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An Address by Prof. Paul Gottfried, President of the H.L. Mencken Club, at the Seventh Annual Conference, October 31, 2014
As we begin the seventh annual meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club, it seems appropriate to address certain misconceptions about our organization. I would not be engaging this particular topic were it not for the fact that what has been said about us is both damaging and false. As we all know, the HLMC has been savagely attacked ever since it came into existence, and this assault has come generally from two directions. One direction, and perhaps the more understandable one, is the Cultural Marxist Left, as exemplified by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Organizations of this type specialize in bullying and destroying livelihoods and reputations. An expose of the SPLC that I read in Harpers several years ago documents the extent to which this group has reaped political and financial rewards by playing on unfounded fears. Terms like “right wing” and “extremist” are steadily manipulated by our warriors against prejudice. And the terms they hurl against us take on ever more extensive meanings as the custodial state and our cultural elites go after their scattered remaining opposition.
Nor should we underestimate the consequences of being railed against by self-proclaimed “hate-watchers.” No matter how many critical assessments about them are published, leftist anti-hate groups that work at instilling hate remain powerful. They speak for the creators and sustainers of our political culture, that is, for the media, educators, public administrators and now much of the clergy. If they exaggerate or confabulate, they’re doing so, or so I’ve been told, for noble reasons. Sensitizers are protecting us against “prejudice,” “prejudice” being defined as holding and expressing views that are incompatible with what our rulers desire to have us think and say.
Neither the SPLC nor the other pea in the pod, the ADL, is an isolated trouble-maker; both belong to what I call in my book on multiculturalism “the priesthood of the managerial class.” They strengthen power relations; and when they blacken the reputations of those they assail, they are serving the political-cultural status quo. Nor do they worry about opposition from corporate elites. Multinationals, the Chamber of Commerce and American defense industries don’t care about what happens to dissenters on the right. Their interests are found in large, multicultural markets, launching wars to spread American “democratic values,” and/or keeping the flow of cheap labor from Mexico and Central America pouring across our borders.
Not surprisingly, “big business” funders of the GOP don’t rush to our defense. Nothing our leftist inquisitors are doing would affect their profits, and certainly not crusades against “bigotry.” Inasmuch as Goldman Sachs, Coca Cola, Chevron, Chase, Bank of America, Bristol-Myers, McDonalds, etc., are leading the charge for expanded gay rights and amnestying illegals, they are unlikely to sympathize with those in our ranks. And though large corporations are pinched every now and then for infractions against PC, this inconvenience is offset by the advantages of continued cooperation with the Cultural Marxist Left. Globalism, feminism, cheap movable labor and generic human rights ideology all butter the bread of large sectors of the business and finance communities.
A more unexpected direction from whence we’ve been hit is the paleoconservative camp. Now I am aware that many in this room, including my person, have been identified as paleoconservatives, and after years of having tried to qualify my ties to this persuasion, I’ve accepted the label that others have conferred on me. Those who know me will understand what I mean by the term, and those who don’t will probably assume that I’m some kind of anthropologist doing research on primitive life forms or Paleolithic rocks. In any case since I devised the term while thinking of myself, it would be unseemly if I ran away from it entirely.
And if truth be known, I still remain emotionally attached (perhaps I’m too old to change) to something called the Old Right, which is usually equated with “paleoconservative.” To a certain degree, although I couldn’t specify what that degree is, I am comfortable with my old club membership. But the designation has become increasingly vague in proportion to those who’ve appropriated it. At this point, I find the following groups all clutching to the old brand name: traditionalist Catholics, no matter what their other views, Southern conservatives, opponents of liberal internationalist interventionism, no matter how far to the left they may be in other matters, at least some on the sociobiological right, sprinklings of Tea Party Republicans, and proponents of Irving Babbit’s ethical theories as filtered through various contemporary interpreters. Some of these associations are cross-linked, but others are so far removed from each other that one has to wonder whether those who share the same label really have anything in common.
Now I’m not nitpicking. It’s certainly anyone’s right to claim any description for himself or herself, providing there’s no attempt to close off the usage of a label to others who have at least equal and sometimes even better claim to it. This kind of expropriation took place with American conservatism, a movement that was taken over by certain leftists, who fell out with other leftists and who eventually waged war on what had been the traditional right. This act of expropriation has disadvantaged those of us who were purged in this transformational process, and therefore we have every reason to deplore what happened at our expense.
