The interviewer is asking about both the past and the future. Anton talks about his experiences in the 2016 election and in the Trump administration. And then he asks about 2024. Here Anton sounds very much like those on the dissident right who feel that the time for elections fixing things is over. It feels like there is a convergence going on on the Right.
Tag: Dissident Right
05JUN2023 – OCF Update – This’N’That
Probably the most significant news is that yesterday the long-discussed Ukraine offensive began. There were several troop and tank movements in the Donetsk
“Russia’s defence ministry released video of what it said showed several Ukrainian armoured vehicles in a field blowing up after being hit.
Russian forces killed 250 Ukrainian troops as well as destroying 16 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles and 21 armoured combat vehicles, the ministry said.”
Currently the Ukrainians have not released any statements with their take on the fighting. From what I read the Ukrainian forces involved included about sixty tanks, 3,000 men, artillery and other armored vehicles.
This is still just a small fraction of the forces available for this offensive but it seems clear this wasn’t a feint. It’s act one. It will be evolving over the next days and weeks and it will be gut-wrenching for all involved.
……………………………………….
The Z-Man had an interesting post today about the evolving perspective on the dissident right about what the struggle with the Left actually entails. Instead of the resistance of the Right to slow down the Left’s never-ending push to produce a heaven on earth he posits that the dissidents are aiming to eliminate ideology as the engine of human social advancement. What’s being rejected is basically the Enlightenment project that gave birth to liberal democracy in the West. In its place would be a pragmatic program based on the limitations of human society. No more heaven on earth. Just earth.
Pretty thought provoking stuff.
…………………………………………..
I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about a horror movie (if that’s the genre) called Nefarious. Apparently it’s a death row prisoner being interviewed by a psychiatrist to see if he’s sane enough to be executed. The twist is that the prisoner claims to be possessed by a demon who wants the execution to proceed so he can escape to a new body from which he can continue his mayhem. It’s still in the theater so they want twenty bucks to stream it at home. Well! I must be getting old. I remember when twenty bucks was actual money. I remember as a kid I once found a twenty dollar bill and I thought I was rich. So anyway I’m stalling until it comes down in price. It looks pretty good in the trailer. The producers aren’t mainstream Hollywood types. They’re on the religious side of things. So that makes it even more interesting to me. Maybe I’ll spring for the twenty bucks. I’ll probably still be able to eat that week. And supporting alternatives to woke corporations like the Hollywood studios is almost a religious obligation. So I guess I’ll fork over the quatloos.
Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 22FEB2023 – A Pattern of Deception
Figuring out that the “Of the people, by the people, for the people” talk was an entire charade and farce is not an overnight realization for most of us. It is a process that takes place as one notices a pattern of deception that began centuries ago.
A few examples: Woodrow Wilson campaigning for president in 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Less than a month after inauguration, American boys were stepping foot on French soil to add more bodies and carnage in a useless conflict, one that would be continued by their sons a little more than 20 years later.
Iraq part 1 & 2, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, China…the list is long of foreign entanglements that did nothing but drain blood and treasure from the nation. Not much needs to be added to explain the insanity of attempting to nation-build in a land of warring tribes and secular violence. Democracy? In Iraq or Afghanistan? How delusional does one have to be to believe in that?
More current is the gay marriage push that, while failing in 37 out of 39 state referendums, (including California-Prop 8) somehow ended up becoming the law of the land when it was decided by 9 unelected tribal elders (SCOTUS) that somewhere in the Constitution the framers accidentally left out the gays. (It should also be noted that many Americans were fine with legal protections such as civil unions, acknowledging one’s life partner, etc. But no, they had to have the ‘marriage’ label.)
Closer to home is the never-ending California state ballot propositions that are voted on, only to be stripped or watered down of their intentions once under judicial review. It is important to note that American citizens never wanted mass immigration to dilute the culture and Western world way of life. No, it was decided for them by the ruling class a long time ago.
The differences between political factions are nil. Rs pretend to be the loyal opposition while Ds appear to have lost their minds over DEI and wokeness ideology. We are not voting our way out of this, nor was there really a chance to do that for quite a while now. The goal now is to survive the coming collapse and hopefully build from the ashes.
