One Nation Under Obama
by Thomas Fleming
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Barack Obama has kicked off his “Patriotism Tour” with a speech that is designed to depict the candidate as a thoughtful man who has meditated long and hard upon the history of our country and the meaning of patriotism. In fact, it reveals him for what he is: a knee-jerk Marxist who has swallowed hook-line-and sinker the academic left’s reinvention of America and its contempt for what the rest of us would call patriotism. It also reveals an inane duplicity that I had hitherto thought impossible in anyone not named George Bush.
Senator Obama is well aware that the patriotism issue does not favor his side. His transparent lack of patriotism is made even more glaring by his wife’s flippant dismissal of her nation’s virtues—until, of course, the arrival of her husband on the national political scene—and by Wesley Clark’s ham-fisted dismissal of Senator McCain’s military service. Most Americans, including many who loathe John McCain almost as much as I do, do not like to hear attacks on the military record of men who have served their country in war and who have been tortured by their country’s enemies.
In something of a jam, then, Obama has gone on a tour whose title is less reminiscent of a military campaign than of Madonna’s “Blond Ambition” tour. He begins with the familiar leftist platitudes about the American Revolution. The tough New England yeomen who left their homes in 1775, according to this myth, were not fighting “on behalf of a particular tribe or lineage, but on behalf of a larger idea. The idea of liberty. The idea of God-given, inalienable rights. And with the first shot of that fateful day – a shot heard round the world – the American Revolution, and America’s experiment with democracy, began.” Etc. etc. They must have been reading “The Declaration of Independence”–or, rather, they must have been the true author’s of the screed that Jefferson signed some 15 months later.
Obama does well to ignore the real men who fought at Lexington, because they were on a mission to prevent the British authorities from seizing the weapons they had stockpiled in anticipation of the outbreak of the revolution they had been plotting. Even the gun nuts at the NRA would probably not like to defend a band of reactionary farmers who were prepared to fight to restore their traditional liberties. They might even have said their chartered liberties, though today we would invoke the constitution and not our states’ colonial charters.
Perhaps we should not blame the Senator too much for his ignorance of any American history that cannot be reduced to ideological slogans about equal rights. He is a victim of his education. Who was there, either at Columbia or at Harvard Law, who did not believe this booshwa? But his professors, at least, would not disguise the fact that they hated the real America represented by either Yankees or Southerners or that they rejected the whole notion of patriotism as Neanderthal. When Alisdair MacIntyre even raised the question in the title of his essay, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?,” he was defying the academic establishment.
Then what, for this “man of mixed race, without firm anchor in any particular community, without even a father’s steadying hand,” is patriotism, since it obviously cannot be the pre-rational love of blood and soil? The answer is that “it is this essential American idea – that we are not constrained by the accident of birth but can make of our lives what we will.” Among these accidents of birth, of course, are such trivial details as who our parents are and in what country we are born. From Obama’s point of view, his Kenyan father should have just as much right as he does to be elected President.
So then, does patriotism mean turning our backs on our families and our people to march boldly into a future determined by ideological abstractions? Apparently. “Patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it is also loyalty to America’s ideals – ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion.” Note the “always.” A dumb WASP who loves the country his ancestors fought and died for cannot even be regarded as a lower kind of patriot. Rather, he is one of those retrograde social elements that Marx and Engels wanted to wipe off the map of Europe.
Like every other unreflective leftist in the world, Obama knows he is on the right side of history. This means, among other things, that he knows what conservatives and Christians believe better than they do. You must have all had the experience. Backed into a corner, the leftist always says, “a real conservative would support a ban on killing seals,” or “a real Christian would see Gay Marriage as an affirmation of the institution of marriage.” For this reason, Obama cannot cut any slack to us knuckle-dragging chauvinists and insists that all of us “can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.” Just as mere Christians cannot have a monopoly on Christianity, and just as (so he has also declared) we could not make an abortion policy on the basis of one faith or of all faiths, so people who love their country have no monopoly on patriotism . Quite simply, Christians and conservatives do not have a perspective on anything, because there is only one legitimate point of view—the point of view of Barack Obama and the rest of the anti-American Marxist Left —that needs to be considered.
In the real United States of America, where patriotism was still a virtue and where people were expected to know their country’s history, Obama would never have made it to the Illinois legislature. In Reconstructed and occupied USA, it will be amazing if he is not made dictator for life.
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1 Comment by Bob on 1 July 2008:
Brilliant, Dr. Fleming. Thank you.
The book links are helpful as well.
2 Comment by MAP on 1 July 2008:
Great article Dr. Fleming. It drives home the point that no matter whether Obama or McCain win, we lose. That groaning and creaking I hear must signal the coming collapse of another empire. God help us.
3 Comment by dwright on 1 July 2008:
What absolute dreadful choices are being offered up as candidates this year. God help us either way, but then again, maybe this is what we deserve. (At least some deserve).
4 Comment by Rob on 1 July 2008:
TLF Writes :”
He begins with the familiar leftist platitudes about the American Revolution. The tough New Englanders who left their homes in 1775, according to this myth, were not fighting “on behalf of a particular tribe or lineage, but on behalf of a larger idea. The idea of liberty. The idea of God-given, inalienable rights. And with the first shot of that fateful day – a shot heard round the world – the American Revolution, and America’s experiment with democracy, began.” Etc. etc.etc.
Dr. Fleming,
Have you considered writing speeches for Obama and McCain ? Mrs. Fleming could then boast of your wise words on liberty to her “important friends , you could obtain your own corner blog, become a patriot , spread freedom for a few years and retire to your own global village or prosperity Island, writing a few lines for the Times in your leisure and, according to the script, live happily ever after — having betrayed your friends and loved ones for the god of abstractions.
5 Comment by Tom Piatak on 1 July 2008:
Great analysis of a dreadful speech. I can well understand conservatives who will not vote for McCain. I cannot understand how anyone claiming to be a conservative could even consider voting for such a leftist charlatan as Barack Obama.
