Founding-stock heritage
0 comment Sunday, May 11, 2014 |
In this discussion of Jared Taylor's new book, this comment appeared:
15 � highduke wrote at 10:33 AM on May 14:
Unless the British founding stock get a sense of identity, destiny & cohesion as a distinct group first, most of them will remain sceptical to WN. Italian-Americans like Tancredo, Borzellieri, La Bruzzo & DeAnna in politics and David Chase & Tom Fontana in entertainment are great allies but the movement needs more Becks, Nugents & Dobbs. A generic White identity must be established & promoted along with WASP identity within US WN. Taylor should make WASP identity the subject of his next book.''
Well, I agree with 'highduke' that the founding stock should, perhaps must, regain a sense of 'identity, destiny, and cohesion', but I sometimes despair of that happening. Founding stock Anglo-Americans are like amnesiacs; many don't know that they are descendants of English colonists, and others know but don't care, calling themselves 'just Americans.' Others are indoctrinated to see their ancestry as something for which they need to apologize. And there are many other Americans who hold founding stock Americans responsible for our predicament.
Promoting WASP identity is something that I think would be good; why should it not be good? I've done a little of that kind of promoting here, with very mixed, limited results. For some reason it's very controversial to promote Anglo-Saxon heritage. It's too exclusivist, it's elitist, it's divisive, so the arguments go.
I've thought about starting another blog which would be exclusively devoted to Anglo-American heritage and history, though I might only attract a handful of readers along with a certain amount of antagonism, but I may still go ahead, regardless. I think it's a worthy project, if only for my own personal satisfaction.
The comments by 'highduke' quoted above seem to tie in with this essay by New England writer H.P. Lovecraft, in 1915. Please note: the idiosyncratic spellings are his.
Americanism
by Howard Phillips Lovecraft
It is easy to sentimentalise on the subject of "the American spirit"�what it is, may be, or should be. Exponents of various novel political and social theories are particularly given to this practice, nearly always concluding that "true Americanism" is nothing more or less than a national application of their respective individual doctrines.
Slightly less superficial observers hit upon the abstract principle of "Liberty" as the keynote of Americanism, interpreting this justly esteemed principle as anything from Bolshevism to the right to drink 2.75 per cent. beer. "Opportunity" is another favourite byword, and one which is certainly not without real significance. The synonymousness of "America" and "opportunity" has been inculcated into many a young head of the present generation by Emerson via Montgomery�s "Leading Facts of American History." But it is worthy of note that nearly all would-be definers of "Americanism" fail through their prejudiced unwillingness to trace the quality to its European source. They cannot bring themselves to see that abiogenesis is as rare in the realm of ideas as it is in the kingdom of organic life; and consequently waste their efforts in trying to treat America as if it were an isolated phenomenon without ancestry.
"Americanism" is expanded Anglo-Saxonism. It is the spirit of England, transplanted to a soil of vast extent and diversity, and nourished for a time under pioneer conditions calculated to increase its democratic aspects without impairing its fundamental virtues. It is the spirit of truth, honour, justice, morality, moderation, individualism, conservative liberty, magnanimity, toleration, enterprise, industriousness, and progress�which is England�plus the element of equality and opportunity caused by pioneer settlement. It is the expression of the world�s highest race under the most favourable social, political, and geographical conditions. Those who endeavour to belittle the importance of our British ancestry, are invited to consider the other nations of this continent. All these are equally "American" in every particular, differing only in race-stock and heritage; yet of them all, none save British Canada will even bear comparison with us. We are great because we are a part of the great Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere; a section detached only after a century and a half of heavy colonisation and English rule, which gave to our land the ineradicable stamp of British civilisation.
Most dangerous and fallacious of the several misconceptions of Americanism is that of the so-called "melting-pot" of races and traditions. It is true that this country has received a vast influx of non-English immigrants who come hither to enjoy without hardship the liberties which our British ancestors carved out in toil and bloodshed. It is also true that such of them as belong to the Teutonic and Celtic races are capable of assimilation to our English type and of becoming valuable acquisitions to the population. But, from this it does not follow that a mixture of really alien blood or ideas has accomplished or can accomplish anything but harm. Observation of Europe shows us the relative status and capability of the several races, and we see that the melting together of English gold and alien brass is not very likely to produce any alloy superior or even equal to the original gold. Immigration cannot, perhaps, be cut off altogether, but it should be understood that aliens who choose America as their residence must accept the prevailing language and culture as their own; and neither try to modify our institutions, nor to keep alive their own in our midst. We must not, as the greatest man of our age declared, suffer this nation to become a "polyglot boarding house."
The greatest foe to rational Americanism is that dislike for our parent nation which holds sway amongst the ignorant and bigoted, and which is kept alive largely by certain elements of the population who seem to consider the sentiments of Southern and Western Ireland more important than those of the United States.
[...]
The main struggle which awaits Americanism is not with reaction, but with radicalism. Our age is one of restless and unintelligent iconoclasm, and abounds with shrewd sophists who use the name "Americanism" to cover attacks on that institution itself. Such familiar terms and phrases as "democracy," "liberty," or "freedom of speech" are being distorted to cover the wildest forms of anarchy, whilst our old representative institutions are being attacked as "un-American" by foreign immigrants who are incapable both of understanding them or of devising anything better.
This country would benefit from a wider practice of sound Americanism, with its accompanying recognition of an Anglo-Saxon source. Americanism implies freedom, progress, and independence; but it does not imply a rejection of the past, nor a renunciation of traditions and experience. Let us view the term in its real, practical, and unsentimental meaning.''
The above was written in 1915.

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