A heated competition for the paleoconservative label, however, has broken out and turned nasty in proportion to how thoroughly the label has depreciated in value. For certainly the old Right has dwindled in influence, as its enemies on the left have made sure that we’re kept out of public view. One could watch Fox-news, if one could stand it, 24/7 without encountering a single paleoconservative commentator or guest, with the single exception of the occasional presence of Pat Buchanan. This exclusion I would assume is deliberate, since I’ve seen lots of political types on Fox, except for those who belong to our side. And the only peripheral exception that may prove the rule, as I just indicated, is Buchanan, whom it is hard to keep off a Republican channel entirely, given his close association with Republican presidents.
Given these problems, one might think that those who belong to a pre-neoconservative American Right would not try to hack each other apart. After all, most paleos of my acquaintance are getting on in years and share with me the same lifeboat, as we try not to be buried beneath our enemies’ destroyer vessels. What possible value can there be for those who are being buffeted about by common adversaries to turn on each other? Unfortunately this has happened, and the Mencken Club is experiencing the consequences. We are being steadily fired on from paleo points of concentration, whether in Potomac, Maryland or Rockford, Illinois. And this unprovoked belligerence has cost us members and brought negative publicity.
These attacks from what considers itself the paleoconservative Right recycle what are noticeably leftwing charges. We are accused of emitting racist pollution and this is a charge that was leveled at me personally, in a recent email note by a Catholic University of America graduate who belongs (or so it would seem from his communication) to the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. I asked this correspondent if he could cite anything I had written that would suggest that I was guilty of inciting racial hate, at which point he changed the subject. It seems his real beef was my interest in German philosophy, which, he told me, caused both World Wars. My scholarship in European intellectual history, which he found reprehensible for not focusing on the evil of German philosophy, supposedly proved that I was guilty of excessive “gene counting” and of other political no-noes that this critic wanted no part of.
My correspondent was also disappointed that we do not frontally address his major concern as a Catholic, which is abortion. I explained that the organization he chose to join, which is our self-designated competitor, does not prioritize any more than we do his particular concern. Why should we be expected to do what his pals have not done? Nor would the evidence suggest that I favor the practice he opposes. Although abortion as a moral-political issue is not something we have paid special attention to at our meetings, this should not be misconstrued as approval. Many members of the HLMC have taken stands against what is misleadingly described as a “women’s health issue.”
In any case those who claim to stand in the paleo camp are now bombarding us with leftist charges. As I recently learned, even knowing people who believe in inherited cognitive differences between individuals and among groups supposedly renders one unworthy of entering the exalted realm of those who address “permanent things.” I’ve no doubt this arcane discussion will go on among the same crowd, even after the ban has been extended to newly declared heretics, and here I’m referring to those who resist the idea of gay marriage. This is the newest non-negotiable demand coming from the Left and the national media. And I wouldn’t question even for a microsecond that those who banish hereditarians, will eventually and in the same cravenly fashion excommunicate other reactionary dissidents.
The conventional Right has its own ways of avoiding divisive issues, a category that would naturally not include presenting Republican talking points. It consists of teaching “values,” which means inculcating non-offensive abstractions that do not blatantly clash with the Left’s social agenda. This preaching takes among other forms talking generally about ethical questions, in a manner that allows the cautious speaker to stay under the radar. It is also possible, without causing scandal, to hold other equally edifying discussions, for example, about the higher and lower wills or about the reading preferences of long dead “cultural conservatives.”
Although such activities are not entirely without merit, one can’t help noticing what they fail to do. The speaker is never provocative, in the sense of challenging the Left’s prohibition against bringing up such verboten subjects as natural human inequalities, traditional sexual roles, or anything else we could only mention at our peril. What Sam Francis called “archaic conservatism” has become even less consequential. Sam’s superfluous persuasion now features self-important groupies who try to sound profound while staying away from edgy subjects about social behavior.
Some self-described paleoconservatives are in fact totally resistant to any evidence of natural human differences or inequalities. They sometimes elevate human equality to a religious dogma, raising it to a belief that no value-bearing person would ever want to doubt. Equality for these doctrinaires does not involve the mere acceptance of the plain fact, that in the present American polity anyone who is allowed to become a citizen (and by now those who are here illegally or those who are placed by their parents on our borders against non-enforced immigration laws) is guaranteed specific legal rights. Conservatism, inc. has turned equality into a religious mystique, one that is integral to an American propositional religion and which mandates a crusade to reconstruct those who defy “our values.”
