On compromising...

The late Dennis Wheeler, who wrote brilliantly in defense of the South, wrote the following in refutation of the Kennedy brothers' book called The South Was Right. These words seem pertinent not only to defenders of the South but to all who are tempted to compromise with political correctness and egalitarianism when defending our heritage. It can't be done, as Wheeler shows:

I have never, to my knowledge, made a statement that is not in line with the position of the Old South. The truth is that many in the Southern movement today despise the superior/inferior social order of the Old South. They really do believe the Yankee Abolitionist position of equality was morally right. And so arises the need for the plausible lie. This enables them to stand for Yankee moral principles but attribute them to the South while attributing "racial hatred" to the Yankees.

Many other examples could be given; I’ll let these be sufficient. This idea that segregation and white social and political supremacy is a Yankee idea and not a Southern idea permeates the Southern movement today. I have reason to suspect that the main impetus for this plausible lie comes from this book, The South Was Right. The plausible lie makes a mockery of truth and the South. The portion of the Southern movement that is advancing the plausible lie is on a go-nowhere treadmill. This is because no advancement can take place for the South until the Yankee equalitarianism that has permeated America is destroyed.

And the reason for this should be clear: No pro-Southern equalitarian can erect any social order that is in one wit better than the one Northern equalitarians erected and in which we now live. Therefore, no matter how many flags and monuments are saved in heritage battles, no matter how many pro-Southern politicians are elected to office, no matter how many new members are recruited into the ranks of Southern organizations, no effective change can be wrought in our society until the principles of Yankee Abolitionist equalitarianism are refuted and overthrown.
[...]
To argue for the South within the framework of the Yankee equalitarian moral system is like trying to fit square pegs into round holes. It is as dishonest as the system our conquerors imposed upon us. And it is dishonorable for Southern men to be dishonest in their presentation of the issues pressing on the South today.''

Along the same lines are these words of Robert Salyer in a piece called Reconstruction and Nationalism:

''Southerners imbued with the egalitarian perspective of right and wrong are complicit in a public policy in the United States that aims at a society hereinafter undifferentiated, held together only by amorphous civic feeling. It is this complicity, and nothing else, that renders the South of today prostrate.
[...]
It is not true that humans have a duty to treat with identical dignity and identical concern every other human being on the planet solely by virtue of being of the species Homo Sapiens. This is the claim of Equality, the claim of Abolitionism, the claim of all modern Human Rights Campaigns, and it is simply unfounded. And it is unfounded because it is not true, because it is immoral.

Humans are social animals, and societies are organic. They have design, form, and a kind of soul in the whole. Rights exist only in society, and society accords different roles, corresponding rights, and different ranks to different members of society. Having such and such number of chromosomes does not, in and of itself, entitle one to freedom or anything else.''

These issues, obviously, are at the heart of most of what ails our society and the whole Western world today. It is around these issues that we will either stand or fall.

Music

Annbjørg Lien plays Norwegian Hardanger fiddle accompanied by Bjørn Ole Rasch. The set of tunes includes (appropriately) the Goblin's Halling and The Buckin' Mule.

How it started

At the blog Sarah, Maid of Albion, there is a good post by Mister Fox. It's about the immigration problem in the UK, with Winston Churchill and his terms as Prime Minister being the focus of the piece.

Although Churchill himself, as Mister Fox indicates, seemed aware enough of the growing problem of large numbers of immigrants to Britain, it seemed that  those around him did not always support his efforts to deal with the problem. It seems that there were already a number of internationalist/globalist types in government.

Mister Fox notes Churchill's warnings about these kinds of people:

“The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country who, if they add something to the culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large portion of our politicians. But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible utopias?''

I've noticed this over the years. The intellectual classes are often the fount of many damaging ideas and trends. This is true in the matter of politics, and in other areas. When I was doing a study on the growth of what we now call 'New Age' religions and cults, it seemed impossible not to see that the majority of those who were in the vanguard of these things were intellectuals, often from upper-middle class or upper-class origins. In general these were people who had, essentially, too much leisure and too much time on their hands, leading to their search for the new, the exotic, the bizarre, and the outrageous.

Some of you no doubt read the article that's been making the rounds on various blogs, about a study which purports to show that liberals are born, not made. Liberalism is claimed to have a genetic basis. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but as someone over at AmRen commented on that article, liberals are often 'intuitives', according to the Myers-Briggs personality typing system. These people who are categorized as 'intuitives', and they are often people in search of some cause or some utopia.

I would say that many of the 'intellectuals' who championed the cause of the One World idea were of this personality type, just as were many of the people like Englishwomen Annie Besant and later, Alice Bailey  who became committed to new-age and leftist beliefs and causes.

I've already quoted, in previous entries, writings from people like H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell, who were dedicated to promoting the destruction of nationalism and to a 'world order.'

I don't mean to digress too much here, but all these people were of a common mind on certain things, and they were examples of the kind of restless intellectuals who are destructive to the existing order.

I think, too, that we (myself included) focus much on the politicians, while there are other people, often in the intellectual world or the ''arts'' or in religious circles who are just as much complicit in what is happening to the West as our our elected (or selected) elites. There is a seamlessness among these groups; there is mutual influence and a popular mindset, a group mind if you will, that prevails among these people. This is true now as it was in Churchill's time.

Churchill's colleagues or cabinet ministers seemed to be working to undermine Churchill's efforts to deal with immigration and its attendant problems.

''The type of attitude Churchill had to endure with his colleagues was growing even then. The early Globalist, One-Worlder, Lord Milner, wrote a Memorandum of June 23rd On the Repatriation of Coloured Men which explained why they could do nothing about it: ”I have every reason to fear, that when we get these men back to their own colonies they might be tempted to revenge themselves on the white minorities there…” This emasculated attitude grew until Churchill was nearly isolated in his own government.''

Were these men cowardly -- really afraid of 'revenge' or retaliation? If so, why? Britain was still very powerful at that time, still a very confident nation. I wonder of people like Lord Milner were not so much afraid as wanting to be sure their internationalist aims succeeded. Too much ethnocentrism or national feeling among the British people would pose an obstacle to their utopian schemes. It's much the same with our current politicians who claim that we ''can't'' deport illegals because we must cooperate with Mexico and not alienate the 'friendly' government there.

Incidentally, were my readers aware of the fact that there had been racial riots in Cardiff, Wales in the 1870s and again in 1911? I was not aware of that; it is something that is not mentioned in the average history book. Today it would not be mentioned because it might contradict the ''diversity is our strength'' dogma.

The people of the UK have been subjected, in recent years, to the nonsense about how ''Britain has always been multicultural'' just as we in America have been pummeled day and night with the phrase ''this is a nation of immigrants'' and ''we are all immigrants.'' Another mode of attacking the national identity of the people of Britain, specifically English people, is the assertion that the people of that island have been a 'mongrel people' for centuries as wave after wave of immigrants or invaders have come to Britain. The fallacy in this is that most of the people who have settled in Britain over the centuries have been of closely-related ethnic groups; they are all cousins of a sort. That is a far cry from the present ill-assorted collection of unrelated people who have immigrated there in later years.

Churchill saw, apparently, that his country was threatened by uncontrolled immigration, but for a number of reasons, including 'internationalist' traitors in high places, and then his own ill-health, he was never able to do anything to successfully stem the growing problem.

In a later era, Enoch Powell gave his warning:

''As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood". That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.''

The people of Britain seemed to be mostly supportive of the speech; it was his fellow politicians and the leftist media who went on the attack.

Mister Fox notes in the blog piece how that in 1955, not long before Churchill left office, the slogan ''Keep England White'' was favored. Fast-forward a little more than a decade, and Enoch Powell is forced out of office and called a 'racist' for saying things that were formerly acceptable. What happened in that short space of time?