6 Comment by Red Phillips on 1 July 2008:
What is eerie is how closely Obama’s neomarxist conception of America as based on philosophical abstractions matches the conception of so many deluded self-identified “conservatives.”
7 Comment by Red Phillips on 1 July 2008:
“I can well understand conservatives who will not vote for McCain. I cannot understand how anyone claiming to be a conservative could even consider voting for such a leftist charlatan as Barack Obama.”
Amen!
8 Comment by Patrick Hall on 1 July 2008:
“What is eerie is how closely Obama’s neomarxist conception of America as based on philosophical abstractions matches the conception of so many deluded self-identified “conservatives.”
__________________________________________________
America, today, IS “neo-Marxist”! Furthermore, at it’s foundation, it was “proto-Marxist”.
There is nothing delusional about it. The United States of America was built upon The Enlightenment; there is nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING traditional nor conservative about the United States, it’s founding, or it’s history. It is only the remnants of conservatism among the people that populate the country that prevents the United States from hurtling faster towards it’s Marxist goals. As the people have been “re-educated”, the speed of “progress” has increased.
9 Comment by Sean Scallon on 1 July 2008:
The sad thing is that any neocon could have made the same speech. It’s almost as though his whole campaign has been to diffuse any kind of issue they could possibly use against him in the vain hope it would leave the commentators on FOX News sputtering. We’ll see.
Many historians and academics would love to have you believe the average soldier is filled with the abstract ideologies in which he is supposedly fighting for and would spout them as one would the chapter and verse of the Bible and would have you believe such acts of heroism are based such causes.
Well the soldier knows better. When asked why he kept fighting the Yankee despite all hope of final victory lost the young Southerner replied “cuz y’all down here.” It’s that simple and that direct. Those who gave their lives for an “ideology” only found themselves dead in the snow in the vast Russian steppe or before the stone wall at Fredericksburg. Even Lincoln knew, that his “one house” ideology would ultimately fail unless it was masked over with a “higher cause”. No doubt the Communist cause in Russia was helped when Whites used foreign troops and aid for their side. Blood and soil has proven throughout to be a more powerful force than mere ideology ever will be.
10 Comment by Red Phillips on 1 July 2008:
Patrick, I disagree with your assessment, but to what end do you make your argument? Why not cling to those conservative elements among the people that even you admit exist?
Do you want to abolish and then refound the US on different grounds? If so, then that is even more romantic and Quixotic than us paleos who want to restore the Old Republic, and our quest is admittedly both those things.
11 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 1 July 2008:
Mr. Hall — I understand somewhat of where you’re coming from, but…really?
When Dr. Fleming makes reference to the “traditional liberties” the men at Lexington fought for (paragraph 4), I suspect he is referring to something that long preceded the Enlightenment.
12 Comment by Patrick Hall on 1 July 2008:
Mr Phillips – indeed, I do cling to those conservative elements among the people. As for abolishing the US government, I have no need to do so; it will abolish itself – that is the very nature of a government not founded upon the Kingship of Christ.
Mr “Rublev” – indeed, the traditional liberties for which men fought at Lexington are something quite different than the “liberties” inspired by The Enlightenment, codified in the US Constitution (among other documents).
13 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 1 July 2008:
Piatak: “Great analysis of a dreadful speech. I can well understand conservatives who will not vote for McCain. I cannot understand how anyone claiming to be a conservative could even consider voting for such a leftist charlatan as Barack Obama.”
Agreed. Better to vote third party or not at all.
14 Comment by TJF on 1 July 2008:
I agree completely with Patrick Hall that America’s experiment in Marxism was not begun yesterday and that the Enlightenment/Jacobin tradition has been an important influence in building this national state, but–and this is a rather large but–it is a grave mistake to speak of the origins of the United States as a project or a propositional nation in the Lincolnian sense. There is no foundation of America. There were colonies scattered up and down the Atlantic littoral, and when they found themselves in conflict with the mother country, they seceded. To justify that secession in Europe, they had recourse to the common ideological propaganda of the day–the language of Selden and Locke. Who took Mr. Jefferson’s piffle seriously, I do not know. What I do know is that a careful study of major figures in the “Revolution” and the early Federalist period–Adams, Washington, Henry Laurens, the Pinkneys, Lighthorse Harry Lee, Gouverneur Morris–would reveal no common ideology, much less a project to transform society. Parallel results can be reached by reading the debates over the Constitution or by looking at sociological studies that indicate the conservative and familial basis of 17th-18th American society.
There is, I know, an argument going around Catholic circles to the effect that the American founding is illegitimate because it was spawned by the Revolution. Some of the people propounding this thesis are quite nice intelligent people who, alas, know too little of American history to make such generalizations. But it is typical of the frivolous and immature American mind that we love to grasp at gaudy novelties that enable us to dismiss all serious study and consideration of evidence. This argument has been put forward several times on our website, without a scrap of justifying evidence or even citation of a reliable source. Pace Lewis Carrol’s Bellman (recently cited by a federal appeals court), what you say three times is not true. If Mr. Hall wishes to make a rational and documented case for this basically leftist argument, let him make it. Otherwise, he should defer to the wisdom of older and better men like Prof. Wilson.
15 Comment by TJF on 1 July 2008:
PS Although there was an element of knavery in Massachusetts, they had legitimate grievances against a government that was aggressively asserting itself at the expense of longtime traditions and of the Charter itself. The Coercive Acts had been passed the previous year, and these measures eliminated home rule in MA, removed cases from MA’s legal jurisdiction–a recipe for murder, so thought Washington–and closed the Port of Boston. It is a long story that used to be familiar to Americans, but it was this long train of abuses that inspired the rebels of 1775-6 to rise up, and not any infatuation with the rights of man. I am in no way arguing that the American Revolution was a good idea–I have Tory ancestors on one side–or that the American system is divinely appointed or even especially good. But we get nowhere with a priori pronouncements. And, to be frank, I am a bit weary of my fellow-Catholics complaints. If they don’t like it here in a post-Protestant country, they are free to leave to find happiness in post-Catholic France.
