Our Open (Borders) Secret
by Thomas Fleming
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The long campaign of 2007-08, already sputtering out in fizzled squibs, childish ploys, and pointless personal recriminations, has offered few of the moments of drama or high comedy that Americans have rightly come to expect of our political candidates. The debates have been as drab as Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits, as wooden as Barack Obama’s imitation of Al Sharpton, and as predictable as Mitt Romney’s second thoughts on abortion and immigration.
For comedy, the best act so far has been Mike Huckabee’s appearances in South Carolina, where he was flanked by Chuck Norris and Ric “The Nature Boy” Flair, whom he introduced as his secretaries of defense and homeland security. I think I would rather vote for Naitch, who knows he is an entertainer and not an athlete, than for a politician who would use a rassler as part of his act.
But even Huckabee’s clowning, deplorable as it is, falls far short of the performances of Bob Dole, backed up by Sam and Dave imitators singing “The Dole Man,” or the unintentional parody of priggish liberalism performed by Happy Hubert Humphrey, or Jimmy Carter’s antics (the “adultery in my heart” confession to Playboy or, best of all, his proclamation “I will never lie to you”—perhaps the greatest lie ever told by an American politician, and that is saying something). I have not even mentioned Jimmy’s wonderful family—his beer-bellied brother Billy or his evangelist sister who “converted” pornographer Larry Flynt. Flynt was so touched by grace that he did an Adam and Eve spread in Hustler, naturally in the best of taste. At least we have our memories!
Populists have often provided campaigns both with drama and with actual issues. The peroration to William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech was still being memorized by at least one schoolboy in the 1950’s, and Huey Long and George Wallace both scared the bejeezus out of the partitocrats. I do not know why Long was shot, but Governor Wallace certainly gave the GOP a good reason to eliminate him, as Martha Mitchell told the press before being hustled off to an institution. Chuck Colson, who went to Arthur Bremer’s apartment allegedly to plant Democrat propaganda, might know something, but he is not talking.
Political assassination is as American as apple pie, and, as I told Pat Buchanan, when he mentioned something about reforming the Republican Party, the last man who tried that was James Garfield, and he was murdered by a professed “Republican stalwart,” whose credo was “My party, right or wrong.” Threatening to reform either party is like getting between the lion and his prey.
The nearest thing to a populist in this race is the mild-mannered Ron Paul. Despite his timid demeanor—in the 50’s he would have inevitably been compared to Wally Cox—Dr. Paul has his zany side: He believes in the Constitution of the old American republic, and he actually thinks it has some relevance for America today. God bless him, I would vote for him if only for pretending to embrace such a heartwarming fantasy. As it is, I am convinced he believes what he says. (His candor and sincerity alone are enough to disqualify him as a serious presidential candidate in these United States.) Paul not only wants, in principle, to restore the republic but also opposes the continued erosion of states’ rights and U.S. sovereignty.
Ron Paul’s most flamboyant gesture in defense of the republic (one in which he is joined by the estimable Duncan Hunter) has been the denunciation of what is sometimes called the North American Union. The NAU is an alleged plot to merge the three countries of North America—the United States, Canada, and Mexico—into a union that will function something like the European Union. If the first step toward unification is represented by the “NAFTA Superhighway”—a free-trade hole in the American border stretching from Mexico to Canada—the apogee will be the issuance of a new common currency, the Amero.
World government has been a treasured bugbear of the fringe right since the heyday of the John Birch Society, and the current conspiracy has supposedly been cooked up by the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bush administration, and the usual globalist suspects. In 2005, the CFR issued a report, “Building a North American Community,” whose aspirations were echoed in the Bush administration’s plan “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” (SPP), released after a meeting among George W. Bush, Vicente Fox, and Paul Martin. The plan, which is predicated on the idea that “our security and prosperity are mutually dependent and complementary,” calls for a joint task force to implement the goals: common security and a common market.
Representative Paul has denounced the SPP as “an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments” that does not even enjoy the legal fig leaf of an official treaty. The more general conclusion he draws is that “decisions that affect millions of Americans are not being made by those Americans themselves, or even by their elected representatives in Congress,” but by “a handful of elites [who] use their government connections to bypass national legislatures and ignore our Constitution.”
The introduction of the NAFTA Superhighway and the SPP into the campaign debate naturally aroused snorts of contempt, and not without reason. The alleged plotters—the leaders of three democratic governments (the United States, Canada, and Mexico), joined by the beloved Republican governor of Texas (Rick Perry) and the most prestigious policy experts at the CFR (which includes most of the important senior members of past administrations)—are no back-alley conspirators. The CFR, of which both Presidents Bush are members, has never made a secret of its commitment to world government, and the American presidents and leading economists who have supported NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO express the consensus, not of the people of America, but of the people who own America and dictate the editorial policies of both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. If you find this statement shocking or surprising, you have not been paying attention to the world around you.
Only a good scout like Ron Paul (or Pat Buchanan before him) could sincerely believe that the erosion of sovereignty is an issue that will arouse the American electorate to cast off the chains of the party state that tells them how to treat their spouses and rear their children, whose children to reward with benefits at the expense of their own, and what to eat and where to smoke a cigar. As an impudent young man, I told my father that his generation—“the greatest generation”—had sold out our liberties by reelecting FDR and by accepting the withholding of federal income tax from our salaries. At least since the time my voice changed, I have known that I do not live in a free country: What I know about republican liberty I have learned from books.
There is no secret plot or conspiracy to undermine our national sovereignty, unless, by conspiracy, we mean the collective will of the political class. Messrs. Fox and Bush would be rightly outraged if they heard rumors of such suspicions. Opposing globalization today is like criticizing affirmative action, challenging women’s rights, or pointing out that homosexuals are a serious drain on our finite medical resources. All right-thinking people, whatever their party or orientation, support globalization. It is a movement whose virtues are so obvious that Cato staffers cannot even understand why anyone could be upset with the idea of a North American Union. Here is young Cato policy analyst Will Wilkinson on National Public Radio’s anti-business program, Marketplace:
There are some who believe a grave threat to American sovereignty looms over the horizon. A shadowy cabal, they say, is planning a massive “NAFTA superhighway,” a new North American currency, and a common market in goods and labor. It will all culminate in an E.U.-like North American Union. It turns out this is mostly fantasy. But the fantasy is more dream than nightmare. Because some aspects of a North American Union would leave Americans and our neighbors both richer and freer.
You see, he explains to the rubes, in making it more difficult for migrants to enter the United States, we have also made it harder for them to leave:
Those who do come now are more likely to stay. And this has increased the permanent population of undocumented Mexicans. The best solution to America’s immigration problem is not a wall or a new crackdown on the hiring of undocumented workers. It’s NAFTA’s unfinished business: a common North American labor market.
The real problem of illegal immigration is that it is illegal. If we simply throw our borders open to the world and say, “Give us . . . the wretched refuse of your teeming shores,” the problem will go away, and we shall all live happily ever after, as Cato’s Steve Moore once said in a debate with Peter Brimelow and me, buying our fruit from Korean grocers and hiring foreign nannies to take care of the children our wives refuse to rear themselves. We could adopt the same approach to other social ills: Legalize rape, and the rapist will be less reluctant to seek treatment for his problem; legalize armed robbery, and the robbers will more readily pay taxes on their earnings.
