Tag: Civic Nationalism

All Men Are Created Unequal. Does That Make America Impossible?

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In the comments section that followed Michael Anton’s recent post about natural rights (“Farewell to Z-Man!

Once More on the Question of Natural Right”), a commentor said,

“Z-man is anonymous because he writes about biological differences, which is a capital offense in our society. Anton is a colorblind civic nationalist, so he doesn’t have to fear having his life destroyed for his views.

I agree that Anton and Z-man would better spend their time fighting the Left, but the schism between those on the Right who believe that there are biological differences among the various peoples of the Earth and those who don’t believe that is fundamental.

That is at the core of the debate between Anton and Z-man. Anton says that natural rights are universal and ever-present. That implies are all peoples are the same at all times. Anton rejects biological differences. Z-man says that the rights put forth by the Founding Fathers were based on their nature. The rights grew out of the particular biology of that people, Anglo-Americans.

For Z-man, culture is downstream from biology. For Anton, biology doesn’t matter at all. That is a fundamental difference.

Anton is a colorblind civic nationalist. He doesn’t believe that culture stems from biology.

His issue with the refugees is that they come from a culture that despises American values. That makes complete sense. However, for Anton, it’s about the culture, not the people. It’s why people like Anton has such a hard time arguing with the Left about immigration.

The Left says we should have open borders or, at least, very large immigration, especially, refugees because we’re all the same so why keep people out. Anton tries to refute this by arguing that we can only let in so many so that they can absorb our culture and truly accept American values. The Left calls him cold-hearted.

Anton has no response other (than) technical arguments because he accepts the Left’s morality: that all people are (literally) created equal so the burden of proof is on him to show why some people shouldn’t be allowed in.

Z-man doesn’t accept the Left’s morality. His argument for why we should reject the Afghani refugees is that they are a different people who will never accept our culture because their biology is different.

And before you start acting like the Left and call Z-man (or me) a racist, just remember that Z-man’s beliefs are pretty much the same as most people around the world, including Israelis and Japanese.

If this was Israel or Japan, their version of Anton would simply say, “No. We will not let in these refugees because they aren’t Jewish or Japanese.”

Anton disagrees with the Israelis and Japanese. He and the Left believe in the Blank Slate, that we are all lumps of clay that can be molded into any form if you just get the culture right.

Ironically, Anton rejects nature’s role in culture.”

Much of what is said here is essentially an accurate description of the difference of positions between the Dissident Right (e.g., the Z-Man) and the Civic Nationalists (e.g., Michael Anton, me).  But there are some subtle differences that I think need to be addressed.  I won’t speak for all Civic Nationalists but I will say for myself that I categorically deny that all human beings are equal in their abilities and have the same temperaments.  In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that human beings are heterogeneous at almost every level.  Even within the same nuclear family there will be remarkable differences of intellect, physique, personality and appearance among siblings.  And between different ethnicities and races the differences will be even larger.  You don’t have to leave the same continent to find the pygmies and the Tutsi.  The first group are hunter gatherers who average less than 4’ 10” in height while the latter are pastoralists that average 6’ but are not uncommonly over 7’ in height.  As far as differences of intelligence and temperament between groups of people there are all kinds of scientific studies and popular descriptions to provide speculation for these differences.

But the basic question isn’t whether these differences exist.  The question is do these differences prevent us from living together in a meritocracy?  In other words, if I’m stupider than my neighbor Bob will that mean we can’t live in the same society without eventually being at each other’s throats?  My belief is we can live together.

The Dissident Right does not believe this.  And as proof they point to the present nightmare we’re living through with “Black Lives Matter,” George Floyd and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion racket being run against white people.

Well, that’s a pretty powerful argument.  Add that to the fifty years of affirmative action and forced integration and you have a pretty bleak picture.

But the Left has been using this equality of outcome scam for decades as a proof that white people are discriminating against blacks.  And for whatever reason we’ve been letting them get away with it.  I no longer think it’s a convincing argument.  America is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society and there is every combination of races and capacities on display.  And what is clearest is that trying to hire people according to their skin color is a recipe for disaster.  Everyone has probably seen or heard of people who were hired under affirmative action quotas and were completely unqualified for the job.  And what is also extremely clear is that African Americans are not the object of systemic racism.  Currently heterosexual white men are the ones being discriminated against and openly.  It seems clear that demanding the end of affirmative action and other anti-white policies and a return to a meritocratic system is the correct way to put all this racialist nonsense behind us.

To do this it will require places like Florida that have a Republican government to refuse to allow anti-white, affirmative action programs to continue.  And the very color-blind approach that the above commentor seems to disparage is the correct approach.  The United States need to get out of the race business.  In fact, I don’t think we should even list it on birth certificates or other government documents at all.  You might as well list my blood type and what kind of belly button I have too.  Instead, we should be concentrating more on things like SAT scores and which computer languages have been mastered.