One thing that had happened during that time was that the Civil Rights Revolution had taken place in the United States, and it was becoming more and more taboo to hold pro-White views or to do anything which amounted to 'discrimination.' All of this, of course, was not happening by chance; it was all part of an overall plan by the Left, aided by the complicity of the left-dominated media and of course the intellectual ''chattering classes'' on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1968, various victim groups began to agitate for their rights, emulating the successful model of the Civil Rights revolutionaries. This happened all over the Western world, both in Europe and here in the United States.

Will Britain succumb to the one-world multicultists? Many Americans pronounce Britain, as a nation, deceased. On the other hand, a lot of people, even among Americans, say the same about us. Don't count the British out just yet, and the same for our people.

Though many people think America will survive if only because of our rebellious spirit (does it still exist?) and our greater (at this point) rights to free speech and to bear arms, I wonder if we are not, despite those things, at a disadvantage. Why? Because in noticing what people say in real life and on the Internet, I hear so many White Americans talking about how Republicans need to 'reach out' to blacks, and try to 'help' theme attain the American dream, and about how wonderful it is that the GOP is getting more 'inclusive.'

There is, I'm afraid, a kind of treacly sentiment on the part of many Americans toward blacks and other minorities, especially Hispanics. There is a paternalistic desire to help them, and a kind of empathy, a feeling that these people are children that need kind assistance from us. It makes many Americans, even on the right, feel all warm and fuzzy to see 'successful' blacks like Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Tom Sowell, Bill Cosby. It makes them feel good that they can admire black people and reassure themselves that they aren't racist, after all.

I don't know if that same sentimentality exists among White British or English people; I rather suspect it doesn't although they do have their share of mad-dog liberals and 'whiggers' just as we do.

I don't have a crystal ball, but I rather think that a critical mass of British or English people will reassert their rights and their primacy of place in their own country.

Conservative vs. Conservative

Here, at OneSTDV, there is a discussion of anti-PC humor and frat-boy 'conservatives'.
The subject was the antics of frat boys at Yale, and the larger subject of South Park 'conservatives' and edgy humor. OneSTDV reflects on why he finds this kind of thing disagreeable.

"Perhaps, it's the desperate attempt at social acceptance that I find sad and the "look at me, I'm so edgy" posturing associated with the content. Again, there's just something shallow and unnecessarily crass about such humor."

A companion piece, in a strange way, is this one, which takes an opposing tack, and lauds crude, ''edgy'' pop culture and disparages those who don't choose to partake of it, mainly Christians.

''Witness a site like Plugged-In Online, a kind of encyclopedic collection of reviews of recent movies, TV shows, and music albums -- all of which are critiqued from an ostensibly Christian perspective. I say "ostensibly" not because I doubt the sincere religious convictions of the site's writers, but because their collective aesthetic notions leave much to be desired. Indeed, their habitual tendency is to equate sanitization with sanctification and G-rated-ness with holiness.''

I've read many of the Christian movie review sites, and if anything, they are quite liberal, finding certain levels of obscene language to be acceptable and a certain amount of illicit sex to be no problem ''in context.''

And I wonder what the writer's definition of ''holiness'' is if 'g-rated' is not to be equated with it. Is there such a thing as X-Rated holiness? Or PG-13 holiness?

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary gives a secular definition of holiness, but to a Christian, holy means simply separated. That was the meaning in the original Biblical languages.

The term “holy” is often understood in its contemporary usage rather than its true meaning in the Scriptures. For this reason, our study must begin by reviewing several dimensions of the definition of holiness.

(1) To be holy is to be distinct, separate, in a class by oneself. As Sproul puts it:

The primary meaning of holy is ‘separate.’ It comes from an ancient word that meant, ‘to cut,’ or ‘to separate.’

Being holy, to a Christian who understands the word, has nothing to do with being a goody-two-shoes, halo-wearing ''saint''. Holiness means being apart from the world and the world system. I suppose this in itself is offensive to the nonbeliever, but considering how thoroughly most nonbelievers dislike Christians, they should be pleased that the real serious Christians separate themselves.

The world likes violent, dark, crude entertainment, but the Christian keeps those things at arms' length. The writer of the article should take heart, though, from the fact that fewer and fewer Christians seem to aspire to holy living. Right now, the fashion among the postmodern Christians is to adopt the world's fashions and fads, and that includes all the raw, crude popular culture.

Holiness is going out of style among Christians. It's so pre-modern.

I'm reminded once again of C.S. Lewis' observation about how each age warns against the very things which are no threat to the prevailing culture: in a libertine culture, people warn against 'puritanism'; in an age which is irreligious, we hear constant cries about how ''right-wing Christians'' are trying to establish a theocracy in our midst. As our borders are obliterated and our country overrun with aliens, legal and illegal, we hear how much ''xenophobia'' and ''nativism'' there is. In an age in which the Minority is king, we hear about ''racism''. In an age where all manner of perversions are out in the open, we hear about how ''intolerance'' is killing us. We have banished the idea of sin, and make excuses for all kinds of bad behavior, but yet we are warned against being ''too judgmental.''

The blog piece continues:

''Thus, to use a Biblical metaphor, is the wheat commonly thrown out with the chaff. Smutty, exploitative, irresponsible, and immoral junk gets lustily condemned, of course, but so does fare that, while irreverent and "adult," is actually in many ways sympathetic to traditionalism, or at the very least gives the ever-looming Zeitgeist a good, square kick in the crotch. Comedies like Juno and Knocked Up, both of which contain a scandalously pro-life message, are dismissed out of hand due to their nonstop racy and vulgar dialogue. The 40-Year Old Virgin, which, if you pay attention, actually promotes  abstinence before marriage, also gets greeted with prissy exhalations of exasperation and contempt for its raucous and ribald content. Fight Club, a profound meditation on the spiritual emasculation of the modern male in a world bereft of belief or hope, is simplistically condemned for promoting violent nihilism. And on it goes...''

Again, I have to ask: if these movies contain such effective messages for ''traditionalism'', why are these loud messages not reaching the drifting nihilistic masses out there, who need to hear them? It seems to me that most people, even the secular intellectuals, must be missing the messages, their attention being focused on the 'racy and vulgar dialogue' and 'raucous and ribald content.' That stuff does have a way of distracting from higher thought and deeper meanings.

''No one would ever claim that the representative sample of movies discussed above were "family-friendly." Still, a conservative critic with even a scrap of subtlety of mind and aesthetic discernment can see that, even if they fall short in certain crucial ways, there is, indeed, much to appreciate in these films. But the good, churchgoin', God-fearin' Plugged-In folks seem almost willfully clueless to such a possibility, smarmily set as they are on maintaining their lofty perch of sanctimonious disapproval.''

Why, I wonder, is the writer so bothered by these ''churchgoin' God-fearin'' folks and their opinions, or their 'sanctimonious disapproval'? When the people I dislike reject my opinions, it is reassuring for me, actually. Why court the approval of people one looks down on, and holds in obvious contempt?

''But even more irritating than the proclivity to reflexively dismiss and sniff at every non-Veggie Tales movie ever made, is the way the Plugged-In-style critic tends to react when challenged.''

Nonbelievers tend to react in an irritating way to their critics, also, and to dismiss and 'sniff' at anything wholesome or non-lewd. This is mystifying. Besides, the Plugged-In type sites are directed at believers; nonbelievers have no need or desire to seek them out. The nonbelieving world will do what it always does, and Christians are to separate.

The Christian's only objection is that this entertainment cannot be avoided; it is everywhere. Billboards, TV promos, radio spots, everywhere we go we see lurid or disturbing images and hear dialogue quoted from these movies. We can't avoid it. It is compulsory in a way, just like all the leftist propaganda in pop culture.

''What about all of those shocking stories from the Bible itself? Adam and Eve are naked without shame, Cain murders Abel, Lot has sex with his daughters during a drunken cave orgy, Onan spills his seed on the ground, David commits adultery with Beersheba and sends Uriah to his death, and the Isrealities wipe out just about everyone in sight over and over again... and all of that's just in the Old Testament! Yet the Bible is a holy book -- THE holy book. If it, Dante, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Homer, Milton, Poe, Joyce, O'Connor, and all the other faithful recorders of human vice, folly, perversity and corruption throughout the ages are allowed to tread in such waters, then why do you immediately look upon movies of recent years with suspicion and consternation if they deal with challenging material?"