Although not all members of conservatism, inc. adhere to the proposition that “equality is a conservative value,” there are many with the means to publicize their views who do embrace this belief. These true believers describe themselves as traditionalists but their tradition consists of the worship of equality, which they treat as our highest tradition going back to our founders. Whatever early American elites did or said that contradicts this preferred founding principle contradicts what we should know is right. Like the English philosopher and pamphleteer John Locke, America’s founders affirmed that all human beings possess natural or, as they’re now called, human rights. Good people, we are told by conservatism, inc., should recognize the equal inborn rights of all human beings, that is, affirm those rights that have been mysteriously intermixed with our DNA and the existence of which should take as a given.
These sanctified rights continue to expand as we progress toward ever greater enlightenment. They now include, for example, the liberty that should be bestowed on gays to proselytize for their sexual preferences in Russian schools. Apparently the Russian president is no longer part of the West or acceptable to the American conservative movement, because he denies sufficient scope to gays for their missionary activities. We are also reminded that our entire history as a country has to do with the expansion and export of rights, starting with certain phrases in the Declaration of Independence, early state constitutions selectively read, and the Gettysburg Address. These documents are thought to underscore how deeply dedicated to equal rights our American forefathers were, despite their misfortune of having had to live in a culturally primitive, sexist, ethnocentric world.
Of course there is a difference between our evolving globalist managerial society and the country that early Americans were building more than two hundred years ago. Conservatism or Republicanism, inc. has taken fatal obsessions, which the founders of this country would barely recognize, and projected them back on to an earlier society. Unfortunately there is scant evidence that most educated early Americans embraced the present preoccupation with universal equality, except in a modified form, as occasionally useful rhetoric. And even when universal rights-language found its way into early American documents, not all of our American founders were in agreement with that rhetoric: whence the heated argument at the Continental Congress about the insertion of natural rights phrases into the Declaration.
Because of the manner in which the American government later developed, particularly after the War Between the States and the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s, political leaders came to stress the Declaration’s proclamation that „all men are created equal”. But we should not confuse the present hour with the distant past. Locke, the writer whom Jefferson plagiarized, would not likely have been invited on to Fox-news or asked to write for a Rupert Murdoch outlet. In the Constitutions of Carolina, which he penned in 1669, Locke provided for slavery and a slave economy, which he clearly did not believe conflicted with his social contract theory of government. There is also no evidence that Locke thought that a social contract bringing into being a particular society had to be open to all of humanity. Or that even all those residing in a particular civil society should have been eligible for citizenship.
The established Right has taken over a quintessentially leftist fixation and raised it to religious status. It may be simplistic to suggest this has occurred because some organizations fear losing their donors. Although I would never doubt the effect of this factor, more may be at stake here. Equality has become a god term in a post-bourgeois, post-Christian West, and most people have acted predictably by going with the flow. This has been as true for the conservative establishment as it has been for the rest of the political-journalistic class, providing we note one significant difference: Whereas the Left seeks new opportunities to apply equality at home, conservatism, incorporated works toward the universal imposition of its highest value. Any idea that contradicts this project should be stigmatized as un-American, because it stands in opposition to what we supposedly are “as a people.”
Allow me to close these remarks by discussing an exchange that occurred while I was writing an essay for an organization that has since driven me out. An official of this organization asked me to write for its magazine on “what is right and what is left?” and when I submitted a provisional draft, it was obvious I had caused consternation. I stated that the essentialist Right believes in the need for hierarchy and never questions natural human inequalities or the naturalness and social value of gender differences. The person who commissioned this essay was aghast that I could utter such heresies. He responded in an email that I misunderstood the true Right, which does not believe in what I said it did. The Right followed Aristotle in believing that conventional social distinctions, as indicated in the first book of the Politics, are often unjust and in need of social reform.
