0 comment Thursday, November 6, 2014 | admin
Mark Steyn writes about 'Liberty and Loss' at NRO's The Corner.
He takes a gloomy view of the future for America on this Independence Day, and that angers most of the commenters at NRO, who somehow think 'conservatives' must be pollyannas or they are not real 'conservatives.' As Steyn is not waving the flag today, he is not getting the usual praise from the choir.
Steyn is an amusing writer, but it seems to me that he has always been fatalistic, writing flippantly about Europe becoming Eurabia, and yet he has never veered too far outside the PC limits. He barely acknowledges the demographic aspect of the destruction of America, and seems to be one of those who believes everything is ideological and economic in nature, not racial or ethnic.
Perhaps this is why Steyn has always been a favorite of the FReepers and the conventional right. (And he's not even black. Imagine that.)
The most interesting part of Steyn's piece is his quote from Thomas Jefferson:
''In my soon to be imminently forthcoming book, I quote one of the most poignant lines from the Declaration of Independence, one that never made it into the final text � Thomas Jefferson�s parting words to his fellow British subjects across the seas: "We might have been a free and great people together." There is a sense both of regret at the separation yet also of its inevitability.''
And Steyn asks at the end if a 21st century counterpart of Jefferson would say 'we might have stayed a free and great people together.'
Steyn seems not to recognize that when Jefferson wrote his words back in 1776, those words which were not included into the final draft of the Declaration, 'we' (American colonists and the English) were A People, together. We had common ancestry, language, traditions, and religion. The Declaration sundered us from our parent race in England. We have been taught to cheer that, and many Americans today are aggressively celebratory about ''breaking free of the Brits'', notwithstanding that the Founders were ''Brits'' or as they were more likely to say, Englishmen.
Have you all seen the video that's making the rounds, wherein Americans on a beach somewhere are asked on camera what the Fourth of July celebrates: independence from whom? Many of the respondents were clueless.
A shocking number of people have no inkling that America was originally under English rule, being a colony of England. Many Americans are so obtuse today that they cannot understand that the colonists were genetically and culturally English. America did not emerge from nowhere.
We can't know what course things might have taken if our colonist ancestors had not seceded from the home country. But we do know that the course we took somehow led us to this disaster that we now face. Instead of remaining tied to Great Britain, we chose to go independent. So today we are no longer 'a people' but a jumble of many peoples, and there is no commonality between most of us and the post-1965 immigrants, nor even between the founding stock people and the post-1865 immigrant wave. There is therefore no 'one people' anymore, and with no unity amongst ourselves, conflict looks less avoidable every day.
If we were to split this country along political or ideological lines, I would surely have to be in a separate country from the 'proposition nation' cult, whether they are Democrat, Republican, or something else. Let the 'America as an idea' people take their multicultural charges and form their own mix-n-match country somewhere, and leave the rest of us in peace in our own land, which will surely resemble the America of old more than the multicult Empire. My America is a kinship-based one, a blood-based one, not a 'notional nation.'
He takes a gloomy view of the future for America on this Independence Day, and that angers most of the commenters at NRO, who somehow think 'conservatives' must be pollyannas or they are not real 'conservatives.' As Steyn is not waving the flag today, he is not getting the usual praise from the choir.
Steyn is an amusing writer, but it seems to me that he has always been fatalistic, writing flippantly about Europe becoming Eurabia, and yet he has never veered too far outside the PC limits. He barely acknowledges the demographic aspect of the destruction of America, and seems to be one of those who believes everything is ideological and economic in nature, not racial or ethnic.
Perhaps this is why Steyn has always been a favorite of the FReepers and the conventional right. (And he's not even black. Imagine that.)
The most interesting part of Steyn's piece is his quote from Thomas Jefferson:
''In my soon to be imminently forthcoming book, I quote one of the most poignant lines from the Declaration of Independence, one that never made it into the final text � Thomas Jefferson�s parting words to his fellow British subjects across the seas: "We might have been a free and great people together." There is a sense both of regret at the separation yet also of its inevitability.''
And Steyn asks at the end if a 21st century counterpart of Jefferson would say 'we might have stayed a free and great people together.'
Steyn seems not to recognize that when Jefferson wrote his words back in 1776, those words which were not included into the final draft of the Declaration, 'we' (American colonists and the English) were A People, together. We had common ancestry, language, traditions, and religion. The Declaration sundered us from our parent race in England. We have been taught to cheer that, and many Americans today are aggressively celebratory about ''breaking free of the Brits'', notwithstanding that the Founders were ''Brits'' or as they were more likely to say, Englishmen.
Have you all seen the video that's making the rounds, wherein Americans on a beach somewhere are asked on camera what the Fourth of July celebrates: independence from whom? Many of the respondents were clueless.
A shocking number of people have no inkling that America was originally under English rule, being a colony of England. Many Americans are so obtuse today that they cannot understand that the colonists were genetically and culturally English. America did not emerge from nowhere.
We can't know what course things might have taken if our colonist ancestors had not seceded from the home country. But we do know that the course we took somehow led us to this disaster that we now face. Instead of remaining tied to Great Britain, we chose to go independent. So today we are no longer 'a people' but a jumble of many peoples, and there is no commonality between most of us and the post-1965 immigrants, nor even between the founding stock people and the post-1865 immigrant wave. There is therefore no 'one people' anymore, and with no unity amongst ourselves, conflict looks less avoidable every day.
If we were to split this country along political or ideological lines, I would surely have to be in a separate country from the 'proposition nation' cult, whether they are Democrat, Republican, or something else. Let the 'America as an idea' people take their multicultural charges and form their own mix-n-match country somewhere, and leave the rest of us in peace in our own land, which will surely resemble the America of old more than the multicult Empire. My America is a kinship-based one, a blood-based one, not a 'notional nation.'
Labels: American History, Ethnonationalism, Ethnopatriotism, Proposition Nation, Thomas Jefferson
0 comment Tuesday, October 14, 2014 | admin
Yesterday's post about Marine Le Pen reminded me of a subject I had meant to post about, that is, the question of why there are not more women who are ethnopatriots, at least judging by the relative dearth of female bloggers and writers who are pro-White.
Every now and then, somebody raises that question, and I suppose there is no definitive answer to it. The obvious answer, of course, is that women seem to be naturally more liberal, based on the tendency of many women to be 'feeling' types, acting based on emotion rather than on 'thinking'. A good many women in my experience say they just don't care much about politics per se. There is the old saying that politics is war by any other means, so it makes sense that women are not as politically oriented as men, generally.
If women abstained from politics because of their oft-state lack of interest in, or understanding of, politics, we might be better off, because women do tend to vote liberal in many instances. However at least in this country there is evidence that married women are more conservative in their politics, while younger single women are liberal. Do young liberal single women develop into conservatives after becoming mothers and having a broader experience of life? Or is it simply a matter of the younger generations being more liberal generally?
However, I know a couple of women who admittedly know nothing about politics (such as what the labels 'liberal and conservative' mean, for example, or how our system works) but who nonetheless have very vociferous opinions about public figures. One of the women I am thinking of here simply states that she 'hates' certain politicians without being able to explain why, when I ask her. She just knows she hates someone, based on seeing their face on the news or in the newspaper. And people like this vote.
But as for the predominance of males among ethnopatriots, the usual answer offered (and I've offered it a time or two) is that males are more territorial and more suspicious of outsiders. Women can be catty towards each other but many seem to feel more protective of, say, immigrants because they perceive them as rather needy or even childlike. More women tend to want to nurture these people and help them. I believe it is almost always women who are behind this fad to import Third World babies. In my town, this is the latest fashion. I have been seeing more and more young White couples, often with two or more children of their own, with a Haitian or African baby in a stroller. This past summer when I was out garage sale-ing with a friend, we encountered two sales being held for the sake of raising funds to go to Haiti and bring back a baby, or to pay adoption fees.
The men who go along with this are essentially doing just that: going along.
Some of the most bleeding-heart women I know are people who seem incapable of perceiving anyone as an enemy or a threat, at least, not people who are perceived as 'victims', such as the illegal Latin Americans who are settling in, here in this town.
Many women just don't want to talk about 'unpleasant things' and would prefer to live on a pink, fluffy cloud.
I've always been a little atypical of women in some respects, though I can recognize the typical female traits in myself in many ways. But I don't understand why so many women have no 'mother bear' instinct to protect their young and to preserve their children's future. The old pioneer women surely had that instinct. Where has it gone?
On a different note, I have noticed lately that on some of the ethnopatriot blogs and HBD blogs, there are a few female names popping up amongst the comments. Is this a trend? It's very noticeable in a couple of places.
And of course there have been notable exceptions to the rule among the few female regulars who post here, and certain female bloggers like Sarah, Maid of Albion. But I think they are still the exception. Mind you, I am not counting women who are just 'conservative' with no seeming ethnopatriot tendencies. There are conservatives who are still not exactly on our side.
Is there any way to change this?
Every now and then, somebody raises that question, and I suppose there is no definitive answer to it. The obvious answer, of course, is that women seem to be naturally more liberal, based on the tendency of many women to be 'feeling' types, acting based on emotion rather than on 'thinking'. A good many women in my experience say they just don't care much about politics per se. There is the old saying that politics is war by any other means, so it makes sense that women are not as politically oriented as men, generally.
If women abstained from politics because of their oft-state lack of interest in, or understanding of, politics, we might be better off, because women do tend to vote liberal in many instances. However at least in this country there is evidence that married women are more conservative in their politics, while younger single women are liberal. Do young liberal single women develop into conservatives after becoming mothers and having a broader experience of life? Or is it simply a matter of the younger generations being more liberal generally?
However, I know a couple of women who admittedly know nothing about politics (such as what the labels 'liberal and conservative' mean, for example, or how our system works) but who nonetheless have very vociferous opinions about public figures. One of the women I am thinking of here simply states that she 'hates' certain politicians without being able to explain why, when I ask her. She just knows she hates someone, based on seeing their face on the news or in the newspaper. And people like this vote.
But as for the predominance of males among ethnopatriots, the usual answer offered (and I've offered it a time or two) is that males are more territorial and more suspicious of outsiders. Women can be catty towards each other but many seem to feel more protective of, say, immigrants because they perceive them as rather needy or even childlike. More women tend to want to nurture these people and help them. I believe it is almost always women who are behind this fad to import Third World babies. In my town, this is the latest fashion. I have been seeing more and more young White couples, often with two or more children of their own, with a Haitian or African baby in a stroller. This past summer when I was out garage sale-ing with a friend, we encountered two sales being held for the sake of raising funds to go to Haiti and bring back a baby, or to pay adoption fees.
The men who go along with this are essentially doing just that: going along.
Some of the most bleeding-heart women I know are people who seem incapable of perceiving anyone as an enemy or a threat, at least, not people who are perceived as 'victims', such as the illegal Latin Americans who are settling in, here in this town.
Many women just don't want to talk about 'unpleasant things' and would prefer to live on a pink, fluffy cloud.
I've always been a little atypical of women in some respects, though I can recognize the typical female traits in myself in many ways. But I don't understand why so many women have no 'mother bear' instinct to protect their young and to preserve their children's future. The old pioneer women surely had that instinct. Where has it gone?
On a different note, I have noticed lately that on some of the ethnopatriot blogs and HBD blogs, there are a few female names popping up amongst the comments. Is this a trend? It's very noticeable in a couple of places.
And of course there have been notable exceptions to the rule among the few female regulars who post here, and certain female bloggers like Sarah, Maid of Albion. But I think they are still the exception. Mind you, I am not counting women who are just 'conservative' with no seeming ethnopatriot tendencies. There are conservatives who are still not exactly on our side.
Is there any way to change this?
Labels: Ethnocentrism, Ethnopatriotism, Gender Gap, Women
0 comment Sunday, September 21, 2014 | admin
Our symbols and our heritage are under attack.
