I listened to the ZMan’s Friday podcast and the topic was an explanation for why he considers the ideal of the color-blind society of such activists as Chris Rufo to be doomed to failure. And I’ll have to say here that he was very clear about why he saw it as unsatisfactory from his point of view.
In a nutshell, he saw the color-blind basis for a multiracial society to be unacceptable because it would not allow for what he called closed associations. And he defined open and closed associations as differing in their method of exclusion. In an open association basically, anyone was admitted who adhered to the basis for which the association was established. In a closed association, those in charge can exclude anyone for basically any reason or no reason at all.
In the ZMan’s mind a society that adheres to a color-blind basis for race relations would never allow closed associations to exist. Now this conclusion is interesting. His position was that the idea of the color-blind society had been put forward back during the William F. Buckley Jr. era of the conservative movement in the 1960s and 1970s and that trying it again would end in the same failure.
I listened carefully to his arguments and came away with several thoughts on his assumptions and conclusions.
My first thought has to do with how the color-blind premise should be applied to American society. What seems fair to me is that if we have a multi-racial society then the most important case where color-blindness should be applied is by the government. In other words, the government treats us all the same. There should be no mention of race in any government policies. We all follow the same equations for our income tax calculations. We all get the same government benefits based on the same measurements of work history and age. We all get to vote just once in an election. And we all have to obey the same laws and we all get the same sentences for committing the same crimes.
And in terms of public accommodations, we can all use the same grocery stores and get the same rates from the electric company. And once again, if we live in the same town, we all have to conform to the same local laws. So, if the local laws say you can’t smoke pot, then anyone regardless of color will be arrested for doing so. And we can eat at the same restaurants. But that restaurant even though it is a public accommodation, is still a private enterprise. It can demand that patrons dress in a certain way. It can demand that diners behave in a specific manner. And regardless of race if someone can’t follow those rules he can be ejected, possibly with police assistance if the result becomes trespass.
And if there is a professional society like the AMA or the Bar Association or an engineering accreditation program these would also be considered public accommodations. As would schools and colleges. But once again everyone must follow the same rules and be judged by the same objective standards. Here the use of standardized testing goes a long way to reinforce these ideas. And this objectivity will prove that when conditions are as equal as they can be that the human population will produce a bell curve of outcomes. That’s right we’re not all exactly the same and that’s just the nature of populations.
And these above referenced cases and things of the same sort are what would be considered public accommodations.
But I don’t assume that private associations need to be open to the general public. In the 1960s and 1970s much was made about how men’s clubs and associations had to be opened up to participation by women. Under a careful analysis of this history, I believe that the Supreme Court could quite easily decide that private associations could limit their memberships based on sex if the whole basis for the association is based on being male or female.
And likewise, why couldn’t there be a club based on its members being of a particular ethnicity or physical characteristic. After all there are already clubs for tall people and there are organizations for senior citizens. There could be clubs for people with blond hair and blue eyes. Parenthetically the ZMan’s favorite example of minorities is “ginger midgets.” There could be a National Association for the Advancement of Ginger Midgets, (NAAGM). And in what way do any of these associations harm people who are not these things? They don’t and therefore they are not unethical.
Based on what the ZMan said in his podcast he would disagree with my analysis because he would say that no mechanism exists to force the federal government to accept the restoration of free association for private, non-public accommodation associations. And maybe he’s right. But regardless, I think that getting the federal government to have to give up on affirmative action and be forced to adhere to color-blind standards would be an enormous improvement over the nightmarish anti-white polices currently practiced in Washington DC.
If and when these first steps have been initiated more effort can be expended to continue working toward the full restoration of the freedoms we were promised under the Bill of Rights. Saying that because past efforts to reestablish constitutional practices have failed that no progress can be made is incorrect. The recent Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action in college admissions and on abortion are clear examples that even after many decades, a bad decision can be corrected. I think there is great merit in pushing for a color-blind federal government.
What do you think?
Tag: Dissident Right
Supreme Court Allows Feds to Continue Helping Illegal Aliens to Enter Country, of Course
Texas installed razor-wire to stop illegals from entering Texas. The Appeals Court ruled that Texas could use the barrier to protect its border. When the feds brought the case to the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh voted to stop the federal government helping illegal aliens enter the country. Of course, John Roberts voted with the Democrats but surprisingly Amy Coney Barrett also did.