When I read this, I knew where this fellow was coming from. In the Politics Aristotle criticized conventional slavery because this arrangement, as it operated, did not always correspond to natural human differences. Aristotle also imagined situations in which slaves) could be inherently more intelligent than their masters. But there is nothing that would lead me to believe that Aristotle did not accept the institution of slavery, or that he doubted that non-Greeks were naturally incapable of ruling themselves. I could have cited, but didn’t for fear of sounding pedantic, Politics, Book Three, section 1275, in which Aristotle dwells on the naturally slavish character of non-Greeks and on their unsuitability for any government other than despotism. Aristotle composed an entire tract Peri Epigamia, which was intended for his student Alexander the Great in which warned against the physically and morally debilitating effects of intermarriage between Greeks and Persians. Note that in defining a polis at the beginning of Politics, Book Three, Aristotle teaches that political rule (arxe politike), which is self-rule by citizens, “is a form of governance in which one governs those who are similar in kind and free.” It would not be an overreach to translate the key phrase, ton homoion genei, as those who are of the same race or ethnicity. In Book Five, we are warned that high among the causes of stasis, political revolution in a polis, is the admission of settlers (epioikoi) who are not of the same race (homophulon). Clearly Aristotle would not be voting with our “sensitive” GOP Senators to amnesty Central American illegals.
On the gender question, pace my critic, whose excuse may be that he studied too long with a Straussian at Harvard, it appears that Aristotle held conventional views about gender relations. In Politics, 1254 b, 14 and 15, (and here I refer to the Greek text which I quoted for my paleoconservative critic), Aristotle tells us that “the male stands in relation to the female (in reasoning about human affairs) as the better relates to the worse (to de kreitton, to de xeiron), and just as the ruler (of the household or state) should stand in relation to those he commands. To the Straussian objection that this last line, together with Aristotle’s observation that women are faulty at reasoning (ateles logou), refers to older Greek men marrying flighty adolescent women, I responded by stating that I could only buy this startling assertion if my critic showed me the proof in Aristotle’s text. Needless to say, he couldn’t, but his bizarre interpretation does survive in journals of the Straussian persuasion, together with the attribution of gender egalitarianism to an ancient Greek thinker who is no longer around to defend himself.
I then informed my critic that I was not advocating for the historic right. I was simply explaining what it was. The person who commissioned the essay did not have to relish the ideas in question in order to approve of my characterization. Indeed I too might have expressed at least some reservations about the historic right if it were a serious force in our society, which it most definitely is not. What I was doing in my project was describing a particular position, not endorsing the opportunistically embraced programs that have become part of the current conservative package. I would not misrepresent my subject in order to accommodate a “conservative activist,” and particularly not one who misleadingly called himself a “paleoconservative.” At the time of this exchange, my correspondent’s organization had still not consigned me to outer darkness. When they took that fateful step last summer, I was irritated but not at all surprised.
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The game’s over. Might as well capitulate.
Good riddance.
Meanwhile in Paris we have Russia engaging in some righteous Christian diplomacy:
http://sputniknews.com/society/20141121/1015014282.html
I saw the story originally at a website that’s popular with Front National supporters:
http://www.fdesouche.com/539745-notre-dame-sapin-noel-offert-russie
Readers there compared Russia’s gift of a Christmas tree with the giant sex toy “gift” to Paris by an American artist and their own Socialist government:
http://www.france24.com/en/20141019-us-artist-withdraws-vandalised-paris-butt-plug-installation/
I bring this up because I think it hints at something that should give us hope. I think the consumer capitalists and ’68ers have brought us low but I also think we can pull out of it. Russia’s recent history can give us some hope. Existence is resistance. That’s why they want to take down Putin and the rest of us.
Would the term “paleoconservative” even exist if Gottfried didn’t use it? HBDers, white nationalist, Catholic traditionalists, etc. have as little or as much in common with each other as they do with FoxNews.
Gottfried complains that there are no “paleoconservatives” on FoxNews besides occasionally Buchanan. You have to define the term, but if you mean someone who opposes foreign intervention and mass immigration and is pro-traditional gender roles, Tucker Carlson must count. There are probably others. Once again, it’s all in your definitions. What’s absurd is the contention that there’s an identifiable group called “paleoconservatives” that’s not allowed on TV.
I don’t feel that close to FoxNews, but I feel closer to them than the nonsense I read at Chronicles.
Its ok to have sub and subsub categories of political groups, as long as they all recognize that they will never agree on everything, and that as long as they largely agree on most issues, they are stronger if they consider themselves political allies. They should avoid specific rejection criteria or rules.
INTERESTING ARTICLE, SIR, BUT I DISAGREE. CONSERVATISM IS COMMON-SENSE.