And who speaks up for them, or for us?
Don't count on this man to defend us. Hear what he has to say in the short video at the link.
Is there any politician who is able to speak forthrightly, without trying to play coy and have it both ways?
This AP story gives us the PC revisionist line about General Forrest, but they don't tell you the background of the 'society' which is the focus of all the controversy. I would like to ask somebody who is ritualistically denouncing that group if they can tell me just how and why it began. I would like to hear their version of the conditions that existed in the occupied South after the "Late Unpleasantness". I suspect they would be speechless because they know next to nothing about that era, about that time and place.
Schools do not teach about that part of our history, the Reconstruction Era, a euphemism if there ever was one. And whatever little is taught is selectively biased in the usual way. Add to that the Hollywood movies and pseudo-documentaries that present a dishonest account, and people know less than nothing. What they think they know is false.
As if Barbour's evasiveness and spinelessness on the Forrest issue weren't enough, we recently learned that he was involved in lobbying on behalf of Mexico.
''Though Barbour is currently considering whether to sign an Arizona-style immigration bill that passed in the Mississippi House in January, he took a softer stance last September on what to do about immigrants illegally in the country. Barbour told Human Events that though the United States must secure its border: "Common sense tells us we're not gonna take ten or twelve or fourteen million people and put them in jail and deport them. We're not gonna do it, and we need to quit--some of the people need to quit acting like we are, and let's talk about real solutions."
Barbour also praised "the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild" the state after Hurricane Katrina. "There's no doubt in my mind some of them weren't here legally. Some of them were, some of them weren't. But they came in, they looked for the work--if they hadn't been there, if they hadn't come and stayed for a few months or a couple of years, we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
I guess Barbour does not remember the stories that appeared after Katrina, in which American workers were hired for jobs rebuilding New Orleans, and were then turned away after they traveled there, being told that Mexican workers had been given the jobs. The reports said many of the men were devastated, because they needed the work. Cheap labor and capitalist greed work well together.
Anybody who says that Americans won't work or can't work as hard as the sainted immigrant is ignorant or dishonest.
So Barbour, like most of our politicians, fails the test of loyalty to his own.
That's what I am looking for first and foremost in everybody these days: loyalty. It's getting pretty scarce.
And who speaks up for them, or for us?
Don't count on this man to defend us. Hear what he has to say in the short video at the link.
Is there any politician who is able to speak forthrightly, without trying to play coy and have it both ways?
This AP story gives us the PC revisionist line about General Forrest, but they don't tell you the background of the 'society' which is the focus of all the controversy. I would like to ask somebody who is ritualistically denouncing that group if they can tell me just how and why it began. I would like to hear their version of the conditions that existed in the occupied South after the "Late Unpleasantness". I suspect they would be speechless because they know next to nothing about that era, about that time and place.
Schools do not teach about that part of our history, the Reconstruction Era, a euphemism if there ever was one. And whatever little is taught is selectively biased in the usual way. Add to that the Hollywood movies and pseudo-documentaries that present a dishonest account, and people know less than nothing. What they think they know is false.
As if Barbour's evasiveness and spinelessness on the Forrest issue weren't enough, we recently learned that he was involved in lobbying on behalf of Mexico.
''Though Barbour is currently considering whether to sign an Arizona-style immigration bill that passed in the Mississippi House in January, he took a softer stance last September on what to do about immigrants illegally in the country. Barbour told Human Events that though the United States must secure its border: "Common sense tells us we're not gonna take ten or twelve or fourteen million people and put them in jail and deport them. We're not gonna do it, and we need to quit--some of the people need to quit acting like we are, and let's talk about real solutions."
Barbour also praised "the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild" the state after Hurricane Katrina. "There's no doubt in my mind some of them weren't here legally. Some of them were, some of them weren't. But they came in, they looked for the work--if they hadn't been there, if they hadn't come and stayed for a few months or a couple of years, we would be way, way, way behind where we are now."
I guess Barbour does not remember the stories that appeared after Katrina, in which American workers were hired for jobs rebuilding New Orleans, and were then turned away after they traveled there, being told that Mexican workers had been given the jobs. The reports said many of the men were devastated, because they needed the work. Cheap labor and capitalist greed work well together.
Anybody who says that Americans won't work or can't work as hard as the sainted immigrant is ignorant or dishonest.
So Barbour, like most of our politicians, fails the test of loyalty to his own.
That's what I am looking for first and foremost in everybody these days: loyalty. It's getting pretty scarce.
Labels: Confederacy, Ethno-Loyalty, Ethnopatriotism, Political Classes, Political Correctness, Southron Heritage
0 comment Wednesday, September 17, 2014 | admin
I was just reading some blogs wherein the usual infighting and general contentiousness prevailed, with very little response from either other, more reasonable commenters or the blogger(s) in question.
Often I wonder why this curious detachment. I think I have finally realized something, which may be obvious to my readers, though I was slow in grasping it.
Some of the bloggers who are ostensibly champions of our side seem to have only an intellectual commitment to it. I keep noticing more and more the absence of emotion on the subject.
Perhaps I am the anomaly or the oddity, if you want to put it that way, in that this subject is emotional and visceral to me. It is not just an intellectual exercise or a game in which I want my 'side' to 'win'. This is deeply serious business to me, and it's the future of our posterity, our children and grandchildren. It's our way of life. It's all we hold dear. It's home and family. It's the life's blood of our ancestors, who made great sacrifices to come here and establish a homeland for all of us, their descendants.
It's about honor. It's about truth, and about what is just and right. It's survival. It's about not letting the heretofore unbroken chain be broken irrevocably. It's about preserving the best of what our forefathers lived for.
"Breathes there the man with soul so dead", as Scott said.
Yet apparently there are those who don't feel this emotionally. The love and the loyalty and the fierce attachment are not there. The lights may be on upstairs but nobody is home down where the hearth-fire should be burning.
The missing piece for some of those who are supposedly our compatriots is the feeling, the emotion, the "all-or-nothing, this is it," sense of urgency.
That missing piece is only the most important one of all.
Often I wonder why this curious detachment. I think I have finally realized something, which may be obvious to my readers, though I was slow in grasping it.
Some of the bloggers who are ostensibly champions of our side seem to have only an intellectual commitment to it. I keep noticing more and more the absence of emotion on the subject.
Perhaps I am the anomaly or the oddity, if you want to put it that way, in that this subject is emotional and visceral to me. It is not just an intellectual exercise or a game in which I want my 'side' to 'win'. This is deeply serious business to me, and it's the future of our posterity, our children and grandchildren. It's our way of life. It's all we hold dear. It's home and family. It's the life's blood of our ancestors, who made great sacrifices to come here and establish a homeland for all of us, their descendants.
It's about honor. It's about truth, and about what is just and right. It's survival. It's about not letting the heretofore unbroken chain be broken irrevocably. It's about preserving the best of what our forefathers lived for.
"Breathes there the man with soul so dead", as Scott said.
Yet apparently there are those who don't feel this emotionally. The love and the loyalty and the fierce attachment are not there. The lights may be on upstairs but nobody is home down where the hearth-fire should be burning.
The missing piece for some of those who are supposedly our compatriots is the feeling, the emotion, the "all-or-nothing, this is it," sense of urgency.
That missing piece is only the most important one of all.
Labels: Ethnopatriotism, Kinship, Loyalty
0 comment Friday, August 29, 2014 | admin
One of the worst things that the Left has done in their transformation of Western society is that they have killed off traditional values and attitudes in a number of ways.
The most obvious way is by infiltrating and subverting Christianity, either directly, or indirectly, by implanting via education and media ideas that are antithetical to Christianity.
Psychology, with its exaltation of the 'self' and 'felt needs', and the religion of 'tolerance' are examples.
Reading this thread from Free Republic is a sad experience, as I knew it would be when I read the headline: An uncertain future after jobless benefits expire
The story which is being discussed is that of a 55-year-old man who finds himself still unemployed as his benefits run out. I won't focus on the merits of that particular man or his story, but on the larger issues of 'hard times' and social cohesion.
A commenter says:
Now for all the Freepers and their "Well, the bum should FIND A JOB!!!" Either most are unaware of the true market in some areas of the US, or just willfully ignorant.
11 posted on 01/29/2011 5:04:39 PM PST by autumnraine''
Actually she (I assume it is a she) is correct that the ''the bum should find a job!!!'' theme is the one that is heard most often over at FR or any other Republican/conservative forum or blog.
There have been times in this country when all that was needed to find work was a willingness to work and minimal qualifications.However, such is not the case now. I know of a number of people who have been out of work for a year to two years, despite a solid employment history and experience. Those that have found work have had to accept jobs that were low-paying and physically demanding. This is especially sad when one is a man in his mid-50s and not as strong as he was. And age discrimination is a reality; hardly anyone gets sued for it, but it is known to happen. Over 40 is over the hill, for most employers.
One man I know of found a job after more than a year, only to have that job eliminated after a couple of months. Sure, you may say this is anecdotal stuff, but it is becoming much more common. Jobs are not growing on trees out there, and employers who are hiring can be extremely selective about hiring, given that it is so much an employer's market. Add to the poor economy the factor of a few million (as far as we know) immigrants every year, as jobs disappear, and things look bleak for many people.
The stereotypical 'conservative' will say of the unemployed ''well, they should have saved or invested better when times were good.'' Yes, but savings and other resources get depleted very quickly in these times. Unexpected things can happen. These days, with wages and benefits being cut, and the cost of living growing quickly, money does not go as far.
I can say honestly that I never had to draw unemployment benefits, but that does not mean that I condemn those who do have to draw them. There but for the grace of God, etc.
Yes, initiative, hard work, and personal responsibility are cardinal virtues, and ones that conservatives uphold, or should uphold. By no means do I disagree that those things are important, or even vital. But bad things do happen to good people sometimes. Not everybody who is experiencing hard times is a lazy no-account who deserves his misfortune, which is what I hear conservatives saying all too often.
Do we forget that other things are also 'conservative values', things such as empathy for kinsman, neighborliness, filial piety, civic pride, and so on? What I see all too often among the average conservative or Republican types is 'everybody for himself, the devil take the hindmost.'
What I think is partially to blame here is that many 'conservatives' are not conservative at all in the sense of revering traditional values and preserving our shared past and heritage. Instead, they tend to react against the excesses of the Left and go to the opposite pole. If liberals/leftists preach about compassion, then the 'right' decides that compassion is just more liberal twaddle. If the left insists that we owe the world a living, (which of course we don't) we go even farther to the 'right' and deny that we even owe anything to our brother, or our kinsman.
Add to this, the fact that in recent years, the libertarian element in 'conservatism' has grown until it eclipses the eternal verities, and leaves us with the 'every man for himself' ethos, the 'every man is an island', I-owe-nothing-to-nobody philosophy.
The sad fact seems to be that the Left with their excess of sentimentality and faux charity have discredited charity and kindness for too many conservatives. With their 'brotherhood of man' claptrap, they have produced the opposite reaction on the right, the idea that nobody is my brother. 'I am a rugged individualist who asks nothing and offers nothing to others', seems to be the motto of the tough-minded 'conservative.'
My recent post about the Great Depression asked whether we would be able to survive such hard times in our era. I think most of us would agree that we probably wouldn't. We lack the communal spirit, and too many have hardened their hearts toward their fellow man. I acknowledge that it's true that the Left has abused and perverted the innate altruism of our people, to the extent that many of us (including myself, I admit) feel cynical at the left's manipulation of our emotions when they guilt-trip us about the bleeding Third World.