For the libertarians at Cato, globalization, free trade, and immigration present no problem, because, as the editor of the Wall Street Journal once famously declared, “The nation-state is finished.” Many libertarians would add that the demise of nation-states has come none too soon, since they never should have existed. They are not entirely wrong. Nationalism has almost as many sins on its record as the Marxism that killed hundreds of millions in the 20th century or the classical liberalism/libertarianism that destroyed the social and moral order of Europe and the United States. One of the only true insights Marxists ever had was that the liberal ruling class
has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
If the international system of large nation-states were to be replaced by confederations of regions and smaller communities, a Chestertonian might rejoice in the possibilities. Such a scenario is hardly likely, however, because it is not in the interest of the groups who preside today over the breaking of nations.
Some form of international empire will undoubtedly be the result of the current drive toward reducing and eliminating national sovereignty. This is hardly cause for alarm. Although many conservatives would like to believe that the nation-state is a universal phenomenon, it is, in fact, an historical creation, hardly older than the 15th century. The states of France and England, to name just two successful examples, were created by ambitious monarchies with the assistance of the equally ambitious aristocrats and businessmen who saw the nation-state as a vehicle for their own interests.
Even churches joined the movement—not only the Protestant national churches of England, Scotland, and Germany that toadied to the rulers who confiscated Church assets and distributed them to their friends, but the pliant and venal Catholic bishops of France and, eventually, of the Habsburg empire. In any such enterprise, factions develop, and the grandchildren of Henry VIII’s wool lords wrested power from Henry’s sister’s great-great-grandson, Charles I. However, the goal of the Roundheads was not to weaken the state but to strengthen it. The same can be said of the Jacobin lawyers who murdered the kindest man who ever sat upon the French throne, from Clovis to Napoleon III. Robespierre was as committed to nation-building as Louis XIV.
This is, of course, a Machiavellian point of view, one that concentrates exclusively on power. States and their governments can be looked at from several perspectives. From a Christian perspective, the rulers of this world have been empowered by God to protect the innocent and punish the wicked. From an ethnic and cultural point of view, our form of government reflects the character of the people: A system of loose monarchy, independent nobles, and sturdy freemen was an expression of the Anglo-Saxon character, just as the cult of plutocracy and celebrity, matched by the servility of the people, expresses the American character today. We laugh at the servility of the Indians and Pakistanis who choose party leaders on the strength of their last names (Gandhi and Bhutto), then go out to cheer for George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton.
In swearing eternal allegiance to the divinely appointed Clintons and Bushes, and in revering the traditions of the Morgans and Rockefellers, a prudent man might also take account of the basic facts of power. It was Gaetano Mosca who explained that the character of an elite impressed itself upon the character of the regime, and it is only a small step from Mosca’s insight to viewing regimes as the vehicles by which an elite maintains and extends its wealth and power.
What can be said of the nation-state applies to all forms of government, including Marxist dictatorships: They serve the interests of the ruling class or party. Just as the commune of medieval Florence was a corporate association of the greater guilds in the interest of the bankers and wool merchants, so (as Milovan Djilas argued) communist governments serve the interests of the party members who “eliminate every form of property except their own.”
For the old union of the United States, the handwriting has been on the wall for decades. A century ago, national business interests used their clout to eliminate the power of state governments to interfere in their ability to expand and monopolize new markets. Now, since at least the 1970’s, transnational business interests are working to eliminate the power of nation-states to interfere in their ability to expand and monopolize new markets. Global markets require global regulation in the interest of the global competitors who seek to be global monopolists, and global regulations require a global state with a global army, global courts, and global police. A Bill Gates or a Ross Perot can make billions by selling to select national governments, but trillions are available to those who will control a global government. Regional integration is only a necessary intermediate step. There is no point in complaining, just as there is no point in blaming the tiger who eats the missionary: The beasts are made this way.
International protests against globalization are led by Marxian leftists, who are the last people in the world to lead such a movement: They have been calling for some form of global regime since the Communist Manifesto. But American conservatives are scarcely in a better position. Since the creation of National Review, conservatives have sacrificed every principle of morality, tradition, and civilization upon the altar of a “free market” that has never really existed, certainly not in the United States. To be fair, all that conservatives ever really meant by the “free market” was big business. Today’s conservative editorialists are only doing what they have always done: They are shilling for their paymasters. Their intellectual ancestors shilled for liberal nation-states, but, for the conservative-libertarian movement, transnationalism, as the kids would say, is the new nationalism, a pretext for destroying everything real that we have inherited and replacing the reality of peoples and their traditions with the virtual reality sold to us by Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the Hollywood-New York axis that shapes our dreams.
Our rulers, cheered on by their mouthpieces in the press, have even succeeded in cashing out the family, not only by promoting divorce, public schooling, and adultery, but by driving mothers into the workplace, outsourcing family functions to soccer teams, and persuading families to dine at corporate-owned junk-food restaurants such as McDonald’s or Applebee’s. Viewed in this light, the North American Union will be a comparatively trivial step in the evolution of post-human America.
Thomas Fleming is the editor of Chronicles.
This article first appeared in the March 2008 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by Big M on 18 March 2008:
Where to start? I can’t get into writing a book here, but IMHO this is the best piece of writing from Dr. Fleming in a while. The way I see it, these are some of the immediate things that need to be done.
First and foremost, the legislatures of the states need to demand a constitutional convention for the purpose of seceding from the United Soviet States of Amerika, and/or completely abolishing the federal government. The Fed needs to be completely abolished, and its directors, well . . . let us say . . . dealt with in the manner that they so richly deserve. Each state needs to decide whether it wants to become an independent entity, or whether it wants to ally itself with one or more of those entities, perhaps going back to alliance somewhat like the Article of Confederation, which was SUPPOSED to be the agenda at the original convention in Philadelphia, which was NOT known as the Constitutional Convention to anyone living at the time. This was where this union made in Hell originated — behind closed doors. At least that doesn’t happen in DC today, right?
The federal government has, as its total purpose, the fleecing of the citizens of this country for the interests of bankers and corporations, as well as slowly imposing a fascist police state, and it’s time to resurrect Jefferson’s words from the Declaration of Independence: it’s time to throw off and destroy the federal government — period.
Every federal enforcement agency needs to go, and the military needs to be dismantled. I could go on, but I’m sure that some others will fill in some of the blanks I’m leaving.
2 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 18 March 2008:
Dr. Fleming’s piece is pretty much the last word on every major issue.
All that’s left is to live locally…as much as practicable.
3 Comment by robert reavis on 18 March 2008:
‘To be fair, all that conservatives ever really meant by the “free market” was big business. Today’s conservative editorialists are only doing what they have always done: They are shilling for their paymasters. Their intellectual ancestors shilled for liberal nation-states, but, for the conservative-libertarian movement, transnationalism, as the kids would say, is the new nationalism, a pretext for destroying everything real that we have inherited and replacing the reality of peoples and their traditions with the virtual reality sold to us by Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and the Hollywood-New York axis that shapes our dreams.’
Damn !!! I would give my right arm to write like that. Truthful, courageous, careless, informed and excellent . Like watching an artist actually imitate life, instead of photo-copying the obvious. Thanks Tom, for ” another’un.”