I disagree on 2 things.
1. Please do NOT use the term “paleoconservatives.” It is a term used by our enemies and it is somewhat derogatory, suggesting that we are in the past, which is not so. A better term would be true conservatives, or eu-conservatives (good conservatives) to distinguish us from the fake neo-conservatives, who are actually pseudoconervatives, i.e. libbarbarians.
Using the right term is 90% of the battle, and we must never adopt our enemies description of us, which are likely to be inaccurate.
2. Conservatism is just common-sense and truth.
I hate the alien invasion and do not want foreigners in my country, just like I close my doors and do not want strangers coming in. And I say this with great pride at my common-sense and sense of justice. I denigrate the alienists and look down upon them FROM A HIGHER MORAL GROUND.
I do not want wars as I do not want my people dying for others.
I love my country, just like I love my family and my town. Patriotism is a virtue.
I do not want foreign aid to be given, as I want the money to kept for us.
And so on.
All conservative principles are based on common sense and higher moral ground of the good of my own self, my family, our white race, our women, and our country. There is nothing “paleo” about it.
No matter how much the libbarbarians lie to us, I will NEVER accept it because my commonsense will keep taking me back to “conservative” principles.
I denigrate the libbarbarians, despite all their baloney of social justice, and take a higher moral ground.
I console myself with this: reality will not be denied. Soon the overclass will be need to actually struggle against the Chinese, who have the advantage of not believing this BS at all.
With all due respect to the Professor’s thesis—who, after all, at least *somewhat* recognizes the problem himself in his choice of the word “archaic”—I mostly feel that the demise he’s noting is a good thing.
Indeed, even to the point of thinking that it took too long and inflicted too much damage doing so.
As Ronald Reagan observed its libertarianism that, if anything, is at the heart of conservatism, not some by-definition doomed “standing on the bulwarks shouting stop” fetishizing perceived tradition. And it’s especially not rooted in any Biblical/religious/theological basis, which bases formed the precise kind of never-ending war on the European continent that our Founders so despised and took pains to avoid. (With the then absolutely revolutionary First Amendment provisions concerning religion.
So what did we get by having the admittedly archaic paleos ignoring that libertarian truth? And indeed rejecting yet another fundamental which is that of the Founders again giving us a *federal* system where people of one state *ought* to feel free to govern themselves differently than citizens of another if they want?
Well let’s see: A reputation for racism via opposing so much civil rights measures and etc. early on; a huge nasty continuing fight over abortion which could have easily been decided by allowing state legislative bodies to differ on the issue; a reputation of fuddy-duddiness at best regarding sex and ugliness at worst concerning homosexuality and gay marriage, and then of course the soaring intelligence behind our wars never-ending based on a nice slurry of anti-aran/moslem racism, rah-rah nationalism, and Biblical injunctions concerning Israel.
Niiiiccce.
And in the meantime what did it get? At least a sound governmental economic status? Bwahaha. At least a sound *economy*? LOL again. A defeat of the forces of social unrest and division? Yeah, right. A position of genuine respect in the world with a minimization of enemies? OMG what a joke… A citizenry that at least wasn’t *afraid* of them with all their innovations in snooping and spying on us and etc. and so forth? Again; on what planet is this seen?
You know what you archaic paleos have gotten us? The John McCains and Lindsey Grahams and the George Bush II’s and his ilk and his wars and etc. Because *the* common line that runs through all of them is the direction of their energies in propping up old archaic ideas and symbols and etc.
I.e., a politics just about totally divorced from context and ideas and consequences. Just a reflexive … “must do/prop up X because … X is what there was before.”
Or, to put it another way, just thoughtless ideologues, which not at all coincidentally explains all the constant archaic/paleo conservative talk such as the Professor’s about … the Greeks, or Burke, or some other Europeans.
Really the mirror image of our uber-Leftists constantly citing *their* goddamned Europeans.
Try following the logic of our Founders instead, Professor. They weren’t hidebound. They didn’t want to have to split from the King, but did when it was clear that that sentiment had changed and that’s what our public wanted. And the same with establishing a federalist system in the first place—the evisceration of which being one more grievous national wounding allowed by our archons and paleos in their over-stay on our national scene.
Farewell indeed.
