perhaps it’s not so suprising if one looks at ‘conservatives’ as part of the problem, and not as the solution since most ‘conservatives’ have bought into the modernist state and all that follows.

on another thread P Murgos writes
http://www.counterrevolution.net/vfr/archives/001607.html#7249

“much of what Republican conservative voters hear from traditionalists is criticism of Republicans, who are in a knife fight with leftists (and their allies)”,
but is this really accurate? i think it is more accurate to say the democrats are the knife you see coming at you, whereas the republicans, read ‘conservatives’, are the knife you don’t see because we see them as allys when they are in fact allys with the left.

perhaps we should stop calling them ‘conservative’ if we consider ourselves also conservative, or abandon it ourselves, i did years ago because it came to signify conserving nothing more than the status quo. l.auster’s italics indicate as much.

instead of holding the pass with the ‘conservatives’ who are part of the revolution, we should gaze in the other direction.

THE REVOLUTION WAS by Garet Garrett

“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”

http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/docs/The_Revolution_Was.html

Abby is right. We must name our enemies. The Democratic Party and its politicians are the enemy. The Republican Party and almost all of its politicians, including all the ones with real influence, are the enemy. Once we get that off our chests, it is a little easier to think about what direction to go politically. HRS

I don’t think it’s a good idea to think of Republicans as “enemies,” because such language leads to a mentality that is all too common on today’s paleo right, namely an abandonment of moral principles in favor of a feeling that anything is permitted against one’s enemies. An example is the attitude that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Thus someone decides that the current American liberal system is his “enemy”; he then notices that Muslim terrorists also regard the American system as their enemy; and before you know it, he starts to sympathize with and make excuses for Muslim terrorists. This is a very widespread type of phenomenon in certain segments of today’s right.

Leftism, as I said recently, is the political form of evil. But we should not regard our fellow Americans who are on the left or who go along with the leftist drift as our “enemies.” Hate the sin, not the sinner.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on July 15, 2003 11:01 AM
“today’s paleo right, namely an abandonment of moral principles in favor of a feeling that anything is permitted against one’s enemies. An example is the attitude that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.””

what! the paleos didn’t abandon moral principle, but quite to the contrary have come out strongly against certain parties explicitely because they do not believe that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” this is especially true of the paleo-conservatives of whom i thinking of sam francis’ latest piece in chronicles when i wrote my opening post. the whole point is that “the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend,” and we had best recognize who the real friends are.

muslims are obviouly just plain enemies, and very old ones at that.

I must second Abby about this. Recognition is not hatred, and I think Mr. Auster is exaggerating paleo sympathy for such as Arab terrorists. Mr. Auster seems to fear that accurate typology necessarily leads to violent enmity. If that were so, traditionalist conservatives would have been shooting Democrats in the streets for decades now.

As for the paleos, the clearest American identifications of the Moslem threat that I have read come from paleo commentators, informed by Christian as well as national concerns. Western resistance to the Moslem challenge without a strong Christian component ultimately will fail, because it will fail to understand that enemy and match his motivation.

(A digression, but perhaps pertinent: One reason I fear for Israel is that her enemies have a religious motivation to fight to the death; most Israelis today do not have a religious Jewish motivation to resist them to the same degree. Israel is the front-line test case of whether a Western-style secular state (official rabbinate notwithstanding) can withstand a religiously motivated assault. Whatever their take on Arab-Israeli rivalries, Americans should watch that closely.)

Our Lord commands us to love our enemies; He does not command us to pretend they are our friends. HRS

I’m not saying there is no such thing as real enemies. But Mr. Sutherland wrote: “The Republican Party and almost all of its politicians, including all the ones with real influence, are the enemy.” Such a formulation makes enemies of not only the “blue” half of America, but the “red” half as well. If virtually everyone in America is our “enemy,” we have backed ourselves into an alienation from which there is no exit. Let us please think about what we’re saying.

Also, when I criticized the reference to enemies, I was not implying that that that idea would lead to violence.

I prefer to think of it in terms of repentance rather than enmity. If we do not repent then we will all go down together. Shared abstract political values do not compose even a small fraction of the actual nation, the actual people, the actual culture. If they did then the result would be the sort of alienation Mr. Auster describes; and it is true that the essence, that which is not liberalism, is terribly sick and is being ravaged by the Great Parasite.

Liberalism is the enemy. The big problem is that it is an enemy within. To the extent it can be exorcised it should be exorcised. Better to free the possessed from their intellectual slavery than to just kill, kill, kill. There is a natural tendency to view those possessed by liberalism as the enemy; but it is not the complete person that constitutes the enemy. It is the enemy within.

As to what Matt says: all true.

As to what Mr. Auster says: I believe that the “blues” would have gotten what they thought they were voting for had Al Gore brazened his way into the White House. I do not believe that most of the “reds” have gotten what they thought they were voting for from GW Bush.

The Democratic Party’s ideology is liberalism and the party is representative of those who believe in liberalism. The Republican Party’s ideology is not conservatism in any form and conservatives who vote Republican are usually betrayed by the party in the end. If anything, the Republican Party’s ideology is … liberalism. By condemning the Republican Party, I am not condemning everyone who votes for it; the one thing the Republican Party is good at (thanks, as I’ve said before, to having the Democratic Party as a bogeyman to its left) is duping conservatives into voting for its candidates.

To be clear, when I speak of the Republican Party, I am speaking of a political apparat, a quasi-governmental institution. I am not speaking of everyone who votes Republican. HRS