16 Comment by Patrick Hall on 1 July 2008:
But THERE IS a foundation of the United States of America. Chronologically, it was March 4th, 1789. The foundation of the United State government, as it is today, is the United States Constitution. The foundation of the United States as an independent entity was the Declaration of Independence; it’s foundation, in turn, were the philosophies of The Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, further, had it’s origins in, of course, Original Sin – to quote Milton: “non serviam”.
“America” as a land and people, there was no foundation. You are correct; America, in 1776, was nothing more than “colonies scattered up and down the Atlantic littoral.” The bulk of the Americans that wanted independence from [illegitimately] Hanoverian ruled England did not, indeed, have any plans to “transform society”. However, there WAS a group that did, and they had influence, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, etc. It is THIS foundation of the United States that has led us to where we are today.
At the end of the war in 1783, what was the legitimate government? As stated, the illegitimate government of Hanoverian George III was thrown off. Was the legitimate executive Charles III (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”)?
No, the fact is, there was no legitimate authority in America, outside of the heads of the families that settled the land. Each and every male householder was, from the very beginning, the legitimate “king of his castle”. Every man that worked the land was it’s owner, not any king, nor his governors, nor winners of a land “lottery”, etc. America, at least the parts that were unsettled, was free for man to settle, and rule over his own household. American men fought and died not for some “proto-Marxist” ideology of Thomas Jefferson, but their own property, their own families, farms or merchant shops. Only from this groundswell of the people could the traditionalism in their hearts be harnessed to bring about a Social Kingship of Christ; not through any central government based on principles of the Enlightenment, nor through an illegitimate King George III, nor through an out-of-touch King Charles III, but through the men whose boots were on the ground of America.
The male heads of families, tribes, clans, whatever you may call them, are the legitimate rulers of America, and only they have the ability to turn towards Christ and His Church to save America.
17 Comment by Rob on 1 July 2008:
Patrick says :
“The male heads of families, tribes, clans, whatever you may call them, are the legitimate rulers of America.”
But, half of them are without hearth, home or spouse, 25% are spending their inheritance on wine, girls gone wild and song, the rest are just wasting their money on politics, video games and blogs.
18 Comment by TJF on 1 July 2008:
I fear the case is hopeless. If Mr. Hall would pontificate less and read a bit more, he might be prepared to learn something. Instead, he apparently thinks this website is a debating society rather than a school. Admitting the facts or at least some of them, he insists upon returning to his errors. If he would read Jefferson and not simply the “Declaration,” he would find a man devoted to his kin, his state, and the classical tradition–the opposite in nearly every respect of that ignoramus Tom without a country Paine. To describe the author of Notes on the State of Virginia as a “proto-Marxist” is to display an effrontery and ignorance that is as invincible as it is vulgar.
The Constitution did not “found” a country; it merely provided the contractual basis for a federal union, hence its freedom from ideology. It was not Plato’s Republic, only a practical consensus on how to conduct the common business of the states.
The remarks on “legitimacy” are even more befuddled. There is a point of which according to which no Hanoverian king was legitimate so long as there were claimants directly descended from Charles I. There is another point of view that declares the choice of king to lie in the hands of parliament. There is a third that, while acknowledging the dynastic claim of the Stuarts, acquiesces in a usurpation that had lasted from the expulsion of James II down to the coronation of George III. What Mr. Hall’s position is cannot be discerned from what he is written, except that he is “mad as hell and is not going to take it any more.” But being mad as Hell or even inviting the Church to save America are not arguments. They are feelings, if even that. Whatever makes for legitimate authority, it does not come either out of a barrel of a gun or out of the mouths of babes denouncing this wicked and unfair world. What made Nero a legitimate ruler? And if he was, then what made Vespasian and his sons legitimate? Yet Christians were told to obey the emperors. Why? Because they were illegitimate? This sort of abstract discussion of real people is worse than foolish: It is tedious. Enough.
19 Comment by TJF on 1 July 2008:
Rob makes a good point. If even 10% of these aspiring patriarchs would clean up their own lives and do their duty, it would be a revolution more fundamental than the installation of Joseph Ratzinger as Il Papa Rè degli Stati Uniti.
20 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 1 July 2008:
One may make the case with considerable conviction that the American “Revolutionists” were counter-revolutionaries against innovations by the British ministry. Colonists almost always change more slowly and are more conservative than the imperial center. When Jefferson wrote of the need for a little revolution now and then he was making a reactionary, not a revolutionary statement—society needs sometimes to revolve back to its earlier principles, shedding the distorting accretions of time.
Of course, if the ultramontanists had their way, there would never have been any America to be patriotic to.
In making the necessary exposures of the young iman we need to take care not to drive people into the arms of McCain, of which I already see some signs.
21 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 1 July 2008:
I am quite sure my ancestors who fought in the Revolution (one being murdered by Tories) did not think they were sacrificing to serve the wretched refuse of the earth.
22 Comment by TJF on 1 July 2008:
Prof. Wilson is exactly right about the counter-revolutionary nature of the revolution. My one precision, as they would say in France, is that the Massachusetts boys were a little duplicitous and plotting rebellion for some time. But none of the American leadership seemed to have desired political or social innovation. I am removing Mr. Hall’s most recent post without banning him altogether at this point. His passionate declarations about what he believes and does not believe can hold little interest for anyone other than a mother or devoted friend. He will not take the trouble to learn from those who can teach him and he is wasting altogether too much time.
In saying, as he does, that Nero was legitimate because he was adopted by Claudius, he neglects to mention that Nero’s dear sweet mom had her husband/uncle Claudius bumped off to make way for sonny boy. When Nero was murdered by supporters of Galba, who was bumped off by Otho who was defeated by Vitellius (and committed suicide) and Vitellius removed by Vespasian, the fact of power was determined by the army but the aura of legitimacy was conveyed by the Senate’s approval, even though a rubber stamp affair.
Legitimacy is one of those difficult questions that have puzzled the wise for many centuries, and it is not a question I propose to answer by snap apodictic responses. I brought up the question in response to a trivializing claim about monarchy. I am not, by the way, denying legitimacy to Nero, only asking questions in the hope of teasing out a coherent and pertinent answer. I have failed.