During the Reagan Administration and later, when the 'homeless problem' first became a big issue, there was talk about people suffering from 'compassion fatigue' towards the homeless. For myself, I know that I used to sympathize with the rare panhandler who would approach and ask for money. Actually, in the old days, even the few beggars had some pride, in that they would not ask a woman for money, or at least not a young woman as I was then. But I was at one time quite moved by their obvious condition and would try to help. But as the numbers of beggars, most of them quite brazen and obnoxious started to multiply, I quickly became jaded to their pleas. I don't like feeling that way, but it seems there is a limit to the amount of sympathies that we can extend to strangers. And that is probably how it should be. We need to emphasize personal responsibility, but there has to be some balance with concern for our neighbors and kinsmen, the latter first, of course.
What the Left has done is that they have exhausted our normal feelings of compassion, in many cases. Their excessive use of guilt and sympathy for the underdog has produced something of a backlash, or an overload, at least among some of us.
I often think that liberals are immune from this condition because they themselves do not feel guilt; they see us, the non-liberal normal people, as being rightfully guilty, while they see themselves as the 'good guys', the virtuous ones who are never guilty of things like racism or xenophobia or sexism or homophobia or whatever other social sin they have dreamed up.
Their 'compassion' is often just a show, not a genuinely felt emotion. It's been shown that liberals are not the best givers of charity.
And I notice that all the lefties who cry crocodile tears over the poor illegals are not taking said illegals into their own homes to house and feed them.
There has been much talk of the 'Cloward-Piven Strategy', apparently due to Glenn Beck's belaboring that subject on his TV show. What that strategy is said to be is an effort to destroy capitalism by overloading the government's resources. Maybe what they are doing to our character is something like this; they weary us and wear us down, asking us to care for the poor and downtrodden, the underdogs and victims of the world. They spend untold amounts of money in an effort to fix all the world's woes, and things only get worse. They are not only stripping us of financial resources, but I think they have, wittingly or not, stripped many 'conservatives' of their old-fashioned values of neighborliness and old-fashioned charity, in every sense of that word.
And in so doing, they have created a living caricature of the hard-hearted conservative who sneers at his neighbor's misfortune and washes his hands of any kind of civic responsibility. This is the stereotype that the left has always used to discredit conservatives, and it is now being translated into reality more and more. This does not help anybody but our enemies.
Am I proposing that we become like gushy liberals, weeping crocodile tears over the 'victims' of the world? Hardly. I am just reminding us that the old America once had a proper balance between the emphasis on personal initiative and the realization that we are all in this together, and we can't sustain a society based on the atomized invididual who looks out for number one only.
Our parents and grandparents maintained something of a balance, but we seem to be losing that, or have already lost it.
The left, I think, wants it that way. They want a society in which people care only about self, or at most their own spouse and children, a society in which people neither know nor trust their neighbors, much less form bonds with them.
I see some very troubling signs on the right, what with many 'conservatives' ever more willing to jettison the old as ''too costly'' -- without even considering the consequences of, say, stopping all social programs cold turkey. There are lives involved; real human beings, who matter more than abstract principles.
I see a danger that many on the right are becoming ideologues in the same sense that Libertarians and Leftists are ideologues -- devoted to abstract ideas rather than to what works in reality, or to what the real-life consequences of ideas are.
Even among ethnopatriots, I see a mere handful who seem to care about all our folk, and not just about those who agree 100 percent with us politically. I see quite a few who can't say anything good about their people, and that is not promising for our future. If we don't like or care for each other, what's ethnopatriotism about?
We seem to have been trapped into repudiating some of the old verities, into thinking that any kind of community is 'communism' and any kind of altruism is manipulation, or that any kind of interdependence is 'slavery'.
This is the worst thing, really, that the leftists have done. In corrupting our culture, by distorting or weakening our better qualities, they have done real damage. Can we undo it?
The most obvious way is by infiltrating and subverting Christianity, either directly, or indirectly, by implanting via education and media ideas that are antithetical to Christianity.
Psychology, with its exaltation of the 'self' and 'felt needs', and the religion of 'tolerance' are examples.
Reading this thread from Free Republic is a sad experience, as I knew it would be when I read the headline: An uncertain future after jobless benefits expire
The story which is being discussed is that of a 55-year-old man who finds himself still unemployed as his benefits run out. I won't focus on the merits of that particular man or his story, but on the larger issues of 'hard times' and social cohesion.
A commenter says:
Now for all the Freepers and their "Well, the bum should FIND A JOB!!!" Either most are unaware of the true market in some areas of the US, or just willfully ignorant.
11 posted on 01/29/2011 5:04:39 PM PST by autumnraine''
Actually she (I assume it is a she) is correct that the ''the bum should find a job!!!'' theme is the one that is heard most often over at FR or any other Republican/conservative forum or blog.
There have been times in this country when all that was needed to find work was a willingness to work and minimal qualifications.However, such is not the case now. I know of a number of people who have been out of work for a year to two years, despite a solid employment history and experience. Those that have found work have had to accept jobs that were low-paying and physically demanding. This is especially sad when one is a man in his mid-50s and not as strong as he was. And age discrimination is a reality; hardly anyone gets sued for it, but it is known to happen. Over 40 is over the hill, for most employers.
One man I know of found a job after more than a year, only to have that job eliminated after a couple of months. Sure, you may say this is anecdotal stuff, but it is becoming much more common. Jobs are not growing on trees out there, and employers who are hiring can be extremely selective about hiring, given that it is so much an employer's market. Add to the poor economy the factor of a few million (as far as we know) immigrants every year, as jobs disappear, and things look bleak for many people.
The stereotypical 'conservative' will say of the unemployed ''well, they should have saved or invested better when times were good.'' Yes, but savings and other resources get depleted very quickly in these times. Unexpected things can happen. These days, with wages and benefits being cut, and the cost of living growing quickly, money does not go as far.
I can say honestly that I never had to draw unemployment benefits, but that does not mean that I condemn those who do have to draw them. There but for the grace of God, etc.
Yes, initiative, hard work, and personal responsibility are cardinal virtues, and ones that conservatives uphold, or should uphold. By no means do I disagree that those things are important, or even vital. But bad things do happen to good people sometimes. Not everybody who is experiencing hard times is a lazy no-account who deserves his misfortune, which is what I hear conservatives saying all too often.
Do we forget that other things are also 'conservative values', things such as empathy for kinsman, neighborliness, filial piety, civic pride, and so on? What I see all too often among the average conservative or Republican types is 'everybody for himself, the devil take the hindmost.'
What I think is partially to blame here is that many 'conservatives' are not conservative at all in the sense of revering traditional values and preserving our shared past and heritage. Instead, they tend to react against the excesses of the Left and go to the opposite pole. If liberals/leftists preach about compassion, then the 'right' decides that compassion is just more liberal twaddle. If the left insists that we owe the world a living, (which of course we don't) we go even farther to the 'right' and deny that we even owe anything to our brother, or our kinsman.
Add to this, the fact that in recent years, the libertarian element in 'conservatism' has grown until it eclipses the eternal verities, and leaves us with the 'every man for himself' ethos, the 'every man is an island', I-owe-nothing-to-nobody philosophy.
The sad fact seems to be that the Left with their excess of sentimentality and faux charity have discredited charity and kindness for too many conservatives. With their 'brotherhood of man' claptrap, they have produced the opposite reaction on the right, the idea that nobody is my brother. 'I am a rugged individualist who asks nothing and offers nothing to others', seems to be the motto of the tough-minded 'conservative.'
My recent post about the Great Depression asked whether we would be able to survive such hard times in our era. I think most of us would agree that we probably wouldn't. We lack the communal spirit, and too many have hardened their hearts toward their fellow man. I acknowledge that it's true that the Left has abused and perverted the innate altruism of our people, to the extent that many of us (including myself, I admit) feel cynical at the left's manipulation of our emotions when they guilt-trip us about the bleeding Third World.
During the Reagan Administration and later, when the 'homeless problem' first became a big issue, there was talk about people suffering from 'compassion fatigue' towards the homeless. For myself, I know that I used to sympathize with the rare panhandler who would approach and ask for money. Actually, in the old days, even the few beggars had some pride, in that they would not ask a woman for money, or at least not a young woman as I was then. But I was at one time quite moved by their obvious condition and would try to help. But as the numbers of beggars, most of them quite brazen and obnoxious started to multiply, I quickly became jaded to their pleas. I don't like feeling that way, but it seems there is a limit to the amount of sympathies that we can extend to strangers. And that is probably how it should be. We need to emphasize personal responsibility, but there has to be some balance with concern for our neighbors and kinsmen, the latter first, of course.
What the Left has done is that they have exhausted our normal feelings of compassion, in many cases. Their excessive use of guilt and sympathy for the underdog has produced something of a backlash, or an overload, at least among some of us.
I often think that liberals are immune from this condition because they themselves do not feel guilt; they see us, the non-liberal normal people, as being rightfully guilty, while they see themselves as the 'good guys', the virtuous ones who are never guilty of things like racism or xenophobia or sexism or homophobia or whatever other social sin they have dreamed up.
Their 'compassion' is often just a show, not a genuinely felt emotion. It's been shown that liberals are not the best givers of charity.
And I notice that all the lefties who cry crocodile tears over the poor illegals are not taking said illegals into their own homes to house and feed them.
There has been much talk of the 'Cloward-Piven Strategy', apparently due to Glenn Beck's belaboring that subject on his TV show. What that strategy is said to be is an effort to destroy capitalism by overloading the government's resources. Maybe what they are doing to our character is something like this; they weary us and wear us down, asking us to care for the poor and downtrodden, the underdogs and victims of the world. They spend untold amounts of money in an effort to fix all the world's woes, and things only get worse. They are not only stripping us of financial resources, but I think they have, wittingly or not, stripped many 'conservatives' of their old-fashioned values of neighborliness and old-fashioned charity, in every sense of that word.
And in so doing, they have created a living caricature of the hard-hearted conservative who sneers at his neighbor's misfortune and washes his hands of any kind of civic responsibility. This is the stereotype that the left has always used to discredit conservatives, and it is now being translated into reality more and more. This does not help anybody but our enemies.
Am I proposing that we become like gushy liberals, weeping crocodile tears over the 'victims' of the world? Hardly. I am just reminding us that the old America once had a proper balance between the emphasis on personal initiative and the realization that we are all in this together, and we can't sustain a society based on the atomized invididual who looks out for number one only.
Our parents and grandparents maintained something of a balance, but we seem to be losing that, or have already lost it.
The left, I think, wants it that way. They want a society in which people care only about self, or at most their own spouse and children, a society in which people neither know nor trust their neighbors, much less form bonds with them.
I see some very troubling signs on the right, what with many 'conservatives' ever more willing to jettison the old as ''too costly'' -- without even considering the consequences of, say, stopping all social programs cold turkey. There are lives involved; real human beings, who matter more than abstract principles.
I see a danger that many on the right are becoming ideologues in the same sense that Libertarians and Leftists are ideologues -- devoted to abstract ideas rather than to what works in reality, or to what the real-life consequences of ideas are.
Even among ethnopatriots, I see a mere handful who seem to care about all our folk, and not just about those who agree 100 percent with us politically. I see quite a few who can't say anything good about their people, and that is not promising for our future. If we don't like or care for each other, what's ethnopatriotism about?
We seem to have been trapped into repudiating some of the old verities, into thinking that any kind of community is 'communism' and any kind of altruism is manipulation, or that any kind of interdependence is 'slavery'.
This is the worst thing, really, that the leftists have done. In corrupting our culture, by distorting or weakening our better qualities, they have done real damage. Can we undo it?
Labels: Altruism, Cultural Marxism, Ethnopatriotism, Leftism, Liberalism, Social Decay
0 comment Tuesday, August 19, 2014 | admin
At the blog The West's Darkest Hour, blogger Chechar weighs in on the ongoing discussion of women in ethnonationalism. It's a very interesting read.