Although, with intellectual giants at our country’s helm, we may not have much left to build from once everything settles. If Biden going to the Ukraine and Poland to basically have a measuring contest between Russia and China is the best we got, then it is not a good outlook for the future.
All Men Are Created Unequal. Does That Make America Impossible?
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 Quotes From OCF – That’s Pretty Cool
Back in the before time when 2016 was shaping up to be a contest between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush I first read Michael Anton’s essay “The Flight 93 Election”. And the fact that someone with an academic background and a connection to Washington understood just how bleak the Uniparty options were for this country impressed me greatly.
And afterwards as I perceived that he was pursuing those at at the far outer edges of conservative thought to provide fresh ideas for a political movement that was hollowed out at the top I was encouraged Because we really do need much more coordination and honest dialog if we’re even going to survive the onslaught of the monolithic Left.
Now I’m not a great thinker. I’m just a schmoe who got tired of being thrown off of photography and science fiction websites because I didn’t kowtow to the Left’s shibboleths and put together my own site where I can say whatever damn thing I want to. But I practiced in my own humble way what Anton was doing. I read far and wide on the on the internet. Back in 2015 and 2016 there were all kinds of crazy people involved in the pro-Trump movement. And beyond the pro-Trump movement there were the dissidents for whom Trump was just a symptom. And I learned quite a bit about the various factions and ideologies and to be honest, the various hates that exist on the Right.
And I can see that there are strengths and weaknesses in each of them. But what is also true is that the Left’s use of surrogates on the Right to disqualify anyone dangerous to the Left has been one of their most successful strategies. William F. Buckley was famous for this.
And the neocons tried to do it to Donald Trump to stop him from being elected. So I made a point to keep an open mind about fringe thinkers. And so I read people like the Z-Man. And I’ve found him to be spot on about a whole raft of things that affect our lives. He’s a very smart guy.
But he’s just one guy. We need about thirty million guys working together just to stop this train from going off the cliff. So on balance I have to give the prize to people like Anton and even Gottfried who may disagree on a multitude of intellectual points but at least are willing to hold a discussion about their differences. To my mind honest disagreement can be enlightening for both sides. You don’t have to convince the other guy but you do have to make an effort to clarify your position for the readers. And I believe that’s how we’ll end up with some kind of a coalition.
So I woke up this morning and I saw I had some traffic coming over from American Greatness. Now I wrote a couple of posts for them a few years back but nothing recently so i was interested. and there I saw this post by Michael Anton. He quoted a blog post I wrote a week or two ago going over my thoughts on the Anton / Z-Man war.
I won’t deny I was pretty happy thinking that somehow Michael Anton had visited my site. After all I had read his article about seven years ago and it had been one of the inspirations for my blogging and many other activities I had engaged in over the years. He had crystallized many of the thoughts that had been growing in my mind ever since the George Bush presidency had destroyed my belief in the Republican establishment.
But beyond my own private satisfaction in being noticed, it gives me hope that there are people trying to build something bigger than just Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or Twitter. We need an actual identity and a mission to save this country. We at least have to agree on what we’re trying to save. I think Anton believes that.
It’s a start.
Michael Anton, Paul Gottfried and the Z-Man – A Fractured Spectrum on the Right
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.
When Our Worlds Collide
When a chemical engineer is tasked with designing a mixing system for insoluble liquids, he has to calculate the amount of energy needed to turn the liquids into an emulsion. So, these liquids that completely repel each other like water and oil can be suspended in each other and thereby come in intimate contact with each other. And in that state they can be smoothly reacted with each other by some catalyst or chemical.
Something similar has occurred between the different camps on the Right. Michael Anton describes himself as a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump Administration. He became well-known for writing the “Flight 93 Election” back before the 2016 presidential election when he advocated for Donald Trump as our last chance to stop the country from sliding into leftist tyranny.
