southwest was never integrated with nor technically even a part of Mexico. Texas (originally French) and New Mexico were “kingdoms” separate from New Spain. California likewise was run separately; it had an ambiguous status, since it was already claimed for England in 1579 by Sir Francis Drake, reaffirmed in the American colonial claims made from “sea to sea.” (Los Angeles was part of South Carolina?!) Thus California was really a huge, nearly empty, missionary district managed by the church, with Spanish troops provided for protection.

The reason the regions not part of New Spain slowly — and very briefly — came under Mexican authority was that they were largely empty. And of course that is why Mexico recruited Americans to settle these regions and later provoked the Mexican War.

So strictly speaking, any reconquista of the American Southwest will be the sending of the invaders home.
83 Comment by PcH on 30 September 2007:

And I should add that I do not see the invasion of our lands stopping in the Southwest. Mexicans have already arrived in large numbers all over the South and along the East coast. That means I do not think there will ever be a “secession,” or rather annexation of the Southwest.

They mean to have the whole continent while white genocide is finished up.
84 Comment by PcH on 30 September 2007:

Bede:

Thanks for the venerable post. I have saved it to disk.
85 Comment by Leon Haller on 1 October 2007:

A few more points added to my comment #63 above (which, again, the morons who pen these writebacks either didn’t read or couldn’t comprehend).

1. Bill Kauffman is a leftist pure and simple. I recall despising him way back in the early 90s. His writing is deliberately obscurantist and plain cranky (somewhat like Fleming’s, at least on the latter point). Moreover, he repeatedly exhibited a typical PC “let’s find a way to blame the white man first (again like Fleming)” attitude too many times to go unnoticed (remember a dozen years ago his quoting with approval that disgusting little stanza about “giving it back” (ie Australia, to the savages) from the Aussie traitor-rock-band Midnight Oil?). I am glad to hear that he no longer writes for the magazine. Good riddance.

2. Whatever the cause of his apparent transmogrification into neoconism, Mr. Hawkins wrote an excellent book back in the 90s called IMPORTING REVOLUTION, about the Marxist links to the mass-immigration agenda. I strongly recommend that any patriots at this site read it. He also published a number of very solid pieces in CHRONICLES on subjects like protecting American national sovereignty, the evils of the UN and the NWO, and the fraud that is contemporary so-called “free trade”. I’ve always thought of Hawkins as one of the better persons associated with the magazine (and of course, his clear, analytical prose was in wonderful contrast to the worthless, opinionated bombast of Kauffman).

3. Both sides in the debate at issue were riddled with intellectual errors – not of fact, but of judgment. Alas, I am too tired and lazy to go into them in any detail. I would most closely agree, however, with Dr. Trifokovic.

4. Justin Raimondo, like Kauffman, is fundamentally another leftist, whom I have personally witnessed on numerous occasions cross the line from libertarian domestic anti-statism and foreign policy isolationism (in the manner of Ron Paul) to plain anti-Americanism. Forget Raimondo’s, ahem, questionable personal life, which the leftist Fleming apparently finds less objectionable than, say, the mere opinions of straight-living dissenters from the hegemonic (Zionist-leftist) Holocaust narrative.

Raimondo is a culturally left- libertarian whose real passions are not those aspects of the libertarian agenda which are shared by conservatives and nationalists (eg, eliminating gun controls, abolishing ‘civil rights’ laws, restoring free enterprise, slashing the welfare state, abrogating NAFTA and other globalist treaties, etc) but rather, those that are shared by the anti-American Left: weakening America’s military strength, further opening our citizenship to legal immigrants, and, of course, opposing EVERY projection of American power abroad, even when necessary to defend American interests (no, I do not mean to imply by that last statement that I was a supporter of the Iraq debacle; I opposed it in 2003 for most of the reasons CHRONICLES did, as well as out of a fear that it would lead to the US being saddled with more immigrant refugees).

Raimondo has, it must be said, produced some interesting writings. I particularly learned from his book RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN RIGHT. I had been very unfamilar with persons like Garet Garrett and John T. Flynn, as well as with the heroic republican tenacity of the Chicago Tribune under Col. MacCormack. Although written from an amazingly tendentious anti-interventionist perspective, it remains worthwhile reading.