He quotes from the discussion at the Counter-Currents blog on the subject of women, and he quotes mostly from a commenter named Karsten, who makes very good points, which I generally agree heartily with. This part in particular:
''Focussing on attracting women (or any minority) is the standard recipe for how a movement kills itself. It�s how traditional conservatism was distorted into the abomination known as "neoconservatism." First, it too asked, "Where are the women?" and became pro-feminist. Then "Where are the Jews?" and became philosemitic. Then "Where are the blacks?" and became "anti-racist," and so forth, until this more "inclusive" conservatism hadnothing conservative about it, and was just another kind of leftism.
It was the Janelle Antases and their equivalents among Jews, blacks, and other minority groups that destroyed the Old Right, because they whined and whined and wanted the Right to change to suit them, and sure enough, it did, until all of its principles were gone.''
This is such an important point. It's what is weakening, and threatening to destroy, any kind of dissident group in our society, from even the mildest dissenters like the Tea Partiers (with their 'diversity' mania, and their fear of being 'racist), to the nationalist political parties in Europe. And now even the harder-core right is succumbing to this desire to 'expand the base' or bring in more warm bodies, or whatever. In the effort to become all things to all people and thus attract more support, and with it more respectability if not power, the ethnonationalist right risks becoming an empty shell.
And the very fact of needing and craving the support of minorities (or indifferent women) is in itself a symptom, a sad indication of how lacking in confidence most Whites are these days. The apparent need for validation by having minorities on board with us, or even speaking for us, is sad and disheartening.
However, the situation between men and women is a different case.
The difference between the male-female divide and those between races and ethnicities is that to state the obvious, men and women need each other. We can have, and did have, our own societies divided along racial/national lines. But men and women cannot form separate societies and survive, although some fanatical feminists believed that total separation of the sexes was the ideal. But that is not a natural or healthy situation.
My only problem with Chechar's post was nothing to do with the ideas he expressed; it was simply that at times, as I read it, I was confused as to where Chechar's comments stopped and the quotes from Counter-Currents began or ended. Otherwise it is a very thought-provoking post, and you may want to follow the link to the discussion from which the quotes come at Counter-Currents.
I do think it's crucial that people on our side accept that we will likely never be a majority; to attract real mass support would necessarily require a loss of our very identity and an assimilation to the prevailing corrupted society around us.
Pandering or accommodating to women (or minorities) is a losing proposition, in the starkest terms.
And I do have to agree with many of those who say that it should, it must, be men who constitute any kind of ethnonationalist movement. Women can act in supporting parts but 'putting a feminine face' on it would compromise it and render it useless.
He quotes from the discussion at the Counter-Currents blog on the subject of women, and he quotes mostly from a commenter named Karsten, who makes very good points, which I generally agree heartily with. This part in particular:
''Focussing on attracting women (or any minority) is the standard recipe for how a movement kills itself. It�s how traditional conservatism was distorted into the abomination known as "neoconservatism." First, it too asked, "Where are the women?" and became pro-feminist. Then "Where are the Jews?" and became philosemitic. Then "Where are the blacks?" and became "anti-racist," and so forth, until this more "inclusive" conservatism hadnothing conservative about it, and was just another kind of leftism.
It was the Janelle Antases and their equivalents among Jews, blacks, and other minority groups that destroyed the Old Right, because they whined and whined and wanted the Right to change to suit them, and sure enough, it did, until all of its principles were gone.''
This is such an important point. It's what is weakening, and threatening to destroy, any kind of dissident group in our society, from even the mildest dissenters like the Tea Partiers (with their 'diversity' mania, and their fear of being 'racist), to the nationalist political parties in Europe. And now even the harder-core right is succumbing to this desire to 'expand the base' or bring in more warm bodies, or whatever. In the effort to become all things to all people and thus attract more support, and with it more respectability if not power, the ethnonationalist right risks becoming an empty shell.
And the very fact of needing and craving the support of minorities (or indifferent women) is in itself a symptom, a sad indication of how lacking in confidence most Whites are these days. The apparent need for validation by having minorities on board with us, or even speaking for us, is sad and disheartening.
However, the situation between men and women is a different case.
The difference between the male-female divide and those between races and ethnicities is that to state the obvious, men and women need each other. We can have, and did have, our own societies divided along racial/national lines. But men and women cannot form separate societies and survive, although some fanatical feminists believed that total separation of the sexes was the ideal. But that is not a natural or healthy situation.
My only problem with Chechar's post was nothing to do with the ideas he expressed; it was simply that at times, as I read it, I was confused as to where Chechar's comments stopped and the quotes from Counter-Currents began or ended. Otherwise it is a very thought-provoking post, and you may want to follow the link to the discussion from which the quotes come at Counter-Currents.
I do think it's crucial that people on our side accept that we will likely never be a majority; to attract real mass support would necessarily require a loss of our very identity and an assimilation to the prevailing corrupted society around us.
Pandering or accommodating to women (or minorities) is a losing proposition, in the starkest terms.
And I do have to agree with many of those who say that it should, it must, be men who constitute any kind of ethnonationalist movement. Women can act in supporting parts but 'putting a feminine face' on it would compromise it and render it useless.
Labels: Ethnonationalism, Ethnopatriotism, Feminism, Inclusiveness, Wn
0 comment Friday, July 25, 2014 | admin
The reader comments on my post called Defenses Against Reality prompt me to pose a question to you all. I've asked the question in the past, probably a couple of years or more ago, and perhaps some of you weren't here then. So I'll ask it again.
How did you start to question ''political correctness'', multiculturalism, egalitarianism, and all those things which are now proving to be so disastrous for our people? Was there a clear defining moment or turning point, an epiphany or ''awakening?" Or was your experience more like mine, a gradual reversion to the values you learned as a child from your elders?
Some of my readers have said that they've always held their present attitudes, while others have had experiences that led to more traditional or realist views.
I don't ask to be intrusive, but I am always interested in how those who once held the standard 'mainstream' views came to be more ethnopatriotic or ethnonationalistic. Is there something about personality types that make some people more conforming or others more questioning and less susceptible to propaganda? Is it innate, or due to upbringing and experience, or some combination? And as somebody here once asked, is there some way to pass on our immunity, if that's what it is?
How did you start to question ''political correctness'', multiculturalism, egalitarianism, and all those things which are now proving to be so disastrous for our people? Was there a clear defining moment or turning point, an epiphany or ''awakening?" Or was your experience more like mine, a gradual reversion to the values you learned as a child from your elders?
Some of my readers have said that they've always held their present attitudes, while others have had experiences that led to more traditional or realist views.
I don't ask to be intrusive, but I am always interested in how those who once held the standard 'mainstream' views came to be more ethnopatriotic or ethnonationalistic. Is there something about personality types that make some people more conforming or others more questioning and less susceptible to propaganda? Is it innate, or due to upbringing and experience, or some combination? And as somebody here once asked, is there some way to pass on our immunity, if that's what it is?
Labels: Ethno-Loyalty, Ethnocentrism, Ethnopatriotism, Kin Loyalty, Old America, Realism
0 comment Sunday, June 22, 2014 | admin
Chuck Baldwin reflects on the Alamo, on this anniversary of its fall in 1836. He writes about the character of the men who died defending the Alamo, men like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Barret Travis.
He notes that Travis was a mere 23 years old when he met his death, and as you see by the letter he wrote before he was killed at the Alamo, Travis was a man of maturity and character, despite his youth. Of course, until very recent times, 23 was very much considered a man, while today, a male at 23 is often referred to as a ''kid'' or a boy or a youth. We no longer expect maturity of 23-year-olds. Maybe that is one of the reasons why we seem to be lacking leaders now; we delay adulthood until what used to be considered early middle age.
But be that as it may, the defenders of the Alamo were extraordinary men. They should be role models for our youth, but given the feminizing of our society, and the downplaying of the warrior ethic and masculinity in general, I suspect they are not held up, today, as men to be emulated, as in past eras.
Baldwin's piece is good, but I have one issue with it, and it's a fairly major point of difference. He says that the Alamo defenders fought and died for freedom.
''The brave men at the Alamo labored under the belief that America (and Texas) really was "the land of the free and the home of the brave." They believed God was on their side and that the freedom of future generations depended on their courage and resolve. They further believed their posterity would remember their sacrifice as an act of love and devotion. It all looks pale now.
By today�s standards, the gallant men of the Alamo appear rather foolish. After all, they had no chance of winning�none. However, the call for pragmatism and practicality was never sounded. Instead, they answered the clarion call, "Victory or death!"
Please try to remember the heroes of the Alamo as you watch our gutless political and religious leaders surrender to globalism, corporatism, and political correctness. Try to recall the time in this country when ordinary men and women had the courage of their convictions and were willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and independence.''
He says that 'liberty and independence' was what motivated the men at Lexington and Concord, too. He says that they died for these principles.
Firstly, I would say that the Alamo represented a different struggle, to some extent, than that of the American Revolution.
The Texas colonists came to Texas at the invitation of a foreign government, the Mexican government. They were entering a foreign land, and they knew that the Mexicans were a people of a very different background, culture, language, and religion. They knew that the heritage of freedom in the American sense was not part of Mexico's system of governance.
The American Revolution was not the same situation at all; the American colonists knew they were of the same blood as their English rulers; it was not a case of being dominated by a foreign people with a different understanding of ''rights'' or freedoms, as with Mexico. They did not see the English authorities as alien peoples; why would they? They were all of the same stock, with the exception of course of the Americans of Dutch descent or Swedish descent, who were a distinct minority. The American colonists claimed 'the rights of Englishmen'.
Somehow, recent generations of students seem to have the idea that the colonists thought of the English as alien oppressors, which was not so. The quarrel was a family quarrel, with the differences being over ideas like 'taxation without representation'. So to that extent, the American Revolution was about ideas or principles, but the Alamo was about a distinct people (the Anglo-Protestant American colonists) being under the rule of a very different people, and deprived of their rights as they understood them. There was an element of a culture clash, even if you don't want to admit a racial aspect, to the Texas independence movement.
I personally don't think that many men (or women) will be willing to die for abstract, disembodied principles like 'freedom' or 'liberty'. I think what it comes down to is that men will fight and even die for home, hearth, land, and ultimately, their kin, their people. I think that's true down through the ages, even when there are abstract principles invoked. And men will die for their faith, if that faith is genuine and strong enough.
And that is the crucial issue now; how many people will risk all to fight for abstractions like the 'proposition nation' with its 'freedom and liberty' shibboleths? Not many, I would say, but people will fight or risk harm to protect their families, homes, lands, and their faith.
Since our country has been turned into a 'proposition nation', open to one and all, standing for no particular way of life except 'freedom and equality', then it is no wonder that many people's loyalties have become attenuated. That may be the reason why ''the best lack all conviction'' these days, because why fight for an abstract notion or for a system of government or a government apparatus in a far-off city? What counts to most red-blooded people is their homes, property, friends, family. It's the people (plus the place) which is home to us. That's what we will defend. Anything else is just words on paper.
I have a few kinsmen who died at the Alamo. I am certain that they died in defense not of abstractions, but in defense of their right to live on their land among their people, practicing their faith, on their terms, self-determining. The issue of their right to bear arms was what sparked the ultimate struggle; the Mexican government tried to disarm them, and then the fight began.
Many of today's politically corrected people don't know why old Americans were so attached to their right to bear arms. It is with those arms that a man can secure and protect his home, his land, his family against outlawry and against a despotic government. A disarmed people is an enslaved people. They knew that.
But ultimately, both the Texans and the Revolutionary patriots wanted the right to live peaceably ''under his own vine and fig tree'' as self-determining people, among like neighbors. That is a primal affinity for most healthy people. We can't make these conflicts into a war for abstractions; it was about flesh-and-blood bonds.
And if one believes that they primarily wanted to secure their political rights, what better way to guarantee them than to live among your own people, who share common standards and ideals about how people treat one another, and about just what rights we have as individuals and collectively?
We are told by the open borders zealots that all the millions who are arriving in our country every year are coming because they want ''freedom and liberty''. But it is evident to anybody with eyes and sense that what many of the immigrants consider 'freedom' is not our idea of freedom. What they consider their 'rights' are not necessarily what we as a people have agreed to be our rights. And their assumed 'rights' come into conflict with ours, and the conflicts are insoluble in some cases.