23 Comment by TJF on 1 July 2008:
PS I should have stated clearly that in legal terms Nero’s accession was decided by the Senate. The Romans never really acknowledged a right of succession, though in the principate it was usually assumed that an emperor would nominate a successor, either his son or a worthy man he adopted. But if the successor turned out to be someone like Caligula, Domitian, or Commodus, someone was sure to engineer his exit.
24 Comment by james on 1 July 2008:
@8Patrick Hall
America became marxist with the influx of marxist oreintated immigrants at the beginnning of the 20th century. Marxist immigrants started placing bombs on wall street then later with there increasing influence in virtual monoploy of the film industry and media started portraying covert marxist oriented themes in film and TV. Themes like multi-culturalism, praising of immmigrants and white guilt over the slave trade.
The early movie studios like Edison or D.W. Griffith were very different for what came after them.
@9Sean Scallon
Actaully I think money and media is more powerful than any army.
The Neocon movement is not just a bunch of foreign policy advisors in the Bush administration. They encompass professers in univerities, historians, journalists, editors, etc
It was the exact same with communism. Years before the so called Russian revolution in 1917 Lenin and his crew were given safe passage throughout Europe and given safe passage throught the European capitals.
In fact these Necons should be called Neo communists as they are former communists whose ideas are not conservative at all like supporting open immigration.
25 Comment by Red Phillips on 1 July 2008:
The language of the Declaration was clearly unfortunate. I have heard it suggested that part of the point of that language was to curry favor with French intellectuals whose help we would need. Don’t know how true that is. But it is nice to see someone recognizing that Jefferson was a much more complicated person than many of his detractors or supporters seem to understand.
26 Comment by Brock H. on 1 July 2008:
I must also heap more criticism upon Patrick Hall. The French Revolution was fought on behalf of the ideals of the Enlightenment and of a secular materialistic creed which gave birth to Marxism a few decades later. Americans did not fight that kind of Revolution, and hence America was not built as a Marxist state. What rubbish is he reading?
27 Comment by jamesvkruse on 2 July 2008:
I have to cringe whenever I hear or read people talk about John Locke or the Enlightenment having a big impact in America in the last quarter of the 18th century. From what I’ve read, the biggest arguments in the Constitutional Convention were made on behalf of ancient Greece, Rome, the history of England, and the history of the colonies. Locke and the Enlightenment figures were hardly mentioned at all. The only 18th century figures mentioned much were Montesquieu and Hume. Though Paine was popular in America initially, Burke eventually won their little debate as well as the hearts and minds of most Americans. People like Mr. Hall would do well to read books like Kirk’s, “The Conservative Constitution.”
28 Comment by TJF on 2 July 2008:
I don’t wish to be hard on Mr. Hall. He is sincere and passionate, and it is certainly true that either side of the debate on the American origins can be overstated. My late friend Russell Kirk went a bit overboard in defending the conservative nature of our revolution–but going overboard is often a necessary corrective. Where I think both he and his hero Edmund Burke went astray was in their defense of the Glorious Revolution. If we may set aside the facts, as Rousseau recommends for a moment, the GR has one serious drawback as the foundation of any conservative ideology in that it represented a daughter’s rebellion against her father, the invasion of the Dutch, and the betrayal of their sovereign by senior officers like the treacherous Duke of Marlborough. The best men on either side of the English Civil War were more principled than anyone involved in the GR, and to put betrayal at the center of legitimacy is like making Cain the founding figure of the human race. (This is not place to go into James II’s manifest deficiencies, much less into the naive defense offered by Belloc.)
Politicians then as now respond to the pressures put upon them. Then it was the major interests of their states; today it is lobbyists. We have been told that Jefferson was a “liberal” and, therefore, the founding was liberal. Since liberal is not used to refer to the political ideology of liberalism until the 19th century, Jefferson could not be, strictly speaking, a liberal. But, since the early liberals shared many opinions of the Enlightenment, Jefferson might be a liberal in the sense that Locke and Smith are proto-liberals. Certainly, in his naivete about the French Revolution, his faith in his own considerable intellect, his idealistic skepticism in religious matters, Jefferson has a strongly liberal side that would appeal, say, to Ronald Reagan, a liberal tinged with a strong dose of Marxism. But he had another side that can be glimpsed in the affectionate and serious correspondence with nephews, his chauvinistic view of Virginia and North America, his reactionary insistence on Greek and Latin and contempt for progressive calls to abandon the classics. Try to think of Jefferson as a brilliant grandfather with whom you have serious disagreements but deeply admire.
TJ himself said that he had not consciously borrowed from Locke, but the ideas of natural rights were–alas for our country–in the air. But so were the ideas of Marx in, say, the 1890’s, but how many people in the villages of Britain and the US adhered to Marxism? Very few. The problem comes, eventually, when the notions of the professors are filtered down to the dumbhead level of highschool teachers and newspaper editors who eventually transmit them to their victims. By steps easy to trace, the revolutionary ideas of one generation’s intellectual elite become the platitudes of another generation’s middle class. One can read the papers of the revolutionary generation’s leaders and scarcely find a trace of the Enlightenment, in deed, far less than in their British counterparts. They were provincials and provincials are never in the avant-garde. In Nova Scotia, to take an example, Scottish Gaelic was preserved though it was virtually lost in Scotland. Similarly, many fine old Medieval customs and ways of looking at the world were preserved and even revived in America. One may deplore the alleged violence of the American frontier, but at the same time we should acknowledge its links with the world of Beowulf and the clan wars of Scotland. Even as late as the 1870’s, the mind-set of the James brothers or John Wesley Hardin is closer to that of the Black Douglas than to a New York banker’s.
I learned, decades ago from Prof. Wilson,, not to turn history into ideology but to dig deeply into the textures of everyday life, to grapple with the character of a people–often better done by reading poetry and fiction than by reading later history books. When feminists and Marxists write nonsense about English history, no one who has read, say, Fielding, Austen, and Trollope can fall for the lies. I think it was CS Lewis who once dismissed modernist theories about Milton by pointing out that he as a Christian and as a “humanist” (someone trained in the classics) understood Milton’s world because he belonged to it. To understand the world of early 19th century America, we can train our minds on Fennimore Cooper and WG Simms.