Now of course maybe the Z-Man is right and the Republicans are hopelessly unable to fend off accusations of racism and they will always be the losers when the Left plays this racket.  If this is so we’ll see this play out.  But I’d like to believe someone like Ron DeSantis is the future.  He recently rejected the High School Advanced Placement curriculum for African American Studies because it was filled with lies.  This is the way to change things.  Just say no and then make it stick.  It’s not easy.  It’s a slog and a fight.  But if we choose fighters to represent us, we will get results.  If we choose squishes like Jeb! Bush, we get what we have now.

So sure, things are bad but I’m not ready to start the race war.  I think we can have a first world country without a civil war.  But it remains to be seen whether the people who claim to be our leaders are willing to fight to save it.  If they’re not then the Dissident Right will be correct.

Michael Anton, Paul Gottfried and the Z-Man – A Fractured Spectrum on the Right

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I have been an advocate of dialog on the Right.  And recently there has been quite a bit of it.  And now I think I can see the present limits of what can be achieved by dialog.  Based on what I have seen I would say that at the point on the Dissident Right where Civic Nationalism starts to be viewed as anathema, then from there on, common ground can no longer exist with the more mainstream right.  The level of hostility is too extreme to allow for civility or even meaningful communication.

So be it.  But that still leaves plenty of latitude for dialog.  After all, the Z-Man and Paul Gottfried have several times shared the stage on various podcasts and they have been extremely cordial.  And Gottfried and Anton have debated on the pages of various right-wing publications with clearly evident collegial respect and politeness.  So, there is a bridge across the chasm but it is more of a shuttle that on its own can visit the two sides.

I can see the point of view of both these sides.  But I will say I have more sympathy for Anton because he has extended himself to try to communicate across the divide in a friendly manner.  The Z-Man was far from friendly.  In fact, he was pointedly hostile and rude.  And maybe that’s the requirement of the position he has staked out.  He has readers who exceed him in their anger toward any moderate figure or group in America.  Maybe politeness toward someone like Anton is a disqualifying act.  But maybe I’m wrong about that.  Maybe he truly feels that Anton is part of the enemy he faces.  And that is every man’s prerogative; to select his own friends and enemies.  But I give the moral high ground to Anton.  He wasn’t demanding any concessions, only extending an olive branch or a flag of truce for a parley.

Almost equally I think I know why the Dissident Right resents the Civic Nationalists.  They see them as the descendants of the mainstream conservatives who allowed themselves to be led along by the Buckleyites and the Neo-Conservatives and never did anything to prevent the takeover of the country by the Left.  They see the egalitarianism of the Civic Nationalists as the stepping stone to all the evils we see today; the LGBTQ madness and the destruction of personal freedoms in the name of diversity, equity and inclusion.  And there’s some truth in that.  In fact, I feel I was one of the pawns who believed in men like George Bush Jr. and his endless wars that accomplished nothing but killing Americans.

I see myself as someone who sees both sides of this divide.  But even though I have sympathy for the dissidents I think Anton’s side is where there may be a chance to take constructive action.  Someone like Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis will reach out to a Michael Anton or a JD Vance because they are interested in practical steps that can actually be accomplished.  Anton has reached out to people on the fringes of the Right like Curtis Yarvin and BAP in order to try to understand their point of view.  And while his viewpoint is still quite different from any of these people he is at least engaging in dialog.  And if nothing else it allows for some measure of coordination on practical things like supporting political candidates and networking.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised at how this contact between two worlds ended up.  But I am a little disappointed.  I wasn’t hoping for rapprochement but some kind of dialog and détente with a little glasnost thrown in for good measure.  Oh well.

But something was learned and nowadays that’s the first step to constructive actions.  Apparently, it’s not yet time for the opposite ends of the Right to talk to each other.  Whatever coordination gets done it will not include the Dissident Right.  At least not yet.

Civic Nationalism vs. White Identitarianism

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Identity politics has enveloped our modern political world.  The Dissident Right says that the winning strategy for Normal White Men is to play the same game and build a separate identity and negotiate relationships with the other identity groups.  The alternative to this is the civic nationalist idea of a civic identity that embraces everyone who identifies with the traditional American culture and constitutional governance.

The question is which one reflects reality.  And what that hinges on is whether there are more people who believe in Old America or more people who don’t.  If the answer is more people believe then we can try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  But if Old America doesn’t have enough support to win back the country, then identity politics is the only way to go.

I have to confess I don’t know the answer to this.  And part of the problem is that the Democrats and their political machine stopped worrying about obeying the law.  So, it becomes difficult to know if we are the majority or the minority.  If they can steal an election then it may be too late to fix the system at all.