So, the supposedly conservative Supreme Court allows the Biden administration to continue to flood Texas with illegal aliens by siding against the Republican Texas governor. Now does Texas have the stones to just say no to the Supreme Court? I bet they don’t. And after what the Justice Department has done to Trump maybe Abbott is right to back down. Who is to say whether they might kidnap him right out of his home and drag him away into a Washington DC gulag.
If I were Abbott I would definitely continue to bus as many illegal aliens to the Northeast as I could. But I think that instead of sending them to New York he should send them to Massachusetts. Their homeless program is already overextended by millions of dollars and if that could be stretched even more it would go a long way toward immiserating the most liberal state in the East. I follow the news in New England and I sense that a lot of anger is already directed against the costs associated with large increases in illegal aliens. Maybe a whole year of financial and social pain might make them reconsider the wisdom of another Joe Biden term.
Watching the destruction caused by Biden’s insane border policy makes it crystal clear that if despite all this he still gets reelected then there is absolutely no hope for this country. A ruinous invasion is harming blue and red states alike and if all the failed policies of the Biden administration do not force his rejection at the ballot box, then nothing can.
This will be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back. If Joe Biden is reelected then I will have to agree with the Dissident Right that the United States of America is irrevocably a Leftist country. Whether it is still the best place to live for you or me is a different question. What will be incontrovertible is that questions of constitutional freedoms will be irrelevant philosophic games. No rights or freedoms will survive exposure to ideologues that will control all three branches of government. Eventually a new progressive Supreme court will discover that the Second Amendment only applies to the FBI and that whatever is declared hate speech will trump free speech once and for all.
So, enjoy the primaries and the November election. Have a blowout party. If Trump wins, we live to fight another day. If he loses then eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. We’ll be in that brave new world where the government decides everything for you; how you heat or cool (or don’t heat or cool) your home, what kind of car you drive, even what kind of food (or bugs) you’re allowed to eat. One thing’s for sure. It’ll be double plus good.
Correcting the Civil Rights Acts
Chris Rufo has written what I think is an interesting article in the City Journal. It’s called, “A New Civil Rights Agenda:
The only hope for a diverse nation is a regime of colorblind equality.”
Rufo points to the Civil rights Act of 1964 and some of the later additions to it for our unfortunate situation. He claims that both Libertarians and the Dissident Right advocate solutions that he feels are unworkable.
“The question is what to do about it. Libertarians have long argued that the Civil Rights Act compromises core freedoms of speech and association to such a degree that only repealing the law can restore them. Another faction argues that the solution to minoritarian identity politics is majoritarian identity politics—that is, if the legal regime has become a racial spoils system, then Americans of European descent must develop “white racial consciousness” and fight for their share.”
Instead, he outlines three steps that he feels would eliminate reverse discrimination:
“First, reformers should outlaw affirmative action and racial preferences of any kind. … The next president should rescind Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Executive Order 11246, which established “affirmative action” and marked the initial deviation from the standard of colorblind equality.
…
Second, reformers must eliminate the “disparate impact” provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 and overturn Griggs v. Duke Power Co., both of which have entrenched the doctrine that disparate group outcomes are de facto evidence of racial discrimination.
…
Third, legislators should abolish the DEI bureaucracies in all American institutions, which openly discriminate against disfavored racial groups, impose ideological orthodoxies on American citizens, and restrict freedoms of speech and association. In addition, federal legislators should radically reduce the size of the federal departments of civil rights enforcement.”
I am not a politician or a lawyer but even an uninformed layman can see that those changes will require either control of both houses of Congress and the president or the Supreme Court to get involved in outlawing whole bureaus of the executive branch out of existence.
I’m not saying it can’t be done but I can understand why there might be a high degree of skepticism on the part of dissidents. Conservatives have been bamboozled by the Republican establishment into hoping for colorblind reform forever and it’s never happened.
But recently we had the Supreme Court strike down affirmative action in college admissions. If they decide to strike it down entirely then possibly all of the three actions that Rufo outlines might actually be covered under this decision. With a conservative president and the Supreme Court outlawing reverse discrimination we might see sixty years of injustice eliminated in short order.