I am hoping that Scott Richert will contribute a piece on Obama’s speech, viewed from the perspective of his discussion of the credal nation.
29 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 2 July 2008:
“…not to turn history into ideology but to dig deeply into the textures of everyday life, to grapple with the character of a people…”
I consider myself duly reproved. Thanks to both professors Wilson and Fleming. This has been a profitable discussion.
30 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 2 July 2008:
When I hear Mark Levin’s anti-Obama rant on the radio last night that ended up in a bakchanded endorsement of John McCain and Tom Fleming’s astute analysis of why Obama is evil and anti-American(aren’t all lefties?), I am almost frightened that the US might not get its just dessert in January 2009. Say it ain’t so.
31 Comment by John Zander on 2 July 2008:
Great article, Dr. Fleming, thanks. Plato might approve of B.O. though not Aristotle. Plato might approve of Marx though not Aristotle. Aristotle understood that there were such things as derivatives of truth i.e. 1/2 truths, 3/4 truths (i’m not sure which is worse) that made them seem true but were often worse (if accepted as truth) than untruths. This is part of the plight of a credal nation for example in wanting to forget or dismiss that even if something may be (potentially) true given the human factor, it is not or may not necessarily yet be true per se unless both true (potentially) & actual (or fact). Plato, in behalf of the elevation of us mortals wanted to imbalance in the direction of imagination or that which is true possibly or potentially regardless of the facts, or the ensuing belief’s actuality. Aristotle wanted to continue in the pursuit instead of a fuller development of the reality of truth. That’s an unfinished project in both Greek philosophy and to this day in subsequent Western philosophy which, whether we realize it or accept it or not still moves us all around the board culturally in terms of our beliefs and subsequent behaviors. Aristototle was correct & for example MARX did not elevate; though neither does the other derivative of truth, capitalism, or worse today state capitalism. Let’s all look at our wristwatches; that’s where we’re still at in time/history.
Plato did elevate due to how he developed, what he set out to believe was true making his derivative as all-sided as possible; and when in tandem with the more steadying and completed Aristotle it was quite a duo, and has been down through the years.
But we yet SUFFER perhaps inevitably due to where we all are in time, the confusion and mistaken identities of derivatives of truth i.e. 1/2 truths, 3/4 truths mistaken for the truth, often with no ‘elevating’ effects but at our profound peril. That really has been the story of the 20th Century in particular and it continues on today incarnate in these two (in many regards really twin) candidates. Only a Hillary Clinton v. Ron Paul contest would at least provide and underscore actual contrast.
32 Comment by robert m. peters on 2 July 2008:
Dr. Fleming:
Your words:
“The problem comes, eventually, when the notions of the professors are filtered down to the dumbhead level of highschool teachers and newspaper editors who eventually transmit them to their victims.”
Your quote brings back my father’s words to me, words spoken about forty years ago by a man who was well read and well traveled, although his “formal” education ended with a high school diploma and his travel was the result of WWII – England, France and Germany – and his training – cement mason – which sent him all across America, Canada and Mexico.
Late in the fall of my freshman year at college, while riding home with him on either Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday, he asked me what I had learned. I began to expound on some of the same notions and ideas which Mr. Hall has represented, having been presented them by the learned folk of the college. After listening patiently, my father then said, according to my memory, “Son, people who believe and act on such ideas are dangerous, be careful of them and that you don’t become one of them.” I asked him what he meant. He said that it was one of those things a man just knows and that such things got him, Uncle Charlie and Uncle Bobby sent to Europe where Charlie was wounded, Bobby was killed and he was away from home and scared. I am not sure that there was much more to the conversation on that topic; and, if so, I do not recall it; but that part has stuck with me. Over the years, I have come to understand; and the brief outline which my father provided about two-score years ago has now acquired substance. Those people, the “One Nation people,” remain as dangerous as ever. Among the tasks which I and others have is to avoid becoming one of them.
33 Comment by Rob on 2 July 2008:
TJF writes : (This is not place to go into James II’s manifest deficiencies, much less into the naive defense offered by Belloc.)
Oh, please , Dr. Fleming. Why must you always offer these mild correctives to one of the english speaking world’s finest writers. He reminds me so much of you that the comparison is almost without limit. He kept the crowd at the door, just as you have, for a generation. ( shouting, ” women and children go first.” )He knew exactly where to rub the sore spots of his detractors and reveled in doing so and then watching them howl.
He could write better than most folks while standing on his head, or pounding glasses of Montrache at the English Village Inn while composing Latin verse on a napkin. What is more nobody reads him anymore and if they did, would be scandalized with everything except his Cautionary Tales for children. Please let the good man rest in peace and indulge one of your Okie admirers by abstaining from any more criticism of this Great Man from Sussex who dictated Walmart biography in his spare time for money to a hapless and starved audience of poor, English, Catholics.
34 Comment by CCH on 2 July 2008:
Dr. Fleming:
I have a question. How does one square the devotion to ‘blood and soil’ message with the Gospels? How can we both be rooted in family and land and also the pilgrims on earth that is asked of us in the Bible?
I mean, are you saying that the “blood and soil” message is actually an integral part of the City of God, or just a sound basis for shared Augustinian peace between the City of God and the City of Man? Or merely a preferrable basis for running the the realm of Caesar than the jumble we have now?
I am genuinely interested in understanding your thoughts. This is not a question meant to trap anyone. I have a strong sense of the validity and value of both of these impulses but it is challenging to relate them.
CCH
35 Comment by Dave Kamka on 2 July 2008:
So this appears to be our country’s lot: 8 years of a half wit with a Messianic world view followed by a half wit with a Messianic world view. As a life long Illinoisan, I remember when Obama was referred to as “the maid” by Democrat leader of the black caucus in the Illinois legislature. He was a standing joke, a laughing stock, and now he is likely a few months away form becoming “Field Marshall and President for Life, Dr. El Hajji Barrack Hussein Obama”. Will he be as a big a joke as Amin? Oh well, I suppose a country developing a 3rd world culture and 3rd world ethnicity should have a 3rd world leader.