But Raimondo is not a man of the Right.
86 Comment by Bede on 1 October 2007:

Has Claes G. Ryn ever attended JRC? Just curious.
87 Comment by Red Phillips on 1 October 2007:

Bede and Scott,

Paleolibertarians are, by definition I think, either anarcho-capitalists or minarchist. Paleoconservatives don’t criticize the state per se. What I think they should criticize is the modern state which is the unified, indivisible, sovereign of Hobbes, Locke, Lincoln, Bismarck, etc.

I personally think nationalism is playing with fire. Perhaps it is a necessary concession to modern reality. But then again, is it not feeding the beast?
88 Comment by Red Phillips on 1 October 2007:

Sean,

“The paleos dissolved—or rather, they erupted—in bile and drunken haymakers.”

The way I read that is not a reference to a specific event. It seems like a bit of rhetorical excess to describe the “fall” of paleoconservatism in general. With a lot of people “turning” on each other.
89 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 1 October 2007:

Leon Haller

I agree with everything in your post.
90 Comment by Brian Wheeler on 1 October 2007:

A Euro-Christian American living in Maine by many orders of magnitude has a much greater claim on California than the chinese,iranians,hindus,pakis and mexicans who are now colonizing California.

The comment above exposes a very serious flaw in the extreme decentralism of Clyde Wilson-I actually like Clyde Wilson. I agree with him on so many things– and the bombastic, local community destroying Bill Kauffman(Who I deeply despise)

Armenians are not European. They have Persian roots.
91 Comment by Rodney King on 1 October 2007:

But the American Renaissance did exist, didn’t it? and in Sept 1995 at its conference Sam said some racial stuff, didn’t he? Think Lew Rockwell liked it?

Bede: whose genetics did Burke and Aquinas follow: Mendel’s or Watson & Crick’s?

Just asking.
92 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 1 October 2007:

Sid, if you think that Lew is a Cundiff-style anti-racialist (or, indeed, any kind of anti-racialist), you’ve never had a candid conversation with him.
93 Comment by Tobias Torgerson on 1 October 2007:

“Don’t both suppositions depend on a “particular theory of federal or state sovereignty”? ”

As far as I now know, no American view of federal or state sovereignty ever held that towns and counties could secede from their state or from the federal union. As far as I now know, the creation of West Virginia was an ad hoc affair done in order to add another Union state and give Virginia a taste of its own secessionsist rhetoric. I rather think that both Unionists and secessionists viewed local and county governments as creatures of the state absolutely. If you think they may potentially be sovereign, then I think you have gone beyond any classical American theory of states’ rights (they are *states’* rights, not county or city or town rights). If you wish to move beyond classical theories of American federalism, fine, do so, but I still think I was right to say that I made all the necessary caveats so as not to include any criticism of Southern secession in my point that there are sub-sovereign forms of government.
94 Comment by Irving Babbitt on 1 October 2007:

I believe Paul Gottfried spoke at the same conference that Sam Francis did, and Paul Gottfried still writes for Lew Rockwell. In fact, Gottfried wrote an essay for Rockwell’s website on this very topic, the Hawkins Frontpage story.

So, Sid’s/Rodney King’s revisionism is all wet. Nothing new about that of course.
95 Comment by Irving Babbitt on 1 October 2007:

Here is an article from this year, on the LewRockwell site by Dr. Gottfried. Here is the title and the link, followed by a quote from the article.

MLK as Twentieth-Century Jesus

http://www.lewrockwell.com/gottfried/gottfried98.html

Although this form of savior-displacement opens the door to many questions not all of which I can address here, there are two misconceptions concerning the King cult that warrant immediate discussion. In both cases, I am criticizing my well-meaning traditionalist friends who have pooh-poohed what is going on. The holiday, contrary to what some predicted would happen twenty years ago, has not turned into “just another George Washington birthday-type vacation,” marked by bargain sales and a few entirely forgettable media references. MLK comes as the prelude to a new Lenten month that is full of compulsory meditation on the sins of white racism. The national birthday shows all the spontaneity of a celebration of Hitler’s birthday held in Germany during the Third Reich.
96 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 1 October 2007:

@Bede (86):

Claes Ryn has been to several JRCs. If I recall correctly, the last one he attended was the one in Georgetown.
97 Comment by Jimmy on 2 October 2007:

@Scott Richert

I just listened to the conference — it was great. Both Srdja & Raimondo brought up some good points.
98 Comment by Frank on 2 October 2007:

I can’t get my post to go to takimag, and since it’s relevant here and Scott P. Richert is also here, I think it’s not disrespectful to post here:

Justin Raimondo,

you call Hawkins a neocon yet this is clearly not so. Was Hawkins a neocon, he’d want free trade and open borders.