He is as far philosophically as anyone on the real Right can be from the Z-Man when it comes to beliefs about the nature of government. And yet these two men have now made contact. Specifically, Anton has written a (very) long post at American Greatness defending the concept of natural rights against an assertion that the Z-Man made that natural rights do not exist. And in fact, the Z-Man’s post was a reaction to an Anton post that was itself a reaction to an essay by yet another personality on the Right the paleoconservative Paul Gottfried. Enough agitation is occurring in our environment to bring these various species in contact with each other and the interaction is yielding change and reaction.
Now suffice it to say that what passes for debate here is more like low intensity warfare (especially in the comments sections). But I think the fact that, at least, they are beginning to acknowledge each other’s existence is the beginning of communication. And this communication is important. Not so much for the writers but for the readers. Currently the ideas of the various groups on the Right are pretty thoroughly siloed. Having the readers get a taste of the other opinions around is all for the good. These ideas need to be banged around against each other a good deal for some clarity to emerge. People need to compare the words to the world around them and decide which model is right or mostly right. Because chances are no one model is completely correct. There could be valuable insights from more than one camp. And it’s possible that minds could be changed on certain points if a wider consensus is formed.
So, this is just talk. But it’s a beginning. One thing that’s been totally lacking on the right is any kind of open discussion of the taboo subjects. We’ve allowed the Left to control the allowable agenda for discussion on the Right for generations. What we’re seeing is the beginning of the breakdown of that control. It hasn’t reached the point where the establishment Right will acknowledge the relevance of the dissident opinions but the middle is starting to address them. Once the majority of the non-Left has shifted to the edge of the dissident territory the establishment will be forced kicking and screaming to the right. What happens after that is unknown.
It may turn out that the Left will outright win and all this will be moot. But if the Right manages to push the country in our direction, then the establishment Right will convince themselves that they were always in the vanguard of this great movement and deserve all the praise and benefits. And eventually the Right will overstep itself and some reaction will occur.
But that’s hardly anything for us to worry about. It will take a generation just to stop the leftward swing of the cultural pendulum, never mind getting it back to the center. But it is encouraging to see the center acknowledge the dissident position and even begin to give grudging approval to some of their ideas. Let’s see what’s next.
Reactions to Yesterday’s Post (A Red-Pilled America)
Yesterday’s post got a lot of new eyes because it got linked on several external sites. Four of these folks left comments. I’ve copied those comments below:
- I enjoy your well written posts. Just for my education, you mentioned “FBI sponsored inner city crime”. Could you elaborate? Thanks.
- I’ve said it before, and it is worth repeating: The salvation of the American people rests with the states and the state governments. Only these entities can protect and defend the people from the predators in DC. Only the states can marshal the resources necessary to prevent the federal government goons from harassing and harming citizens. Just as state governments have refused to cooperate with federal goons on various issues, it is time for states to utterly nullify the federal government. By no longer allowing collection of federal taxes within their jurisdictions, and also not allowing agents of the DC to operate within their borders, Americans can be freed of the criminality inflicted upon them by the unaccountable criminals at the US Capitol. It is time to take Federalism to the next level. A convention of states could, in a single day, invalidate the entire swamp and begin a new era of freedom and government accountability in this once great nation.
- I think tribunals, and executions, will go a LOOONNNNNGGGGGGGG way to healing this country. The “great experiment” (i.e. the black man, women’s “rights”) is an ABJECT FAILURE!!! We HAVE to move forward Or NO ONE DOES, and of course, NO ONE LIVES.
- And you honestly think the R’s are the genuine answer? You are a bigger fool and bigger part of the problem than originally calculated.
Well, I think this represents an interesting cross-section of people on the Right. The first commentor didn’t explicitly provide his position on the topic I was discussing but he definitely read my words and had a specific question about one of my statements. He also said polite things about my writing (which is always greatly appreciated) so I assume that we are at least not too far apart on basic beliefs on the American political situation (at least that could be the case).
The second and third commentors wanted to address specific actions that they hope some groups will take to force changes in the political situation. These are actions that will not occur under the current political framework but would require some kind of rupture of the political structure, either through a civil war or a loosening of the federal arrangement that might involve some kind of implicit or explicit nullification of federal laws that are deemed harmful by various states.