36 Comment by John Zander on 2 July 2008:
CCH,
ANSWER to your querry:
“If we cannot love what we see, how can we love what we do not see?” -jesus
I’d also posit best reason Aristotle is slightly above plato. … though – We all love a horse race.
I’d like to race TJF. I’d lose but benefit from the comparison.
I never listened to him on tapes or watched him only read him. thus i have no actual idea who he is.
i want to give him the benefit of the doubt – since you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
i still don’t know if we’ll ever meet. i don’t like to meet people much.
i’ve improved upon shakespeare:
‘meeting is such sweet sorrow.’
[i wear the bells... i'm the court jester.] … when they put the bells on you, you can’t kill no birds, they hear you coming. but conversely you ain’t supposed to hurt the jester. however if you do, please at least make me laugh.
i prefer no place if it’s not the same one.
does that also answer your question.
i hope not.
[no more posting from me for a week...] i’ve posted too much even with the bells on.
now for some REAL fun.
37 Comment by CCH on 2 July 2008:
John -
Your first sentence is outstanding.
Perhaps, then, ‘blood and soil’ is indeed a specific embodiment of the point of departure for shared peace between the City of God and the City of Man. Even in the City of Man, many people care about their families and lands. And, in the City of God, as you say, it is from them that we learn how to love and at least taste in an embodied way God’s faith, hope and charity.
Our families and our lands, then, would also be the constitutional interest that should be embodied in our government. For the government to claim to embody the supernatural virtues of ‘charity’ or ‘hope’ would be trying to put new wine into old wineskins at best, false prophecy at worst. For it to embody some other competing ideology would make it un-’constitutional’ in Calhoun’s sense of constitutional. In either case, whatever its rhetoric sounds like, it ceases to be constitutional if it ceases to practically embody the interests of blood and soil and preservation of associated society.
38 Comment by Sid Cundiff on 2 July 2008:
I thank Dr. Fleming for stealing my thunder. The so-called “Glorious Revolution” needs a revisionist in the way Thomas DiLorenzo revises Dishonest Abe and Richard Gamble revises Woodrow the Worst.
The English historians John Miller (*1946) and Tim Harris are a start. I welcome other reading suggestions.
For now: If Americans in 1776 were “counter-revolutionary”, were they counter the Revolution 1688?
39 Comment by TJF on 2 July 2008:
Rob is aware that I am very fond of Belloc, but he wrote too much and with too little study. In this he was very much like his friend Chesterton, but unlike Chesterton, who had an unerring instinct for the sane, Belloc–perhaps it is his French side–runs to extremes that blind him to ordinary truths, like the ordinary truth that Robespierre was a monster. Nonetheless, he is an invaluable corrective to the past two centuries and a great source of pleasure to his readers.
CCH’s question is too important to be answered briefly. Let me respond indirectly by saying that I have written two books showing the convergence of pre-Christian moral thought onto a plane below that of Christianity but which is an indispensable basis. Taken out of context, many of Christ’s provocative statements might be interpreted as a rejection of marriage, family, and patriotism. Another set of statements could have the opposite effect. In coming to fulfill, not overturn the Law, He (so I believe) took for granted what Jews and Pagans of the first century all took for granted. Some extremist Christians–Judaizing pharisees on the one hand or Montanists on the other–claimed His authority for rejecting what I have called “the morality of everyday life,” but the early Church repudiated their views as heretical. I am thinking of a book to be called, “City of Man, City of Satan,” in which I would take up a challenge implicitly offered by Augustine, who sometimes tends to denigrate the uses of, for example, the Roman Empire. What the pre-Christian world had, at its best, were the foundations on which the Church could be constructed–respect for life, love of children, a sense of justice, etc. What we have done in rejecting Christ and his Church is not to go back to paganism–far from it–but to undermine those indispensable foundations and on the ruins of the Church to build the City of Satan. At some other point, I would be happy to discuss any of these matters in detail, and in the sequel to Morality I am taking up the bonds of love and hate implied by kinship and friendship and their opposite. Indeed, that was the original subject of my last book until I decided to carve out a part of it to use as preface for what I am doing now.
40 Comment by Rob on 2 July 2008:
Tom Fleming at #39 writes :
“What the pre-Christian world had, at its best, were the foundations on which the Church could be constructed–respect for life, love of children, a sense of justice, etc. What we have done in rejecting Christ and his Church is not to go back to paganism–far from it–but to undermine those indispensable foundations and on the ruins of the Church to build the City of Satan”
Belloc on “The Great Heresy –the Modern Attack”:
” Men sometimes call the modern attack “a return to Paganism.” That
definition is true if we mean by paganism a denial of Christ’s truth: if
we mean by Paganism a denial of the Incarnation, of human immortality, of
the unity and personality of God, of man’s direct responsibility to God,
and all that body of thought, feeling, doctrine and culture which is
summed up in the word “The Faith,” then, and in that sense, the modern
attack is a return to Paganism.
But there is more than one Paganism. There was a Paganism out of
which we all came_the noble, civilized Paganism of Greece and Rome. There
was the barbaric Paganism of the outer savage tribes, German, Slavonic and
the rest. There is the degraded Paganism of Africa, the alien and
despairing Paganism of Asia. Now since, from all of these, it has been
found possible to draw men towards the universal Church, any new Paganism
rejecting the Church now known would certainly be quite unlike the
Paganisms to which the Church was or is unknown.
A man going uphill may be at the same level as another man going
down hill; but they are facing different ways and have different
destinies. Our world, passing out of the old Paganism of Greece and Rome
towards the consummation of Christendom and civilization from
which we all derive, is the very negation of the same world leaving the
light of its ancestral religion and sliding back into the dark.”
41 Comment by Patrick Hall on 2 July 2008:
I have been purged.
Just what I would expect from a Liberal American.
Good riddance. I don’t even know why I bother.