4 Comment by Dominic on 18 March 2008:
Great article, but how are homosexuals a drain on our medical system? Think of all of the billions we spend on AIDS relief for heterosexuals in Africa.
5 Comment by James Newland on 18 March 2008:
I don’t understand the Birch-bashing, Dr. Fleming. It seems completely gratuitous. Whether or not there exists a shadowy cabal dedicated to bringing it about, or whether it’s being done in plain sight and within the law, the push toward globalization is real and it is just as evil in its implications as the Birchers say it is. That’s the only point that really matters, isn’t it?
6 Comment by Haywood Hale on 18 March 2008:
There’s always a number of perspectives from which to view something essentially singular, as Dr. Fleming points out. But I really suspect we’ve reached now (since the Federal Reserve Act or ‘con’ i.e. treason was perpetrated after the start of the 20th Century) the point of no return if this delusion isn’t exposed. It is not self-correcting, never mind self-policing. Rather it is continually and perniciously used toward its ultimate goal which not only doesn’t serve Americans, it doesn’t serve the planet itself.
The American Delusion I’m referring to was articluated on the other board by Dr. Wilson, namely – *That the U.S. government, which has almost unlimited access to resources, needs to borrow money and pay tax-free interest to those who lend to it at no risk. (end quote)
This is what Henry Ford meant after the passing of the Federal Reserve Act after the start of the 20th Century when he said that if Americans understood what has just been made of their financial system there would be revolution before morning. Ford thought from what I’ve read that it was nothing less than treason. Can a government even if democratically elected sell out its own country?
The Federal Reserve Act literally flipped what was. And we just got a glarring example of it two days ago when in underwritting JP Morgan/Chase’s takeover of the failing Bear Sterns the Fed. printed 1/2 trillion dollars i.e. (500 Billion) and gave it i.e. “loaned” it to itself who is also JP Morgan/Chase. That’s why taxpayers don’t owe it. But taxpayers (i.e. working Americans/when they can find a job) pay for it in inflation. The more money printed the less it’s worth.
You see the Federal Reserve Act way back when gave the function of the U.S. Treasury to a cabal of international bankers. So the U.S. has not been Sovereign since THEN. They pretend to be ‘Federal’ but they are a private corporation just like their strongarm agency for the collection of taxes the IRS is a private corporation.
This is WHY the U.S. Treasury does not lend money to them. Conversely the cabal of international bankers lends money (they print it) to the U.S. Government. Translation they lend our money (which their IRS collected) to us and we must pay it back to them with interest, they don’t pay taxes on. It’s much worse than that in that the ‘loans of our money to us are guaranteed’ so when they lend our money to us or lend our money to foreign countries like Mexico or Kenya etc. the loans are guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayer including the tax free interest in case a foreign country defaults on those loans. So whenever one of these private banks through ExIm Bank i.e. the Export-Import Bank of America lends Billions of taxpayer money to a foreign country and then that debt is ‘forgiven’. It’s not forgiven by the bankers because the loans with the interest were guaranteed to be paid back by the U.S. taxpayer to the private banks and they (i.e. the Fed.) print up the money to cover it, pay themselves and charge it off to the U.S. taxpayer. It’s even better for those bankers if a foreign country defaults because then the bankers print up the entire balloon payment owed them with ALL the interest due ‘as if’ the loan had gone to term; but now thanks to the default they get all those funds immediately.
But you see at the “top” this is not seen as a conflict of interest or a ‘moral hazard.’ Dracula sits in the bloodbank quaffing at will on all of the blood the taxpayers donated. But you can’t get a transfusion that will save your life if you can’t pay for it. You see that Dracula says is a ‘moral hazard.’ Or if he gives it to you and it’s SO expensive now due to inflation you later can’t pay it down on a timely basis, then your credit ’score’ Dracula keeps track of is destroyed.
So in effect the Federal Reserve Act – GAVE the U.S. Treasury to a private cabal of international bankers who perform a ’service’ for the U.S. Treasury.
Nice work if you can get it. It was super-banker Baron B.A. Rothschild’s brainchild when he pointed out prior to this becoming the law of the land here in the U.S. thanks to the Federal Reserve Act – “Give me control of a nation’s currency and I care NOT who makes its laws.” Is there any question whatsoever that he was correct!?!
They themselves don’t owe anything ever – it’s only us slaves in our own country who based on this system of debt must always be in debt. … It’s not only NOT a level playing field, it’s a precipitous incline made ever more slippery due to inflation with the bankers at its summit. No kings ever had it so good. At least such kings of old were visible. While this is a juggernaut hiding in plain sight and cannibalistically gobbling everything up. Forget asking Congress (bought and paid for just like at the time the Federal Reserve Act was enacted through Congress) or Obama to ’save’ you. … But I suspect even Lincoln wouldn’t have gone for this. I wonder if he was shown the future he would have let it go in that direction by pushing the Civil War, and subsequently having to butcher his own people? No I don’t think he would have but he didn’t understand that consequence.
The simple solution to start is to restore the U.S. Treasury as the U.S. Treasury. Then we’re no longer systemically required to be a debtor [i.e. slave] nation. … And make the Federal Reserve and the IRS go out into the jobless market here in the U.S. now that it’s all been offshored, and work for a living. Henry Ford must be smiling today in his grave. While perhaps Lincoln is not so happy? Lincoln’s probably thinking – I wish I were in the land of cotton old times there are not forgotten look away look away look away Dixieland… (I’m not sure I have the words right, I’m just an aspiring Southerner myself.)
Does anyone really question that this is NOT the case? They know it’s the case, they don’t care. Sorry if this was too baldly accurate. They may say I’m creating a ‘moral hazard.’
7 Comment by Edward on 18 March 2008:
“A global state could only be a global hell from which there would be no escape.” -The Morality of Everyday Life
Truer words have never been uttered.
8 Comment by Lord Karth on 18 March 2008:
The one–and only one–good thing about all this is that, sooner or later, the entire operation is going to collapse of its own weight. The demographics are driving the situation, and their inexorable logic will produce a grisly and gruesome conclusion.
Regardless of who occupies the White Palace and whose corporate Lords get to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, the Imperial elite is going to have to pay attention to one primary issue: paying for the retirements and free medical care expected and demanded by the Baby Boomer generation. It’s already begun; the first of that perfidious and morally crippled generation has already retired. Millions more of them will do so in the next 20 years. The regime’s power and tenure in office does and will continue to depend on how those retirees will get theirs.
Nobody in the Throne City has a clue as to how to solve the issue.
Cutting off benefits will produce riots in the streets, as the Boomers’ taxpaying children revolt against having to take the responsibility for providing for their parents they were told they could shirk. (No doubt the ghost of Claude Pepper will be laughing his head off while this happens.) Increasing taxes to the European level required will collapse the economy.
This will tend to impede the growth of the Global State. No foreign elitist will be terribly interested in pouring more money down the American rathole for no return, especially while Europe and China unravel under their own demographic pressures. Europe is further along that particular path than we are, thanks to its policies on Islamic immigration, and China’s “one child”/”Little Emperor” policy will make the Chinese collapse more violent than ours. Ours will be nasty enough.