This is so frequently brought up by the atheist or secular critic of Christianity: the charge that the Bible itself is lewd and obscene. If so, then most newspapers or history books are obscene when they describe immoral acts. The fact is, there is a world of difference between the Bible's treatment of the stories alluded to above and a secular source. The Bible describes these things bluntly and matter-of-factly, and invariably shows the bad consequences that follow sin. Everybody suffers by it. There is a moral, whereas in popular culture sin does not always bring ruin, far from it. It is glamorized.

I think most people on the right acknowledge that popular culture generally, as well as ''high culture'' are profoundly subversive of traditional ways and morals.

(Note: Beersheba, in the quote,  presumably refers to Bathsheba.)

''To this, the self-satisfied Christian critic of the Plugged-In variety smiles blandly. "You're comparing Shakespeare to Pulp Fiction? I'm sorry... that just doesn't work!" While declaiming any qualitative equivalency between the Bard and Tarantino, you reply, why can't this question be asked? To this, he scoffs at first, taking the answer to be self-evident, but when you persist, he stammers that Shakespeare and everyone else who wrote a long time ago always wrote with a moral framework in mind, while contemporary writers are in almost all cases just scurrilous schlock-meisters whose only agenda is to mock all things decent. Suggest that your interlocutor is painting with the broadest of brushes and, moreover, speaking from pure ignorance, and you'll again be favored with a patronizing smirk, much like Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" character once fixed upon his guest before snarkily observing, "Well... we have our little opinions, don't we?"

Nice straw-man (or straw-woman) construction there. Talk about broad brushes. The Christian is always reduced to a caricature in these kinds of pieces.

''In the coming years of struggle, hopefully more true cultural conservatives, be they of Christian affiliation or not, will plug out of the "Plugged In" mentality, and will begin to entertain more independent and adventuresome aesthetic principles. Whatever your faith, it's not a sin to be provocative; indeed, extreme times call for extreme art. To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling pictures''

But who is being shouted at, and what are they saying? Is this shouting directed at the prissy stereotyped ''conservative Christians?" If so, what is the message -- that they need to get with the times? Christians do not need the conservative message; the ones who do are the very ones who eat up the 'provocative' entertainment and ask for more. Obviously they are not getting any kind of ''conservative'' or ''traditionalist'' message. I would venture to guess that all this ''edgy'' entertainment is consumed in large quantities by a predominantly liberal/leftist/libertarian audience, which would include most young people today. Why are they not getting any ''conservative'' message from these movies which 'shout' conservative messages? Perhaps they are deaf in a moral and intellectual sense.

If the aim is to destroy what vestiges of traditional Christian morality there are, then in what sense is this goal conservative or traditional? I don't see what is conservative about trashing middle America (which is grounded in old Christian morality, for most people) and established ethical precepts.

Many Christians, by the way, were once secular people who were steeped in the 'adventuresome and independent'' attitudes, but we left that behind. Nobody forced us to; it's just what happens naturally when you become a Christian. Not all of us have lived sheltered lives or shunned the world from birth onward. Not all Christians came from Christian homes, not by a long shot. So Christians have the advantage, in some cases, of having tasted the world, lived in it, wallowed in it and all its temptations, and yet walked happily away from it. Many nonbelievers only know life from a nonbelieving perspective.

And where does this profound division, this rift which is widening into a chasm, come from? It is all part and parcel of the counterculture and its conquest of American society  which culminated in the 1960s and 70s. To return to the subject of 'South Park conservatives', they are nothing more nor less than a product of the 1960s. No such group or such mindset could exist, had not the (anti)ideals of the 60s prevailed.

The sixties generation, strangely, is abhorred by many on the 'new right', the secular right. I say this is strange not because the counterculture crowd is not abhorrent but because the secular ''frat boy'' right, the South Park conservatives et al, are the direct descendants of the sixties counterculture. The vulgar bathroom humor, the disrespect for everything staid and wholesome, the rebelling against previous generations, the refusal to grow up and be adults, the foul language, it's all derived from the ''free speech, free love'' mores of the counterculture. I find it odd that many of those on the right who say, as one blog commenter said somewhere, that ''I'll be glad when the baby-boomers all die off'' are the people who most emulate the baby-boom generation in their libertine, vulgar proclivities. They really should thank the baby-boom generation for making the popular culture which they embrace so fiercely. It's all of a piece with today's popular culture.

Had the counterculture never existed, or not succeeded, we would have a much more traditional culture today, and we would not be strangers to, or hostile toward, the culture and heritage from which we come. And we would not be so divided, one generation against each other, and nonbeliever against Christian.

The 'frat boy conservatives' with their outrageous pranks are the true heirs of the 60s, though I think that the 60s rebels believed that they were making some kind of statement against what they viewed as their parents' failed society. At some point, as the 'counterculture' became lionized by adults who should have known better, it became a kind of self-reinforcing conformism. One had to be leftwing, foul-mouthed, sexually libertine, and ''irreverent'' in order to be part of the in-crowd. Those who did not join in were ridiculed as squares, uptight, not ''with-it.'

The same thing happens now. The South Park conservative compartmentalizes his 'conservatism', puts it away out of sight, except when fiscal or small-government issues are at stake. In all other respects, he is a libertarian or liberal.

I know there are those on the right who think that social conservatives, especially Christians, drive people away from ''our side''. If only we were more hip, trendy, more in step with the times and all the pop culture fashions, then we could attract droves of people to our side. This is wishful thinking.

The thing is, social conservatives make the social liberals uncomfortable. We cramp their style, even if we refrain from saying anything to upset them. Even if we are as bland and inoffensive as Ned Flanders, to use a rather stale TV reference, we alienate some people, and that's to be expected. The other side of the coin is that the hardcore nonbelievers alienate the believers, and there are more believers out there than some people admit. It seems we need to go our separate ways, but the catch is that we are so few; we need unity or else we have no chance. We are stuck with each other as it stands now, which makes me as unhappy as it makes the other side.

Is it time?

Over at the Texas Nationalist blog, (which is now added to my blogroll, by the way) Daniel Miller sounds the alarm for Texans to awake.

He lays out his case for believing that our American Republic is a lost cause.

While I would not like this to be true, I can certainly see all the troubling signs that he sees, and in addition I've been feeling rather pessimistic about the growing divisions among various groups of people -- not just minorities vs. Whites, but the open animus on the part of just about everyone toward Christian believers, plus the North-South rift, rural vs. urban, left vs. right, young vs. old, and all the rest of the ugliness.

We all know what happens to a house divided against itself, and our house is divided all kinds of ways. And the election next week shows little promise of changing anything substantial; the names and faces may change, but I see little evidence of the kind of change we need, given the deep divisions and hatreds that exist, and given the candidates from whom we have to choose.

Judge Andrew Napolitano made a recent statement that it is time for Texas to secede. Follow the link to listen to the audio via Third Palmetto Republic.

Has the time come? I don't know for sure, but it seems to be in the air. And if and when the time comes, I hope it will be Texas which takes that step.

Sam Houston, the first President of the Republic of Texas said:

"Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."

I hope Sam Houston's words hold true in our time as they did in 1836.

"Brave New World"

Brave New World

But you, Thomas Jefferson,
You could not lie so still,
You could not bear the weight of stone
On the quiet hill,

You could not keep your green-grown peace
Nor hold your folded hand
If you could see your new world now,
Your new sweet land.

There was a time, Tom Jefferson,
When freedom made free men.
The new-found earth and the new-freed mind
Were brothers then.

There was a time when tyrants feared
The new world of the free.
Now freedom is afraid and shrieks
At tyranny.