But for now, my world view is that what Old America stood for is a good thing that is worth upholding.  The civic national concept is a framework that provides a way for human beings to live together in harmony.  The live and let live aspect of free association and freedom of speech is an attractive and valuable concept.  If it is shown that these things are irremediably lost then America without them becomes far less attractive a proposition.  At that point I believe it would be necessary to reevaluate all the options.

America’s defining virtue was always freedom.  And freedom is an absolute.  Sure, there were plenty of cheats that occurred against the Bill of Rights.  At different times and in different places crimes against freedom of speech or the right to bear arms or the other fundamental rights were perpetrated.  But for the most part our rights were respected.  We were treated as free men.

If we aren’t free men then our citizenship becomes a lot less valuable than we thought it was.  If it turns out that freedom has been removed from the bargain then what we have left must be measured against all the locations on the globe to decide which one provides the highest quality of life.  In some places economic opportunity might be higher.  In others crime levels might be lower.  In others traditional lifestyles may be more attractive than living in a woke cesspool of dysfunction and delusion.  Maybe some of the red states may provide a successor state to Old America.  That would be a very attractive option if it becomes impossible to save the republic.  That option would include all the virtues of the old system without having to constantly battle the Left for the right to live a normal life in your own country.

So, for now I’ll cling to the hope that we will be able to resuscitate Old America and cleanse it of the lunacy that the Left is inflicting upon us.  I don’t assume that the blue states can be saved.  Places like California and New York are hopeless.  The best thing that can happen there is for systemic collapse to provide an object lesson on what happens when you legislate insanity.

But if my fellow Americans embrace anti-white identity politics then I will be shown wrong and I will have to admit my error and swim across to the Dissident Right.

In Praise of Civic Nationalism (At Least My Version Any Way)

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Among the Dissident Right, the CivNats (as they call them) are almost an epithet.  Maybe not as despised as the NeoCons or the Libertarians but close behind.  And in a way I see their point.  The Civic Nationalists have allowed themselves to be gaslit by the Uniparty for the last fifty years.  For pointing this out to me I will always be indebted to these merchants of hate.  But as incisive as their thoughts are regarding the details of how the Uniparty uses identity politics against the white people of America I can’t come around to their idea that every ethnic and racial group is bound to face off against each other over the carcass of the United States of America.  To my way of thinking, that would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I am not a descendant of the Mayflower pilgrims.  And my people weren’t born within a thousand miles of England.  Other than possible sentry duty on Hadrian’s Wall during the early centuries of the Christian era all of my people had spent their time in southern Italy for as far back as our family tree can show.  But I don’t think any Standishes or Bradfords were ever brought up more patriotically American than my family was.  And having grown up in New York City I met many immigrants who came to this country with the sole object of making their children as proudly American as was humanly possible.  And this was in a city where the various ethnic groups treated each other with all the fondness that the various groups in Beirut currently do (well, short of RPG fire anyway).

I once met a man on the subway who had fled from China by swimming across the bay to Hong Kong.  He and his two brothers attempted it together.  One brother was dragged back, the other brother drowned.  But this man made it.  When he found out that Hong Kong would revert to China one day he decided to come to America.  He was a lower working-class fellow but he invited me to his apartment for dinner.  When he told me how he taught his children to revere America as the greatest country in the world because of its freedom and justice he sounded like a Frank Capra movie.  I was amazed.  This was back in the mid-eighties and New York had become a crime ridden hellhole with racial animosity at the boiling point.  But here was this man who could barely speak English and struggling to make ends meet speaking with an almost religious fervor about his adopted country.  It was kind of inspiring.  To me it was a kindred spirit to how my family was raised. We believed that myth.

Now here we are in 2020.  Antifa are the children of the Mayflower descendants, the top of the heap, and they don’t believe the myth.  To them America is a hate filled racist death camp.  Then you have BLM.  They are the descendants of the black slaves, the bottom of the heap, and they believe the same thing.  So that just leaves us, the middle of the heap.  Some of us still believe.  And I know the myth can work because I’ve seen it.  But it only works for those who don’t want to destroy what’s here.  My grandparents didn’t have a dream of turning America into Naples or anywhere else in Italy.  That Chinese fellow didn’t want to resurrect Canton here.  He wanted his children to speak English and watch the Mets play baseball on channel 9.  My ancestors didn’t get here until long after the Civil War but I have no desire to pull down statues of confederate soldiers or Founding Fathers.  That’s as bad as the Nazis burning books on relativistic physics just because Einstein was Jewish.  This country has a history.  It includes acts of great bravery and acts of down right cowardice.  There has been burning hatred and great compassion.  But that history is real.  Revisionists are retelling it from one point of view and want nothing else to remain.  But I’ll have none of that.