Okay, enough happy, happy talk. Rufo’s thesis is that conservative government would be well within its rights to eliminate almost all of the most obnoxious components of today’s racial reverse discrimination policies. But what he describes would take a courageous Supreme Court and a conservative president willing to use his authority as head of the executive branch to bring the various agencies to heel.
Let’s just say that I completely understand the Dissident’s Right’s skepticism. And all this depends on a conservative president. Will we ever see another one of those? Stay tuned till November.
The World of Ideas
I was glad to get some interesting comments from both the civic nationalist and dissident right perspectives during the last few days. And I’m especially glad that the writers were level headed and thoughtful individuals. I visit various sites with all kinds of commentors who don’t always react to each other with, let us say, tolerant open mindedness. And I understand that verbal combat may be more of a feature than a bug at some of these sites but truthfully, I seldom learn anything useful from the sort of mental arm wrestling that goes on during these exchanges. So, kudos to all involved. We’ve raised the level of internet discussion by several orders of magnitude. Bravo.
I’m especially glad about this situation because I’m personally located somewhere on the border between the civic nationalist and dissident right factions. While I consider myself a civ-nat I recognize that for whatever reason my political cohort has been guilty of incredible gullibility for decades and I’m tired of being part of a conspiracy of the ignorant. So, I’ve been listening in on what goes on at the cool kids’ table and learning their lingo. And I’m not afraid to admit that they’ve got a lot of things figured out. But I also know that I’ll never be cool enough to sit at their table. I just believe too deeply in the decency of most people when they’re all treated fairly. I feel that if we run the game fairly, we can get people, all kinds of people, from the dumbest to the smartest and from the meanest to the most naïve to at least act decent.
But that’s why I’d like to have the discussion with people whose hearts are in the right place. If you ever see the comments section of a Fox News article it’s remarkable. There are some thoughtful comments. But they’re drowned out by a flood of rage-aholics. You could say that any site that has the traffic that a large outlet like Fox gets is bound to attract a goodly number of deranged individuals but from my point of view it renders the comments almost useless as a venue for the exchange of ideas. So that is why I’ve been trying to find people who straddle that same line on the political spectrum and set up a dialog. Because that political border is where I think the reality of our future lies.
We need to toughen up the civic nationalists to where they won’t let themselves be rolled by the progressives, while at the same time lure the dissidents back from the fringe where things get pretty dark. My dream would be to have a space where a guy as tough minded as the ZMan would be willing to have a good faith conversation with civ-nats like Michael Anton or Chris Rufo.
Now this might be terribly mistaken. As I’ve said many times, people must be allowed to select their own enemies and it’s ridiculously presumptuous of me to think I can judge whose interests are served by discussion and with whom. These are all grownups and they get to decide which playground to play in.
So, let’s not use those names. Let’s just use regular folks who inhabit the internet and try to see if the information flow serves any purpose. I’ve heard lots of interesting perspectives. And all of the talk has been quite cordial, which makes my life easier. So, keep up the good work.
Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 05DEC2023 – DR to CN Reply
I took Zman’s assertion that natural or individual rights do not exist as the affirmation that these concepts originate in Western Civilization, and are not universal. Throughout my military career traveling the globe, this resonated with me as our ideas are just that – ours. One would receive blank stares from Indonesian bush folks if you began to try and explain these. This is why the dilution of Western countries by mass immigration (invasion, really) puts these abstract conceptions of natural and individual rights at risk under our supposed Democracy. For example, look to the polls of Muslims in the US and UK who overwhelmingly agree with the notion of living under Sharia law if they could. Or how varied the customs, cultures and traditions are in the Middle East compared to the West.
My biggest appeal to the DR side is seeing the world as it is and not how people ‘wish’ it were. This means that differences should be acknowledged and a sane and serious approach to societal ills should be employed in the areas of crime, immigration, and the well-being of the citizens in our nation.
Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 05DEC2023 – CN to DR Discussion
The dissident right (DR) certainly has an appeal to anyone who has watched the disintegration of American society and culture over the last sixty years (I am currently 62 years old). I found the DR critique of many of the United States current problems to be very insightful. In the end though, I think the proposed DR solutions to our problems will cause more problems than they solve.