From where I sit, I suspect that the next 30 years or so will see the following:
a) A worldwide economic collapse, as the elderly populations parasitizing America, China and Europe wipe out the productive segments of their respective societies;
b) The global-government enterprise will be destroyed when the local elites in each nation attempt to hold on to the social and economic heights in their own localities;
c) A series of civil and international wars, beginning in Europe, spreading to America and encompassing China as those same elites use military forces to maintain their own power and privileges. These will tend to be Lebanon-style wars of ethnicity and religion as those groups who have not been amalgamated into the “global society”. It is very possible that these wars will involve chemical and biological weapons on a wide scale–such weapons are cheap and easily dispersed, and the ethnic nature of the conflicts will lend themselves very readily to each of the combatant groups deHumanizing its rivals, thus increasing the probability of their use;
d) The bureaucratic, commercial and industrial buck-passing chains that have sustained the current high-technology culture will be severely disrupted, if not outright destroyed. Any surviving Human societies will be on the peasant/village level, at best.
The survivors will envy the dead. Assuming, of course, that there are survivors. (I will make no cash bets on the validity of that presumption.)
Meanwhile, I’m going to sit back, make some popcorn, open up another beer, and laugh my head off at the comic futility (and inevitability) of the whole thing.
Let the festivities begin !
Your servant,
Lord Karth
9 Comment by miles on 18 March 2008:
I agree with every word. Especially these words:
““A global state could only be a global hell from which there would be no escape.”
If we have a global govenment and it “goes bad” on us, there is nowhere to run to. There is no contintent out in the middle of the Pacific to go to and start over. This was always my fear about a “global state”. What do we do if someone who really dislikes the rest of humanity can finagle a place atop it? All that person would have to do is remove the freedom of the press under whatever premise and we could be in for God knows what under them. It would be like Stalin’s Russia, writ large. Seperate governments are a check on each other. People can vote with their feet or vote in their bedrooms (by only having one kid) and bankrupt them when they become corrupt and infrige on people’s natural rights.
10 Comment by robert reavis on 18 March 2008:
My Lord speaks words of wisdom but appears to unravel towards the end when he writes :”I’m going to sit back, make some popcorn, open up another beer, and laugh my head off at the comic futility (and inevitability) of the whole thing. ”
While it is true that all comedy has an end ( as my poetry professor asserted, “because if this goes on forever, it ain’t funny”) not all endings are enjoyable.
11 Comment by Eagle on 18 March 2008:
There is an interesting discussion developing here. Most see things going “badly” at some point in the future. But I would argue that it is unclear what “badly” will look like.
Some suggest an implosion of society and reversion to smaller, less technically oriented pre-modern living units.
Some suggest an Orwellian totalitarian society with harsh control mechanisms.
I might suggest that, present financial turmoils and the near term hardships they will produce aside, that the future may well still end up per Huxley’s vision of total control by “gentle” means. A scientific, super-organized, sedated, sexually freed, pristine dys/utopia.
The drug treatments are shaping up this way. The “hypnotopia” of television, ipods, and computer gaming is well advanced. The destruction of the family and parallel advancement of the free sex “lifestyle” is well under way (though Huxley overlooked the fact that it will include same-gender sex). The application of technique and scientific management to every aspect of life is happening. The “impediment” of Christianity is being removed either by force (e.g., Middle East, Balkans) or marxist enculturation (e.g., North America, Europe). The notions of “peoples” who value their customs, language, or other cultural facets are also dying rapidly, again, either by force or enculturation.
I think many have wisely pointed out that disease, inter-racial strife, food shortages, or the destruction of the means and systems of production may well halt the march to this “utopia”.
So which will it be? Destruction, squalor, and pre-modern subsistence living? Outwardly regimented, though still technilogical and modern, living? Or, carefully organized regimentation that will not “feel” harsh at all (unless, of course, you are a “savage”)?
12 Comment by Edward on 18 March 2008:
Most people are not as ideologically driven as the elite classes in Washington, so perhaps the reason people have not rebelled in any meaningful way is due to their ‘conservatism.’ That is to say that people will not defend their homes or make war upon globalism until it has literally stormed their front doors and destroyed what they love. For many people, resisting even federal intrusion into their personal lives represents a much too abstract goal. We must witness our lives being altered. Maybe it would be better if people felt as if they were fending off a thief than plotting a revolt against a faceless government thousands of miles away. As for the way it will all end; God only knows (literally).
13 Comment by Lord Karth on 18 March 2008:
Herr Reavis @ # 10
Believe me, sir, there will be comedy enough for all over the course of the next 30 years or so. Granted, it will tend towards the Absurdist school, but it will be funny all the same. Just look at all the fuss and feathers going on over the current Imperial “election”, for example. We all know that absolutely NOTHING will change in any serious sense, politically–State spending will still spiral out of control, immigration will not be controlled in any significant way, just to name two examples—but all the punditry is carrying on just like things could be altered politically. As if Obama would be different from Clinton would be different from McCain.
That’s Absurdist humor at its VERY best !! So why not enjoy what can be enjoyed ? The weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth will come quickly enough, I think. Besides, it’s not like the situation will be all of a piece. There will still be good beer to drink while the Show goes on, and the popcorn will still be just as tasty. And afterwards ? Such survivors as there are will absolutely not be bored. Hungry, tired, cold….but absolutely not bored. There is something to be said for that.
Remember this: they don’t call it the Human Comedy for nothing.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
14 Comment by Lord Karth on 18 March 2008:
Eagle @ 11:
The Warshawski brothers (degenerates though they may be) may have spoken prophetically. Given the current trends towards technology-worship and thought control, we may get something like the Matrix. The only differences between the movie and the real future may be these: that it will be “run” by Humans instead of machines, and that the Carrie-Anne Moss analog will not be wearing fancy leather costumes; said togs having been banned as being both sexist/degrading to women and an offence against Animal Rights.
Too bad. One can’t have everything, I suppose.
Your servant,
Lord Karth
15 Comment by roho on 19 March 2008:
Nothing ever continues unless it is “Duplicatable”, and can be passed on from one generation to another. Unfortunately, common sense is not always duplicated.
Role Reversal has taken out the only tool our Founding Fathers gave us to control Leviathan. That would be the power of the individual through a vote that found itself with other votes to create a majority decission. “The United States Incorporated” has eliminated one of those votes by telling the citizen that “Collective Bargaining” is wrong, while simultaneously creating the largest “Unions” in history within the Government itself! (NEA, etc.)……….The greed of corporate America was controlled for decades by the true working man that co-existed beside his peers in his own country, while producing and buying goods from his own peers……….Now Leviathan has it’s own Employee Base with an attitude of “It’s us against the peasants!”
Labor Unions were sold to the American people as being “Marxist and Anti-Free Trade” while Leviathan formed it’s own. Boycots are a distant memory of the past as only the elderly can remember when “Outsiders” that grew coffee were told to get their prices in line or we would stop buying coffee!…..Now, we send our children to their deaths for Leviathan in overseas wars, while happily stimulating the Chinese economy down at Walmart. Our elected criminals laugh at us and call us bigots if we threaten to withold our vote from them, as their Corporate Obligations trump our miserable little vote!
So, here we are. Part of the largest labor union in the world watching it merge without our permission with other Federal Unions, and still claiming that “Collective Bargaining” is communism and we are free!……………………..Yea, like free trade is free.