So, here’s my version of civic nationalism.  If your idea of America is that it is a terrible place founded by evil white people who need to expiate the sins of their fathers copiously and endlessly, then you’re not an American.  Even if you are Thomas Jefferson’s multi-great-grandson, you aren’t an American.  You’re nothing.  But if you believe that with all its warts and all its mistakes that the United States of America is the single greatest experiment in human governance since Adam and Eve were given the Garden then you are an American and my brother.  I don’t particularly care if you are white, black, red, brown, yellow or even green.  As long as you stand for the Star-Spangled Banner, Pledge Allegiance with your hand over your heart and love this country for what it has always been, then you’re an American.  The main thing is you believe in the Bill of Rights and the rule of law.  Don’t try to take away our guns just because your old country didn’t have them.  Don’t try to stop people from speaking their minds just because it might hurt someone’s feelings.  Don’t expect us to suspend our immigration laws just so a few more of your cousins can jump the border.  Don’t try to erase our history or inflict guilt on us for being successful.  Speak English and bring your children up to love this country and its history.  And whatever you do don’t have anything to do with antifa, BLM or the Democrat party.  They’re all Marxists.  It would help if you like baseball instead of soccer or cricket but that is a minor thing.

So that is the coalition I want, true believers.  But I won’t include anyone in who kowtows to the thugs who hate America.  You’re either proud of this country or you’re just a freeloader looking to tear off a piece of its wealth.  I’m guessing there are still millions of us.  And having a common point of view gives us an identity and orients us politically and culturally.  And that’s the only use of the words identity and orientation I’ll ever need.

Enough is Enough

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If living through this nightmare does only one good thing, it’s this.  It will give President Trump a mandate to end globalism once and for all.  Once we’re finally released from our cells, we’re going to want him to take whatever steps he can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.  And that’s quite a laundry list of things.  First off, it’s time to close not only the borders but the airline routes too.  Apparently Chinese New Year is the occasion for sending millions of Chinese back and forth from there to here just chock full of whatever pathogens have shown up in the wild game markets of China.  That must stop.  If China refuses to adhere to modern food hygiene then they should be treated like a plague city and kept at arm’s length.  Instituting a quarantine for travelers from China and similar places at the border for say, two weeks would go a long way to preventing another horrific outbreak like the one we’re suffering under now.  And because there’s no way of telling at the Mexican border where anyone comes from, we’ve got to end all the illegal immigration.  Not just sorta/kinda, but for real.  Use the state of emergency to shut down the border and if a judge says no then declare martial law and do it anyway.  The people will approve it.  And while we’re at it, suspend legal immigration for the time being.  It doesn’t make sense to be bringing people into the country during a catastrophe.

The next thing is to get Congress to declare all sorts of industries critical to Homeland Security and use a carrot and a stick to bring them back on shore.  And make it a very heavy stick.  Having our pharmaceuticals manufactured in China turns out to be a bad idea.  And manufacturing everything else there hasn’t helped either.  The President should do himself and us a favor and repatriate pharmaceuticals, automobiles, electronics, chemicals, metals, building supplies and just about everything else.  As far as I can tell we’ll need the jobs badly when this is over and the tens of millions of unemployed people are going to want growth in the economy and plenty of it.  And one good way to jump start something like that is to rebuild all the infrastructure that has virtually rotted away over the last fifty years of neglect.  Infrastructure projects have often in the past been boondoggles but compared to tossing trillions away to keep people sitting in their homes I doubt you could do worse.

Some will be worried that shifting production here could cause a worldwide depression.  I find that unconvincing.  The East Asian economies have their own domestic demand that is quite mature at this point and not having ten percent growth won’t kill them.  As for the rest of the developing world, if it’s not corona virus from China, it’s dengue fever from Guatemala or Ebola from the Congo.  We don’t need any more lessons in epidemiology.  We can see that plagues don’t mix well with a modern western democracy.  It’s time to roll up the welcome mat and tell everyone out there to stay home and fix their own damn problems.  And if it’s not too much to ask how about stop eating bats for a start.  Try chicken, it tastes the same.

 

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Bridging the Chasm Between the Dissident Right and the Civic Nationalists

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A week or so ago I critiqued an on-line article about finding common ground with leftists who were upset about being attacked by their even crazier neighbors in the “woke” community.  In my analysis I rejected the value of accepting them as allies and as an alternative proposed a dialog with the Dissident Right.  I said:

“So, in answer to the title of Mr. Klavan’s article, yes conservatism can be conserved but not by accepting non-conservative ideas and the people who live by them.  Let the progressives, the liberals, the moral relativists, the feminists and the alphabet people battle with their even crazier “woke” brethren (or whatever gender bent category they prefer) on their own.  We have nothing in common with them and nothing to gain by engaging with them.  I would much prefer to engage with the fringe groups to the right of us and see if we can find some common ground with them.  Their ideas are more extreme than ours but they at least do not reject the values that we embrace.  In many cases I think they have let pessimism radicalize their thinking and pushed them to conclude that only radical solutions to our problems exist.  I think the last few years have shown that progress can be made if the right people get involved.  If actual conservatives have a part in running the country better outcomes are possible.”

