Guest Post by The Zman
Something the old paleocons recognized in the 1980’s, was that the new conservatism of Bill Buckley was doomed to fail, because it started from the premise that the current political arrangements were legitimate. Since the Left had defined those arrangements in the 20th century, it meant the New Right was going to become corrupted by its willingness to operate within the Progressives rules. For example, if you agree that segregation is evil, there are only a narrow set of policy positions you can support with regards to race.
That is, of course, exactly what happened. Instead of being a moral philosophy that stood in opposition to Progressivism, it became a foil. Conservatives were the controlled opposition, who gave legitimacy to left-wing ideas by opposing them and then ultimately embracing them. If you embrace the premise, you inevitably embrace the ends. The debate is about the middle part. It’s why conservatives have spent decades trying to accomplish the goals of the Left, without embracing the means of the Left.
In the context of the Cold War, this debate between the Left and Right, was mostly about economics and foreign policy. As much as the conservatives tried to paint the Left as a bunch of Bolsheviks, the Right never seriously challenged the Left on socialist policies like public pensions, socialized medicine and anti-poverty programs. Similarly, the approach to the Soviets was a debate about how to best manage it. The exception was Reagan’s talk of roll back, but that was mostly rhetoric. He was more than willing to bargain with them.
That’s something to keep in mind with the battle over what will come to oppose the latest iteration of Progressivism. The Ben Shapiro types who are endlessly punching Right by demanding America be defined as an idea, rather than a place and people, are embracing the main argument of the Left. They have different notions of what those ideas mean and how they should be implemented, but fundamentally Ben Shapiro agrees with the Left that America, or any nation for that matter, is just a set of ideas, not a place and people.
This new conservatism must end the same way as Buckley conservatism ended. That is, as an amen chorus for the Progressive state. If you agree that the new definition of a nation is post-national, as in not being defined by borders, language and people, then the debate is what defines the new state. If you further agree that the new state is defined by ideas and a set of values, then the only thing left is to figure out who defines those ideas and how will they be enforced. Eventually, an agreement is reached.
This notion of the state as a post-national, post-Christian theocracy is not without real consequences. It may seem ridiculous, but when the people in charge believe in something, no matter how absurd, the people pay the price. You see that in the Kavanaugh fight. Big shot intellectuals are starting to notice what people on this side of the great divide have been saying for years. If society is defined by “who we are” then someone who dissents must be excluded from that society, by force, if necessary.
In that context, splitting the difference could no longer be passed off as moderation. It was cowardice. Any Republican who voted against Kavanaugh (and, of course, any Democrat who voted for him) would thereby exit his party. Just as the congressional vote in 1846 on the so-called Wilmot Proviso revealed that the fault-line in American politics was about slavery, not party, the Kavanaugh nomination shows what American politics is, at heart, about. It is about “rights” and the entire system that arose in our lifetimes to confer them not through legislation but through court decisions: Roe v. Wade in 1973 (abortion), Regents v. Bakke in 1979 (affirmative action), Plyler v. Doe in 1982 (immigrant rights), and Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 (gay marriage). The Democrats are the party of rights. As such, they are the party of the Supreme Court. You can see why Ted Kennedy claimed in a 1987 diatribe that the Yale law professor Robert Bork would turn the United States into a police state. For Democrats, an unfriendly Supreme Court is a threat to everything.
That means the country itself. The general Democratic view that has hardened since the 1960s is the one expressed on many occasions by Barack Obama. The United States is not a country bound by a common history or a common ethnicity—it is a set of values. That is an open, welcoming thing to build a country around. But it has a dark side, and we have seen the dark side during the hearings. If a country is only a set of values, then the person who does not share what elites “know” to be the country’s values is not really a member of the national community and is not deserving of its basic protections, nice guy though he might otherwise be. Such people “belong” to the country in the way some think illegal immigrants do—provisionally.
Back at the founding, opponents of the new Constitution argued that the new political model would inevitably result in the supremacy of the court. Anti-federalists argued that the Supreme Court, as defined under the Constitution would become a source of massive abuse. Beyond the power of the executive, the court would eventually come to dominate the legislative branch. This is exactly where we find ourselves today, where both sides of the ruling elite view the court as the only source of legitimate moral authority.