TomB
The Paleos have no political power in the GOP, what we have running the GOP is essentially a gang of powerful Wall Street banking interests, globalists and Chambers of Commerce types along with the Defense industry.
Nor is contemporary libertarianism part of Conservatism.
The people who run the GOP detest Christians, ethics, morals or anything that doesn’t enrich them. They don’t like the little people – the ones who cling to their guns and church. They want them gone. They look at a forest and see cardboard boxes for sale and if you turn the other way, they’d turn your wife and parents into gourmet cat food and share the profit with you.
Wasn’t this an inevitable outcome of the foreign policy of last 100 yrs.? America is becoming more like Austria Hungary empire ,more like Ottoman Empire . Russia can retreat .UK and France did. America has to retreat to the wilderness of Wyoming or S Dakota to save the Greek or Christian values . The rest of the country will be atomized . Look at Ferguson. No discussion outside the race box . Look at Las Vegas supporting illegal action of Obama pure for ethnic interests.
Look at demands of gays and lesbian over Macy’s parade. No concern of other . Look at Happy Hanukah but no Happy Christmas .
This is the goal of the liberal corporate managerial class . For them there is always a helicopter waiting to fly them for landing them in best school,best college,best profession ,and best jobs . They also have media to hype how good and liberated they are ,how they have evolved beyond race,gender,language,and geography.
The fact of the matter is that this class hasn’t moved past the base instincts of self hedonism of all varieties .
EVEN BLACKS ARE SPEAKING OUT AGAINST THE ALIEN INVASION AND HOMOPATHY.
It is well known that blacks vomit when they hear the words “gay rights”, “gay marriage” and all other other liberal garbage.
And hate aliens too and are speaking out against Obama’s illegal amnesty (which is null and void):
http://www.conservativeblog.org/amyridenour/2014/11/21/black-activists-speak-out-against-obama-amnesty-agenda.html
They are not paleo. They take these same positions like conservatives because it is COMMON-SENSE.
Putin should be more of a hero to anyone truly conservative–indeed, his refusal to fall in line with WWgay should be a key litmus test to determine whether people are real conservatives(Glen Beck?). The obvious and scientifically verified differences between different breeding groups of peoples is another–if you don’t believe in human biodiversity, you are probably a closet liberal. But not noticing these things has become so politically correct that unhealthy, illiterate, very low IQ people can come across our borders and set up shop with calamitous consequences, yet no media will permit such facts to be known.
Very depressing, but the fight is not over, and regardless of our criminal elites, the final resolution will come through the determination of the American people, who remain armed, not to have their patrimony stolen.
What Prof. Gottfried describes is probably a blessing in disguise. It’s better that all the contradictions, half-truths and attempts to square circles in the conservative movement are falling apart. It’s good too that the people who inherited the mainstream conservative institutions of the Anglosphere are so stupid and so rude to their traditional base. All this will help us escape the rut we’ve been in since the Reagan and Thatcher era. The politically correct crowd are also running on empty and are turning on one another so it’s really good news all round.
Hi rod::
The problem I have with your dissection is in a way that explains too much. After all the people in the GOP had to get *elected,* and I believe that my take on things noting all the different strings they play upon to accomplish same better explains same than your somewhat … monocausal hypothesis.
After all, I don’t know that theres enough bankers and globalists and Chambers of Commerce types to fill a football stadium even, much less account for the voting results, right?
Nevertheless of course there’s no total discounting of the influence of such types in the Party, that’s for sure.
Do not use the term eu-conservatives. For one, there is the confusing alternative interpretation that it has something to do with the European Union.
It’s also tin-eared to a far worse extent than paleoconservative. The associations it brings to mind are eusocial insects and forced, garbage terms like cisgendered.
Stick with true conservatives. That one’s a winner.
Fox News is always Israel first. Therefore Neocon.
I very much like to read Paul Gottfried’s articles. I wish he would write more.
Some of the responses to this article are amazing in their stupidity.
As if the elitist/anti-egalitarian paleoconservatives actually like the little people:
http://takimag.com/article/encountering_gottfried/print#axzz3JnH1rAgu
Paul Gottfried: I’m not much impressed with the “traditionalism” of the American heartland or (to use that ridiculous neologism “red states”). That heartland, in which I’ve spent much of my life, has supplied the teeming footsoldiers for McCain, Karl Rove, the inexpressibly stupid “W,” and loudmouths like Sean Hannity. It is the American heartland that now identifies patriotism with launching wars of choice in the name of spreading “our democracy.” Its inhabitants, moreover, suffer from the vulgar eating habits and lack of cultural literacy that their critics often impute to them. However perverse in their political judgments these critics may be, they are right about the ignorance and gullibility of heartland Americans.