Isn’t it better to overlook Hawkins’s article rather than to burn bridges; is anything gained otherwise? I disagree with him on foreign policy, but he seems to want what’s best for the American nation. Tancredo too is unfairly labeled “neocon,” though I do hope “paleocon” still means more than “one who opposes the Iraq War.”

—
@all

We should be bound by a common desire to save our own Western nations and communities within; especially if demographics don’t let up, Western Civilisation; and, yes Sid, whites (no disrespect intended). If the Netherlands fall to Sharia, do we sit idly by obeying paleo isolationist dogma? I’m not advocating centralization btw.

Under such a movement, Hawkins would probably be a natural ally unless he’s secretly a globalist. He would be an asset despite his rude behavior.

—

An argument for secession:

One argument for Southern secession that I think Dr. Francis would like: it can bolster the patriotic identity by jettisoning the parts that are too diverse or corrupt. Also, we Southerners at least see a Southern nation, even if it’s not politically expedient to secede.

—

Scott P. Richert,

I wasn’t aware of the history of nationalism either, but when talking with folks if they’re even aware of a distinction they tend to view patriotism as something disconnected from kinship consisting entirely of ties formed via acquaintance and Sid’s view of cultural ties.

One who loves his nation then is a patriot, and one who loves his state is a nationalist?

What’s the gain from everyone speaking English if they can’t communicate using it?

Heck speaking of misunderstandings, I’m not entirely sure of just what a “right-libertarian” is and how a libertarian could even be on the right, though I’ve an idea but it would mean there’s a great deal of diversity within the term right-libertarian. When I want info on the war I go straight to Raimondo, but I don’t see him as right wing as I understand his views. No disrespect intended.
99 Comment by Frank on 2 October 2007:

Scott P. Richert wrote:

It just goes to show what many of us knew all along: Far from being “conservative,” the extreme nationalism of men such as Hawkins is actually a leftist phenomenon–and has been ever since it emerged during the French Revolution.

Is Hawkins truly leftist or merely misguided and unChristian? His loyalty would seem to be to the American people and not merely his state. The desire to exploit a neighbor and to acquire limited resources as vital as oil for the sake of the US nation seems to be his.

Anthony Cooney wrote regarding Chesterton:

Chesterton’s objection to Imperialism is precisely that it seeks to destroy all such peculiar customs which differentiate nations. Its aim is the cosmopolitan aim of a standardized humanity living in a standardized economy under a standardized law. It is not the existence of sovereign nations which is the cause of war. It is the policy of the Empires, British, French, German, Russian, and since Chesterton’s day, American, to expand and bring all peoples under their sway, which results in the clash of titans.

This sort of imperialist sentiment doesn’t seem to apply to Hawkins.
100 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 2 October 2007:

@Frank (98):

“Isn’t it better to overlook Hawkins’s article rather than to burn bridges; is anything gained otherwise?”

Is it possible to burn bridges once someone else has already burned them?
101 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 2 October 2007:

@Frank (98):

“Under such a movement, Hawkins would probably be a natural ally unless he’s secretly a globalist. He would be an asset despite his rude behavior.”

And that’s why we had him writing for Chronicles, and why he was invited to take part in the JRC. But alliances go both ways. You can debate with allies over areas of disagreement, but if you stab them in the back, you can hardly be considered an ally anymore.
102 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 2 October 2007:

@Frank (99):

“Is Hawkins truly leftist or merely misguided and unChristian?”

I didn’t say that Hawkins was leftist; I said that extreme nationalism is a leftist phenomenon, as many true rightists have recognized.

That’s not to say that the nationalist cannot have many, many conservative traits. Certainly, Hawkins does. But there’s nothing truly conservative about nationalism, which always defines a people in opposition to the other, not in terms of itself.
103 Comment by Justin Raimondo on 2 October 2007:

To Leon Haller:

If you don’t like my private life, then don’t open your big mouth about it: it’s private, anyway, so what the f*ck do you know about it? Nothing!

As for me being a “leftist” — you are wrong, my friend. Eliminating gun controls, abolishing ‘civil rights’ laws, restoring free enterprise, slashing [abolishing!] the welfare state, abrogating NAFTA and other globalist treaties, etc — I am for all of those things, as I have written on many occasions.
104 Comment by Frank on 2 October 2007:

Thank you for replying. I wish I knew just what to ask you to draw out your wisdom.