That’s why the Kavanaugh fight was so vicious. Progressives fear the court could define “who we are” in such a way that excludes them. It’s also why guys like Ben Shapiro are not just wrong, but dangerously wrong. By going along with the general premise of a country being just a set of values, he is committing suicide on your behalf. He has a place to go if things don’t work out here. If the definition of “who we are” turns out to not include you, where are you going to go? More important, where are they going to send you?
That’s why this new notion of the state can only end in horror. Since the Greeks, political philosophy has assumed that a society is a group of related people, with a shared history and shared space. The debate was over how best to organize society, to match the temperament and character of the people. This new model allows no room for debate and no tolerance of dissent. Like every totalitarian ideology, it has to end in a bloodbath as the fight to define “who we are” results in the pruning of those who are deemed “not us.”
I used to subscribe to the notion of America as an idea rather than a distinct place founded by a distinct people. In the long days of my political and racial innocence, I believed that all people were capable of governing themselves and that ordered liberty was accessible to any nation willing to grasp the concept.
I know now that rational self-governance and a civil society based on personal liberty protected by the rule of law was the product of a particular people. White people of European stock seem, in retrospect, to be the only race of humans remotely capable of producing a society and culture that allows for the maximum amount of individual freedom within the necessary boundaries required for a civil society and a spiritually and morally healthy culture.
The civility of our society and the moral and spiritual health of our culture have decreased in proportion to the influx of non-white peoples, the increased self-loathing of influential segments of the white population, and the deliberate dumbing down of large swathes of the white population.
The now blatantly obvious anti-white rhetoric and sentiment (by both non-whites, and white elites) will devolve into an attempt to physically destroy the white race, either through naked violence, or through the more peaceful, though no less destructive process of miscegenation. One need only look to South Africa to see the genocidal trajectory of the first method. Likewise, anyone paying attention to American entertainment media can easily see the second method unfolding in an obviously deliberate and calculated fashion.
The white race is being swamped by demographics all over the world. Unless we rediscover our unique worth as the founders and guardians of civilization and act accordingly, we will be drowned in a sea of political tyranny, racial hatred and relentless violence. As a distinct people, this century will see either our rebirth, or our last stand.
If you are a white man, look into the eyes of your children and grandchildren before you decide where and how, or even if, you will stand. After all, you are deciding for them.
Awesome comment. Better than the article IMHO… Chip
That was an outstanding + 1000 post by xrugger, especially the last paragraph, but I thought Zman’s article itself was also +1000.
As a life long political junkie from an early age I grew up watching on TV Buckley’s Firing Line and its Liberal counter part The David Susskind Show. The Ying and the Yang of its time. I was raised in a blue collar liberal union family who were all life long Democrats. (My Father flipped with Reagan and he despised Clinton). At 14 in 64 I read Barry Goldwater’s book, The Conscience of a Conservative and I was converted.
Zman makes powerful points in his article I wholeheartedly agree with. His last paragraph is why every week I prep wider and deeper for what is inevitably coming.
though no less destructive process of miscegenation
There is a PetSmart commercial where they have a white man marrying a neegrow . Also now many commercials with white women and neegrows.
I refuse to buy any of these products.
It is a great divide, and it will widen to epic proportions when Buzzy Ginsburg assumes room temperature. What we all have in common is less important now than what our emotional IQ is. The Bill of Rights is not made to remedy hurt feelings, when your feelings are abused in the future, call 911 or arm and muscle up your tribe. Sad but true?!
Sad how we all allow the democrats and theirnilk to become known as the party of tolerance when its the opposite! 1984 indeed. Doublespeak!
“Freedom Evolves” is a profound book by Danial Dennett. So often people are looking at history from the context of the present. For example, women were discrimated against and blacks were slaves. Therefore, let’s tear down the statue of all the white men.
The fact is are ideas evolved from somewhere. There is no little man behind the window of your eyes. These fanatics are going to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Are we going to be ruled by the Constitution and Law and Order, or by Communist mobs; that decision is being forced on US, it will come down to the greater force, just as in Spain 1936-1939.
Robert- That is the same decision that was forced on the Russians at the beginning of the last century by da joos running the revolution. Some things never change.
Absolutely true. Many years ago I dragged by father to a Buckley/John K.Galbraith debate. It was just after the cold war ended. Galbraith’s reputation should have been in tatters. What I saw, at a young age, was an obviously smarter Buckley, willingly being used as a foil, not going for any kill shots during the arguments, deliberately, in my mind, throwing the debate. All out of some sense of “collegiality” I’m sure.