The fourth commentor is especially interesting. And not only because he recognized that I am, “a bigger fool and bigger part of the problem than originally calculated.” He also seems to have gotten the impression that I think the Republicans are somehow the “genuine answer” to our problems. What I find interesting is that not only didn’t I say or imply that the Republicans were part of any solution, but my post never mentioned the Republicans at all. What this tells me is that many of us are already locked into points of view and ways of looking at things that almost preclude hearing what people with other points of view have to say.
And I see this in my own discussions with others. I already have a narrative about what’s going on. If someone has a different way of looking at things, often I attribute this different point of view to a lack of understanding or ignorance of the facts. We develop tunnel vision to simplify the playing field. We’re tuned into a few general indicators. Maybe they’re key phrases or buzzwords that we use to size up whether someone is on “our side” or not. And from these we extrapolate everything else about that person. But the conversations between people even on the “same side” aren’t very helpful.
I’ve been of the opinion that people on the right have become more extreme because they’ve been shut out of the conversation by gatekeepers at places like National Review and the Weekly Standard (when it still existed). Being silenced by the mainstream of your own side tends to radicalize those who are excluded. And by the same token excluding dissident voices will weaken the reasoning abilities of those who are left. They no longer have to defend their opinions against real opponents and so they descend into lazy idealism that is ungrounded in reality. And so, we end up with echo chambers and silos where we preach to the choir.
There have been some positive steps taken. In 2022 Marjorie Taylor Greene attended the America First Political Action Conference. She became the first member of Congress to show she was not afraid of the white supremacist label associated with attending a dissident right event. J.D. Vance refused to condemn her for it. The Claremont Institute in California has taken small steps to have dialog with members of the dissident community. There are the beginnings of dissident ideas being mainstreamed on national shows like Tucker Carlson’s broadcast. These are small things but they are a beginning.
As for my humble part, I’m just glad when people leave comments; good, bad or confusing. Any communication is better than none, I guess. So, onward and upward. Please leave your comments below.
Race Realism Means Finding a Way for the Races to Talk Honestly
I was reading the Z Man’s Monday morning posts and it was about how conservatism went wrong. And as usual it was very informative and thought provoking. One of the points had to do with Harry Jaffa and that ended up with a discussion of Jaffa’s current descendants at the Claremont Institute. Z Man pointed to two posts on Claremont’s American Mind website (1, 2).
In the first post called “No New Normal” Z Man is satisfied with the argument until it involves race.
“Here is a post on the same site as the Gottfried post, in which the editors reject the new normal of American politics. Everything is good until this. “In reality, race is not the ultimate fact of human identity or the central problem of American life. Different ethnic populations have different general tendencies, but not different natural rights. Everyone is capable of learning to live well in this country, but only if we confidently endorse both our geographical and cultural boundaries.””
Z Man continues on about the second post, “Demographics are Not Destiny”
“The linked post in that quote is worth reading, as it rips the mask from the “new conservatism” and exposes it as the old conservatism. The great fork in the road, the shadow that hangs over human history, is biology. The story of man is not one tale with many chapters, but many stories of many people, all of whom have their own unique understanding of themselves and how they should live. The genuine man of the Right understands this and accepts it. Equality, in short, is inhuman.”
These thoughts encapsulate the difference between the Dissident Right and the Civic Nationalists. The dissidents dogmatically stress that the differences between people, make living together under the American Constitution impossible. This seems to me to be a horribly pessimistic assertion. And since the Z Man states often that he doesn’t believe that there will be any partition of the United States along racial lines this pessimism about the various human races and ethnicities living together seems like a hopeless situation for his side.
By the way I am aware of why it would seem that race relations in the United States are so abysmal. The Democrats have spent the last sixty years, more or less, weaponizing the African American population as a club to defeat their political opponents and almost as much time doing the same thing with Hispanics and Asians. It really is no wonder that all of American society seems poised to melt down into a cauldron of race hatred at any time.
But I think there is a path out of this rat trap. The Democrats were never satisfied with dividing the country into white and non-white. They exploited male versus female antagonism and then they really went crazy with all of the various sexual deviancy populations. The LGBT thing was their greatest extravaganza.