Another excellent piece from Dr. Gottfried. I wish he was more direct in identifying his paleoconservative critics. Catholic’s are implied in this but I gather there are more.
Wow, out of 30 million blacks, a few I never heard of condemn amnesty. Not too impressive.
Cold War II is coming, if it’s not here already, as warned by Gorbachev and Kissinger. And in this Cold War it will be the paleoconservatives like you who will be the treacherous fifth column. In a fundamental sense your ilk has always anti-american, being anti-Enlightenment. You all would have stood athwart the American Revolution, yelling Stop. Preferring the status quo of monarchy, aristocracy and theocracy.
Basically, you are threatening civil war. Perhaps allied with Putin?
“… In a fundamental sense your ilk has always anti-american, being anti-Enlightenment. You all would have stood athwart the American Revolution, yelling Stop. Preferring the status quo of monarchy, aristocracy and theocracy. ”
“In a fundamental sense your ilk has always anti-american, being anti-Enlightenment. “
Bliss, were the Congregationalists of early New England anti-Enlightenment or pro-? Many of them believed in witchcraft as well as in communitarianism and in sharing food in hard times. They also were at odds with the English Crown. Would you classify ye olde New Englanders as being left wing or right wing?
Were they fundamental proto-Americans, or not?
Were slave owners who signed the Declaration of Independence anti-American tools of a foreign power? What about Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner who was also Enlightenment intellectual and critic of conventional Christianity?
Do you classify the Confederacy, the actual, historical Confederates, as left wing or right wing? If right wing, did the Confederates’ 18th century forebears stand athwart the American Revolution more or less than Northerners?
Was Abe Lincoln’s desire to repatriate freed slaves to Liberia good or bad?
Bliss, spell out some fundamental American values for us.
American values are congruent with Enlightenment values:
Rationalism
Secularism
Egalitarianism
PAUL GOTTFRIED WROTE:
Well, that is the very first time anyone other than me has said that multiculturalism is all about money. However, it is very obliquely mentioned here.
I will however say it again (for perhaps the 100th time)–big business created multiculturalism in order to work hand in hand with mass immigration and thus increase the supply of workers and consumers, to depress wages, to increase GDP and sales, to increase corporate profits.
How this is not obvious, I can only wonder.
Just a few observations that might get under some people’s skin; first being, before there was ‘gay evangelism’, old-school conservatives used to be quite tolerant of gays with the reasonably tolerant descriptive ‘greek’ (interestingly, Aristotle came from an openly gay culture, in this context)
Insofar as:
“Equality has become a god term in a post-bourgeois, post-Christian West”
I would note ‘post-christian’ was the apparent intention of at least some of the founders, in regards to creating a ‘secular’ republic:
“a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word ‘Jesus Christ,’ so that it should read ‘a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion,’ the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination” -Thomas Jefferson, commenting on proceedings in the Virgina Assembly.
Benjamin Franklin appears to have agreed with Jefferson: “If the Mufti of Constantinople were to send an emmissary to preach to us Mohammedism, he would be provided a pulpit”
James Madison goes even farther: “Experience witnesses that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution”
My own observation is, in any democracy, ethics, self restraint, tolerance and honesty will always take a second seat to narcissism, avarice, bigotry & persecution, if only because people who play by the rules in any democracy are at a disadvantage to those who easily subvert the rules to their own advantage. In effect, democracy, and for that matter, European culture, is a failed experiment:
http://ronaldthomaswest.com/2013/05/15/youve-got-apes/
^
Prof. Gottfried,
(1) Not archaic, but timeless. You render unto Hegel that which is the Eternal God’s.
(2) There is a yawning abyss in tone between the writing of Mencken and your own. The more you can bridge that divide, the more likely the petty tyrants will abandon you in search of softer targets, preferably one another.
More than conquerors, not less.
THE WHOLE WORLD IS CONSERVATIVE—EXCEPT WHITE COUNTRIES.
SO WHO IMPOSED LIBERALISM ON THE WEST?
