It is interesting that when’s Kerry’s lack of qualification for being President in war is brought up by conservatives, Bush is inevitably left out of this criticism. No one here doubts that Kerry is unfit for the job, but with Bush we have someone who has already -proven- himself to be unfit for the job. It’s potential unqualifiedness vs actual unqualifiedness.

Isn’t this rather a carping point from Mr. Ring, considering my repeated attacks on Bush’s competence as president? I have criticized him particularly for his lack of ability to explain his policies, to respond effectively to criticism, to see likely problems in advance, and to face facts that do not match his boilerplate.

I was not going to send in my absentee ballot, but reluctantly did because Kerry is simply too dangerous in my assessment not to oppose however futile.

Mr. Auster’s decision to essentially abstain on principle is courageous and commendable, it is a bit like the old saying, “a drunk has to hit rock bottom before he realizes he has to change.” So I think Mr. Auster sees a possible scenario where America will “hit rock bottom” in whatever frightening or dismal form it will take.

But hoping that Kerry’s assumed (certain) disastrous tenure will force a new “Reagan revolution” with a diminishing, indoctrinated and outnumbered native population does not follow the models already seen through history.

So again the problem I see with Mr. Auster’s principled position is that it seems to ignore his own many essays chronicling the transformation of what was Judeo-Western civilization into what promises to be France in about 20 years, a nation colonized and its host population marginalized under the weight of a legislated alien culture, in their case, certainly Islam.

I don’t think a new President Reagan is on the horizon because America has evolved into a place where the people of the American entity reject that which made America great, think multiculturalism.

President Reagan’s work as it related to reviving conservatism was temporary at best. After his presidency, America went quickly into full decadent mode from which it shows no sign of recovering from.

To me, society always seeks the natural state and sad to say that state is one of social hedonism and decadence which is a feature those of the liberal persuasion wish to mainstream.

National unity, E. Pluribus Unum, along those well clichéd lines of, language, culture and boarders is as dead as God was to Nietzsche.

“Where has God gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left?” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Can anyone offer their vision of America in 50 years?

My inclination is to agree with Mr. Auster. But who will be the “new Reagan?”

There will be no “Reagan” figure to save America from itself.His presidency had positive impact in shaping America’s psyche because it occurred at a unique historical crossroad where the great socialist experiment of the USSR teetered on the brink of total failure.Reagan gave it the nudge. This was an almost “larger than life” dynamic which Reagan faced, and commanded.Those heady days are gone for good.Bush had his chance to shine after 9/11 but unlike Reagan, lacked the smarts and personality to neuter his critics during the bad times.
America’s quickly approaching future will be an eviscerating socialism. The radical left’s incrementalist, socialist intrusions on America have occured at a nice, steady pace over the last thirty years.We on the right can slow things down a bit, but face it, the radicals are entrenched and pervasive where it counts: in the universities, the news organizations and most importantly, in the philanthropic foundations. Kerry’s election, which I think will come to pass, will simply accelerate the process.Bush’s election might slow the lefties down, but not by much.
I’ll extrapolate outward to a very dark place: Western Socialism vs.Islamism; which one prevails?

Lawrence, I respect your voting decision but I wish you’d change your mind and vote against Kerry by voting for Bush.

Before casting a write-in vote for Tom Tancredo (for any office), consider that he has explicitly asked people not to do that. Maybe he’s just being a team player, but he may also have reason to believe it would harm his long-term efforts.

Rocco, my bet is that Islam would prevail. Western socialist eloi like Chirac and the sorry collection of Tranzis in Brussels haven’t the will to resist the jihadis. They just don’t get it. Unless they repent and come to their senses, they can’t.

Going back to Mr. Auster’s ‘new Reagan’ or ‘Reagan to the nth degree’, such a figure could precipitate and ride a great awakening into victory over both the left and Islam. Absent this, I think bringing dhimmitude sooner would be better than later, for the left seek nothing less than our complete extermination. Tradtionalist Christians and Jews could at least survive dhimmitude - horrible though it would be - to grow and eventually assert ourselves at some future date.

Once in control, the Muslims would figure out who to impose the Sharia sentences upon. The Soros’, the Kerrys, Blairs and Chiracs would be headed for the chopping block in short order. The average stupefied, kool-aid swilling westerner (the kind who vote the socialists into power year after year) would find his supply of drugs, degenerate entertainment, and welfare suddenly cut off. That could lead to some repentance as well - they might even discover their own heritage.

Congressman Tom Tancredo recently visited Beslan. I heard absolutely nothing about this in the media.

http://www.house.gov/tancredo/

Rocco is making a reasonable argument, that the conservative recovery that I hope for as a result of the defeat of Bush will not occur, and that therefore there is only the choice between going off the cliff at 80 miles an hour with the Democrats or going off the cliff at 50 miles an hour with the Republicans, in which case staying with the Republicans gives us a little more time to live. But I would rather have hope in the possibility of a recovery, than to be hopeless.