But all of this follow-on intersectional advocacy doesn’t sit very well with the people that they think they’ve captured during their race dividing stage. Most Hispanics don’t want to be called Latinx. And most of them don’t much want their kids groomed for inclusion in the trans-gender club at school. Likewise, Asian parents don’t want their kids denied academic advancement because they don’t rank high enough in the intersectional bingo game.
And these ethnic groups are starting to realize that giving their votes to the Democrats doesn’t create a better country for their kids to live in. Recent polls show that this is already happening. Less than 30% of Hispanics think Biden is doing a good job. That is lower than his number among white voters. So, it shows that forming a coalition on the Right with non-white Americans is possible. What seems to be the stumbling block to accomplishing this is the abysmal ineptitude of the Republican Party.
Think about it. Donald Trump was branded as a racist in 2016 when he was running for president on the platform of building a wall on the Mexican border. And yet he had a higher percentage of Hispanic voters in 2020. That seems to tell me that it’s more the messenger than the message. Trump spoke crudely but honestly about what he believed and people respected him for it. All of this leads me to believe that leaders who aren’t afraid to speak to people of different races and who can convince them that their lives would be better under “equality” rather than under “equity” could forge a coalition based on mutual benefit.
Someone like Ron DeSantis is doing that in Florida which has a huge Hispanic population. Trump could do it again if he can just get an unrigged election in 2024. So, I throw my hat in with the civic nationalists. But I think the dissidents should be willing to talk with us. They have lots of important insights into the failures that the Republicans have been guilty of over the years. They could point out the mistakes we must not make again. And they represent a sizable chunk of the population. They need to be part of the dialog.
As I’ve said before, the Right needs to expand the conversation. When the neocons were the gate keepers, they got to dictate what was the window of acceptable opinion and that got us to the point where objecting to illegal immigration was an unacceptable position. It’s important that a robust debate goes on and some of the people on the outskirts of the party are right about things that the establishment has been dead wrong about. The people on the fringes aren’t right about everything but a dialog with them would be good for both sides.
UPDATE 24MAY2022
A commenter named Tucker had this to say:
“I would strongly recommend that the author of this article visit this link and absorb the rock solid analysis that “Civic Nationalism” is a gigantic fraud.
https://www.eurocanadians.ca/2020/08/civic-nationalism-is-fraud.html
I also encourage any readers of this author’s article to read the analysis cited above.”
So I went to the link and read the 5,500 word post that listed five reasons why civic nationalism is a fraud:
I. This brings us to the first and most obvious fraud of civic nationalism. Being that, by its very definition, civic nationalism isn’t even nationalism.
II. The second fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s just globalism by another name.
III. The third fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s extremely vague and practically impossible to enforce.
IV. The fourth fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s born from cowardice and cannot save whites from replacement and extinction.
V. The final fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s never worked and it never will work.
Looking through these various charges of fraud I see a list of the grievances of white citizens of the Anglosphere against their governments for allowing large scale immigration from the third world. And I am fully sympathetic with these issues. I am also aware of the reverse discrimination that these governments have been guilty of over the last decades in a wrong headed attempt to undermine the dominant culture in these places. But in my mind none of those problems are tied to civic nationalism. They are tied to some sort of white guilt that the elite class feels. Donald Trump had no problem pointing to illegal immigration as a danger to our country. And he was clear that reverse discrimination was going on in our government. It seems to me that what is needed to eliminate these problems are leaders who are not ashamed of the history of the people who built the country.
As far as the demographic situation, stopping uncontrolled immigration will lessen the impact of demographic change but even if every “illegal immigrant” was sent home the non-white component of the population would still be a very significant part of the United States. But I am more interested in making sure that the country maintains the culture that made America a special place.
The European heritage that the English and the other European settlers brought has a distinctive style. It fostered thrift, hard work and family life. That is what needs to be maintained. Celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July are an important part of the civic life of our country. The Christian heritage is an important part. These things have resonance with many of the immigrants who came here in the last fifty years. Latin Americans are Catholics. They enjoy Christmas the same as Europeans. Many of the Asians who live here are Christians too. Certainly there are differences in these peoples’ lives but they can be good Americans.