Words have not changed their sense so soon
Nor tyranny grown new.
The truths you held, Tom Jefferson,
Will still hold true.

What's changed is freedom in this age.
What great men dared to choose
Small men now dare neither win
Nor lose.

Freedom, when men fear freedom's use
But love its useful name,
Has cause and cause enough for fear
And cause for shame.

...Freedom that was a thing to use
They've made a thing to save
And staked it in and fenced it round
Like a dead man's grave.

You, Thomas Jefferson,
You could not lie so still
You could not bear the weight of stone
On your green hill.

You could not hold your angry tongue
If you could see how bold
The old stale bitter world plays new--
And the new world old.

- Archibald MacLeish

PC Republicans vs. PC Democrats

I feel compelled to address a few of the canards and talking points that the 'colorblind conservatives' return to time and again. One that is frequently heard is that ''Democrat social programs cause all the black social problems. If it weren't for the Democrats/liberals, there would not be so much black crime or illegitimacy.'' Sometimes people elaborate on this one, and claim that black illegitimacy rates were negligible before the social programs of the 60s and onward were introduced. AFDC supposedly caused the number of unmarried mothers to skyrocket, and of course it's implied that were it not for the welfare checks, blacks would be chaste until marriage and monogamous within marriage.

Is there any evidence of that claim? One of the public figures who is most associated with the problem of social pathologies in the ''African-American community'' is Democrat Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Although he was a Democrat, he warned of the dangers of family disintegration among blacks. He said:

"The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States."

He was quoted here on the subject:

Mr. Moynihan speaks with passion about a poverty that is inextricably tied to "a volcanic change in family structure, for which there is no comparable experience in human history."

The 'respectable Republicans' say that the volcanic change, which led to a rise in illegitimacy and other social problems, was directly caused by Democrat/liberal bleeding-heart policies, like AFDC and other social programs. However, that is simplistic. The changes were already under way before the growth of the welfare state in the 60s and later. Much of the change resulted from earlier upheavals, first, emancipation, and then the uprooting of large numbers of rural blacks who went to large cities, many in the North, to find jobs. Disconnected from family and familiar surroundings, it was easy for many blacks (and poor Whites, for that matter) to break free of old social constraints and conventional morality.

It must be remembered, too, that many of these rural blacks did not hew as closely to conventional morality as did Whites. Illegitimacy rates and marital breakup rates were always higher than those of Whites.

Morality in general began to become more lax, especially during the years of World War II; this frequently happens because of the disruption caused by war, and the greater mobility and social disarray that accompanies it. Whites, too, had higher rates of social problems in the post-war years, though black problems were significantly more common.

This AmRen article from 1991 points this out.

''Black illegitimacy rates have always caught the attention of observers, even when they were forbidden to draw conclusions from them. As far back as 1944, when Gunnar Myrdal wrote An American Dilemma, he was worried about a 16 percent illegitimacy rate among southern blacks, which was then eight times the white rate. Today, nearly two thirds of all black children are born to single mothers (the figure for whites has risen to 15 percent), and if there is a single statistic that sums up the plight of American blacks today, this is it.''

But is that directly attributable to liberalism, as the 'respectable Republicans' insist? To claim such a thing is to deny that blacks bear any responsibility for their actions, or that they are free moral agents, not puppets of a political party -- or of White people in general, as many of the shriller PC Republicans imply.

Black people are not an inert mass who can be led this way and that by others. Yes, they vote consistently Democrat, because Democrats and their big-mommy government offer better pickings than the Republicans, and because the Democrats anti-White rhetoric and policies appeal to blacks and other minorities. To say that blacks are 'slaves on the Democrat plantation' is silliness. If they are being exploited, which is possible, given the corrupt political system we have, they are also doing some exploiting of their own. The Democrats deliver privileges to nonwhites -- as do the Republicans, but the Democrats go all out, and top Republican pandering every time.

Common sense would support the idea that subsidizing anything produces more of it, so that the easy social welfare benefits would provide an incentive for more single motherhood. This bears on the situation with illegal (and legal) immigrants, too. Subsidizing their irresponsible or illegal actions encourages such actions.

The rest of the talking points being disseminated by the PC Republicans involves a distorted picture of the War Between the States and the Reconstruction era. Their simple-minded scenario depicts Southron Whites as being cartoon villains out of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and makes slavery the sole cause of the rift between North and South. This is a caricature of history, and I cannot refute it in detail here; it would require a book. Unfortunately most Northerners and sadly, many Southron people too, have been weaned on such a caricatured, distorted view of the North-South conflict, and so the PC ''conservatives'' find a ready and gullible audience willing to accept their childish and oversimplified account.

The gullible Republican audience believes that the Democrats represented ''racism'' while the noble and selfless Republicans of the War era and afterward were the friends of blacks and heroic supporters of ''equality'' and freedom. So, believing this, they believe that the only reason the old ''solid South'' voted Democrat for so many years is that White Southerners were evil ''racists''. They show no sign of ever having heard of how Radical Republicans ran rampant in the South during Reconstruction, and how these extremists stripped White Southerners of their civil rights and liberties. They know nothing about the depredations against the White Southron population that took place during Reconstruction. And how can they know, since most schools and history books present a politically corrected account of what happened then, of the excesses and outrages of Reconstruction, of which Republicans were the architects, turned White Southerners against the Republican Party for a century or so. This is why some of my older relatives to this day will not vote Republican.

Actually, the Republican Party has been making the claim that the Democrats want to 're-enslave black people' ever since emancipation and the Reconstruction era, as the above document put out by the Union Republican Congressional committee shows. (Click to enlarge the document)

So now there are two parties, made up mostly of White people, each claiming that the other group of Whites consists of a lot of vile racists who want to ''keep blacks down.'' According to the Democrats, the Republicans are the racists, and according to the Republicans, who want to live down their reputation as being a White man's party, the Democrats are ''the real racists''. So we've got twice as many White people affirming that other White people are hateful racists trying to keep the black man down.

What message does this put out? How does this help the country? It does not; it further cements the minorities' stereotype of Whites as bigots and hypocrites. It hampers relations between the races.

However, that last sentence does not indicate that I am one of those colorblind conservatives who thinks that the races would all get along famously if only ''those other racist White guys'' stopped stirring up hate and division. For Democrats to believe such utopian foolishness is predictable; they are not known for being honest or realistic. But for ''conservatives'', who used to pride themselves on common sense and groundedness to believe this is unforgivable. The Republicans are again proving to be the Stupid Party.

As I type this, I can just hear those objecting that ''but the Democrats are far worse; the Republicans at least have some good candidates!" Yes, I agree to some extent. I plan to vote next week, though my faith in the system is weakening by the day, but I will not have an easy time choosing between the evils.

If the Republican Party is to be salvaged -- and that is a huge ''if'', there will need to be a resurgence of common sense and a repudiation of the childish game-playing and name-calling, and above all, a jettisoning of political correctness and pandering. I know; that's a forlorn hope. But PC and all its attendant lies will have to go; the issues that are at the heart of it are the very issues that will be the death of us if we do not deal with them head-on, minus all the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and name-calling, minus the intra-racial hate and divisiveness.

A rejection of liberalism in its Republican guise is one of the most urgent needs if things are ever to turn around.

More on the PC foodfight

It appears that some sane people showed up to comment on the thread I linked in the post below this one. It is heartening to see that some people are not buying into this silly name-calling match as to who is the ''real racist'' and who is the best friend of blacks.

The writer of the linked article answers critics by protesting that she herself is from the South -- that is irrelevant; whoever buys the PC view of history is effectively siding  against their Southron forebears. And that's all that matters, in my judgement.

I am not sure if the following post is by the same Ernest who comments here, but good job anyway:

Posted by: Ernest   
Oct 26, 05:49 AM
Good grief. I don't know who is more pathetic. You are the ones claiming hater. While you try to outdo each other as the ultimate hater, racist, oppressor, slave holder and just all around bad white people. The Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, MEChA, NAACP, LaRaza and hundreds of other race groups are laughing their asses off. No wonder our nation is swirling the drain. The Marxist have us all tied up in PCland.''