No, our forebears did not fight or die for abstractions and fine-sounding words on parchment; they died for the right to be self-determining, to live and worship as suited them and their ancestors, and (they hoped) their posterity.
It's all about the people, the flesh-and-blood people.
He notes that Travis was a mere 23 years old when he met his death, and as you see by the letter he wrote before he was killed at the Alamo, Travis was a man of maturity and character, despite his youth. Of course, until very recent times, 23 was very much considered a man, while today, a male at 23 is often referred to as a ''kid'' or a boy or a youth. We no longer expect maturity of 23-year-olds. Maybe that is one of the reasons why we seem to be lacking leaders now; we delay adulthood until what used to be considered early middle age.
But be that as it may, the defenders of the Alamo were extraordinary men. They should be role models for our youth, but given the feminizing of our society, and the downplaying of the warrior ethic and masculinity in general, I suspect they are not held up, today, as men to be emulated, as in past eras.
Baldwin's piece is good, but I have one issue with it, and it's a fairly major point of difference. He says that the Alamo defenders fought and died for freedom.
''The brave men at the Alamo labored under the belief that America (and Texas) really was "the land of the free and the home of the brave." They believed God was on their side and that the freedom of future generations depended on their courage and resolve. They further believed their posterity would remember their sacrifice as an act of love and devotion. It all looks pale now.
By today�s standards, the gallant men of the Alamo appear rather foolish. After all, they had no chance of winning�none. However, the call for pragmatism and practicality was never sounded. Instead, they answered the clarion call, "Victory or death!"
Please try to remember the heroes of the Alamo as you watch our gutless political and religious leaders surrender to globalism, corporatism, and political correctness. Try to recall the time in this country when ordinary men and women had the courage of their convictions and were willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and independence.''
He says that 'liberty and independence' was what motivated the men at Lexington and Concord, too. He says that they died for these principles.
Firstly, I would say that the Alamo represented a different struggle, to some extent, than that of the American Revolution.
The Texas colonists came to Texas at the invitation of a foreign government, the Mexican government. They were entering a foreign land, and they knew that the Mexicans were a people of a very different background, culture, language, and religion. They knew that the heritage of freedom in the American sense was not part of Mexico's system of governance.
The American Revolution was not the same situation at all; the American colonists knew they were of the same blood as their English rulers; it was not a case of being dominated by a foreign people with a different understanding of ''rights'' or freedoms, as with Mexico. They did not see the English authorities as alien peoples; why would they? They were all of the same stock, with the exception of course of the Americans of Dutch descent or Swedish descent, who were a distinct minority. The American colonists claimed 'the rights of Englishmen'.
Somehow, recent generations of students seem to have the idea that the colonists thought of the English as alien oppressors, which was not so. The quarrel was a family quarrel, with the differences being over ideas like 'taxation without representation'. So to that extent, the American Revolution was about ideas or principles, but the Alamo was about a distinct people (the Anglo-Protestant American colonists) being under the rule of a very different people, and deprived of their rights as they understood them. There was an element of a culture clash, even if you don't want to admit a racial aspect, to the Texas independence movement.
I personally don't think that many men (or women) will be willing to die for abstract, disembodied principles like 'freedom' or 'liberty'. I think what it comes down to is that men will fight and even die for home, hearth, land, and ultimately, their kin, their people. I think that's true down through the ages, even when there are abstract principles invoked. And men will die for their faith, if that faith is genuine and strong enough.
And that is the crucial issue now; how many people will risk all to fight for abstractions like the 'proposition nation' with its 'freedom and liberty' shibboleths? Not many, I would say, but people will fight or risk harm to protect their families, homes, lands, and their faith.
Since our country has been turned into a 'proposition nation', open to one and all, standing for no particular way of life except 'freedom and equality', then it is no wonder that many people's loyalties have become attenuated. That may be the reason why ''the best lack all conviction'' these days, because why fight for an abstract notion or for a system of government or a government apparatus in a far-off city? What counts to most red-blooded people is their homes, property, friends, family. It's the people (plus the place) which is home to us. That's what we will defend. Anything else is just words on paper.
I have a few kinsmen who died at the Alamo. I am certain that they died in defense not of abstractions, but in defense of their right to live on their land among their people, practicing their faith, on their terms, self-determining. The issue of their right to bear arms was what sparked the ultimate struggle; the Mexican government tried to disarm them, and then the fight began.
Many of today's politically corrected people don't know why old Americans were so attached to their right to bear arms. It is with those arms that a man can secure and protect his home, his land, his family against outlawry and against a despotic government. A disarmed people is an enslaved people. They knew that.
But ultimately, both the Texans and the Revolutionary patriots wanted the right to live peaceably ''under his own vine and fig tree'' as self-determining people, among like neighbors. That is a primal affinity for most healthy people. We can't make these conflicts into a war for abstractions; it was about flesh-and-blood bonds.
And if one believes that they primarily wanted to secure their political rights, what better way to guarantee them than to live among your own people, who share common standards and ideals about how people treat one another, and about just what rights we have as individuals and collectively?
We are told by the open borders zealots that all the millions who are arriving in our country every year are coming because they want ''freedom and liberty''. But it is evident to anybody with eyes and sense that what many of the immigrants consider 'freedom' is not our idea of freedom. What they consider their 'rights' are not necessarily what we as a people have agreed to be our rights. And their assumed 'rights' come into conflict with ours, and the conflicts are insoluble in some cases.
No, our forebears did not fight or die for abstractions and fine-sounding words on parchment; they died for the right to be self-determining, to live and worship as suited them and their ancestors, and (they hoped) their posterity.
It's all about the people, the flesh-and-blood people.
Labels: American History, Ethnopatriotism, National Character, National Sovereignty, Proposition Nation
0 comment Sunday, June 15, 2014 | admin
Tell me again that no third party will ever succeed in America.
Tell me again how the Republicans are 'the best we can hope for.'
It seems I've been told that so many times in recent years, but in light of this, how can anybody say those things in sincerity, or without shame?
''Mr. Cain got a jump on other potential GOP 2012 candidates Wednesday when he formed a presidential exploratory committee, which allows him to raise money for a possible White House run. None of the likely frontrunners have taken that step.
The Atlanta radio host and former chief executive of Godfather�s Pizza said he plans to spend several months seeing if he can drum up enough support among donors and voters to justify a full-blown campaign.''
The FReepers, who to me represent the 'average' GOP voter, seem beside themselves with excitement about Cain running for President, not to mention Allen West, who also sends a thrill up the collective leg of the FReepers.
However, I am dumbfounded that even the FReepers are still trotting out this old chestnut:
''He will be a powerful put-down to the myth of 'republicans = racist�
Now that some brave and powerful black conservatives have put their necks on the line - and WON - there will be more who will step forward.
Without being able to use the race card - the libs so long successful lie - a card now maxed out and soon to be canceled - they will be hard put to refute opposition stances.''
Can you believe anyone can say that with a straight face after the last two years of experience? Does the name 'Michael Steele' ring any bells over in FReeperland? What about J.C. Watts? Condoleezza Rice? Colin Powell? Is there anybody I've forgotten?
One more reminder: surely some of you here remember that some Republicans said that same thing about a certain candidate in 2008. If he were elected, surely that would disarm the left and minority voters, because it would put the lie to their claim that this was a 'racist' country, and they would no longer have any excuses about how blacks can't succeed in this country. Therefore there would be no more race card to play. People actually said that. How has that worked out? Anybody noticed?
Maybe it's been a smashing success and I just haven't noticed.
Really, though, what hope is there for the Republican Party in the next election? The other candidates or wannabees -- Romney, Gingrich, Pence, Jeb Bush, 'Huckster' Huckabee -- could there be any sorrier slate of candidates anywhere?
And yet there are still those who say that a third party can never succeed; it will just elect the Democrats yet again. Invariably somebody brings up Ross Perot and how he caused the election of Clinton. But would Poppy Bush have been any better, apart from the sex scandal thing?
Of course a third party will not succeed as long as people keep denouncing the very idea of it, and calling it a hopeless cause. As long as people convince themselves, or let others convince them of that supposed certainty, then no, a third party will never succeed.
People do forget that the Republicans started as a third party.
Just because third parties since then have failed to capture much support does not mean that it can never happen. There is a first time for everything, and if ever there was a time, it is now, for a party that might actually represent the interests of the American majority.
The Tea Party is the great White hope for some people -- but the Tea Party faithful seem to see themselves as the great Diverse hope, apparently, with their ardent courtship of minorities and the 'colorblind' crowd.
Some might say, 'Cain (or West) might be a good conservative gentleman and a wonderful candidate.' Some people put great stock in their success in past endeavors, business or the military. Surely we can see for ourselves the folly of electing a relative unknown, or a candidate without the right kind of experience. Some might say 'why does his race matter? Why shouldn't Republicans run a black candidate?'
No matter how conservative a black candidate might be, for such a man to be President at a time when things have never been tenser amongst the races would mean that such issues would only be further complicated, not soothed, as some people claim. And it would further marginalize Whites within the Republican Party, as political correctness would be reinforced tenfold, with everybody leaning over backwards to show their 'colorblindness' and to be 'sensitive and inclusive.' We would be even more constrained in acting towards our own interests -- which, once again, do not coincide with those of any ''minority community.''
Having Republicans join Democrats in the never-ending quest for minority approval and for the ultimate Black Savior would only mean that we would be that much farther away from any addressing of our needs and interests. End result: we would be more marginalized than ever, if the GOP becomes another haven for politically correct identity politics.
And as others have pointed out along the line, it will become established policy that we should have a black (and later, other minority) president as some kind of gesture of good faith. To elect a White president after two (or more) black presidents would be denounced as a ''big step backward'' towards the bad old days of discrimination and 'White hegemony.' Republicans would not counter these accusations, but would buckle under and try even harder to appear non-racist.
At this point, electing someone as a gesture of goodwill or a statement against 'racism' or as a way of proving how PC we are is just a very bad reason to choose the occupant of the highest office in our land.
Let only the best candidate be chosen. But at this troubled point in our history, having another presidency in which race would be front and center all the time is the last thing we need. It would not pour oil on the troubled waters, but would be more fuel for conflict.
Tell me again how the Republicans are 'the best we can hope for.'
It seems I've been told that so many times in recent years, but in light of this, how can anybody say those things in sincerity, or without shame?
''Mr. Cain got a jump on other potential GOP 2012 candidates Wednesday when he formed a presidential exploratory committee, which allows him to raise money for a possible White House run. None of the likely frontrunners have taken that step.
The Atlanta radio host and former chief executive of Godfather�s Pizza said he plans to spend several months seeing if he can drum up enough support among donors and voters to justify a full-blown campaign.''
The FReepers, who to me represent the 'average' GOP voter, seem beside themselves with excitement about Cain running for President, not to mention Allen West, who also sends a thrill up the collective leg of the FReepers.
However, I am dumbfounded that even the FReepers are still trotting out this old chestnut:
''He will be a powerful put-down to the myth of 'republicans = racist�
Now that some brave and powerful black conservatives have put their necks on the line - and WON - there will be more who will step forward.
Without being able to use the race card - the libs so long successful lie - a card now maxed out and soon to be canceled - they will be hard put to refute opposition stances.''
Can you believe anyone can say that with a straight face after the last two years of experience? Does the name 'Michael Steele' ring any bells over in FReeperland? What about J.C. Watts? Condoleezza Rice? Colin Powell? Is there anybody I've forgotten?
One more reminder: surely some of you here remember that some Republicans said that same thing about a certain candidate in 2008. If he were elected, surely that would disarm the left and minority voters, because it would put the lie to their claim that this was a 'racist' country, and they would no longer have any excuses about how blacks can't succeed in this country. Therefore there would be no more race card to play. People actually said that. How has that worked out? Anybody noticed?