I agree that Heritage Americans have been reviled and treated with a hatred that has surprised me. The question is: is that hatred solely an ethnic hatred? I would say that it isn’t. “White people” are strongly associated with being Christian. I don’t think that’s particularly true anymore but that is the stereotype and lefties love them some stereotypes. The BLM website at onetime listed both stable marriage between a man and a woman and deferred gratification as being examples of white privilege. No, those are examples of Christian morality. Of course ethnic differences are used as a wedge to fracture our society and it has been wildly effective.
Can different ethnicities live side by side peaceably? I don’t see why not in theory but in practice it may no longer be possible. The well has been poisoned and there may be no way back to what we were, the old culture looks to be gone. What is the DR solution then? After giving it a lot of thought I think the DR has settled on some type of ethnic caste system. One set of laws for thee and one for me. Anyone who believes in objective standards of right and wrong (that apply to all people) will find that to be a real problem. I know I do.
I would also like to ask: how should ethnicity be defined? Even in the founding of the United States the English weren’t as homogeneous as we’d like to imagine (see Albion’s Seed). Add in all the immigration that has already happened and can’t be reversed, it’s a hopeless mess. Lines will have to be drawn in the new system but no one will say how this will happen.
The thing that finally tore it for me is when Zman declared that there is no such thing as “rights.” Declaring rights to be an abstract concept that don’t actually exist, he dismissed them out of hand. If there is no such thing as individual rights then there is no such thing as personal liberty. Everyone nowadays seems to want to put a leash on me. Zman’s statement reminded me of a quote by communitarian Alasdair MacIntyre:
“From this it does not of course follow that there are no natural or human rights; it only follows that no one could have known that there were. And this at least raises certain questions. But we do not need to be distracted into answering them, for the truth is plain: there are no such rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns.”
― Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
I am not familiar with the work of Professor Özkırımlı but the title of his book seems to indicate that his is a “critical theory.” This country is dying from too much Hegelian theory, do we really need more?
Guest Contributor – ArthurinCali – 04DEC2023 – Civic Nationalist to Dissident
I used to believe in civic nationalism and the idea of the global populace buying a ticket to the (American) story and ideals. Funnily enough, around the time I held these beliefs was 30+ years ago in an America that had a firmly entrenched demographic majority of Heritage Americans. (Roughly 80% IIRC)
See, that’s kinda of the paradox of the idea of a successful nation operating under civic nationalism in that you still need a majority ethnic population who puts their full faith in the mythos of said nation’s founding, institutions, and ideals. Once it hits a certain fracturing of population and becomes majority-minority, with no one group asserting dominance – this gives rise to overt tribal tendencies. Diversity is not a strength. If it were, nations like Japan and China would be importing as many diverse groups as possible to get an edge on the global economic competition.
Still, if we lived in a reality based sane and serious nation that spoke the truth on differences a la Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, it could have worked. This would require media, academia and gov’t to cease the relentless attack on the historical figures actions and events that led to the creation of the USA. No, not celebrate outright the dark corners of a nation’s history (that all nations have, Western and non-Western), but understand that each apology, every condescending remark merely removes another brick of the foundation of American mythos and her founding.
This is part of how I found myself admitting more and more that I am a part of the Dissident Right. I will vote for Trump-not as a faithful belief that he will be our Red Caesar but more as a wrench into the leviathan machine that hates me and my people.
“Since all nations lay claim to a unique place in history and to certain boundaries, all national identities are exclusionary. In that sense, all nations are ethnic nations […] Brubaker elaborates on this, claiming that there are two different ways of mapping culture onto the ethnic-civic distinction. Ethnic nationalism may be interpreted narrowly, as involving an emphasis on descent. In this case, Brubaker argues, there is very little ethnic nationalism around, since on this view an emphasis on common culture has to be coded as a species of civic nationalism. If, however, ethnic nationalism is interpreted broadly, as ethnocultural, while civic nationalism is interpreted narrowly, as involving a cultural conception of citizenship, the problem is the opposite: ‘civic nationalism gets defined out of existence, and virtually all nationalisms would be coded as ethnic or cultural’. Even the paradigmatic cases of civic nationalism, France and America, would cease to count as civic nationalism, since they have a crucial cultural component.”