And the white countries were conservative too, until about this century. The whole world does not use the word “conservative” to describe themselves, but they believe in these many things that are considered “conservative” automatically, because it is common-sense. For example:
1. No immigration. Most non-white countries do not let foreigners come into the country and “immigrate”, just like they do not open their house doors and let strangers come in. Everybody closes their doors and houses have walls and doors have locks, as do most families, companies, stores and nations. Immigration (I mean granting citizenship to aliens, not mere tourism) is rare is most of the non-white world.
2. No affirmative action. Opportunities first go to the citizens and those who are most qualified; foreigners are not given jobs that the natives can do. This is just common sense.
3. Disgust for homosexuals: There is no such thing as “gay rights” or “gay marriage” in most of the world. The idea that a man would sodomize another man is enough to make most people vomit.
Love for family, your own race and culture and keeping outsiders out is just culture.
So American (and European) “liberalism” is anti-culturalism, foisted on the people, by force, by the govt. and constant media brainwashing.
Why? Who IMPOSED liberalism on the American and European people?
I do not mean to sound facetious, but the liberal Joe Biden knows who did it!! He has described it so well, I think you all should hear it from the horse’s mouth.
Vice President Biden Acknowledges ‘Immense’ Jewish
Role in American Mass Media and Cultural Life
at: http://ihr.org/other/biden_jewish_role
Also: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/349155/joe-biden-attributes-social-liberalism-jewish-control-hollywood-%E2%80%98social-media%E2%80%99-patrick
And:
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/05/influence-cultural-politics
So my bottom line: “Conservatism” is common-sense and culture and therefore right. Liberalism is opposite of these and therefore can be called “neo-barbarianism” and wrong and just a Jewish scam. This is the punch line to put down the liberals!
The proper response of any charge of racism should be,”Please explain why I should not be racist”. We’ve all been brainwashed that somehow we’re responsible for everything (if it’s bad) and that we should love everyone no matter what. Let’s love those who love us. The rest we should scorn and push away.
Pay attention to me!
There is an evolutionary angle to the transformation of contemporary conservationism. Many organization have become totally boring to escape scrutiny. Nobody will read what they publish unless they suffer from insomnia. This also helps those who want to fund conservatives organizations. Others price themselves out of the market so as to avoid trouble-makers. Just hold meetings in expensive hotels and charge $150 for lunch with a boring speaker to keep out the riff-raff.
Conservatism in this country is just another scam to market the corporate state–no different than Liberalism. Even at the cultural level, Conservatism here is just a lagging indicator, not a real movement.
While I don’t disagree that the authentic right is in decline – it is from a demographic perspective – I would take issue here with the good Doctor’s terminology, although I recognize that there is a significant risk in contradicting the person who arguably coined the term. Paleoconservatism has always taken human differences (racial, ethnic, gender, cultural, religious, etc.) for granted. This is testified to by the fact that one of the core traits of what has been called paleoconservatism is its early embrace of immigration restrictionism. While they don’t make an ideology out of differences, as White Nationalists are prone to do, they also recognize that to deny differences in the face of plain sight evidence has to be ideologically motivated. So people who object to the recognition of human differences clearly are not paleoconservatives, but something else. Perhaps they were paleocons who became more “enlightened.” Perhaps they are “paleoish,” distinguishing themselves from “regular” conservatives on trade or foreign policy. Perhaps they identify themselves as Burkean or Kirkian. But if they are reprimanding Dr. Gottfried because he doesn’t parrot PC nonsense, then they have become PC mouthpieces, almost certainly not because they actually believe it, but because they are protecting their backsides. While I do not know what caused the falling out between Dr. Gottfried and Chronicles Magazine, the PC potshots he is describing here are clearly not coming from Rockford, IL, unless I really missed something.
I failed to hear any mention of Libertarian and Ron Pauls run in 2012 which for the most part was ignored by the MSM
A real alternative to NEO CON FOX news was Judge Nepolitanos show which was very Libertarian’ It was too much for the establishment and so was cancelled.
Aristotle argues on “race” in the polis as follows: “…difference of race is a cause of faction, until harmony of spirit is reached; for just as any chance multitude (ἐκ τοῦ τυχόντος πλήθους) of people does not form a state, so a state is not formed in any chance period of time (ἐν τῷ τυχόντι χρόνῳ) (Pol. V 1303a 25-27)”
Wise, sensible, and realistic man….