I think the more important problem is finding leaders who aren’t afraid to call out anti-white discrimination. We need politicians and judges who will strike down things like affirmative action and restore our rights to freedom of free association. The endless attempts to enforce equality of outcome in the face of the reality of human differences must end. Seeing racism in every disparate outcome is nonsense. Some people are smarter. Some people are harder working. Punishing those people to make less intelligent or lazier people feel good is unjust. What must be maintained is equality under the law. Equal opportunity is sufficient to allow just outcomes.
And private association also needs to be unrestrained by government oversight. People need free association to flourish culturally. Men’s clubs have the right to exist. So do ethnic societies. So do people who like baseball. You wouldn’t force a baseball club to give equal time to a member who wanted the yearly outing to be basketball game. If the Daughters of the American Revolution are forced to accept members from Papua-New Guinea because otherwise feeling might be hurt that negates the very meaning of the organization.
I don’t see a civic nationalist point of view preventing anyone from eliminating a lot of the problems that have made life in the United States unfair to white people. What it takes is being unafraid to call out unconstitutional laws and also putting a brake on immigration to prevent destroying the original culture and way of life.
Friday Happenings and a Hint from the Z Man
A marvelous morning. After a lot of rain and cool weather over the last two day the sun has broken through and the temperature is supposed to be skirting with eighty. The pool guys are here today and will open it up and treat it. Right now, it’s a rich color that I’m told is green and I’m guessing those guys will have an awful lot of vacuuming to do.
Camera Girl has finally found some butternut squash seedling for her garden and I’m continuing with my program of chopping down and uprooting invasive trees like Russian Olive and Ailanthus that spring up everywhere. Now that my great experiment with the fence support has panned out, I’ll buy a few more supports and strengthen the posts. That will give me the chance to decide on the “final solution.” I’ve been thinking about metal posts but that’s a big effort and as usual my laziness weighs in against it.
As is my routine on Friday mornings I listened to the Z Man’s podcast. I heard a sort of throwaway line that he is having a essay of his posted at American Greatness. That I think is a significant moment. I’ve been wondering how much farther the coalescence would move between the Dissident Right and the MAGA Right. Previously I observed paleoconservative Paul Gottfried as a link between the two sides. Gottfried writes on American Greatness and the American Mind and has had the Z Man appear on his podcasts. With the Z Man writing at American Greatness, I think we see the next step in the mainstreaming of dissident ideas and thinkers. And that’s all to the good.
The opposite reaction to this rapprochement is comments that Z Man says he’s been getting from some of his more strident readers claiming he has been toning down his rhetoric on hot-button topics like immigration and race realism. My guess is that with his growing reach into more moderate audiences he’s recognized the desirability of softening his language to avoid scaring off the squeamish. And once again, that’s all to the good. Truly hateful rhetoric just for the sake of hatefulness doesn’t help anyone, especially those on the Right attempting to build coalitions.
I look forward to the day when Nick Fuentes, the Z Man and other dissidents can show up on Tucker Carlson’s show and sit down with more moderate types like Michael Anton and the people over at Claremont. Both sides would benefit enormously by the chance to speak openly and honestly with each other. At some point it might be possible for the agenda of an energized MAGA coalition to even get the dissidents to climb down off the ledge and rejoin the rest of the Right.
Look, I know that last statement sounds like happy-happy talk but I think there’s more than just unbridled enthusiasm at work here. The overreach of the Left has done them serious damage. Damage on a scale we haven’t seen since the American electorate booted Jimmy Carter out of the White House and spawned the Reagan ‘80s. I think it would be extremely valuable to have some voices from the Dissident Right in the mix when we start talking about agendas. Obviously not everybody on the fringe is safe to have mixing with us normies. But the more sober-minded and thoughtful individuals like Z Man have a lot to say about where the Right has gone wrong so many times before. I welcome the idea that he is making the effort to talk to the moderates.
So, this is an interesting morning. Summer returns to the Compound and interesting happenings are afoot on the Right. All to the Good.