But there’s nothing truly conservative about nationalism, which always defines a people in opposition to the other, not in terms of itself.

That’s interesting. I’ve heard such said of nationalism, and it would of course be preferred for patriots to embrace their nations out of extended love of real, lower levels.

However, modern society is fluid and interwoven – communities don’t exist as they once did, and those that do like the remote Faroe Islands don’t seem capable of retaining their young people.

The modern world is within a different paradigm as long as cheap fossil fuel abounds. Hawkins’s view of geopolitics from a US nationalist vantage would seem politically expedient though exploitation of another nation is unChristian. Hawkins doesn’t want to integrate the Iraqis into a larger American state but simply to take control of their oil. At least ostensibly, his desire isn’t to build a larger American state to counter a rising China but to empower the US that he loves. He does wish for the world to be unipolar under the US, but this is distinct from the neocon desire of a world under one dominant humanist power (actually Israel might be their preferred dominator putting them in the same class as Hawkins, but for the sake of argument their true goals are ignored)

—

Is it possible to burn bridges once someone else has already burned them?

1. As long as his ego isn’t bruised, he won’t be opposed to returning or at least working with his (ideologically) natural allies once he realises where he belongs. 2. If it’s ignored it becomes less of an issue.

If a juvenile says something terrible, he often isn’t fully aware of what all he saying. So an adult is usually better off ignoring it, and the comment is soon forgotten.

I see too many petty fights among folks in political groups, and I’ve enjoyed reading Hawkins in the past. It kills me to see him act so immaturely, and I hate to see him drawn into the neocons. His view of the world will probably change and become perverted the longer he’s among them.
105 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 2 October 2007:

@Frank (104):

“I see too many petty fights among folks in political groups, and I’ve enjoyed reading Hawkins in the past. It kills me to see him act so immaturely, and I hate to see him drawn into the neocons. His view of the world will probably change and become perverted the longer he’s among them.”

Indeed. Perhaps the fact that he’s been writing for FrontPageMag.com since 2002 may have something to do with his recent behavior.
106 Comment by TJF on 2 October 2007:

I am once again astounded and embarrassed by the cavalier approach to simple questions of fact displayed on this site. If, for example, I had decided to speak at the debate, I would have spoken against hasty withdrawal, though there was much in the other side’s arguments that deserve respect, and they clearly won the room–which had, by the way, few peaceniks or libertarians in it. The nonsense over poor Bill Kauffman is particularly embarrassing. Where do you people pick up such nonsense? Anyone who would insult another man’s wife (and a woman he doesn’t know!) because she is half-Armenian invites the contempt of any decent person. What sort of barn were these people raised in?

This discussion marks the unwelcome return of the rude, ignorant, and stupid brownshirts. (To distinguish them from the intelligent, polite, and well-informed racists whom I have normaly encountered and with whom I am often happy to engage in discussion.) These people are giving bigotry a bad name. When I used to know the people from the American Renaissance, they never spoke this way. Such language is the mark of the proletarian would-be revolutionary. They used to sit in cafes. Now they don’t have to get out of their little rooms.

Note to these people, if that is the correct word, posting on this site. Daily Worker language (such as cockroaches, vermin, etc.) is not permitted. By the way, Iranian peoples (including Scyths and Armenians) belong to the Indo-European language family. Indeed, they belong to the Indo-Aryan group, a name that ought to brighten the day of every little nerd in their Hitler Youth video-game club. They are caught on the horns of their own dilemma. Which is definitive, geography, or religion and ethnicity? If Christian Indo-European Armenians are not “European” by virtue of geography, then, presumably, Turks from Constantinople to Berlin are. Hatred, in depriving them of the manners their mothers must have taught them, has also robbed them of their wits.

Perhaps we made a mistake in setting up this website. I know that I can barely bring myself to look at it, much less contribute to it. Despite the lies these people love to tell, the way meth addicts love to destroy their brains, there is hardly a subject we are unwilling to discuss with rational and informed people, who have some idea of how mature human beings discuss serious questions. Debating ethnic and racial issues with the likes of the Squealers and Hollers is like debating the merits of Botticelli with a high school art teacher sculpting garbage on an NEA grant. If the main effect of the internet is to give the illusion of speech and power to the products of American education, then it is time to turn the field over to David Frum. He belongs here and we don’t.

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