Replying to a right-wing tough guy

A hostile, semi-nihilistic e-mail of a type I get from time to time from a certain familiar kind of reader who perhaps has been reading too much Buchanan and too much Rockwell and maybe too much stuff that’s worse than that as well:

Senor Auster, nature kills everything that is weak, the men of the West are weak. Logic dictates they will be killed off for it. Question for you: do you know what the real price tag for this bounty and freedom we have enjoyed is? I really don’t think you have the slightest idea, which is why you’re writing these articles. I’ll let you in on something, you want to be free, you want to live in peace, you have to be willing to kill for those things. Prose don’t cut it, cost and consequence are huge. If you don’t believe me, ask someone who was in Danang or Saipan. Don’t ask someone who was in Sobibor or Treblinka. They were too busy manufacturing weapons. That’s the source of this problem.

My reply:

Your e-mail is incoherent, except for your notion that talk is futile, and your notion that civilizations have to fight to survive. First, if talk is futile, why are you writing to me? Second, haven’t you seen me say over and over that the majority people of the West must rediscover themselves and start to re-assert themselves in order to survive? Have you read my article “In Search of Moderate Islam, Part II,” where I lay out a strategy of confrontation with Islam, including Moslem immigrants in the West, that goes beyond anything discussed by any mainstream conservative or any other kind of conservative?

Another thing. I don’t like people who say things like, “The men of the West are weak. Logic dictates they will be killed off for it.” That is the same as saying that the West deserves to die. When people start talking like that, they show that they’ve already given up on the West and have become traitors and enemies to it, as many paleocons and paleo-libertarians have become. It’s fine to say, “If the West continues to act in such and such way, it will die.” That’s a factual statement. But when people say, “The West deserves to die,” they are already half-wishing death to the West.

If you can drop the hostile tone and sound like a Western patriot instead of like someone wishing or accepting the death of the West, you can write back to me. Otherwise, don’t bother.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 29, 2005 01:02 AM | Send