Screw the United States!
42 Comment by TJF on 2 July 2008:
Well, there you have it. When a kid cannot get his way by shouting, he proceeds immediately to insults and curses. I suppose this is what he learned in some nice Catholic college his well-meaning parents sent him to. Tomorrow, the Pope will get the same treatment and then it will be every Pope since Pius X, and then it will be the unfeeling God who did not consult him when he laid the foundations of the earth. Poor parents, poor children, poor country.
43 Comment by Rob on 2 July 2008:
Patrick,
Why do you moan about not having all your posts published ? If I were to figure a percentage of my posts that Dr. Fleming allows to see the light of day it would be below 50%. But as he says, “This is not a debating society or a stream of conscience immitation of James Joyce’s Ulysses.” I just figure it is like playing basketball for Coach Bob Knight and if he doesn’t kill you, or run you off, you will have learned a great deal from a genius whos bark is much worse than his bite. Besides, I can’t stand the emotional types posing as “great americans” living off the fat of their founders like National Review, or that yawning feeling I get from reading The Strictly Standard ( I mean the Weekly Standard ) or that hopeless sentimentality of Worst Things ( I mean First Things ) So why feel bad about having no place to lay your head, when it is the same for all of us . Cheer up . I actually admire your tenacity in the face of a more tenacious teacher. Stick around and quit complaining, Tom doesn’t suffer fools patiently and these days, we are all foolish sometime or another.
44 Comment by bent on 2 July 2008:
there are some fine points being made, but as we speak they (?) move forward.
when does the talk stop ?
45 Comment by Horace Grady on 3 July 2008:
A real American Conservative would fight with every fiber of his and her being the economic and racial dispossession of the majority Eruopean American population. Race replacement is incompatible with being a conservative European American.
White American Women who marry outside of their race must be disowned by their parents.
46 Comment by Horace Grady on 3 July 2008:
Barack Obama is hell-bent on race-replacement. If he is elected, Amnesty will have a very good chance of being passed -if the republicans are kicked out of the congress.
If Amnesty is passed, you should expect an open declartion of war against White American men by the corporate media. You should expect a much greater and more vicious expression of in-your-face racial nationalism from Hispanicis,Asians and Africans.
European Americans if they are to survive as a significant racial majority in America are going to have to fight back in unrlenting,merciless and take-no-prisoners manner.It will be a time when THE MEN will be separted from the boys.
I declare both Republican and Democratic goverments illegitimate and void. Do not give your allegiance to the Federal Goverment.
I think the situation is far worse than most people realize.
47 Comment by MGB on 3 July 2008:
I have to agree with Horace Grady’s comment that “the situation is far worse than most people realize.” And I would submit his two comments at 45 and 46 as prima facie evidence of either the complete decay of American education or the idiocy of allowing internet access to those confined to mental institutions. Keep posting Mr. Grady, your comments provide proof for the rest of us.
48 Comment by Horace Grady on 3 July 2008:
Yeah ,well the spelling was pretty bad in those two posts. But the essential idea is correct. If the fight against racial dispossession is not fundamental -along several other basic ideas-to American conservatism, than American conservatives are just pushing another version of “America, the proposition nation”.
Change the racial composition of America and America will no longer exist. Is this what philosophers call the intensional meaning of a word?
Barck Obama is a mighty serious threat to the Euro-American majority. His wife will be the number one cheerleader for OUR racial annihilation. I don’t know if she will maintain her composure as she leads the cheer for OUR racial annihilation through post-1965 non-white immigration. But she will be well dresed with white gloves and evening gown as she leads the cheer. However, voting for little John McCain is no defense agianst this very serious threat.
49 Pingback by Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture | Your Home for Traditional Conservatism » Church and Nation: A Credal Nation, Part 3 on 3 July 2008:
[...] the heart of Barack Obama’s “Patriotism Tour” speech (discussed recently by Dr. Fleming and Dr. Trifkovic) lies the concept of credal nationhood. In the previous two installments of [...]
50 Comment by MGB on 3 July 2008:
Re: post 48.
I have a lot more in common with an African-American who attends Latin Mass and who can trace his lineage back to pre-Revolutionary America than I ever will with a blue-eyed Albanian narcotrafficker. But keep pressing the racial aspect as it provides a good laugh. And try spellcheck sometime. It’s free.
51 Comment by MGB on 4 July 2008:
Who else is laughing “beside” me? No one, as I sit in the room by myself. If you meant “besides” then I know not whom, for I am not aware of others laughing at your seventh grade prose. That is what I am howling at. Some of your arguments make sense, but your writing ability turns most of what you “hunt and peck” into hysterical Klan-speak. If you took off your hood you might be able to read your crayon rough draft better before you type it into your 286.
52 Comment by michigander on 4 July 2008:
African-Americans who attend Latin Mass? That must be a significant demographic.
53 Comment by TJF on 4 July 2008:
I would like to have a vote on who is more stupid and offensive, the hysterical and dyslexic bigot Horace Grady on this thread or the hysterical and bigoted anti-racist Shahin on my previous piece. Since South Africa was a “racist” regime, he is arguing, that justifies the ANC’s terrorism. May I suggest to Shahin that he go to South Africa and do a little humanitarian aid to the re-oppressed natives. But he should make sure that his parents have tickets bought in advance so that when they go too tell his murderers they forgive them, they can have the 14 day advance price. Go way, both of you, and play with people your own age.
54 Comment by TJF on 5 July 2008:
In what sort of laboratory do they manufacture people like HG? He is like one of those zombies imagined by Louis Farrakhan or the editors of Commentary, a living refutation of every claim to superiority advanced by Western man. The best part is his manners. He blunders onto the website of a magazine that was fighting the immigration battle before he was born and now wants to lecture its editors on the threat of Third World immigration. The worst part of this is that here at home I do not have the capacity to edit my column and must get up and go to the office. My Lord, what we have fallen to in this country. And what a choice we have between the Shahins who hate us because we are European and the the Gradys who hate everything because they love nothing, not even the Great White Race which they disgrace.