Mr. Auster,

I have a question. How Is your idea of American conservatism rising from the ashes like a phoenix related to what I take is you clear understanding of the impactand eventual outcome of the multicultural agenda?

How can you reconcile the two when immigrants are generally not assemilated and share a different value system than that of traditional American conservatives.

Andrew’s question somewhat misstates my position. When I say that I hope for a resurgence of conservatism, I do not mean that I hope for some near term _victory_ of conservatism over liberalism and multiculturalism; I mean that I hope for the appearance of an effective conservative _resistance_ to liberalism and multiculturalism. At present, there is no such resistance. All the existing forms of conservatism have too much in common with liberalism to oppose it effectively. From the start of my concern about immigration, the thing that has been personally most unbearable to me was not the thought of the eventual extinction of America and the West, but the thought that this was happening without any debate, without any battle, by a silent, cowardly retreat—that we were letting ourselves be destroyed without trying to stop it. An American and Western people who have rediscovered their historic identity CAN start to wage that resistance. I don’t know what shape that resistance will ultimately take. But I do know that once the majority people begin actively to stand up against their own dispossession, and do it on a basis of moral principle not resentment, then everything about American politics will change. That is what I hope for.

For a theoretical expansion on these ideas, see:

What is European America?
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001631.html

For a practical expansion on them, see:

How to Defeat Jihad in America
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13532

Today I had the privilege of watching Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party campaign in person. It was refreshing to see a man who understands the way our government was designed, who has read and comprehended the Constitution (do you think Bush or Kerry could say the same?), who knows the purpose of government is not to nanny us into mindless oblivion, who is willing to stand in the gap for principle.

The presidential election is not a horserace. We don’t vote based on who we think has a likely chance of winning. We vote on conscience and we will be held accountable for those votes in this life and the next. The outcome of the election is not in our hands but our actions now are given to us to manage. Will we be good stewards of what we have? or will we truly ‘waste’ our franchise on a worthless candidate?

I appreciate Sapientia’s report on Peroutka. I plan on voting for him on Tuesday in Virginia.

I am amused that, even in intelligent discussions of voting at intelligent web sites, I continue to see voting for Peroutka described as “a wasted vote”, “a protest vote”, “essentially abstaining”, etc.

Let’s propose the following, realistic scenario. You live in Texas, my former home state. The polls indicate Bush will win by 100,000 votes in his home state. You and your wife go out and vote for Bush, making his final margin of victory 100,002 votes. Explain how these two votes are more meaningful, or more responsible, or less wasted, than if the same two votes had been cast for Peroutka.

Mr. Coleman seems to be basing his decision to vote for Peroutka on the fact that Virginia is not a battleground state, and therefore his vote will not affect the outcome. But would Mr. Coleman still vote for Peroutka if he were living in a battleground state and his vote might sway the election?

For myself, I’ve decided that I would decline to vote for Bush even if I lived in Ohio or Florida. (As I’ve indicated before, I’m not saying that mine is the right choice, and that Mr. Coleman’s is wrong. It’s a personal decision.)

All excellent comments.

I wasn’t sure, but I sensed many months ago that Mr. Auster would either write in Tancredo or vote The CP way. And his answers to us are honest and from the heart, I believe. I respect Clark Coleman for voting for Peroutka. I do not consider either Mr. Auster’s or Mr. Coleman’s to be “protest votes”, but so what if they were/are? Thank goodness there are other parties/persons out there who those of us like and respect and support! Tancredo was interviewed recently and the subject was brought up about write ins for him for President and he laughed and said something to the effect that (and I am paraphrasing) “I am not a candidate for President—far from it!” Still, I may vote for him. I am one of those 4-6% “undecideds” across the country.

I posted some other thoughts on this subject on the “What a vote for Bush means now” thread.

Thank you Mr. Auster for clarifying your position. It now makes better sense to me. I was thinking about your views in terms of an ultimate victory over liberalism when you are actually taking the logical approach of questioning when and in what form the majority population of America will express their resistance to the liberal onslaught.

Mr. Auster, “resistance” as such generally implies opposing and defending a seemingly lost cause. The “French_ resistance_” was hopeless to do anything but harass the Nazis. It was the American _forces_ that obviously won the war.

Organized resistance and the ever present law of unexpected consequences, calls to mind the resistance movement of Mahatma Gandhi and the unexpected defeat of the British Empire by non-violent means.

So resistance can be hopeless desperate, defiant and futile as the French model, relying on a benevolent force to rescue the cause or it can mobilize the society and rally it beneath the banner of a moral and righteous cause as the Indians did. Other forms exist as well, I would argue liberalism itself is a revolutionary resistance movement backed by people like George Soros and implemented by politicians like Kerry.