Recently I have read several articles by the Dissident Right that seem to echo the idea that there is room for constructive engagement between the so-called “Civic Nationalists” and the so-called “Dissident Right” (wow, that a lot scare quotes!).  Of course, from their point of view this merely means they are interested in proselytizing us over to their cause.  And, fair to say, I’m interested in changing their minds about some of the darkest pessimism they have concerning America’s future.

To be perfectly candid, the biggest difference between realistic civic nationalists and the dissidents is their conclusions about racial identity.  They are convinced that a minority majority America cannot maintain the essential characteristics that the country had when 85% of the population was of European descent.  Now this is a very sensitive subject and even acknowledging that it could be an issue has been enough to get all kinds of people banished to the gulag of the de-platformed.  Racial and ethnic topics are taboo for all but the anti-white cheerleaders of the left and their only object is to vilify everyone from Christopher Columbus to Kate Smith for not having read the playbook of the 21st Century Witch Hunters.  But considerations of race and identity are important and should be able to be discussed rationally and constructively.

The descendants of the English who founded this country have a right to be proud of what their forefathers created.  The United States is one of the most remarkable human inventions that can be pointed to.  Along with the British, Roman and Athenian systems it evolved from, it has blossomed into a model that has impacted to a greater or lesser extent, the whole of the human world.  Without a doubt, there was something about the people and the circumstances that surrounded the founding of this country that should be revered by its descendants and anyone who chooses to live in it.

The charges of guilt against America for conquering the country from the Native Americans and for slavery before the Civil War are absurdly hypocritical.  War and slavery have been a part of every human culture including the Native Americans and Sub-Saharan Africans from the very beginning and to the extent that the United States and Britain have worked to eliminate slavery and embrace the idea of all humans being a family, they should be recognized as having made a quantum leap beyond the long depressing history of nations and empires murdering and enslaving each other to stay alive.

And this hypocrisy about America’s supposed guilt is, I believe, a big part of why the Dissident Right believes that a non-European majority in the Unites States will destroy the things that have made it unique.  All of the hooting and hollering about Jefferson and Washington being slave owners and whatever the latest atrocities the Antifa idiots commit compounds the sense of unfairness that people feel when they are confronted with the ongoing discrimination that affirmative action represents.  Anyone who has seen what corporate management has become knows that choosing a woman or a minority or an LGBTQ candidate is the only way to avoid being subject to the dreaded “diversity and inclusion” police.  Your judgement will be questioned and your “unconscious bias” will be referenced by your upper management and the advocacy groups that have sprung up like poison mushrooms in every school, college, corporation and non-profit organization.

So, I’m cognizant of the outrages being perpetrated on the legacy population of the United States by, mostly, their fellow European Americans ostensibly for the benefit of these various minorities but I disagree with the dissidents on the conclusion that this has to inescapably change the country into something unrecognizable to those who loved it.  And as a rationale I am reminded of the southern European immigrants of the 1890s and early 20th century.  These people were equally considered unacceptably alien and a threat to the American nation.  And indeed, when they flooded the country in their millions, they did create chaos and an explosion of crime.  But by their desire to emulate the prosperity of their neighbors they instilled in their children the desire to be Americans in every sense and they did become Americans and they probably loved this country as much (if not more) than those Mayflower descendants who currently bad-mouth the United States for all the supposed sins that their woke brethren enumerate.  This former wave of immigrants leads me to believe that we can absorb some reasonable amount of immigration.  Obviously unlimited and illegal immigration is a danger to our system and needs to be stopped in order to allow the already large number of legal immigrants to assimilate.

But the current climate of “blame America” is the real danger I see.  Whatever numbers of immigrants are deemed harmless to the country, they still must be inculcated with a sense of gratitude for their membership in it and toward the people and culture that built it.  And to accomplish that our government must not be put in the hands of America-haters like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or any of the other Democrats who want to divide and conquer us.

As far as the dissidents’ opinions on HBD, I can’t confirm or deny whether there are such large differences between populations of humans as they claim.  But if they do exist, I still do not see the relevance.  There is plenty of variance in intelligence and other characteristics within populations and these ranges of variance act in hierarchical fashion to steer individuals to occupations and groupings that suit them more or less.  The important thing is that people feel that everyone is at least given the same chance to try to succeed.  A ditch digger who earns his money honestly doing the task he is qualified to perform is more honorable than the Ivy League legacy student who gets his spot in school and industry while more qualified candidates are rejected because their families didn’t vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.