The following comments make good points, too:

Posted by: Quartermaster   
Oct 26, 06:46 AM
You really do need to give some historical context to teh time period of 1850-1877. All you've done is parrot a leftist line about the evil Confederacy that is not, and never has been true except in the fevered minds of leftists. The leftists were the Republicans, not the Dems. People like Davis, Jefferson, and Jackson would not recognize what therir party has become and would be utterly disgusted with it.

Posted by: Gunner57 
Oct 26, 06:56 AM
I don't agree with your underlying politically correct accusation that the plight of blacks in America are part of some diabolical scheme concocted by white people that is merely aided by a few opportunistic blacks. Cut me a break! BTW, I am no Democrat. Martin Luther King had his fingerprints all over the "Great Society". King was a full blown socialist, yet conservatives grovel at his feet and still talk about his "content of character" statement which has a hollow ring in Obamaland. The Obamaland that over 90% of blacks still support. Do you really believe Michelle Obama doesn't believe in these giveaways but is just being an opportunist Democrat? I don't think so. She is motivated by her hatred of white people. She wants to steal eveything she can from white people. Sadly, Republicans "play me too" all the time and still do to racially exclusive policies.

Are Democrats keeping blacks down by awarding them scholarships, entrance to our best academic institutions, degrees, jobs, mortgages, business loans when they don't qualify for any of them? Then let me be one of the downtrodden. No African nation could ever compete with a first world nation if they did not have the assistance of white people. That is a fact. God help those poor people when Arab Muslims intervene in their affairs. They still enslave them. Heaven only knows how the Chinese would exploit these people. Ms. Shiver why do these people need all this help in the first place? Is it because of some pseudo-science invented by white people? I don't think so.''

I am surprised some of these comments made it through; I rarely if ever see any such ideas expressed on American Thinker. Maybe all is not lost, yet.

I had long since given up commenting on ''colorblind conservative'' forums, but maybe there is some fertile ground there after all.

Out-PCing each other

I don't even know where to begin with this piece.

It makes you feel as though you've gone through the looking-glass. Sure, the PC Republicans have been doing this kind of thing for a while, this playing of the race card, this ''who's the Real Racist'' game. But this is beyond that. Heaven knows the Democrats are low enough, but this bizarre competing as to who is the ''real racist'' or who is the real friend of African-Americans is just childish, and all it does is leave America with two pandering, race-card playing, politically correct parties, instead of one. And one is too many.

The GOP is becoming one huge embarrassing joke.

But there's one bright ray of hope: when this piece was posted at Free Republic, the first couple of comments were negative. Maybe some out there are not hopelessly mired in trying to outdo the Democrats at their own game.

From one of those comments:

''Yet this piece mirrors the Marxists' tactics in attempting to put Southerners, Democrats, especially white people, people of color, and everyone else at odds.

To call this screed historically accurate is beyond a stretch. There are shreds of truth woven in with ridiculous distortions.

Textbooks? Feh!

To blame the 'scientific' view of the relative intelligence and other characteristics of the races on Democrats demonstrates a real lack of knowledge of the development of scientific thought. The writer should obtain a copy of Ackerman's Natural History (1848), written before Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and get a handle on what everyone learned in Anthropology thought.

Compare and contrast with The Bell Curve and see how that works out.

The bottom line is that the New Left has used historical distortion and identity politics to twist the fabric of American culture over a few decades into the current 'devil take the hindmost' political attitude held by the current party in power in DC.

If Republicans in general and Conservatives in particular cannot get beyond that methodology in order to gain and maintain control of the Federal Leviathan to rein it in and put it on a massive weight loss program, then nothing will really change and this nation will continue down the road to ruin, just driving on the other side of the center line.

5 posted on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 2:15:05 AM by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)

Maybe there are others who are weary of this schoolyard taunting, this using of the race card by both parties.  It's beyond ridiculous, and it's damaging to the country.

Friends, foes, and folly

We hear a great deal about ''hate'' in the news and in our discussions on the Internet. I've blogged a number of times about how ''hate'' is nearly criminalized now, as if our feelings, whether they are bad or good, are subject to censure by law.

The ''hate'' is always assumed to come from our side, from the White majority, and never from the various others who live among us. It is a given, under political correctness, that they are always the targets of the ''hate'' which is peculiar to White people alone, and it is a given that they are never the perpetrators. However anybody who reads the news, or who lives in a ''diversity-enriched'' area, knows that we are more often the targets, not the perpetrators. Although there is a growing amount of resentment and ill-feeling on our side these days, it is in some part simply a reaction, a defensive kind of resentment and dislike, if not ''hatred''. It is hard not to dislike someone who hates you, and who makes no secret of it.

This is true on a personal level as well as on a group level. Some years ago, I had a co-worker who, in a passive-aggressive way, made my life miserable at work. She developed a dislike for me, and although I made attempts to befriend her, or at least to have a civil relationship with her, she remained resentful until she eventually quit her job a few years later.

I have a liberal Christian friend who is also a counselor; her advice to me for dealing with this hateful woman was for me to ''kill her with kindness,'' to disarm her and neutralize her dislike for me by being sweet and solicitous towards her. I thanked my friend for her advice, but told her I am not an actress; it isn't in me to feign friendliness or affection. I would be civil as I try to be to everyone, and I would be courteous and fair in my dealings with her. By this time, I was this woman's superior, so this increased her resentment of me.

I did not succeed in winning this bitter woman over; I lack the ability to act sweet towards an enemy.

Even now, as a Christian, I find it hard. I find the commandment to love my enemy, and bless those that curse me, to be hard. It does not come naturally to me, though I know there are many Christians who seem incapable of even conceiving of anyone as an enemy, and I wonder if my Christian walk is deficient because I find loving my enemies to be difficult.

This does not mean I feel raging, seething resentment or hatred towards anyone, nor does it mean that I wish harm on anyone, or that I would do anything vengeful or malicious. There is a difference, for me, between having a dislike and a healthy suspicion of people who have shown themselves to be hostile to me and mine, and truly hating them. To me, hate implies a kind of festering obsession, an excessive focus on someone. Some say hate is the counterpart of love, with both emotions fixed obsessively on a certain person or persons.

My feeling toward those who are hostile to me and mine is to want to avoid and shun them as much as possible. I generally think that real enemies are not likely to be appeased, or won over by saccharine-sweet overtures to them.

I believe this in the group sense, as well as in individual situations.

Would I do good to those who persecute me? I would do a kindness to a personal enemy if I were in a position to. I would do it because I am commanded to, because it is the right thing, not because I think it will make them love or respect me.

However, personal enemies are different from enemies in a national/tribal sense.

Just recently I had a conversation with a friend, who is somewhat politically incorrect but naive, in which she railed about ''racists'' who harass blacks. Where this came from, I don't know; blacks are rare in our town. I suspect she saw something on the news that provoked her remarks. But I tried to bring her to reality by saying ''most of the hatred is directed our way. We are hated more than we are guilty of hating.''

She seemed to understand, but I am not sure I got through to her.
There are many Whites like this woman, usually people who live in non-diverse places, people who have little to no real-life experience of ''diversity'' in its natural setting. They know only the sugarcoated diversity they see on TV and in movies.

There seem to be many Whites like her who do not really perceive anyone as an enemy, and do not want to see any of the hatred that is being directed towards them. They live in a fairytale world where people are all potential friends and brothers. They generally believe if we treat everyone nicely, they will like us, and will reciprocate our kindness.

Reality is a different matter.

I think many White Americans, even those who are not far-left liberals, delude themselves that racial conflict and other group conflicts can be eliminated by ''understanding'' and ''reaching out'', or to use an older term, appeasement.

At the Throne and Altar blog, Bonald writes a very good piece on ''When People Hate You." (I recommend reading the whole thing, of course.)