16 Comment by C Bowen on 19 March 2008:
Gov. Huckabee who played the role of the New Deal populist in the present charade, as a matter of policy, wanted to widen I-95 from Bangor to Florida, displacing by eminent domain, thousands of home owners and increasing the flow of goods to Big Box stores and ‘tourists’ in cars to new destinations a little bit faster, I suppose, in theory.
I don’t know if this was a put up job to confuse the masses in light of the topic at hand, the NAFTA Superhighway(More Roads for some, fewer roads for others?) but it does remind the observer of this era that it was Ike, following FDR, who unleashed the abomination of the Interstate Highway System, if under the guise of national security (the absurd and imagined threat of a land invasion?) rather than New Deal ‘public works’ garb, or 19th Century Whig/Republican mercantilist cum nationalist language.
Of course, the end result was all the same only the slogans they change.
Thus I feel some satisfaction that, as Dr. Fleming noted, we live in an Era that did not elect FDR and seal the fate of the Republic; nor do we even live in an era of Ike style national security nationalism.
And truth be told, if its widening I-95 or building a big highway in the West, which should a Mainer choose?
17 Comment by robert reavis on 19 March 2008:
My Lord @13 writes : “Absurdist humor at its VERY best !! So why not enjoy what can be enjoyed ?”
Yes indeed, and thanks for reminding me of all the possibilities in “redeeming the times.” Your unworthy servant of the Realm —of the Cookoo’s Nest.
18 Comment by James Newland on 19 March 2008:
Daniel, read the Creature from Jekyll Island, by G. Edward Griffin.
19 Comment by B. Scott on 19 March 2008:
The primary concern in this article appears to be the fate of the nation-state in the midst of electrified regression.
All borders are open. The Internet ensures that. If you don’t have to leave your hometown, you have adjusted to the global environment, which has become, as Marshall McLuhan said some decades ago, a village.
The nation-state remains intact.
If sovereignty resides in the individual, what are you?
Technology as a restorative force: Conservatives have to like that!
20 Comment by Thomas Miller on 19 March 2008:
B.Scott
You’re another miserable troll trying to poison the air in this discussion board with your idiotic attacks on the “proletariat” (yea, like THEY are the ones who hold power in this country); and now, conservatives who won’t get with the gloablization program.
Please go back to the miscreants at the Cato Institute forum in whose company you belong.
21 Comment by Haywood Hale on 19 March 2008:
ditto Thomas Miller – B. Cato rather B. Scott just touched a new bottom, pardon the pun. Scottie tissues you know on Wall Street… stock plummeted and touched a new bottom, and started to rise… amidst buying and selling pressures. I kid. There’s enormous power in the victim Role; no power in being the Actual victim.
So those in the ‘know’ about this always are “sensitive” to being sure the actual victims aren’t seen.
Get it? …
Really (you get it?) – if so go into politics or work on Wall Street (no sorry that’s closed – to outsiders.) Sorry. We’re the ‘victims’ though. Sorry. Maybe in another life…you have your beliefs, at least. Good for you! Keep on, keeping on… Right on! … dude.
22 Comment by Brutus on 19 March 2008:
“All borders are open. The Internet ensures that. If you don’t have to leave your hometown, you have adjusted to the global environment…”
B. Scott, you really are still in High School, aren’t you?
Using your “logic,” a man living in the 19th century could have said the same after becoming aware of the telegraph.
23 Comment by Brutus on 19 March 2008:
Oh yeah, B. Scott, how is the market doing?
Tell us, should we invest just a fraction of our life savings or all of it?
If some of you are puzzled by my asinine comment to B. Scott here, I am reminding him of something that came up in another thread. He told everyone not to worry, just invest in the markets and everything will be hunky dory.
24 Comment by NGPM on 20 March 2008:
“Only a good scout like Ron Paul (or Pat Buchanan before him) could sincerely believe that the erosion of sovereignty is an issue that will arouse the American electorate to cast off the chains of the party state that tells them how to treat their spouses and rear their children, whose children to reward with benefits at the expense of their own, and what to eat and where to smoke a cigar.”
Dr. Fleming, four years of your indoctrination has had more effect than I would ever have imagined. When I first emigrated I had every intention of registering with the U.S. embassy; two and a half months later I realised I had forgotten to do so. Yesterday I looked it up and found that I could register online, and I was reminded of what I already knew: the theoretical advantage of registration is to allow them to know where you are so that in the event of an upheaval they must account for you.
At that moment I exited the web site. Just seeing in print that the U.S. government would be able to track me turned me completely off. I’ll take my chances with the political situation here than ever take any chance that my own government might get its hands on me.
“At least since the time my voice changed, I have known that I do not live in a free country: What I know about republican liberty I have learned from books.”
At the moment I live in the ultimate Republic and while I consider it far freer than the United States if by “freedom” we mean freedom to do most things productive and/or uplifting with one’s life, I have had enough of republican “liberty,” and for that matter “equality” and “brotherhood.”
25 Comment by Big M on 20 March 2008:
Daniel, here’s another excellent read about the Fed:
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm
26 Comment by B. Scott on 20 March 2008:
Brutus @23 & 24:
“Using your “logic,” a man living in the 19th century could have said the same after becoming aware of the telegraph.”
Yes he could.
“Oh yeah, B. Scott, how is the market doing?
Tell us, should we invest just a fraction of our life savings or all of it?”
It’s doing what it’s suppose to be doing. If you think it’s destined to go down, you can always short the market. As far as how much one should commit, a fraction of your savings is always the best. It’s just common sense.
27 Comment by B. Scott on 20 March 2008:
Thomas Miller @21:
“…like THEY are the ones who hold power in this country…”
Enlighten me.
28 Comment by TJF on 20 March 2008:
I had not intended to say anything in response to B. Scott’s comment, but he persists in exposing himself–a sort of ideological flasher. His wooden head aside, it might be useful to unpack the argument, which is a set of superstitiously held assumptions that infect all too many victims of public schooling.
To begin with, note that he has not understood the argument or its context, and, although he has no broader understanding of what the issues are or what the writer intends, he rushes in to say what the argument is–reducing it to his own level of absurdity–which he thinks he can easily refute by trotting out a few cliches borrowed from the Austrian School’s set of bubblegum cards.
He is apparently astonished or outraged that once upon a time rich people died, some of them quite young. Here is some news: Everybody still dies, even the rich, and some of the rich and famous have a bad habit of dying young, precisely because they have followed the progressive/hedonistic ethic of living for today and caring nothing for either ancestors or descendants.
This mistake grows out of a more fundamental mistake, which is to suppose that, because we can shoot off missiles or build computers, we know more about what is important in human life or lead better lives. Naturally, to evaluate this assumption we would have to look at rates of suicide, depression, drug-abuse, crime, child-molestation, rape, etc. Figures are not always reliable or easy to come by, but no one who knows anything would actually believe that the statistics favor life in the new millennium.