My hope is that if honest reformers like Donald Trump can begin to roll back the harmful policies that the social justice programs of the 1960s and 1970s then maybe the dissidents will come around to our way of thinking and support reasonable reform of an admittedly dysfunctional system.  But for now, I think it’s reasonable to begin a dialog with the Dissident Right.  They were among the first who diagnosed the conscious malpractice of the Establishment Republicans and their clandestine collusion with the Left in marching this country over a cliff.  They are just as legitimate a part of the nation as some of the radical groups that the Left has welcomed into its camp.  Ostracizing them just to prove our purity is stupid and self-defeating.

So that’s what I think.  That was long because it is difficult to talk about these things without being very clear about what I mean.  But I thought it was worth saying.  Leave your opinions, if you’d like, in the comments.

Taking Back the Momentum

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Recently I got into a discussion with one of my on-line friends, Tyler (The Portly Politico) about whether the Dissident Right was correct when they said that the only path forward was dividing up the country between the Left and the Right.  Now this division could take several directions.  The one everyone always mentions is some kind of civil war with armies and battles.  But a more likely direction would be some kind of loosening of the ties between states and the federal government to the point where differences on legal and criminal matters end up making them essentially different countries but keeping the parts of the federal government that benefit everyone like the armed forces and interstate highways.

I stated that I thought that something like that was possible but was not necessarily what needed to be done to straighten out the mess we’re in.  What would make sense is for the redder states to start asserting themselves on policy issues where the federal government has been pushing their Leftist ideas on the states.  A good example would be the abortion laws that some of the southern states have recently passed.  Take a stand that you know the Left hates and make them squirm.  It’s not enough to pass good legislation.  You have weaponize your actions in the same way that the Left does.  Another fruitful avenue would be anti-discrimination laws that would allow an employee to take his employer to court for being forced to celebrate something like say, the rainbow coalition that goes against his religious beliefs.  Or if the company has openly used diversity as a cover to favor some candidates over others then they could bring this into a state court for adjudication.  There’s nothing that a corporation hates more than to have to pay out fines and then have surveillance done on them by government.

An easy one is to go after Leftists in red states.  Texas should immediately enact some laws that criminalize the abetting of an illegal alien presence in Texas and then jail all the city politicians in Austin who have made it a sanctuary city.  Basically, set up some traps and force them to either follow the illegal immigration laws or go to jail.

If you look at these ideas you can see that they are the mirror image of what the Left does to us in places like California.  They pass laws that take some recent court decision and use it as a club to beat any conservatives who happen to live under their jurisdiction.  Eventually the Supreme Court might find the law unconstitutional, but in the meantime, they’ve made life hell for their enemies.  That’s what our side needs to start doing.  Make them pay a price.  And with the Supreme Court nominally against them on a lot of these issues, they won’t have any recourse.

These types of actions have several good effects.  First off, morale; bad for theirs, good for ours.  Secondly, doing things that everyone said was impossible changes opinions, emboldens people who have already given up to give things another chance.  Who knows?  Maybe we can even flip the Dissident Right back to civic nationalism.  And lastly it gives you something to build on.  Other states will get the idea and join in.  Once you have enough momentum even the Supreme Court might get enough courage to reverse some imaginary constitutional right that a former court made up.

What it’s going to take is some governors and legislators in red states to start coordinating with a Republican President to let some of these types of actions go forward.  Sure, the Ninth Circuit Court will scream bloody murder but as long as it’s out side of their jurisdiction they can’t do anything concrete.  Hollywood will boycott the states.  Good, let them.  The states have to start learning to say no to blackmail.  This is the perfect time to start.  The economy is good and there are plenty of business opportunities that aren’t beholden to leftists.  So, if the Chamber of Commerce squawks the Governor can tell them to count their tax blessings that they aren’t in California.

Part of the problem all along is the Republican Presidents have never tried to rein in the Deep State.  They are enormously strong but so is the executive power of the presidency.  If it can be coordinated with the power that the state legislatures and governors have at their disposal, real progress can be made.  And once again we see that all this comes back to having a Republican president who actually is on our side.

 

The Great Awakening

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In a recent post I stated that back in 2015 the Alt-Right/Dissident Right (or whatever your favorite term is) predicted that the identitarian politics and globalist economic policies of the Left would push the civic nationalists over the edge and radicalize them into their own identitarian group.  In that post I called it the Great Awakening.

The term Great Awakening is actually a description for several religious revivals that occurred in British North America and later in the United States between the 1730s and the late 1800s.  I am stealing the term to use for a completely different phenomenon.