''What do you do when some group hates your group?

Traditionally, there have been two responses: defense or appeasement. Sometimes, when the enemies goals are modest, appeasement is actually the logical strategy.''

There are some cases, he notes, where our enemy is implacable, and cannot be won over or appeased. Bonald mentions the third possibility -- which is the one most popular among liberals of various stripes: ''understanding'' the hatred. This is the approach that is the ''official'' one in our society. We, the majority group (Christians, Whites, heterosexuals, etc.) must understand and see things from the other's point of view, even to the extent of delegitimizing our own right to self-defense or survival itself. After all, we deserve the hatred that is directed at us; we brought it on ourselves, or at least our ancestors did.

This is a very demoralizing attitude, needless to say.

Many people are stuck in that mode, unable or unwilling to see their own group's interests or their individual interests. They perversely empathize with those who are trying to do them harm physically, or to subvert and supplant us.

How do we become un-stuck as a people?

I think for some of us, the turning point was some specific event, something that brought home to us the fact that we are hated just for what we are and what we represent. For some of us, the process was gradual, and the things that woke us up were cumulative, over time.

In my own case, I remember one turning-point, after decades of bad experiences, when I read a newspaper article by someone on the right -- it may have been Joe Sobran, I can't recall -- who pointed out that every MLK Day, we hear nothing but ''how far we still have to go''. We never hear an acknowledgement of the decades of concessions and special privileges, or of the billions of dollars spent to make amends. No, it's all about how bad we still are, and about how much more must be done, how much more we must do to show our good faith. That struck a nerve with me.

Most people have to have real-life experiences in order to lose the rosy view of ''diversity'' but even then, some refuse to acknowledge that we have enemies, that we are hated more than we hate. Without that recognition, it is hard to change attitudes.

Agincourt

On October 25, 1415,on St. Crispin's Day, the Battle of Agincourt was fought, which was a lopsided victory for the English against the French. This is part of our heritage, and is commemorated in Shakespeare's Henry V.

In the video, Maddy Prior and June Tabor sing the traditional song, The Agincourt Carol; their harmonies are beautiful.

Disappointing, though unsurprising

Over at the Confederate Colonel blog, Stephen Clay McGehee has been posting a series of videos produced by the Georgia SCV(Sons of Confederate Veterans) which were to be run on The History Channel as paid ads. Now it appears The History Channel has backed out, following a complaint by a liberal blogger. (I wish I had that much power as a blogger, that a complaint from me would stop a cable network from running ads I don't like.)

I am not surprised. Knowing the slant of The History Channel, I was, rather, surprised that they would accept any ad from a politically incorrect group (especially one Confederate-related.)

I have watched the first couple of videos and they are not offensive; they are well-done, and do not represent 'hate' or any such thing. But they do represent a point of view which, shamefully, is not permitted in this country any longer.

Over at Confederate Colonel, you can watch the ads for yourself on this page.

The History Channel, despite its authoritative and impartial-sounding name, is nothing more than a purveyor of propaganda, much like all the so-called educational channels on TV. I am an avid watcher of factual historical programming, but for some time, The History Channel, like PBS and just about all channels, traffics in political correctness, not facts. For that reason there is no longer TV in this home; life is better and more peaceful without it.

But nonetheless, millions of people still watch TV and obtain much of their ''information'' from it. That is why it is tragic that only one side of ''history'' can be heard, and only one side of the ''news'' is reported.

It's hopeless...

Or so says the writer of this piece.

As I sit here writing, a conservative victory in the midterm elections looms. But I find no reason to be optimistic. The midterm elections will solve nothing. The plain fact is that conservatives have lost the battle for America. The country that many of us were born in has ceased to exist. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Nothing can or will change until we come to terms with the grim reality of moral degeneration. And I have no hope that this can happen, save by some terrible trial.''

Is it true?

If so, is our mortal wound self-inflicted?

And if we think we are finished, and that we've done it to ourselves, I guess we should all close up shop and go amuse ourselves while we are waiting for the end.

The writer of the article has expressed some interesting views, and has had a somewhat controversial career, but ironically, he warns about the greatest danger to human civilization:

He maintains that "the greatest danger to human civilization today is not environmental degradation, but a return to the ancient plague of pessimism."

I agree with that, certainly. Say not the struggle nought availeth.

Missing ingredient

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.

Again, truth is ''controversial''

The usual suspects complain:

James Kelly, CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, called for action Friday after reading remarks from state Supreme Court Justices Richard Sanders and Jim Johnson regarding African-American populations in prison.

The justices said African Americans are overrepresented because they commit a disproportionate amount of crime.

"What are these two guys doing on the State Supreme Court?" Kelly asked.

He is calling for Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Madsen to "establish a special commission on racial disproportions in the criminal-justice system and to make recommendations on how to modernize the system and ensure equal justice before the law," according to an Urban League news release.'

Kelly goes on to say that if the justices believe that blacks commit more crimes, then 'there's a problem that goes to the top.' Meaning, I presume, that the problem CANNOT be a problem of black crime.

Chief Justice Madsen has, as this source notes, upheld the state's ban on gay ''marriage'', which does hint that she might not be the typical politically correct leftist judge. Whether or not the 'special commission' willl be established is not yet known but the usual course of things is for everybody to bow down to the demands of ''the African-American community.'' Their wish is our command, apparently.

Judge Richard Sanders, who is one of the judges who made the controversial statements (note: these days, ''controversial statement" usually means ''truth") is also not your typically PC judge, although his opponent in the current election accuses him of siding with criminal defendants too frequently -- so he hardly appears to be a tough law-and-order judge, if indeed there is such a thing these days.

It's about time that somebody started defying the race-hucksters and the PC commissars. Will the judges stand their ground? Or will they be reduced to the usual groveling and apologizing? Let's hope not.

Does the judicial system discriminate against blacks or other minorities? The obvious, and simplest, reply to that often-repeated charge is that blacks and some other minorities commit more crimes -- to which the politically correct response is that police ''target'' minorities and let Whites get away with crime. How long will people let these charges go unchallenged?

There are also disparities in male-female differences in rates of incarceration and sentencing. Does this mean that the justice system is biased? It surely goes against the grain of political correctness, as according to the PC belief system, men (specifically White men) are privileged, and women of all races are victims of discrimination. So where is the bias here? While it's apparently true that women commit less crime, or less violent crime, they are nonetheless capable of heinous acts, and are not ''better people'' than men. However women do receive lesser sentences when they murder, for instance, and are less likely to be executed in states where the death penalty exists.

See the statistics here.

Bizarrely, most liberals argue that women are still discriminated against in the justice system, and of course if they had their way nobody would be executed, except thought-criminals perhaps.

When we compare women and men in the justice system, few people question the obvious disparities; but when it comes to minorities, especially blacks, it is taboo to even consider the obvious fact that differing rates of crime among the races might be the main reason for the disparities in arrest, conviction, and sentencing.

So we go on with this absurd charade of pretending that blacks are blameless victims of racism, always sinned against and never sinning, not even capable of sin. How can any sane adult pretend to believe such foolishness? How can any judge, whose business is to administer justice, pretend that one group of people is above scrutiny?

Judges, ideally, are to be impartial, and yet what is ''political correctness'' but an all-encompassing system of partiality, of putting minority groups in a special privileged category, off-limits to criticism?

Patriotism, nationalism, and beyond

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.

On October 22, 1836...

Sam Houston was sworn in as first President of the Republic of Texas.

News footage from a few decades ago...

Some historical footage in this newscast video from 1972.

I've sometimes wondered if the whole story behind this was ever known, or should I say, ever made public. Coincidentally I have, among my ephemera collection, an old magazine from 1968, I think, with a lengthy article about the presidential primaries of that year. I had intended to blog about it at some point.

It's interesting to note that Walter Cronkite in this newscast coverage does a passable job of hiding his flaming liberal biases; in those days at least a show of objectivity was required. Imagine how something comparable would be covered by the news networks now. Imagine Olbermann of Maddow or the CNN crowd covering something like this.