The idea of resistance (or war and victory) works only if the enemy has been clearly identified and the society has mustered the will to oppose a mutual foe. Multiculturalism is not viewed by the elites, intellectuals, educators and general population.

Liberalism knows no mutual foe except for the establishment. There is something for everyone in the liberal army provided they are non-white and non-traditionalists. Multiculturalism is the enemy of American heritage and culture as is liberalism, and is made up of individual cultural, ethic and special interest groups which do not subscribe the notion of “American”.

The current crop of immigrants celebrate the dismantling of the existing status quo, indeed they feel it is their right to do so and are fed the multiculturalist lie that all cultures are on equal footing with American culture. The resulting false sense of superiority compels them to reject empirical evidence of clear American superiority in favor of the many inferior third world societies they fled from.

The ideal immigration scenario was the original logical and sensible model of the early years of the immigrant experience. All the talents and hard work of those early newcomers was directed in support, not opposition of the existing American culture. That spirit must be recaptured and soon before it is lost forever.

The result is an uncivilized underclass which like a magnet draws the cultural standard from the once lofty heights of the American ideal, to the base levels of third worldism which is slowly being forced on every part of America.

As such it seems to me barring some divine invocation of the law of unexpected consequences I am having trouble envisioning the scenario where essentially a giant version of the Balkans (America 2084) can recapture the golden age of America. There just doesn’t seem any way a nation transformed as America will be will seem worth fighting for in the minds of those many ethnicities and indeed native Americans who reside here.

Am I off base here?

I do not mean resistance in the sense of a seemingly lost clause. I mean standing against something and trying to push it back rather than accepting it. Resistance may be a futile gesture against overwhelming superiority, or it may be a successful counterattack. I put no prior limit on what the resistance may achieve. The key thing is that there be resistance.

As for the hopelessness of the situation as Andrew sees it, it may be hopeless. But, as I said before, if the European American majority population of this country began to speak up for itself AS the majority, that would totally alter the current dynamics of our situation and we cannot predict where that would lead. You said you’ve read “What is European America”? Please read it again. And also read the other article I linked, where I argued that the key thing vis à vis immigration is not to think of solving the whole problem in one step, but to _reverse_ the current trends, so that there is a net out-migration of Moslems and other incompatible Third-Worlders from the United States. That is not inconceivable.

The two articles each suggest a change of direction, not a final victory. The first article suggests that the European American majority begin to assert itself as such, instead of having no conscious existence as such. The second article aims at a net out-migration of non-assimilable peoples. Those changes of direction would not solve all our problems, but they would signal a movement toward life instead of a continued movement toward death.

Andrew2, I highly recommend a couple of additional outstanding articles from our host (Mr. Auster) which were published at FrontpageMag.com over the summer. They explain in great detail how the leftist doctrine of multiculturalism works its poison into our nation. They are:

How Multiculturalism Took Over America
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14164

“Anti-Racism:” The Mailed Fist of Multiculturalism
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14261

Resistance begins with knowledge - of who the enemy is, and what their plans and goals are. The only small thing I would disagree with in your post is the idea that liberals are working against the “establishment.” Liberals ARE the establishment - despite all of their pretense to the contrary. The goal of all liberalism (from “neoconservatism” to Marxism) is to overthrow the created order, along with any human institutions that acknowledge and support it. In its place, liberals plan to establish a utopia of one kind or another: a “New World Order”, a “New Soviet Man”, the “Thousand-Year Reich”, a “Classless society”, etc., etc. - always in the name of freedom, democracy, and equality.

Thanks Carl I thought both articles were outstanding .
As far as your point about liberals being the establishment, you are right I think. Whenever I discuss this issue with others I say “the liberals are assuming control of the very instituitions that they once protested and sought to destroy.”

But on second thought I think it is factual to say that they clearly control most if not all important offices, institutions, agencies.

Thanks

If the goal is to set up an opposing party to pull the g.O.P. to the right, I eould htink that voting for Peroutka would be better than for Mr. Tancredo, becasue it would help energize an existing party.
The CP might not be perfect, but if it were a little stronger, it might force the G.O.P. to deal with its issues or help in the formation of a better conservative third party.

In answer to Mr. Auster’s question, I recommend voting for Peroutka regardless of what state one lives in. I was just pointing out a couple of things: (1) It is easy to vote for Peroutka in a non-battleground state, and (2) the criticisms of such a vote make no sense.

There is an interesting moral dilemma that people often raise when it comes to voting for Peroutka: “What if everyone did what you are advocating?” The obvious answer is that Peroutka would be President, which would be better than having Bush as President. What the critics really mean to ask is, “What if enough people follow your example to cost Bush the election, but not enough to elect Peroutka?” My answer to that is: If 10% voted for Peroutka, 40% for Bush, and 48% for Kerry, please explain how the 10% are responsible for whatever disaster Kerry brings us, rather than the 40% who voted for Bush.