Maybe it's been a smashing success and I just haven't noticed.
Really, though, what hope is there for the Republican Party in the next election? The other candidates or wannabees -- Romney, Gingrich, Pence, Jeb Bush, 'Huckster' Huckabee -- could there be any sorrier slate of candidates anywhere?
And yet there are still those who say that a third party can never succeed; it will just elect the Democrats yet again. Invariably somebody brings up Ross Perot and how he caused the election of Clinton. But would Poppy Bush have been any better, apart from the sex scandal thing?
Of course a third party will not succeed as long as people keep denouncing the very idea of it, and calling it a hopeless cause. As long as people convince themselves, or let others convince them of that supposed certainty, then no, a third party will never succeed.
People do forget that the Republicans started as a third party.
Just because third parties since then have failed to capture much support does not mean that it can never happen. There is a first time for everything, and if ever there was a time, it is now, for a party that might actually represent the interests of the American majority.
The Tea Party is the great White hope for some people -- but the Tea Party faithful seem to see themselves as the great Diverse hope, apparently, with their ardent courtship of minorities and the 'colorblind' crowd.
Some might say, 'Cain (or West) might be a good conservative gentleman and a wonderful candidate.' Some people put great stock in their success in past endeavors, business or the military. Surely we can see for ourselves the folly of electing a relative unknown, or a candidate without the right kind of experience. Some might say 'why does his race matter? Why shouldn't Republicans run a black candidate?'
No matter how conservative a black candidate might be, for such a man to be President at a time when things have never been tenser amongst the races would mean that such issues would only be further complicated, not soothed, as some people claim. And it would further marginalize Whites within the Republican Party, as political correctness would be reinforced tenfold, with everybody leaning over backwards to show their 'colorblindness' and to be 'sensitive and inclusive.' We would be even more constrained in acting towards our own interests -- which, once again, do not coincide with those of any ''minority community.''
Having Republicans join Democrats in the never-ending quest for minority approval and for the ultimate Black Savior would only mean that we would be that much farther away from any addressing of our needs and interests. End result: we would be more marginalized than ever, if the GOP becomes another haven for politically correct identity politics.
And as others have pointed out along the line, it will become established policy that we should have a black (and later, other minority) president as some kind of gesture of good faith. To elect a White president after two (or more) black presidents would be denounced as a ''big step backward'' towards the bad old days of discrimination and 'White hegemony.' Republicans would not counter these accusations, but would buckle under and try even harder to appear non-racist.
At this point, electing someone as a gesture of goodwill or a statement against 'racism' or as a way of proving how PC we are is just a very bad reason to choose the occupant of the highest office in our land.
Let only the best candidate be chosen. But at this troubled point in our history, having another presidency in which race would be front and center all the time is the last thing we need. It would not pour oil on the troubled waters, but would be more fuel for conflict.
Labels: Cultural Marxism, Ethnopatriotism, Gop, Identity Politics, Respectable Right
0 comment Saturday, May 24, 2014 | admin
When was public virtue to be found where private was not? Can he love the whole who loves no part? He be a nation's friend who is, in truth, the friend of no man there? Who slights the charities for whose dear sake, that country, if at all, must be beloved?
- CowperThinking about the Tea Party movement, and the disagreement that exists on the right about it, it seems to me a shame that many on the pro-White side regard the Tea Partiers in general as what they disparagingly call ''patriotards'' or sheeple.
I've certainly been critical of the deluded efforts of the Tea Parties to scurry away from any sign of political incorrectness, and their need to quickly grasp at some evidence of their lack of 'racism.'
However, I don't want to leave the impression that I look down on the many White Americans who are involved in, or sympathetic to the Tea Parties. For many people this seems the only opportunity to express a growing sense of unease, at the least, if not a sense of outrage about what is being done to our country and to the soon-to-be-dispossessed majority. Having been propagandized into believing that there is no option other than the TP, they are grasping at it as a drowning man reaches for a lifeline.
It does disturb me that there is so much rancor for those people, many of them good and decent Americans, who are not racially conscious enough for some people on the pro-White end of the spectrum.
We've all been subjected to the propaganda of the existing multicult system, with its taboos and shibboleths, and with its relentless methods of shaming and punishing those who violate its ubiquitous rules. Some of us were among those 'patriotards' not very long ago, and some of us have, nevertheless, made our way past the hedges and barriers of political correctness to a more realistic and honest point of view. Some of us are still on that path, and those who are farthest along might have a little more patience and empathy with the stragglers and strugglers who are moving towards truth, however slowly.
This piece, by Samuel J. Phillips, from TOQ deals with the Tea Party movement. It's a very good piece, and in it he says:
''It is tempting to simply dismiss such people as saps or fools. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to at least try to engage. Our numbers are too small and our forces too weak to write off any potential allies.''
Lest I be considered one of those who dismiss the Tea Party attendees as 'saps or fools', I second what Phillips says there. In a recent piece in which I disparaged Glenn Beck and the rest of the self-appointed 'leaders' of the movement, my intention was simply to point out the suspect motives of the 'leadership'. Does this mean I think that the Tea Partiers are not potential allies? Not at all, provided they are able to take off the blinders and listen to something outside Fox News and 'conservative' talk radio. As always, there will only be a small minority that is really seeking the truth; unfortunately most will not go against what they perceive to be the tide of popular opinion among their Republican friends. But some can be led in the right direction.
Phillips implies that it will be necessary to engage with the people that many on our side look down on as dupes and fools, to 'reach out' to them, in the cant phrase that is so much used nowadays.
I think he may be right.
'Intellectually, there is the beginning of an alternative right that is capable of confronting and destroying the premises of the system that oppresses us. We have to build on this foundation and create institutions that are capable of real political action. This will require compromise, sacrifice, and innumerable defeats. It will also require many white advocates to leave their comfort zones and engage with people that they may regard as mistaken or even immoral. However, there is no other way forward.''
Phillips also links to this piece by Mark Hackard at Alternative Right.
Towards the end of that piece, he says
''What then is the core of American identity? It is a point of hope that throughout the land there are still many Americans of strong faith and generous heart. They love their country without conditions, as they love their family. And they would see America as a Christian nation, though its ideology belies the notion. These positive qualities and instincts are exploited in the service of democratic pluralism, a pseudo-religious creed.''
That is the point at which we have to try to engage with the people some write off as 'patriotards.' I have to say, sadly, that there are some on the pro-White side who really don't like most of their fellow Americans very much, and that is a huge problem. Without the 'strong faith and generous heart' and the love of country (which to me, means the love of the people) we will not reach many of our kinsmen with our message. As Hackard's essay implies, these good qualities of our people have been misused and exploited to turn us into a people without a country, a people who are afraid to assert their own interests, and instead put everyone else's interests first.
Hatred of a common enemy can only unite people for a brief time, and the alliance will be an uneasy one. A common love for our people and heritage and yes, the land which is our birthright is the only thing that might truly unite us.
Love of country, as in love of our people and the land itself, is a good thing, , despite the cynicism with which many have come to view it. If we can connect with these lost sheep, who at least have some vestigial love for their people and nation, we might salvage this country and the future of our progeny. We will not prevail if we neither like nor respect our fellow Americans, even those who are bewitched and exploited by unscrupulous 'leaders.'
- CowperThinking about the Tea Party movement, and the disagreement that exists on the right about it, it seems to me a shame that many on the pro-White side regard the Tea Partiers in general as what they disparagingly call ''patriotards'' or sheeple.
I've certainly been critical of the deluded efforts of the Tea Parties to scurry away from any sign of political incorrectness, and their need to quickly grasp at some evidence of their lack of 'racism.'
However, I don't want to leave the impression that I look down on the many White Americans who are involved in, or sympathetic to the Tea Parties. For many people this seems the only opportunity to express a growing sense of unease, at the least, if not a sense of outrage about what is being done to our country and to the soon-to-be-dispossessed majority. Having been propagandized into believing that there is no option other than the TP, they are grasping at it as a drowning man reaches for a lifeline.
It does disturb me that there is so much rancor for those people, many of them good and decent Americans, who are not racially conscious enough for some people on the pro-White end of the spectrum.
We've all been subjected to the propaganda of the existing multicult system, with its taboos and shibboleths, and with its relentless methods of shaming and punishing those who violate its ubiquitous rules. Some of us were among those 'patriotards' not very long ago, and some of us have, nevertheless, made our way past the hedges and barriers of political correctness to a more realistic and honest point of view. Some of us are still on that path, and those who are farthest along might have a little more patience and empathy with the stragglers and strugglers who are moving towards truth, however slowly.
This piece, by Samuel J. Phillips, from TOQ deals with the Tea Party movement. It's a very good piece, and in it he says:
''It is tempting to simply dismiss such people as saps or fools. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to at least try to engage. Our numbers are too small and our forces too weak to write off any potential allies.''
Lest I be considered one of those who dismiss the Tea Party attendees as 'saps or fools', I second what Phillips says there. In a recent piece in which I disparaged Glenn Beck and the rest of the self-appointed 'leaders' of the movement, my intention was simply to point out the suspect motives of the 'leadership'. Does this mean I think that the Tea Partiers are not potential allies? Not at all, provided they are able to take off the blinders and listen to something outside Fox News and 'conservative' talk radio. As always, there will only be a small minority that is really seeking the truth; unfortunately most will not go against what they perceive to be the tide of popular opinion among their Republican friends. But some can be led in the right direction.
Phillips implies that it will be necessary to engage with the people that many on our side look down on as dupes and fools, to 'reach out' to them, in the cant phrase that is so much used nowadays.
I think he may be right.
'Intellectually, there is the beginning of an alternative right that is capable of confronting and destroying the premises of the system that oppresses us. We have to build on this foundation and create institutions that are capable of real political action. This will require compromise, sacrifice, and innumerable defeats. It will also require many white advocates to leave their comfort zones and engage with people that they may regard as mistaken or even immoral. However, there is no other way forward.''
Phillips also links to this piece by Mark Hackard at Alternative Right.
Towards the end of that piece, he says
''What then is the core of American identity? It is a point of hope that throughout the land there are still many Americans of strong faith and generous heart. They love their country without conditions, as they love their family. And they would see America as a Christian nation, though its ideology belies the notion. These positive qualities and instincts are exploited in the service of democratic pluralism, a pseudo-religious creed.''
That is the point at which we have to try to engage with the people some write off as 'patriotards.' I have to say, sadly, that there are some on the pro-White side who really don't like most of their fellow Americans very much, and that is a huge problem. Without the 'strong faith and generous heart' and the love of country (which to me, means the love of the people) we will not reach many of our kinsmen with our message. As Hackard's essay implies, these good qualities of our people have been misused and exploited to turn us into a people without a country, a people who are afraid to assert their own interests, and instead put everyone else's interests first.
Hatred of a common enemy can only unite people for a brief time, and the alliance will be an uneasy one. A common love for our people and heritage and yes, the land which is our birthright is the only thing that might truly unite us.
Love of country, as in love of our people and the land itself, is a good thing, , despite the cynicism with which many have come to view it. If we can connect with these lost sheep, who at least have some vestigial love for their people and nation, we might salvage this country and the future of our progeny. We will not prevail if we neither like nor respect our fellow Americans, even those who are bewitched and exploited by unscrupulous 'leaders.'
Labels: Activism, Ethnoconservatism, Ethnopatriotism, Nationalism
0 comment Friday, May 23, 2014 | admin
Joe Sobran, who recently passed away, wrote a piece on nationalism and patriotism. It was written not long after the 9/11 attacks, and it is written in the spirit of warning against the dangers of the blind patriotism that seemed, for a while, to be sweeping this country.
The subject of patriotism vs. nationalism is one that I have returned to periodically on this blog. It is a distinction that is hard to explain, and hard to discuss with others, because different people seem to have differing perceptions of what each of those terms means.