— Umut Özkırımlı, Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Introduction, pp.24-5
Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 02DEC2023 – Dissident Monarchists
Hi photog,
I’m a reviled civic nationalist just like you but you shouldn’t put more weight on successful predictions by the dissident right than they deserve. I realized in 2004-2006, when Republicans had the presidency and both houses of congress, that we were in deep do-do. With Republican control nothing changed. Literally, nothing changed. While I like to think I’m smarter than the average bear it doesn’t mean that I have a solution for all that ails the U.S. any more than the dissident right does.
Before I stopped following the Zman (please don’t think I have a grudge against him, I just know him better than most) he was reading a lot about Karl Marx and the early Russian communists. Zman was impressed by their sharp social criticisms; they did an excellent job of diagnosing the problems 19th century Europe was facing. The elephant in the room with the Marxists was their solution to these problems was horrific. Seeing a problem doesn’t mean you can solve it.
I hate to say it but a lot of what is happening in the U.S. right now reminds me of problems I used to associate with South America; a loss of the middle class and large slums. When I was younger I would wonder why the ruling classes in these countries didn’t do more to encourage the development of a middle class. As time passed I realized that the ruling classes in those countries liked things that way, they liked being an aristocracy that lorded it over the peasants. They had a class identity and not a national identity. I think that’s where the U.S. is now but the dissident right solution of moving toward monarchy is not a solution. All it will do is formalize the class distinctions we’re already seeing.
At least that’s how I see it.
Comment from TomD
I’m not certain I see that it is the far right moving to a monarchy. It seem that the current trend of the concentration of all power into the executive branch and the underlying administrative state would come closest to a de facto monarchy. And that looks to be a feature of a significant portion of the entire ruling class, regardless of party affiliation.
Please expand on the equation of far right to monarchy.
Reply by Glenn W
Hi Tom,
When I wrote the comment about monarchy I had in mind an argument that Zman has made on many occasions where he compares our modern democracy with a monarchy. Zman argues that being in the white hot spotlight of an election discourages any self respecting person from running in the first place. Over time the sane people are boiled off and only the most superficial people would consider running for election to any public office. This how we get congress critters like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes in office. He then compares the democratic clown show to a monarchy where the king has to keep the people happy or risk being toppled from power. That is an over simplification but not by much.
To be fair, Zman probably isn’t advocating for monarchy but he does consider it to be superior to any democratic system. What I think he actually advocates, without saying it in the open, is some form of commmunitarianism (for an introduction to what that is please read “The Communitarian Option”).
The common thread that runs throughout the dissident right, to use Zman’s term, is its antagonism to individualism. Zman constantly hits on the theme that the voting public is a bunch of morons who cannot be trusted to vote for enlightened self interest. Of course that is the principle that our founding is based on and why he disdains civic nationalists. The details of what exactly the dissident right would like to replace our system with are always vague but it won’t be a system where the hoi polloi are allowed to mess things up.
Anarcho-Tyranny in the Spotlight
As I’ve mentioned many times in the past, I may not agree with all of the conclusions that the dissident right draw but without a doubt many of the observations and inferences they make about the world around us are completely correct. For instance:
Sam Francis (April 29, 1947 – February 15, 2005) was a paleoconservative whose views would put him solidly amongst the dissident right today. He coined the term anarcho-tyranny which refers to armed dictatorship without rule of law, or a Hegelian synthesis when the state tyrannically or oppressively regulates citizens’ lives yet is unable or unwilling to enforce fundamental protective law. Commentators have invoked the term in reference to situations when governments focus on weapon confiscation instead of stopping looters.
This concept has been discussed very often on the ZMan’s site and it seems transparently clear that the current federal government and many state and local governments use this policy to punish some of their constituencies and reward others. Essentially it sets up two separate systems of law.
In the recent past there are many examples of this concept in operation. And in fact, it is the hallmark of the post George Floyd policing and prosecution strategies in most American cities. Basically, blacks can commit an assortment of violent and non-violent offenses with impunity. While if white people attempt to resist these crimes, they will be prosecuted with extreme severity. The most well-known case was Kyle Rittenhouse who defended himself from Antifa attackers in Kenosha WI. He was charged with murder but miraculously was exonerated in court.