As some sort of liberal-libertarian, he apparently believes that happiness is a question of making money and that so long as money is being made in the market, we have no right to complain about anything else or even to try to understand what is happening to our world. Unfortunately, he throws his argument away when he says that one can simply short the market, if it is likely to go down. Obviously, in such a play there are winners and losers. When markets are steadily rising, investments are not a zero-sum game, but when they go down, some people do in fact lose: They have to. As for selling the market short, i wonder if he knows how much money is out their in derivatives from American markets. I don’t have the figure, but it is many many times the GDP of the US, which means if there is a collapse, it will be worse than the collapse that led to the Great Depression–and for a similar reason. Reckless investors in the 1920’s were speculating on the margin, and today the big players all went to the school of Nick Leeson.
Mr/MS B Scott aside, the article was not a lament for the passing of the nation state but an attempt at a hardboiled analysis of what is going on. The nation-state, as i took pains to point out, is not a universal precondition for human happiness but a political form that evolved over the past 500-700 years. Man can live without nations, but can he live without family, community, political identity in one great anonymous global market. To judge by the cultural poverty of the US, the self-abusive lifestyles of the middle and upper classes, and the ignorance and lack of intelligence displayed by B Scott, we cannot.
29 Comment by B. Scott on 20 March 2008:
Brutus @24:
“He told everyone not to worry, just invest in the markets and everything will be hunky dory.”
I never said anything even remotely close to that. One point I was trying to make, in other line of discussion, was that self-reliance is more virtuous for a conservative than always blaming or being dependent on the government. Investing, not speculating, is just one option available for those who agree.
If you’re going to paraphrase me, be respectful, get it right.
30 Comment by Haywood Hale on 20 March 2008:
Hey I liked TJF’s post so much I got to say well here is again. My rabbi said anything worth reading once is worth reading at least twice. I’m smarter than my rabbi, but I agree- I’m trying to get him to become a Christian – he will. He is already. Or maybe next life. But in this life I’m Christian.
(Quote of TJF):
I had not intended to say anything in response to B. Scott’s comment, but he persists in exposing himself–a sort of ideological flasher. His wooden head aside, it might be useful to unpack the argument, which is a set of superstitiously held assumptions that infect all too many victims of public schooling.
To begin with, note that he has not understood the argument or its context, and, although he has no broader understanding of what the issues are or what the writer intends, he rushes in to say what the argument is–reducing it to his own level of absurdity–which he thinks he can easily refute by trotting out a few cliches borrowed from the Austrian School’s set of bubblegum cards.
He is apparently astonished or outraged that once upon a time rich people died, some of them quite young. Here is some news: Everybody still dies, even the rich, and some of the rich and famous have a bad habit of dying young, precisely because they have followed the progressive/hedonistic ethic of living for today and caring nothing for either ancestors or descendants.
This mistake grows out of a more fundamental mistake, which is to suppose that, because we can shoot off missiles or build computers, we know more about what is important in human life or lead better lives. Naturally, to evaluate this assumption we would have to look at rates of suicide, depression, drug-abuse, crime, child-molestation, rape, etc. Figures are not always reliable or easy to come by, but no one who knows anything would actually believe that the statistics favor life in the new millennium.
As some sort of liberal-libertarian, he apparently believes that happiness is a question of making money and that so long as money is being made in the market, we have no right to complain about anything else or even to try to understand what is happening to our world. Unfortunately, he throws his argument away when he says that one can simply short the market, if it is likely to go down. Obviously, in such a play there are winners and losers. When markets are steadily rising, investments are not a zero-sum game, but when they go down, some people do in fact lose: They have to. As for selling the market short, i wonder if he knows how much money is out their in derivatives from American markets. I don’t have the figure, but it is many many times the GDP of the US, which means if there is a collapse, it will be worse than the collapse that led to the Great Depression–and for a similar reason. Reckless investors in the 1920’s were speculating on the margin, and today the big players all went to the school of Nick Leeson.
Mr/MS B Scott aside, the article was not a lament for the passing of the nation state but an attempt at a hardboiled analysis of what is going on. The nation-state, as i took pains to point out, is not a universal precondition for human happiness but a political form that evolved over the past 500-700 years. Man can live without nations, but can he live without family, community, political identity in one great anonymous global market. To judge by the cultural poverty of the US, the self-abusive lifestyles of the middle and upper classes, and the ignorance and lack of intelligence displayed by B Scott, we cannot. (end quote.)
Excellent post TJF…
el’Ditto.
______
31 Comment by Brutus on 20 March 2008:
B. Scott claims I disrespected him by my paraphrase. He claimed that a true conservative should welcome the deindustrialization of America because he should have the wit to live off the markets. I trust everyone here has read enough of his comments concerning the “markets” to see that it is not a bad paraphrase.
Yes, self-reliance is always better, B. Scott. However, it would be a big plus if America did not completely deindustrialize as you advocate. After all, a man needs SOMETHING to work with. Delivering pizzas or serving food is most likely NOT going to result in too much “self-reliance.”
32 Comment by Eagle on 20 March 2008:
Dr. Fleming,
Thank you for an excellent piece.
Also, thank you, Ambassador Bisset, and Dr. Trifkovic, and others for your recent efforts in Canada regarding Kosovo. The fools in Ottawa decided to do the wrong thing anyhow. As a Christian and as an American, I am glad you defended Christian civilization, and as a Serb, I am touched that you took up “our” cause.
I don’t have a complete grasp of the history, but it does indeed seem to me that the world was a better place when we had a Bavaria, Prussia, Holsweig, and so forth living near a Venice rather than, say, a Germany and Italy. I could be quite content with a Raska, Sumadija, Vojvodina, Banat, and Kosovo without Serbia – if the world were different. But I am absolutely depressed by a European super-state “giving” the heart of Serbia away to a bunch of barbarians who even now persist in emptying southern Serbia of Christian peoples and Christian legacy. I cannot even call these barbarians “backward”. They are in fact “forward”. The progressives of “Europe” believe so. I wish they were all a bit more “backward”, frankly speaking.
The usual Balkan satrapies peaked out from behind the apron this week and “recognized” the local bully that mama and papa told them was now a co-equal. Those unfashionable Serbs, however, continue to get themselves killed because they just cannot, as the clueless American minister of state told them, “accept reality”. You see, they are “backward”. I personally do recognize reality – the one that Aldous Huxley foretold; so, I say, God bless those savages.
33 Comment by Thomas Miller on 20 March 2008:
b. Scott @ 28
If you actually believe that the likes of truck drivers, construction workers and machinists own this country, then you are so hopelessly deluded that there is no point in trying to “enlighten” you…
34 Comment by NGPM on 21 March 2008:
“Man can live without nations, but can he live without family, community, political identity in one great anonymous global market.”
Dr. Fleming, your lamentations of the present “order” are all fully justified, but here’s a tougher question: what about those of us who grew up without or with only a few flashbacks of traditional family, community or real political identity? At the risk of dishonoring my parents–they did all they knew how to do in the turbulent and National Review-laced 1980’s and 1990’s–culturally speaking my upbringing has been by and large meaningless. Do we just find a wholesome niche and insert ourselves in? I’ll attest here and now that it’s not so simple. I did not grow up with anyone that I could even remotely stand now and even if I find acceptance in a tight group of divine friends I am doomed to be something of an outsider. I know a few other people who feel the same way–who, regrettably, are geographically very distant.
Maybe there is no answer. It’s always harder to propose a positive alternative than to denounce a negative state of affairs, but it is necessary. We can’t leave the Earth without leaving something positive behind, namely children who grew up with at least some scrap what we should have had.