What I am talking about is the phenomenon of normal apolitical Americans waking up to the fact that the Left has been systematically destroying this country for the last fifty years.  And that they’ve been doing it with the tacit approval of most of the Republican hierarchy for most of that time.  When I say the Left I am including the progressives that make up the Media, Academia, the various bureaucracies at the state and federal level that lately are being called the Deep State and all the other entrenched organizations that have been pushing a radical agenda that works for the destruction of the family and traditional life in general.

Up until recently, most normal people assumed that the way to resist these progressive institutions was to vote for the Republicans at the state and federal level and support their efforts to preserve traditional values and cultural norms.  But the Great Awakening was catalyzed by the spectacle of the 2016 election in which the mask finally dropped and we saw the republicans for what they really were.  They were the gate keepers for the Democrats.  They ensured that no matter who was elected the progressive agenda would continue unabated.  During that election Donald Trump called out all of the republican presidential candidates and exposed them for their weakness and lack of courage.  He identified illegal immigration as the weapon being used to destroy America and said he wasn’t afraid to fight against it.  And when the Republican voters threw him their support, the Republican Establishment showed their true colors and became the Never Trump movement and declared that they’d rather elect Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump.

But even after voting for Donald Trump many Americans didn’t recognize the fact that they were personally the target of the progressive agenda.  Even after eight years of Barack Obama and all the hate and lies that attended his “fundamental transformation of America,” these sleepwalkers assumed that nothing could or should be done to change the trajectory of the culture.

Luckily for us there are two things happening to wake these sleepwalkers up.  The first is the President.  President Trump makes it a part of his duties to call out the progressive fanatics.  His bombastic style is an effective means for exposing the ugliness and stupidity of these people.

The other thing that is waking the sleepwalkers up is the acceleration of the Leftist agenda.  We now have immigrant congresswomen from the Middle East openly spouting anti-American and antisemitic sentiments openly.  And not being censured by their Democrat leaders.

And we also now have the transgender phenomenon on full display.  We have high school girls who’ve worked and trained to become competitive athletes being forced to compete against essentially men.  The dispiriting result of such an unfair practice is opening eyes even among communities that normally would have nothing to do with traditional groups.  A schism is opening up in the so-called LGBTQ community between lesbians and transgender supporters over the primacy of biological identity.

All these increasingly strident and unappealing spectacles are waking up normal Americans to the reality that the country is being hijacked by a concerted effort to undermine the normal way of life that makes life worth living.

So, what makes me think things are changing?  Look at the intersection of the two factors I mentioned above.  When AOC’s “Squad” started dumping on America, President Trump told them to go back to their dysfunctional craphole homes and fix them up before they complain about America.  And when the Media breathlessly interviewed Republican women expecting them to condemn the President they didn’t.  A few years ago, they would have.  But defending the Squad is a bridge too far.  Most Americans have had enough of strident leftists.  And this week when President Trump went after Representative Elijah Cummings for his inaccurate statements about the ICE border station and told him to spend more time improving the conditions in his own Baltimore congressional district most Republicans may have been uncomfortable but they could see the relevance of the comparison.

The worm has turned.  The Overton Window has shifted radically and the truth can now finally set you free.  President Trump has made it thinkable to call the Leftists on their lies and people are starting to do it.  And that neutralizes a big part of the scam that they’ve used on the right for the last fifty years.  And that will cause the whole thing to accelerate even more.

And that’s what I call the Great Awakening.  We’re waking up and finding out that the Emperor has no clothes and we don’t have to pretend anymore.  That doesn’t mean we automatically win.  We may find out that we’re outnumbered.  The awakening isn’t an end it’s a beginning.  We still need to figure out how we get what we want.  We’ll have to find out who we can work with and who we can’t.  But at least we’re awake.

 

Identity Politics and Civic Nationalism – Part 2

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Identity Politics and Civic Nationalism – Part 1

At the end of the first part of this post I said I’d look a little more closely at the specifics of the Dissident Right’s logic and compare it to my own way of looking at where we are.

First off let’s acknowledge something that we cannot afford to forget.  The Dissident Right (or Alt-Right if you prefer) was the only group who both knew what was going wrong in this country and weren’t afraid to say it out loud.  They recognized that the Left was in control of all the levers of power and the Establishment Republicans had no intention of changing the results of the Left’s program.

The Dissident Right explained exactly how the schools and colleges proselytized the children and how the Media, the Democrats, Big Business and the Courts twisted every part of society until nothing remains of the normal world of just a few years ago.  And as proven, the Establishment Republicans use the anger this generates to get themselves re-elected.  But once in office they can be depended on to never actually reverse any of this destruction and instead just talk about how dead set they are against whatever the next outrage is.  And when that outrage becomes law they just move along to the next.

And the Dissident Right identified the fact that both Parties and Big Business were determined to use immigration, both legal and illegal, as a means to swamp out the votes of the citizens of the United States as a way to eliminate all resistance to their agenda.  It was plain during the 2016 election that none of the Republicans, no matter how “conservative” he was, would say a word against illegal immigration for fear of being called a racist.