I’ll give a few other examples.
I guess the general case would be to compare the government’s treatment of two groups. The groups that were given preferential treatment would be the BLM and Antifa rioters during the 2020 riots. These people were allowed to riot, loot and commit arson and even murder without the police or FBI using their considerable powers and capabilities to either stop it or arrest the perpetrators. For weeks and across most of the large cities in the United States a reign of terror was permitted and in some cases like Minneapolis encouraged by government officials.
The contrasting group would be the January Sixth protestors. For what amounts to peaceful trespass these United States citizens have been denied due process, imprisoned in some cases for years without trial and tried in kangaroo courts with sentences sometimes measured in decades of prison time.
Now if we were to look at specific cases, I think the case of subway good Samaritan Daniel Penny and the homeless lunatic he subdued is a perfect example. Penny was on a subway car when a deranged homeless man named Jordan Neely began threatening random women passengers because they wouldn’t give him the money he demanded. He went so far to make death threats. Penny restrained Neely in a chokehold and unfortunately Neely died from this action. Penny is a marine veteran and white, Neely was black and a homeless mental patient who had been arrested 42 times and punched a 62-year-old woman in the eye, and broke her eye socket.
So here we have anarcho-tyranny incarnate. Jordan Neely was a creation of a system that would not arrest a black man who had broken the law over forty times. They just released him to continue creating fear and hurting innocent people. And when a white man protects the public from this menace he is charged with murder when what he was doing was defending himself and the weaker individuals being harassed by Neely. He tried to do the job the prosecutors refused to do.
And so, this individual case showcases the intended effect of this anarcho-tyranny. The law will defend those it favors who break the law and at the same time will force those it dislikes to suffer the crimes being allowed without even the chance for self-defense. They just have to suffer and take it. Or be sent to prison where even more of their humanity will be stripped away.
The dissident right gets a lot of things right.
Guest Contributor – GlennW – 28OCT2023 – Reaction to Chucking Pebbles
Hi photog,
I’ve been watching the comments to your post to see if a discussion breaks out. Well, maybe I should be the first one to jump in and see what happens.
As you may remember, I read and listened to ZMan religiously until the kerfuffle with Michael Anton. After giving it some thought I decided that Anton was a lot more right than the ZMan and I just lost interest. I’m sure ZMan would brand me as a “civ-nat” but I just can’t care anymore. As I get older I find one dimensional labels, including “civ-nat”, worse than useless and try to avoid them when possible.
There are several ideas I would like to throw out there and see what your readers think. It seems to me that the white collar and entrepreneurial community always knew the blue collar folks were getting the shaft. For the most part they thought they were on the “right side” of history so they were safe. Now they are starting to realize they are just the next ones to be eaten by the crocodile. The next couple of years should be interesting.
You are correct that ZMan doesn’t think the races can live together under one set of laws fairly enforced. A big problem for the Dissident Right is they can’t really provide a definition of “race.” White, black, and brown aren’t races. I have heard ZMan say on several occasions that the original colonies should have grouped together into five different countries, instead of one, due to differences in the English immigrants. For anyone whose interested I believe he got that idea from the book Albion’s Seed.
If that’s true, and you multiply that across all European immigration to the U.S., there are literally hundreds of white groups (really clans) in North America. Add to that all the other immigration that’s happened over the years and I am a bit perplexed as to how the Dissident Right would implement a government. ZMan never provides a sketch of what this reconstituted government would look like and I suspect that’s on purpose.
Also, per their theory, I should prefer to live next to other white people (yes, I’m white) over anyone else. I happen to be Christian and find that I have more affinity for other Christians than a generic white person. I would, in no uncertain terms, rather live next to a black family from my church than Richard Dawkins. I don’t think I’m the only one that feels that way and would fight any attempt to cram some form of involuntary segregation down my throat.
In the end I don’t think the Dissident Right will be a majority on the “right”. If they hope to accomplish anything they will have to learn to work with the civ-nats who they love to hate. Maybe ZMan is coming around to that view? I guess we’ll see in time.