35 Comment by TJF on 21 March 2008:
I agree entirely with “Eagle” that the nation-state is not necessarily the best form of political order and that independent or autonomous smaller nations and regions are more creative. The tiny city-states of Sumer, Greece, and Italy gave more to civilization than all the imperial states put together. He is also correct in saying that the nation-state is vastly preferable to the regional empires and global state that awaits us. As for the Serb “savages,” I used to say, 25 years ago, that the hope of the American people lay in the rednecks and hardhats who never went to college. Unfortunately, those people were all too willing to depend on government, and their children have become wiggers. I suppose the upper middle class country-club Republican kids should be called Whiggers.
I sympathize with the plight of NPM and to a great extent share it. Man is, however, more resilient than we might imagine, and even the most degraded of us retains a spark of what the Creator infused into us. We are all like the children of kings being raised in a degrading hovel, waiting for some word from our father, who will restore us to the life we were born for. From time to time we receive hints and even messages. Then, the first question to ask is: What are the experiences that lead us out of the darkness and into the light? For most of us it may be stories, music, painting, history, and perhaps also the experience of a less-spoiled world. At 16 I was as confused as anyone today, but I read constantly, both English fiction and some of the ancient classics. As an atheist I knew little of the Bible, but I did read a book of Bible stories a pious sister had given me. I loved music but also loved fishing trips in the wilderness. All these experiences were helping to shape an alter-ego that eventually replaced the creature made by public schools, pop music, movies, and TV.
Another group of positive experiences are the celebrations and liturgies that give a hint of a joy that passes human understanding, while stilll another is the making of friends who share something of your “quest”–though I would be very careful about this.
Finally, to conclude this little sermon, it is important to beware of false gods and idols–conservative ideology, nationalism, free market economics, racism, anti-semitism, do-gooding, etc. The problem with NR conservatism was not so much that it was false as it was inadequate and set far too low a standard. Readers were invited to admire mediocre prose and simplistic arguments, and in admirng a WFB novel they became incapable of appreciating even Raymond Chandler, much less Walter Scott or Homer.
This does not really solve the problem, I know, but here is one last hint. There was a time when we could speak of “saving” the country or even a part of it, like the South. The model would then be the Confederate army or the Byzantine soldiers inside Constantinople or the good emperors. But what happens when Rome or New Rome has fallen to the Goths or the Turks? Then our role becomes quite different. Some might be able to set up shop in some out of the way place like Trebizond, but others need to keep the flame alive more as missionaries, scholars, poets. St. Benedict offers one good example, but the Byzantine patriarch Gennadius ofers another–he prayed, studied, and watched his flock after the Turks had destroyed almost everything.
This is a burden, I must add, that it is almost impossible to bear. I have watched how in one generation decent Americans have lost their children and children to mass-culture. It is, however, a burden worth bearing, and if it is lighter and more pleasant to bear it in France or Italy, then by all means do so. I used to ridicule the American expatriates of the 1920’s. Now I regard them as simply premature. But, if conservative ideology is a trap, so is aestheticism. It is, indeed, pleasant to sit in St.Sulpice between masses as the organist plays that magnificent organ and then slip out for a good coffee before browsing the book stalls along the Seine, thinking about an excellent dinner. Certainly more pleasant than reading the collective wit and wisdom of Messers Brookhiser and Goldberg, but do not let these pleasures stand in the way of reality. Better to do your best rearing a family in the suburbs than turn into a second-rate Glenway Wescott. Nonetheless, my French friends seem to be doing a far better job of rearing children than most of my American friends, and their lives are incomparably more pleasant.
36 Comment by pablo H on 21 March 2008:
Dr. Fleming thanks for the great post (s). My wish is much more simple (and maybe simplistic). I wish conservatives would:
1) Turn off the TV and stop subsidizing -and being influenced by – an alien entertainment “Industry” which is in fact their enemy.
2) Understand that culture and ideas matter and impact our lives
3) Stop expecting the current US education industry to educate your children and pass on the ideas of western civilization. Do it yourself or find the right kind of private school.
37 Comment by Edward on 21 March 2008:
Isn’t this problem of cultural vacuum created in part by an American, libertarian concept of freedom and individualism?
Modern life looks disdainfully on tradition and instead prefers that every man start from scratch and fight like hell to create his own life and reality. My generation views living within a local culture as far too simple and constricting. They opt for a selfish hedonism that is bred by the belief that freedom is an end in itself to be attained at the expense of even goodness and truth.
Its also very difficult to find continuity and culture when you live down the street from Hindus, Muslims, atheists, and are friends with non-practicing Catholics and you happen to be a Catholic who takes his faith seriously. There is almost a sort of monasticism that characterizes this life, and when living in a country like America, communities quickly dissolve into people of the same income brackets rather than of the same traditions. This life becomes especially difficult for parents who, instead of rearing children within a community characterized by neighbors who share the same traditions and histories, must practically wage war with the world outside their front door in order to keep their children from falling into the same isolated amorality that is so common.
38 Comment by NGPM on 21 March 2008:
My life at the moment is organised verbatim along the lines of Dr. Fleming’s prescription more or less verbatim. I suppose then that I ought to stop whining and, especially considering it is Good Friday, be thankful for the fact that I perhaps have a shot at not going to hell.
“This is a burden, I must add, that it is almost impossible to bear.”
I have thought about that preservationist vocation more than a few times. It is not simply that the burden is difficult to bear, it is that I know someone needs to do it and I wonder, given my nurturing in the barbarism of consumer culture, whether I even have the raw material to participate. And of course the need to support myself and, hopefully, soon start saving to build a household precludes the possibility of devoting much time to self re-education.
“Turn off the TV and stop subsidizing -and being influenced by – an alien entertainment “Industry” which is in fact their enemy.”
When I casually mentioned a woman I had no intention of allowing my children to watch the accursed porno box, she responded, and I kid you not: “Oh, but you have to let them watch TV. Because otherwise they get stigmatised and made fun of at school.”
The problem with Pablo’s suggestions is not that they are too simple. It is that most people are simply too idiotic to understand simple truths.
39 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 21 March 2008:
Fortunately the American people who avoid big cities and their Edges are more resilient. Unlike the Mexicans, with their capacity for seeminigly limitless ability for suffering, they possess an instinct for survival that transcends college education and sucking up to political elites. Their revolving doors do not concern switch hitting between brain trusts and spin-doctory as is cool with the “elites.” The vast sea of red will concentrate on cleaning things that need it, fixing broken machines to keep their local economy running, and eventually starting small shops to make products they need and to employ their kin.
There’s hope out there, so don’t be discouraged by short-term greed and stupidity.
40 Comment by NGPM on 21 March 2008:
“do not let these pleasures stand in the way of reality. Better to do your best rearing a family in the suburbs than turn into a second-rate Glenway Wescott.”
The counterpart to that is not to let Jansenist rigourism, which I have noticed is as much a temptation for young disaffected Americans as aestheticism, stand in the way of pleasure. (And while we’re on the subject of France, it bears remembering that both Gallicans and libertine perverts share responsibility for that country’s downfall.) But of course you know this, and as you suggest, raising a family in an American suburb can seem almost as hopeless as searching for meaning in the life of an aging bohemian (its counterpart today being the “leftover hippie”).