Times have changed, but the protesters look very much like their 21st century ragtag counterparts. Some things don't change...

The essentials

These Are Not Negotiable

''...it is incumbent upon us to very seriously and thoughtfully examine those principles that we absolutely will never cede or surrender. We have already surrendered much of the freedom that was bequeathed to us by our forefathers. We are now to the point that we must define those principles that form our “line in the sand” and that we will not surrender under any circumstance. Either that, or we must admit to ourselves that there is nothing–no principle, no freedom, no matter how sacred–that we will not surrender to Big Government.

Here, then, are those principles that, to me, must never be surrendered. To surrender these liberties to Big Government would mean to commit idolatry. It would be sacrilege. It would reduce us to slavery. It would destroy our humanity. To surrender these freedoms would mean “absolute Despotism” and would provide moral justification to the proposition that such tyranny be “thrown off.”

[...]
God separated the Nations (Genesis 11). Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that we Americans maintain our independence and national sovereignty. We simply cannot (and will not) allow ourselves to become part of any hemispheric or global union.''

Many of you may have read this piece already, or discussed it elsewhere. It's by Chuck Baldwin.

He lists what he considers the absolutely essential principles, the ones we would never compromise or give up, as free people.

He starts out, wisely I think, with the right to bear arms. I think many of our Founding Fathers considered this right basic, and the only sure means of guaranteeing our other freedoms.

Please read the whole piece, and the list of Pastor Baldwin's essential principles.

On further considering the list, I think the last right, that of living as an independent and sovereign people, is central.

Pastor Baldwin mentions, importantly, that in the Christian view, the nations are and must remain separate, not blended together as in the arrogant attempt to unify the world at the Tower of Babel. The nations are meant, at least in part, as God's checks and balances. If the world were unified under one system, and that system were, or became, corrupt and tyrannical -- which would be likely -- there would be no alternative, no escape, no haven of refuge.

This is the way things are shaping up in our time: as this proposed 'global governance' takes on the air of inevitability, where will any dissenter go to opt out of such a regime? My ancestors were able to flee to this continent and build a new society here. And even now, where can we go to flee the global multiculturalist regime? Its tentacles are everywhere. There is nowhere to go.

One more reason why our sovereignty, or any people's sovereignty and independence are important to freedom: it is only by means of a kindred population of equally freedom-loving people that you and I can hope to enjoy any degree of liberty. Our Founding Fathers stated that only a people who were essentially moral, sharing common ideas of God-given rights and freedoms, could even establish, much less maintain a free republic like our original America.

Introducing a mixed multitude of people from drastically different stocks, people with differing priorities and different proclivities, disparate ideas of how to live together, guarantees the failure of liberty and freedom.
Only by having a closely-connected group of people with a common store of traditions, and agreed-upon beliefs about rights and freedoms and morals, can we have a free and peaceful home. We cannot have a mixed-multitude nation (otherwise known as ''diversity'') and have our sovereignty and independence.

On my list, if I were to make one, I think I would put Pastor Baldwin's last item as the first.

What about you?

All in the 'family'

Kissing Cousins, which is a post at the WTPOTUS blog, discusses this article, which makes more genealogical claims about the president. The article says, based on the word of a genealogist, that the president is related to Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, and ex-President George Bush.

It seems to me that we saw these same claims back during the campaign of 2008 and also during the Henry Louis Gates story, and I scoffed at them then as being propagandistic. To me, these kinds of articles try, firstly, to establish distinguished ancestry for favored presidential candidates and their wives. I am sure there have been focus groups run which have shown that the gullible public are impressed by reports of 'noble ancestry'. This seems paradoxical in a country like ours where many people are defiantly populist and anti-royalty, but it seems there is some having-it-both-ways being done here; people worship certain royals like the late Princess Diana and now her sons, primarily William, and we also have our own ''home-grown'' pseudo-royals like the Kennedys and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, while she was alive. It seems part of us still looks up to royalty and aristocracy. And for many people, sleazy celebrities, provided they have enough ''glamor'' and media coverage, fill in as substitute royalty.

So the media lackeys work at giving candidates and politicians of their choosing some kind of cachet by linking them to illustrious ancestors.

Is it true? Well, as the blogger linked above notes, online genealogy can be notoriously unreliable, and in my experience, sometimes laughably inaccurate and error-ridden. There are some absurd things to be found in online family tree information. It can't be taken at face value; a lot of additional research is needed to discern what is accurate and what is not.

Still, the genealogist of the AP article reports this information as unimpeachable truth. And her political leanings are nakedly obvious, as she mentions some supposed ancestor of the president, a dissenting minister from England, as being very ''socially conscious'', meaning liberal. So it's all right then. I mean, if the president were (supposedly) descended from some hellfire-preaching minister, we would not hear a word about it, I am sure.

The article mentions that Stanley Ann Dunham claimed, like many Americans, to have a Cherokee ancestor (a full-blooded one, of course; that's absolutely de rigueur). I've met relatively few people who don't make this claim. I remember a New York Times article from a year or two ago, in which DNA testing was examined, and the results of some test subjects were discussed. One of those who claimed American Indian ancestry (full-blooded Cherokee, no doubt) was apparently crestfallen when the tests showed nothing indicative of that claim. Recently there was the spectacle of Jessica Alba learning on TV that she was more European than she thought. Her disappointed reaction was amusing in a sad way.

There is a lot of confusion and so much propaganda on matters of DNA and genealogy. The propaganda, of course, is meant to confuse people and to foster the idea that ''we are all one big family'' or ''we are all one race'', etc. Six degrees of separation and all that. How are we who are not scientists to separate the nonsense and lies from the facts? Most of us are not equipped to do so.

And unless we have some solid information about our family history, we begin to fall for much of this propaganda.

In the president's case, it seems that the court genealogists are trying to establish the president's legitimacy as ''one of us'': he is descended (supposedly) from colonial ancestors. He is related to many presidents and public figures. He has long roots in this country -- this is probably supposed to counter the increasing perception that the president is just not American in his experiences, his knowledge, his background, his attitudes, his behavior. So out come these stories about his ancestry and roots.

It's telling that they are trying to tie him to those who are perceived as his bitterest critics: Palin and Limbaugh.

But ultimately it will not work. Even if we had the word of a highly reputable genealogist with no discernible agenda, it would not work.

As Miri at WTPOTUS says, the biggest stumbling-block is that if the original information, the starting point, is not verified, then the rest of it is of very dubious value. Because, when you get down to it, we don't know where we are starting from, without documentation and primary sources, witnesses. It's all just supposition if not outright confabulation.

Think about that. It's pretty unsettling.

Not a place...

"My home is not a place, it is people." 
Lois McMaster Bujold wrote that. I agree with it. Speaking for myself, my home is people, not just a geographic location, and yet I have a strong, primal attachment to the place which is the old home place, where generations of my ancestors lived and died, and where they lie buried.

I wrote a little about the subject of home, and about the loss of home in a post called Home Truths.
The subject is far too little discussed in all our debates about what is happening to our country and our people. The idea of home is very primal, and is essential to us all -- yet we think little about it in the context of our crisis.

However, over at Signals From the Brink, the Narrator has a very good post called 'Us', which says some very important things about home and identity and culture. If you haven't already done so, please read it; it's well worth reading and pondering.

But somebody's got to do it

I've been trying to avoid discussing the subject, but it's one that riles me. When I've addressed it in the past, I've taken criticism from those who thought I was being 'exclusionary' or 'divisive.'

But during this past week, it seems that every other blog or forum of a right-wing nature that I've visited has had nasty comments directed at Anglo-Saxon Americans. To cap it all off, in my inbox at Intense Debate yesterday was an ugly comment on an old blog entry of mine. The diatribe from someone with a Hispanic or Italian name, culminated in the statement, in all caps, that Anglo-Saxons needed to be completely removed from the face of this earth.