And the Dissident Right was the only group that supported Trump.  Everyone else either said he was a joke or abhorred him for being a vulgarian.

So, as I said above, ignoring the Dissident Right means ignoring the only group that knew how we were losing the Country to the Left and how we could stop them from doing it.  Clearly what they say has to be carefully considered.

But you might say, why not just jump on their band wagon?  For me, that is a disturbing choice.  The Dissident Right is comprised of people who believe that differences in race and even ethnicity prevent a heterogeneous state like the present United States from living in harmony.  They believe that the future will be a fractious hodge-podge of identity groups that, led by the trouble-makers on the Left, will spend all their time pursuing imaginary grievances against the European Americans that they’ve been told are holding them back from being happy.

The Dissident Right points to affirmative action discrimination and the destruction of the family and the LGBTQ lawfare warriors and de-platforming of people on the right and say we are already there and that once we are a majority-minority-nation, things will only get much worse.

Accepting this hypothesis as true is not something I would do unless forced by irrefutable evidence.  But having it espoused by people who have been right about things that the majority were wrong about means I have to find reasonable arguments for why the Dissident Right is mistaken in their conclusions.

Instead of going through a bunch of cases and subsets of categories I’ll sum up the problem we’re experiencing by saying that in the 1960s when the economy was very strong the leaders of the Democrat party saw that they no longer had an unbeatable coalition of disaffected voters like they had in the 1930s and 1940s.  They decided to follow the Marxist playbook and weaken their enemies by sowing as much division as they could.  They espoused abortion as a way to destroy the family and they sponsored all the grievance movements to further fracture the country.  They infested the schools and steadily eroded intellectual life until even the sciences were politicized and distracted from their primary functions.  And they enshrined massive immigration both legal and illegal.

But even when all this was going on it was still possible for a conservative leader like Ronald Reagan to rally the Right.  And when that happened, the country was able to see itself as one people.  It was only when we were led by people who believed in the propaganda of the Left that everything has fallen completely apart.  Basically, since 1988 (thirty years) we have been living under the rule of the Left and their Globalist Echoes on the Fake Right.  Bush Senior, Clinton, Bush Junior and Obama allowed every outrage of the Left to happen to us with either enthusiasm or feigned reluctance.

This track record is why I think that the Dissident Right may be mistaken in the irreversibility of the changes we are experiencing.  In just two years President Trump has installed a whole generation of federal judges who will begin the process of reversing the damage done by the rogue judiciary.  Without Justice Kennedy it’s possible that the SCOTUS will reverse the decisions that found a constitutional mandate for abortion and gay marriage and affirmative action.  Those types of actions would change the world we live in.  Once those injustices are addressed people would see the world much differently.

The final thing that I need to address is the Race Realism that the Dissident Right says will prevent the United States from existing in harmony.  They claim that both differences in behavior and feelings of separateness will forever keep different races and ethnicities from living peacefully together.  My experience with diversity is a product of growing up and living in New York City in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.  Believe me when I tell you that things were very far from harmonious in the “glorious mosaic” that existed in that era.  There was a separate neighborhood every ten to fifteen blocks and mostly the ethnic and racial groups didn’t happily mingle or even interact.  There were riots and even several large areas of the city burned down.  Crime was rampant and the subways were very dangerous as were the parks and other empty areas.  Of course, the Democrats were always stoking the unrest with grievance propaganda.  But then I remember what happened when the city finally had had enough and elected a law and order Republican, Rudy Giuliani.  It got better!  And indeed, the people of all races and ethnicities felt more united and less angry when a sensible government started enforcing the law and holding everyone accountable.

I won’t claim that there aren’t differences between people.  In fact, I’ll go one step further and says we’re all different from each other.  Every family has a smarter kid and a tougher kid and a kid who doesn’t follow the rules.  But if one kid does better in school you can’t hold him back to make the less smart kid feel better about himself.  And as every parent knows, the best way to keep the peace in a family is to come up with reasonable rules and make sure that everyone follows them.  It’s only when you see someone else getting away with something, you’re not allowed to that trouble begins.

So, this is getting overly long.  My way of thinking about this is that if we can elect non-leftists who want to restore normalcy to the country, we can do it.  Maybe it won’t happen.  But just saying it’s impossible doesn’t appeal to me, at least not yet.  President Trump has given me hope that it can be done.  Let’s see if he can do it before we throw in the towel.

Tyler Over at the Portly Politico Has Added His Two Cents on Dissident Right and the Civic Nationalists

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Tyler has a lot of good things to say about the topics we’ve both been seeing on the political stage.  Plus he says some good things about me, so how can I resist.

 

The State of the Right, Part II: Dissident Right and Civic Nationalists