By the way, I think I know the black Latin Mass Catholic MGB was describing, and there are several in my own parish. Human life is strange and cannot be reduced to one dimension, whether it is race, nationality, religion, or even intelligence. Poor Mr. Grady has a family somewhere, probably, and friends and perhaps even harmless interests like illustrated novels or building model cars. As a wise man once wrote:
When the felon’s not engaged in his employment/Or maturing his felonious little plan,/His capacity for innocent enjoyment/Is just as great as any honest man…When the enterprising burglar’s not a burgling,/Or maturing his felonious little plan,/He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling/As much as any honest man/…
55 Comment by TJF on 5 July 2008:
My two columns on political questions that involve race are an illustration of why it is virtually impossible to discuss such matters today. On the one hand, we are assailed by globalist-leftists who want us to shed tears over the fate of colonial Africans whose conditions have been vastly worsened by national independence. On the other hand, we have the marginalized young men who want to strike out at anyone who will not support their own liberation movement–whose members it is more polite not to describe. As Sam Francis–far from being sensitive on any of these issues–used to say, we can only discuss race, immigration, etc., if “we keep the brownshirts out.” As an amateur student of anthropology, I am familiar with the phenomenon of the peripheral male, but it is a sad thing to contemplate in our own people.
56 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 5 July 2008:
Dr. Fleming, in my experience those you describe are people who would have been participating in civil rights protests a few years ago to enforce equality on other people, and turn white supremacists only after they are personally affected in some way.
57 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 5 July 2008:
Dr. Fleming I don’t remember Shahin, but Horace Grady is offensive enough for me. Thank, and God bless you for discouraging his ilk from poluting your website. It amazes me how people cannot distinguish between a reasonable candidness towards obvious racial differences on one hand; and outright bitter hatred of all but one’s own kind on the other. Or maybe they can distinguish. They know you are of the former persuasion, and they descend on this site in order to convert you and recruit you to the latter one.
58 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 6 July 2008:
Pardon my French. but I see little difference in character between Yankee egalitarians and Yankee white supremacists. They are both self-centered, short-sighted, hypocritical, and abstraction-mad. The only difference is the latter can’t afford safe neighbourhoods and private schools.
59 Comment by John Zander on 6 July 2008:
#58 “…They are both self-centered, short-sighted, hypocritical, and abstraction-mad. The only difference is the latter can’t afford safe neighbourhoods and private schools.” -Clyde W.
Yes the latter, the abstraction-mad must *imbalance in that direction for their release of endorphins, the brain’s natural painkillers…to compensate them for finding out their short-sighted, & hypocritical leaders fed them to the dogs.
We all need [thanks God and mother Nature] our natural processes such as endorphin release – some of us being aware of it, as well as the need for civilization – don’t get as sadly bamboozled as the abrstractionists.
What’s the best reason to be a conservative – we say bite the bullet, don’t eat it imagining it’s a biscuit. In other words wipe the clouds [abstractions or pretty lies] from your eyes – it ain’t so bad out here, then. If enough of you idiots will STOP doing that bogus stuff. They’re already planning your next war – since it feeds you that imagery you crave.
60 Comment by NGPM on 12 July 2008:
“I can well understand conservatives who will not vote for McCain. I cannot understand how anyone claiming to be a conservative could even consider voting for such a leftist charlatan as Barack Obama.”
No one in any of my social circles has had the audacity to admit to me that he voted for McCain in the primaries or intends to vote for Obama in the general election. I am told one of my cousins supports the latter, but I have not even seen that fellow in about three years.
An Obama presidency will easily seal the fate of the rapidly degenerating U.S.A., which given the harm we have spread to the world since rebelling against the British crown would be a welcome end, except that in this case it represents a total devastation of the general population rather than a simple political upheaval.
May God have mercy on my children, that they be born and raised on foreign soil.
61 Comment by NGPM on 12 July 2008:
@58: Not every white supremacist is descended from old-stock New England Puritans–or, arguably, even has any meaningful ancestry. Dr. Fleming writes of Mr. Grady that perhaps he “has a family somewhere, probably,” but nowadays you can never frankly be sure. There are many in my generation who do indeed have families and even well-meaning and hard-working yet completely deracinated families. It is that latter that is the key to understanding this all. Most young, white Americans do not have a real community in which to seek refuge. (I seriously doubt anyone here would suggest that West Coast strip malls and suburbs actually resemble real towns or places.) If they are lucky, they’ve got their parents’ culturally sterile McMansion and a little cash. To be caught dependant on this tenuous lifeline is a dangerous thing especially given the volatility of the present economy, and white nationalism, perverse as it may be, at least has the attraction of appearing to take action about a very serious problem, and as the memory of Hitler fades into the past it can scarcely be discounted as “spent.”
In the 1960’s Catholic and Jewish children rebelled against their upbringings and became Marxists. In the 1980’s they became disgusted with SDS and joined the GOP as [literal] neo-conservatives. The present leftist resurgence clearly lacks the thrust and substance of 1960’s radicalism and may just represent a last gasp after all. In the next few years we may well see an increasing number from my generation succumb to the White Nationalist virus. The present state of affairs and the inevitable harm our incumbent leaders will do point in that direction.
Frightening times indeed. Choose your poison.
62 Pingback by Fleming on Obama and Patriotism « The Vermont Traditionalist on 12 July 2008:
[...] http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=656#more-656 [...]
63 Comment by Robert Alpert on 17 July 2008:
I have never understood what was “left” about Obama–I am always puzzled by the way it is used by conservatives. Jean Jaures E.P. Thompson for that matter Arthur Scargill count as left– take them or leave them. Dr. Fleming is much more on target when he compares Obama to the loathsome Madonna (Blonde Ambition), in fact it is the best characterization of the Obama campaign I have come upon. The detestable cohort that Dr. Fleming describes as anti-American Marxist Left I believe are better viewed as moral narcissists (to crib Robert Penn Warren’s phrase) –largely Northerners and descendants of the racist northern abolitionists — who as Warren observed (and as Dr. Fleming I think observes) believe they hold the key to the “treasury of virtue”.