To me, the term 'patriotism' is what Sobran, in the linked essay, calls 'nationalism', in the jingoistic sense.
''This is a season of patriotism, but also of something that is easily mistaken for patriotism; namely, nationalism. The difference is vital.
G.K. Chesterton once observed that Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of British imperialism, suffered from a "lack of patriotism." He explained: "He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English."
In the same way, many Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be "the greatest country on earth" in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the 2nd-greatest, or the 19th-greatest, or, heaven forbid, "a 3rd-rate power," it would be virtually worthless.
This is nationalism, not patriotism. Patriotism is like family love. You love your family just for being your family, not for being "the greatest family on earth" (whatever that might mean) or for being "better" than other families. You don�t feel threatened when other people love their families the same way. On the contrary, you respect their love, and you take comfort in knowing they respect yours. You don�t feel your family is enhanced by feuding with other families.
While patriotism is a form of affection, nationalism, it has often been said, is grounded in resentment and rivalry; it�s often defined by its enemies and traitors, real or supposed. It is militant by nature, and its typical style is belligerent. Patriotism, by contrast, is peaceful until forced to fight.
The patriot differs from the nationalist in this respect too: he can laugh at his country, the way members of a family can laugh at each other�s foibles. Affection takes for granted the imperfection of those it loves; the patriotic Irishman thinks Ireland is hilarious, whereas the Irish nationalist sees nothing to laugh about.
The nationalist has to prove his country is always right. He reduces his country to an idea, a perfect abstraction, rather than a mere home.''
My impression is that most Americans, especially those on the paleo-conservative end, as well as libertarians and leftists, associate patriotism with the blind jingoism and militarism. Witness how the slur ''patriotard'' is directed at those who tended to be pro-Iraq War and Islamo-skeptical. Most Republicans consider themselves patriotic, and their detractors on right and left call them ''patriotards''.
Likewise, the term nationalist is viewed with suspicion by most of the average American type; the media have assigned a derogatory meaning to ''nationalist'' as being associated with ''supremacists'' or Nazis or right-wing xenophobes (so-called.)
I don't know how we might untangle the contradictory and confused meanings and connotations of those two terms. Sobran makes a pretty effective case for his definitions, and for a humble kind of patriotism that does not go in for interventionism and militarism for its own sake.
''When it comes to war, the patriot realizes that the rest of the world can�t be turned into America, because his America is something specific and particular � the memories and traditions that can no more be transplanted than the mountains and the prairies. He seeks only contentment at home, and he is quick to compromise with an enemy. He wants his country to be just strong enough to defend itself.''
By Sobran's definitions, I would have to consider myself a patriot, but a patriot towards my people, not towards a regime or an ideology or a set of principles.
But this can get sticky in our ''post-American America.'' The ruling ideology in this country is insistent that everybody and anybody who takes up residence on American soil is one of my people, just by virtue of being here. Likewise everybody who is born here, even though they may be part an ethnic enclave and speak little English, is one of my people, an American. So we have to distinguish between loyalty based on geographic location and political boundaries, and loyalty based on blood kinship plus common culture and history.
I am reminded of this piece from 1996 to which I linked in a past blog entry.
And, of course, the American media are becoming less American, as Britons and others infiltrate their ranks. CNN epitomizes an emerging electronic life-form that is slowly becoming the eyes and ears of the world community. Members of the media, particularly foreign correspondents, are becoming what Mitchell Cohen, an editor at Dissent, calls "rooted cosmopolitans" -- people with several loyalties, standing "in many circles, but with common ground" in the form of a home base. Cohen's description evokes the turn-of-the-century essayist Randolph Bourne's idea of a transnational America -- of multiple-passport holders and dual citizens.
A new Manifest Destiny, in other words: We strip the world of its human ingenuity, attracting the most talented Asians, Africans, and so on to the United States. We anglicize them. Although they are not loyal to the degree that former immigrants were, they accept America as their base. We become the place where all the world's major cultures and economies meet, conquering the world as it conquers us. Blood-and-soil nationalism recedes.
Given that American politics has often been a series of peaceful evolutions, we may be in the midst of a transition so gradual that it cannot fit within the confines of the news. It will be apparent only after it happens. Tom Nairn, a social scientist, writes that nationalism is "an inwardly-determined social necessity, a 'growth-stage,' located somewhere in between . . . 'feudal societies' and a future where the factors of nationality will become less prominent." America, more than any other nation, may have been born to die.''
We are entering a new phase in which we will see which side prevails: the idea of ''transnational America'', which, to me, is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, or the traditional nation, (which word, after all, denotes 'birth'). Human nature inclines us to kin loyalty; it does not incline us to the article writer's abomination of America as a congeries of ''rooted cosmopolitans'' of all races and creeds.
The two ideas are on a collision course, and we can only hope that human nature and tradition win out against social engineering and utopian ideology.
The subject of patriotism vs. nationalism is one that I have returned to periodically on this blog. It is a distinction that is hard to explain, and hard to discuss with others, because different people seem to have differing perceptions of what each of those terms means.
To me, the term 'patriotism' is what Sobran, in the linked essay, calls 'nationalism', in the jingoistic sense.
''This is a season of patriotism, but also of something that is easily mistaken for patriotism; namely, nationalism. The difference is vital.
G.K. Chesterton once observed that Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of British imperialism, suffered from a "lack of patriotism." He explained: "He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English."
In the same way, many Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be "the greatest country on earth" in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the 2nd-greatest, or the 19th-greatest, or, heaven forbid, "a 3rd-rate power," it would be virtually worthless.
This is nationalism, not patriotism. Patriotism is like family love. You love your family just for being your family, not for being "the greatest family on earth" (whatever that might mean) or for being "better" than other families. You don�t feel threatened when other people love their families the same way. On the contrary, you respect their love, and you take comfort in knowing they respect yours. You don�t feel your family is enhanced by feuding with other families.
While patriotism is a form of affection, nationalism, it has often been said, is grounded in resentment and rivalry; it�s often defined by its enemies and traitors, real or supposed. It is militant by nature, and its typical style is belligerent. Patriotism, by contrast, is peaceful until forced to fight.
The patriot differs from the nationalist in this respect too: he can laugh at his country, the way members of a family can laugh at each other�s foibles. Affection takes for granted the imperfection of those it loves; the patriotic Irishman thinks Ireland is hilarious, whereas the Irish nationalist sees nothing to laugh about.
The nationalist has to prove his country is always right. He reduces his country to an idea, a perfect abstraction, rather than a mere home.''
My impression is that most Americans, especially those on the paleo-conservative end, as well as libertarians and leftists, associate patriotism with the blind jingoism and militarism. Witness how the slur ''patriotard'' is directed at those who tended to be pro-Iraq War and Islamo-skeptical. Most Republicans consider themselves patriotic, and their detractors on right and left call them ''patriotards''.
Likewise, the term nationalist is viewed with suspicion by most of the average American type; the media have assigned a derogatory meaning to ''nationalist'' as being associated with ''supremacists'' or Nazis or right-wing xenophobes (so-called.)
I don't know how we might untangle the contradictory and confused meanings and connotations of those two terms. Sobran makes a pretty effective case for his definitions, and for a humble kind of patriotism that does not go in for interventionism and militarism for its own sake.
''When it comes to war, the patriot realizes that the rest of the world can�t be turned into America, because his America is something specific and particular � the memories and traditions that can no more be transplanted than the mountains and the prairies. He seeks only contentment at home, and he is quick to compromise with an enemy. He wants his country to be just strong enough to defend itself.''
By Sobran's definitions, I would have to consider myself a patriot, but a patriot towards my people, not towards a regime or an ideology or a set of principles.
But this can get sticky in our ''post-American America.'' The ruling ideology in this country is insistent that everybody and anybody who takes up residence on American soil is one of my people, just by virtue of being here. Likewise everybody who is born here, even though they may be part an ethnic enclave and speak little English, is one of my people, an American. So we have to distinguish between loyalty based on geographic location and political boundaries, and loyalty based on blood kinship plus common culture and history.
I am reminded of this piece from 1996 to which I linked in a past blog entry.
And, of course, the American media are becoming less American, as Britons and others infiltrate their ranks. CNN epitomizes an emerging electronic life-form that is slowly becoming the eyes and ears of the world community. Members of the media, particularly foreign correspondents, are becoming what Mitchell Cohen, an editor at Dissent, calls "rooted cosmopolitans" -- people with several loyalties, standing "in many circles, but with common ground" in the form of a home base. Cohen's description evokes the turn-of-the-century essayist Randolph Bourne's idea of a transnational America -- of multiple-passport holders and dual citizens.
A new Manifest Destiny, in other words: We strip the world of its human ingenuity, attracting the most talented Asians, Africans, and so on to the United States. We anglicize them. Although they are not loyal to the degree that former immigrants were, they accept America as their base. We become the place where all the world's major cultures and economies meet, conquering the world as it conquers us. Blood-and-soil nationalism recedes.
Given that American politics has often been a series of peaceful evolutions, we may be in the midst of a transition so gradual that it cannot fit within the confines of the news. It will be apparent only after it happens. Tom Nairn, a social scientist, writes that nationalism is "an inwardly-determined social necessity, a 'growth-stage,' located somewhere in between . . . 'feudal societies' and a future where the factors of nationality will become less prominent." America, more than any other nation, may have been born to die.''
We are entering a new phase in which we will see which side prevails: the idea of ''transnational America'', which, to me, is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, or the traditional nation, (which word, after all, denotes 'birth'). Human nature inclines us to kin loyalty; it does not incline us to the article writer's abomination of America as a congeries of ''rooted cosmopolitans'' of all races and creeds.
The two ideas are on a collision course, and we can only hope that human nature and tradition win out against social engineering and utopian ideology.
Labels: Cosmopolitanism, Creedal Patriotism, Ethnopatriotism, Nationalism, Nationality, Patriotism
0 comment Wednesday, May 7, 2014 | admin
I have had this post simmering for a day now, and I have been dragging my heels about writing it, but I suppose it will keep nagging at my mind until I write it.
We have likely all heard the often-repeated saying ''A society (or civilization) can be judged by how it treats the least (or weakest) of its members.'' Who said that? It is credited to several people, including Mohandas Gandhi, (the MLK of India and the hero of lefty new agers everywhere). A close approximation of that sentence was also spoken by Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat politician and presidential candidate who was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968.
Pearl S. Buck, a popular writer and leftist activist of the mid-20th century said something similar:
"Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members."
This piece by Tim Heydon, about the National Health Service report on elderly care in the UK hospital system, posted at Sarah, Maid of Albion provoked a kind of strong reaction in me. I reacted, understandably, to the disturbing content of the article -- and to the comments attached thereto at Sarah's blog.
And it was more than that. It was the cumulative effect of a number of callous comments, or downright hateful comments posted by 'conservatives' of various stripes, everywhere from Free Republic to the comments section on this blog, over the last few months.
We've been hearing a lot about the proposed government-run health care system that looms in our future, and its proposals to curtail health care for those over 60 and those with chronic conditions. The gist of it all is that such people are being increasingly talked of as being a drain on the economy and a waste of space and resources. And in a way, this is all the culmination of many decades of propaganda which exalts youth, beauty, and perfect health, as being the epitome of human worth. The counterculture of the 60s, with its adolescent narcissism and its unhealthy obsession with 'health' has taken its toll. It's been a long time since America respected its elder citizens.
No doubt there have always been people who did not respect their elders, even their own parents, but they have not been brazen or bold enough to display their callousness and resentment openly, as we see now. And this is even among 'conservatives', many of whom name the name of Christ, and profess to believe the Bible.
I blame the decades of leftist propaganda. Leftists are odd in that they claim to care for society's ''weakest members'' and the helpless and the poor, but when you look at what they actually do, they clearly don't care. They have had their consciences seared 'as with a hot iron.' They claim to care about children, but support abortion.