“Modern life looks disdainfully on tradition and instead prefers that every man start from scratch and fight like hell to create his own life and reality… This life becomes especially difficult for parents who, instead of rearing children within a community characterized by neighbors who share the same traditions and histories, must practically wage war with the world outside their front door in order to keep their children from falling into the same isolated amorality that is so common.”
That’s the grand irony of it all: in the contemporary United States, it is the hedonist reality that is the culture and tradition, and those searching for something more meaningful are the ones who must fight to tear down the existing order.
A viable strategy is to center one’s adult life around the Catholic Church and the nearest decent pub. I have made it a point that convenient access to both of these things is an absolute prerequisite to any movement I make in the future.
41 Comment by NGPM on 21 March 2008:
And another thing: if anyone does happen to emigrate, avoid other Americans abroad like the plague. Dr. Fleming’s mockery of the Lost Generation was not without reason.
42 Comment by T. French on 21 March 2008:
‘A viable strategy is to center one’s adult life around the Catholic Church and the nearest decent pub. I have made it a point that convenient access to both of these things is an absolute prerequisite to any movement I make in the future.”
This is good advice. I would also advocate forming a small group of trusted friends and learning how to brew beer and or make wine. Much good fellowship to be had and you will gain practical knowledge of one or two great traditions of the west.
One of the problems that foster the unreality and escapism of our current deracinated lives is being unable to obtain the most basic needs of life for ourselves. Being able to cook, garden, raise some form of livestock, drink home brew and enjoy good company is good salve for the terrifing dependancy we have been lulled into. If you can confront and succeed in solving some of the basic problems of life independently or with a band of fellows, the higher problems of culture might look a bit less overawing.
43 Comment by Allen Wilson on 22 March 2008:
Here’s what I’ve been contemplating between bouts of working so much I have little time for much of anything else:
1. Plant some fruit trees on a piece of land inherited from my grandfather so they’ll be bearing fruit or about to start doing so if and when I start living there.
2. Drill a well and install an old-fashioned hand pump.
3. Download and store a lot of old out of copyright books (with few exceptions, the only ones worth having nowadays are all old and out of copyright) from Google and elsewhere, such as the 1911 Brittanica, great works of literature, old Greek and Latin textbooks and all the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, English and Southern literature and histories I can find, and in case the electricity goes out for an extended time:
4. Make sure I have dry, secure storage for the expensive books I have bought over the years, then cull the ones without enduring value.
5. Find a solar source for charging batteries or otherwise powering equipment, so I can still use Dr Fleming’s ‘History and Literature of the Ancient World’, and some other audio resources, if and when when the ‘lectric goes out.
6. Fix a good garden spot on that land.
7. Find some means to build a house there that will withstand storms and not be too susceptible to fire.
8. Get back to fishing and hunting at least enough that I can catch fish and shoot straight again.
9. Get all the tools and implements I’ll need for whatever I might need to do, and warm durable clothes in case Penney’s or the evil Wally World cant supply our needs or we cant get there.
There are other things I’ve been considering, but there’s no need to blather on. This isn’t crackpot survivalism, it’s just forethought; however, we may all do well to learn a bit about self-reliance skills from some survivalist publications.
I’m an Arkansawyer and a Southron born and bred. Where else would I go to make my stand? When it’s all said and done, I’ll be preaching the gospel of Dixie till I die, even if I’m the last one left to do so and no one listens or has enough sense to understand.
I’ll tell my kids, if I can ever afford to have any, the story my other granddad used to tell me on the front porch, the one his maternal grandfather told him on the porch when he was a child, about how soldiers used to wrap salted meat up in cloth and tie it to their leg, and how, when he was at Chickamauga, a yankee bullet tore the meat and his entire pant leg off, and never touched his leg.
I sure will miss my German beer, though, and the occasional cheap French wine that no self-respecting Frenchman would ever drink, and my cheap imported olive oil that no self-respecting Greek or Italian would ever use for anything.
Even so, a nice trip to Europe before the hard times come would be nice, and I’d spend it in the Cathedrals and libraries and museums and at the monuments and on the battlefields.
44 Comment by robert reavis on 22 March 2008:
Mr. Wilson,
You speak well of the permanet things. Reminded me of this poem by Thomas Hardy. Happy Easter to you and yours.
In Time of ‘The Breaking Of Nations’
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
– Thomas Hardy
45 Comment by Son Of A Devil Dog on 23 March 2008:
My dear departed father, who won a bronze star with a combat V on Okinawa, hated FDR. One of his favorite witticisms about Roosevelt, was “I have seen waahr, and I have seen Eleanor…I prefer waahr.” Government duplicity never ends. I miss the Old Marine
46 Comment by Brutus on 23 March 2008:
“My dear departed father, who won a bronze star with a combat V on Okinawa, hated FDR. One of his favorite witticisms about Roosevelt, was “I have seen waahr, and I have seen Eleanor…I prefer waahr.” Government duplicity never ends. I miss the Old Marine”
It was said by people who knew FDR intimately that, since he was crippled himself, he hated healthy and robust men. It is not hard to imagine men who are confined to wheelchairs secretly harbor a resentment that can approach hatred towards men who can walk and enjoy life AND LOVE AND SEX. Moreover, I also understand that his wife liked young “studs.” This, also, doubtlessly could have fueled his zest to see young men maimed and killed.
We generally, out of decency, do not mention this probable disposition, but it may occasionally bear contemplation and honest consideration.
47 Comment by NGPM on 24 March 2008:
I stand by my opinion that Americans abroad are in general to be avoided, but if Mr. Wilson or any other remaining true Occidental wishes to see Europe, there’s a modest Parisian flat to accomodate them…
48 Comment by NGPM on 24 March 2008:
And save some luggage space for raiding the used bookstores.
49 Comment by Michael Ezzo on 28 March 2008:
Like you, Nicholas, I’m on the eternal search for some
definitive cultural structure for myself.
The Catholic Church is (as it is for you and others)
my cherished home away from (our ultimate) home.
The ultimate irony of America is how the very same
freedom of choice that leads to the niche-style
interests that weaken communal
ties, simultaneously provides some of the antidote — home schooling is one example.
This choice is not available in countries where
stronger group ties prevail. In order to be a productive community member one must often suppress choices and freedoms.
How much are we willing to give up? What elements of community are worth sacrficing for, and which ones aren’t? Is it even possible to have strong communal ties simultaneous with the myriad individual choices that new technology facilitates?
50 Comment by W. James on 8 April 2008:
Kudos to Dr. Fleming, our “voice crying in the wilderness.” To effect change, we will have to go outside the political process. The State has two pillars: the military and the banking system. While the military is not my target, a military boycott would create an intolerable situation for the State. Men could simply not enlist or re-enlist. If a draft were reinstated, we could be conscientious objectors and not bear arms. A boycott of the banking system would create another intolerable situation for the State. We could simply withdraw our money en masse –a run on the banks– and thereby precipitate economic paralysis. These actions are legal and moral, and would provide the necessary leverage to persuade the State to meet our demands.
51 Comment by Ron Q on 9 April 2008:
You’re all a bunch of unpatriotic conservatives! How can we swill beer and stuff our faces with popcorn while the Republican Party needs our help? What would Rush say? Get with it you guys.