But watch: my reaction here will be the one called ''divisive''.

Wait -- there's more: over at TakiMag -- to my surprise they are accepting comments again -- there was an unpleasant exchange among commenters on this John Derbyshire article.

The instigator, whose name I seem to recognize as one of the old-time Taki regulars, spewed venom about the ''Anglo-Saxon rejects'' who created this country. Apparently those founding Anglo-Saxons are responsible for everything wrong with this country, including, somehow, the bullying of a gay student at an Eastern college. Never mind that the two main principals in that story were Hindu and Chinese, if I remember correctly.

One commenter posted in response to the Anglophobe:

''I am guessing that you aren't Anglo-Saxon. Why did your ancestors come here? They came because the Ango-Saxon rejects created such a great country. Non-Anglo Saxons from Europe from the far reaches of Ultima Thule to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic to the Urals brought their socialist-proletariat sensibilities to the voting booth and screwed everything up.''

Well said, in my opinion. And it's a rare day when anyone says anything in response to the railing Anglophobes. Once in a while I have seen 'Svigor', who posts at a number of ethnopatriot blogs, give a good comeback to the slurs and insults over at Steve Sailer's blog. But that is something of a rarity.

I was brought up, as many of you were, in a day when we said ''sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never harm me.'' Sure, sometimes it's best to just let it roll off your back and ignore these things as what they are, namely, the impotent rantings of people who are steeped in resentment and who have some kind of ''issues''.

Somehow, though, it seems unjust to let all these things go unchallenged. First of all, there are factual inaccuracies bandied about in these kinds of rants, which seem to be increasing in frequency. The idea that the founding stock of this country, (mostly English) were 'rejects' and rabble is just false. I've read such nonsense as the charge tht the Pilgrim fathers were expelled from their home country. Wrong. They actually had to slip away under cover of darkness and made repeated attempts to get away to Holland or elsewhere, and succeeded only after several tries. There was no freedom to emigrate for them. This is all described in detail in the Willison book, Saints and Strangers.

Yes, there were some prisoners sent to some Southern colonies later, but the Jamestown colonists were not deported or transported criminals. Most of the colonists were decent and honorable people. I will put my ancestors up against anybody's in terms of their lineage and character and honor.

Perhaps it makes the Ellis Island crowd feel better about themselves to lie about the origins of the first colonists but those lies should not be unchallenged.

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, as the old proverb says.

I cannot count the number of times I have read slurs against WASPs because they are 'rich elites' who are either do-gooder liberals or self-hating Whites. Then I read that the WASPs are fat, gluttonous White trash. Can both be true? Sure, there are extremes at one end or the other in every group, but to caricature only Anglo-Saxons in this fashion is bizarre.

Most people on the racial right seem to stereotype WASP Americans as 'elites' like the Boston Brahmin types -- but do they even exist anymore? Who are they? Where? What are their names? The only New England elite I hear about are the likes of the Kennedys or John Kerry. Kerry, it is true, has some colonial ancestry, but he is also of much more recent immigrant stock, and Kerry is an adopted name as we know, as his family has no Irish ancestry.

Every time someone brings up the 'WASP elites sold this country out' mantra, I have to ask them: who are they? Name me some names. Specifically. I never get an answer.

The New England upper crust from colonial times rather quickly intermarried with people of other origins. The moneyed classes in the Northeast are -- or were -- all quite inbred among their own social circle, but if you examine their names and origins you will find they are not all WASPs, not by a long shot. Some are of continental European origin, and they are no longer a monolithic group, religiously or ethnically. I would say most of the people with the money and influence today are johnny-come-latelies, nouveau riche types, with money but no breeding.

There is not a WASP cabal running this country, in complicity with Jews or otherwise. In fact, the old WASP gentry were accused of being anti-Semitic, as well as xenophobic in general.
So again, which is it? Cosmopolitan? Or xenophobic and exclusive?

May I just throw out a few names here? Madison Grant. Wilmot Robertson. Henry Cabot Lodge (who was as ''Brahmin'' as you can get). Carleton Putnam, who was a kinsman of mine. Most of you are familiar with those names, if not, you might wish to google them.

They were not men who were self-hating, or liberal, or 'selfish elite rich WASPs'.

And somebody may counter with names of liberal New Englanders in our history. Fine. But the fact is, there are far more everyday people in this country who have roots in England than there are 'liberal WASP elites' or ''poor (Anglo-Saxon) White trash.''

I am convinced there are many more Americans of predominantly English roots than are even aware of it. Most such people had ancestors who came as colonists centuries ago, and have lost track of where exactly their ancestors came from. Those of more recent immigrant stock know that their grandparents or great-grandparents came from some Southern or Eastern European country, or Central Europe, so we have skewed statistics on ancestry. Most such polls are based on what the respondent says, not on any verifiable facts as to origins. If people do not know the full story, they can't report it to a poll-taker.

And again, who can blame them if they choose not to identify as English or Anglo-Saxon? If they hear nothing but venomous comments about Anglo-Saxons, they tend to disassociate themselves from it. So at this point, there are too few that know their origin and fewer still who will speak up in defense of their ancestors or their Anglo-Saxon brethren. The ''WASP'' is now the favorite whipping boy for people on the racial right, oddly. Some complain of anti-Jewish sentiments on the right, but Jews get better press than the WASP.

There is one thing that unites the far left and the far right: they often seem to blame every woe of the world on Anglo-Saxons. Not just on Whitey, mind you, although there is a lot of Whitey-bashing, but Anglo-Saxons. Few other groups can be criticized so viciously with so little response.

And here's one other thing to chew on: the nature of the attacks on Anglo-Saxons is pretty much the same as the accusations against White men in general. The Anglo-Saxon, whether you like him or not, is sort of the arch-White man, in the popular imagination. Those who hate Whites are guaranteed to hate Anglo-Saxons intensely. If the White man is thought guilty of being too rapacious and too 'ethnocentric' and oppressive and dominating, then the Anglo-Saxon is the epitome of such evils, in most Anglo/White-haters' minds.

I don't relish saying it, but when I hear people from various ethnic groups grumbling about how the English or the Anglos oppressed their forebears, it sounds exactly like the complaints from American Indians, Hispanics, and other victim groups. It is sad and pathetic that people on our side will play the victim card.

It's easy to wonder if those who revile Anglo-Saxons are not, in great part, motivated by envy. The United States was, in its prime, the strongest country in many ways, and the wealthiest. Likewise the British Empire at its peak. Even now, with our countries in decline and our people in danger of being demographically obliterated, millions upon millions of people seek to gain entry to both the UK and the United States. That says a lot. Unfortunately it is not admiration that brings them here, but envy and covetousness.

Envy and covetousness beget resentment and hatred. So perhaps in a way the hatred is a backhanded compliment, but nonetheless it's one that we could do without.

There is a perverse streak in human nature, too, that causes those who have received help and charity to hate their benefactors. There is more than a little of that at work in this assault on Anglo-Saxons. No good deed goes unpunished, as they say, and people do bite the hand that fed them.

Too, everybody wants to topple the man at the pinnacle, and it looks like the envious are succeeding. And I think many of those of more recent immigrant origin scent blood; they see that the formerly dominant Anglo-American has become weakened, and they are taking advantage of the situation to claim power for themselves, although they could have done no such thin unless the Anglo-American majority was severely wounded.

I hope I may be forgiven for asking if the Ellis Island immigration wave helped or hindered this country, or if the divisions that were introduced were in fact just the beginnings of the multicultural regime. This is not a slam at any of my readers; if you are a regular reader, I assume you are pro-White and that you know that this country was by origin an Anglo-Saxon Protestant country. That much is fact, it's history, regardless of anyone's feelings about it.

Somebody has to do the thankless job of defending the people who made this country, just as somebody has to defend our larger kin group as it is under attack. It's all part of the same struggle.

The divisiveness that comes from those who have a need to slander the founding group of this country is something that has to be addressed, or it will be our downfall.