One thing to remember about Buckley, is that he didn’t have a revolutionary bone in his body. No Sam Adams or Thomas Paine was he. He was what he was, an elitist who was born and died in comfort. Like so many talking heads to this day, I believe that he became a “conservative thinker” because in 1952, the conservative playing field was empty, while all the “thinkers: of that day were on the left. He had a whole side of the field to himself.
Buckley did have an important role to play however. I believe he was allowed to exist by the elites as sort of an eternal flame to a dead philosophy while they reshaped the country. They never thought, throughout the 50s, 60s, 70’s, up until the early 80’s that their ideas could be successfully challenged and beaten back. Especially after they deposed Nixon, their high water mark. They’ve had free reign since 1933, and are only now being exposed to ideas they can’t compete with, and only thanks to internet communications.
I find Shapiro, to be deep down, a fraud.
It will get really bad for whites once Trump is out of office. Most whites will try to live and let live with these motherfuckers which will never work. One good thing is these white progressives will be the first ones voted out of political office by these people of color. Another good thing is that most Third world people hate these fucking Jewish traitors more than I do. Once these white traitors are out whites may be able to come to some mutual agreement with Hispanics in the Southwest. Maybe .
I’d rather live around a bunch of Catholic spanics than a bunch of sharia-pushing Muslims any day.
And I AM NOT a Christian.
Buckley was a cia guy. The bigger problem however was his giving the neocons a place to disseminate their crap.
Something i was reminded while reading this is of Ibn Khaldun the maghrebi historian. He had a concept labeled asabiyyah meaning social cohesion or group unity. but if i recall he considered it a cyclical concept, where a group with high cohesion would usurp the old, grow complacent and less cohesive and then itself be usurped by a new group. well worth the read.
nothing new under the sun.
I gotta give 1000 thumbs up to any article that slams (((Ben Shapiro))).
2 -3 months ago I never heard of (((this dipshit))). Out of the clear blue one day (((he))) has (((his))) own talk show on 77-WABC!! Then, a few weeks ago I discover (((he))) has a weekly show (Sunday, I think) on Fux Newz.
He has a truly horrible radio voice. Like what your voice sounds on a tape recorder when you fast forward the tape …. and he does actually talk a-mile-a-minute. Demeanor comes across as a total slime-ball.
(((Neocon fucker))) who also loves (Israhell). What a surprise.
Buckley had a single great moment when he told Gore Vidal: “Now listen! You quit calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamned face and you’ll stay plastered!”. But the pussy later regretted it. He was amongst the first to cringe when the likes of Ann Coulter came along. Like I said, a total pussy when verbal pushback was called for.
His sailing books are great, though. Interesting and informative and, of course, extremely well written. I highly recommend them.
An aside about Buckley’s unusual and pretentious sounding speech: he explained to a critic of his that he spoke only Spanish until he was 2 years old (Mexican nursery workers cared for him). His father moved the family to Paris and his early education was all in French. They moved to London when he was 10 years old and only then did he begin to learn English. So he legitimately said “what should my accent sound like?”. I find it interesting that three of my favorite authors (Buckley, Ayn Rand, and Thor Heyerdahl) all had English as a second or third language, yet expressed themselves so well. My theory is that it caused them to focus on being exactly ‘precise’ with their words which, perhaps, native speakers overlook.
https://thenectarine.ca/crime/42-kg-of-carfentanil-found-in-house-of-faisal-hussains-brother-enough-to-kill-everyone-in-canada/
Carfentanil is used medically for tranquilizing elephants and rhinos. It has no other medical uses. It is impossible to dilute to the point of being safe for human consumption.
2.1± 0.3 ug/kg is the dose at which elephants become recumbent. That’s 2.1 micrograms per kilogram of body weight to sedate an elephant. That is *absurdly* low dosage. 8.4mg will sedate a 4000kg elephant. The RCMP claim as little as 20ug can be fatal to human beings. Skin contact can cause transference of a dose.
Even a kilogram atomized and put into the air of a large building would kill hundreds if not thousands depending on the size of the building,
If you hear any kind of warning about such an attack, take it very seriously, get inside a building that does not have a large central plenum, or into a small private dwelling.
Better, of course, is not to live or work anywhere near a large population center. Especially if it’s iconic and would make good headlines for a terror organization or deranged nutjob seeking perpetual fame with his own Wikipedia page, a made for TV movie, or other notoriety.