But they don't even pretend to care about the old and the infirm, unless said old and infirm are of a victim group of some sort. They obviously, emphatically, don't care about their own blood kin and countrymen.
And I am going to make the same charge against many of the callous fiscal conservatives who would pull the plug on granny, their own and everyone else's, if it meant lower taxes for them, or less of a burden on them financially. And if their granny is sitting on a sizable fortune, so much the better if she pops her clogs sooner rather than later.
When I had deserted the liberal camp, I still, for a long time, could not bring myself to identify as a 'conservative' because to me, conservatives were all too often grasping and mean (in both senses of the word), eager to judge others who they deemed 'deadbeats'. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in the context of the debate over extending unemployment benefits. There is incredible hardness of heart among many Republicans and among many libertarians who spent their adolescence reading Ayn Rand. They truly do believe selfishness is the ultimate virtue. They truly despise the man who is experiencing hard times.
That's to be expected if one is a nonbeliever, but it is just not possible to hold those attitudes if one is a Christian.
I truly think we are being sifted now, and that we will see who is a real Christian, and who has a heart for his neighbor or his brother, and who is living only for Self and money.
And even if this does not matter to you on moral grounds, think of it this way: do we really love our people, or are we really even loyal to our folk if we despise some large segment of them?
For some people, their despised group is Christians. Well, that category includes most of our ancestors up until recently, so if you loathe Christians, you loathe your own forefathers, your blood and kin, as well as your European and American heritage, which was bound up, like it or not, with Christianity. Our ancestors lived and died for it. Go ahead and despise them and all they believed in, but forfeit your right to claim you care about your people or heritage.
And can anyone say he cares about ''the existence of our people'' if he hates his elders, or the elders of our people in general? I say categorically: no. It is not possible to have contempt and a cold heart towards your elders and still claim you care about our people, your people, or your nation.
So I say, if you name the name of Christ, you cannot hate your own people, especially your elders who raised you and taught you and nurtured you when you were weak and helpless and dependent.
Despise the weak, if it makes you feel tough, but remember you too will likely be weak one day, or ill one day, and possibly broke one day. How much comfort will Ayn Rand be then?
And if you claim to be an ethnopatriot yet loathe large segments of your people, then your claim is dubious.
I am reminded of an old 'Peanuts' cartoon, in which 'crabby' Lucy Van Pelt says ''I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.''
Do you hate the old, or Christians or the Europeans or the Anglo-Saxons/WASPs, White women -- and still claim you love your race? You can't love an abstract notion of your people, or your idealized version of your people. You have to love the flesh-and-blood, imperfect people that you see around you.
It seems that for some people, loving their folk means that they love those people who are exact mirror images of themselves: people with the same ideology or belief system, people of similar ethnic identification, people who speak the same shibboleths. What kind of love is it that loves only that which mirrors onself very closely? Loving those like ourselves is a necessary balance to the insane xenophilia that is force-fed to us day in and day out, but it can be carried too far. If we love only that very small coterie that is on the same page with us ideologically, or generationally, then our love is too narrow to enable us to prevail in this crisis.
Like many of us, I have family members whose political views are absolute anathema to me, yet I can still love them as my flesh and blood. After all they might come around and see common sense one day. That is where 'charity' comes in; I may not like my lost relatives very much but I can be patient with them and loyal to them when the chips are down. That is all that is required for the disparate elements among our people to work together. Your family, warts and all, will always be your family.
We don't all have to love each other in the warm and fuzzy sense. We should be loyal to one another if we intend to continue as a people.
We cannot afford the division and constant infighting.
Our enemies are trying to ensure that we all turn on each other and become hopelessly divided. Divide and rule.
In fact, I am going to have to convince myself, for the sake of keeping up my morale, that all the cold-hearted ones out there, the misanthropes and the nihilists are really just provocateurs or operatives pretending to be on our side, in order to sow division. If I believed there really were so many hard, bitter hearts on our side, people who would turn their backs on their elders, I would not be able to continue this effort any longer. What would it all be for? Why save a people that is no longer a cohesive and loyal group in any case? Why save a people that won't save their own? Why save a people that have so little love for their own kin?
Some people on our side, when accused of being 'haters', have offered the rote response that we don't hate anybody; we are acting out of love for our own people. Well, where is the evidence of that love? It is increasingly hard to find out there.
Maybe the charge of 'hatred' fits -- but only in the sense that many of us hate our own, far more than we hate the sainted Others. And that is sad.
The most tragic thing about a protracted struggle like ours, and the long-term onslaught of propaganda, is that we have started to believe the rhetoric of the Left, and have become a kind of reflection of the Left. We merely react to their manipulations, and have lost track of what we once were, and become something our ancestors would not even recognize.
As for me and this blog, I had hoped that I would be able to post more positive things about our heritage and our people, to call us back to an awareness of what we might be at our best.
Can it be done? Can we change things? Awash as we are in this sea of ugliness and lies, it becomes harder and harder to see the other shore.
We have to believe it's possible, as an act of sheer will.
We have likely all heard the often-repeated saying ''A society (or civilization) can be judged by how it treats the least (or weakest) of its members.'' Who said that? It is credited to several people, including Mohandas Gandhi, (the MLK of India and the hero of lefty new agers everywhere). A close approximation of that sentence was also spoken by Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat politician and presidential candidate who was defeated by Richard Nixon in 1968.
Pearl S. Buck, a popular writer and leftist activist of the mid-20th century said something similar:
"Yet somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members."
This piece by Tim Heydon, about the National Health Service report on elderly care in the UK hospital system, posted at Sarah, Maid of Albion provoked a kind of strong reaction in me. I reacted, understandably, to the disturbing content of the article -- and to the comments attached thereto at Sarah's blog.
And it was more than that. It was the cumulative effect of a number of callous comments, or downright hateful comments posted by 'conservatives' of various stripes, everywhere from Free Republic to the comments section on this blog, over the last few months.
We've been hearing a lot about the proposed government-run health care system that looms in our future, and its proposals to curtail health care for those over 60 and those with chronic conditions. The gist of it all is that such people are being increasingly talked of as being a drain on the economy and a waste of space and resources. And in a way, this is all the culmination of many decades of propaganda which exalts youth, beauty, and perfect health, as being the epitome of human worth. The counterculture of the 60s, with its adolescent narcissism and its unhealthy obsession with 'health' has taken its toll. It's been a long time since America respected its elder citizens.
No doubt there have always been people who did not respect their elders, even their own parents, but they have not been brazen or bold enough to display their callousness and resentment openly, as we see now. And this is even among 'conservatives', many of whom name the name of Christ, and profess to believe the Bible.
I blame the decades of leftist propaganda. Leftists are odd in that they claim to care for society's ''weakest members'' and the helpless and the poor, but when you look at what they actually do, they clearly don't care. They have had their consciences seared 'as with a hot iron.' They claim to care about children, but support abortion.
But they don't even pretend to care about the old and the infirm, unless said old and infirm are of a victim group of some sort. They obviously, emphatically, don't care about their own blood kin and countrymen.
And I am going to make the same charge against many of the callous fiscal conservatives who would pull the plug on granny, their own and everyone else's, if it meant lower taxes for them, or less of a burden on them financially. And if their granny is sitting on a sizable fortune, so much the better if she pops her clogs sooner rather than later.
When I had deserted the liberal camp, I still, for a long time, could not bring myself to identify as a 'conservative' because to me, conservatives were all too often grasping and mean (in both senses of the word), eager to judge others who they deemed 'deadbeats'. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in the context of the debate over extending unemployment benefits. There is incredible hardness of heart among many Republicans and among many libertarians who spent their adolescence reading Ayn Rand. They truly do believe selfishness is the ultimate virtue. They truly despise the man who is experiencing hard times.
That's to be expected if one is a nonbeliever, but it is just not possible to hold those attitudes if one is a Christian.
I truly think we are being sifted now, and that we will see who is a real Christian, and who has a heart for his neighbor or his brother, and who is living only for Self and money.
And even if this does not matter to you on moral grounds, think of it this way: do we really love our people, or are we really even loyal to our folk if we despise some large segment of them?
For some people, their despised group is Christians. Well, that category includes most of our ancestors up until recently, so if you loathe Christians, you loathe your own forefathers, your blood and kin, as well as your European and American heritage, which was bound up, like it or not, with Christianity. Our ancestors lived and died for it. Go ahead and despise them and all they believed in, but forfeit your right to claim you care about your people or heritage.
And can anyone say he cares about ''the existence of our people'' if he hates his elders, or the elders of our people in general? I say categorically: no. It is not possible to have contempt and a cold heart towards your elders and still claim you care about our people, your people, or your nation.
So I say, if you name the name of Christ, you cannot hate your own people, especially your elders who raised you and taught you and nurtured you when you were weak and helpless and dependent.
Despise the weak, if it makes you feel tough, but remember you too will likely be weak one day, or ill one day, and possibly broke one day. How much comfort will Ayn Rand be then?
And if you claim to be an ethnopatriot yet loathe large segments of your people, then your claim is dubious.
I am reminded of an old 'Peanuts' cartoon, in which 'crabby' Lucy Van Pelt says ''I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.''
Do you hate the old, or Christians or the Europeans or the Anglo-Saxons/WASPs, White women -- and still claim you love your race? You can't love an abstract notion of your people, or your idealized version of your people. You have to love the flesh-and-blood, imperfect people that you see around you.
It seems that for some people, loving their folk means that they love those people who are exact mirror images of themselves: people with the same ideology or belief system, people of similar ethnic identification, people who speak the same shibboleths. What kind of love is it that loves only that which mirrors onself very closely? Loving those like ourselves is a necessary balance to the insane xenophilia that is force-fed to us day in and day out, but it can be carried too far. If we love only that very small coterie that is on the same page with us ideologically, or generationally, then our love is too narrow to enable us to prevail in this crisis.
Like many of us, I have family members whose political views are absolute anathema to me, yet I can still love them as my flesh and blood. After all they might come around and see common sense one day. That is where 'charity' comes in; I may not like my lost relatives very much but I can be patient with them and loyal to them when the chips are down. That is all that is required for the disparate elements among our people to work together. Your family, warts and all, will always be your family.
We don't all have to love each other in the warm and fuzzy sense. We should be loyal to one another if we intend to continue as a people.
We cannot afford the division and constant infighting.
Our enemies are trying to ensure that we all turn on each other and become hopelessly divided. Divide and rule.
In fact, I am going to have to convince myself, for the sake of keeping up my morale, that all the cold-hearted ones out there, the misanthropes and the nihilists are really just provocateurs or operatives pretending to be on our side, in order to sow division. If I believed there really were so many hard, bitter hearts on our side, people who would turn their backs on their elders, I would not be able to continue this effort any longer. What would it all be for? Why save a people that is no longer a cohesive and loyal group in any case? Why save a people that won't save their own? Why save a people that have so little love for their own kin?
Some people on our side, when accused of being 'haters', have offered the rote response that we don't hate anybody; we are acting out of love for our own people. Well, where is the evidence of that love? It is increasingly hard to find out there.
Maybe the charge of 'hatred' fits -- but only in the sense that many of us hate our own, far more than we hate the sainted Others. And that is sad.
The most tragic thing about a protracted struggle like ours, and the long-term onslaught of propaganda, is that we have started to believe the rhetoric of the Left, and have become a kind of reflection of the Left. We merely react to their manipulations, and have lost track of what we once were, and become something our ancestors would not even recognize.
As for me and this blog, I had hoped that I would be able to post more positive things about our heritage and our people, to call us back to an awareness of what we might be at our best.
Can it be done? Can we change things? Awash as we are in this sea of ugliness and lies, it becomes harder and harder to see the other shore.
We have to believe it's possible, as an act of sheer will.
Labels: Christian Charity, Division, Ethno-Loyalty, Ethnopatriotism, Social Decay