sent a contribution to VFR today, which I appreciate very much, and followed it up with the below message about what VFR has meant to him, which I appreciate no end. (To readers who have sent contributions recently and have not heard back from me, my apologies, I will write to you very soon).
I’ve been appreciating VFR long enough now that it’s high time I made a donation, so I thought I’d express my gratitude for the important work you’re doing and tell you how VFR has changed my thinking.
I don’t remember how I first found VFR, which means I was probably just browsing conservative websites, following one link after another, and eventually someone happened to link to one of your entries. At first, the site seemed pretty “out there” to me, and I wasn’t inclined to take it seriously. What jarred me was your frank use of racial terminology: saying that “whites” do this, “blacks” do that, etc. My attitude toward that way of expressing one’s thoughts was at that point similar to how you describe the neoconservatives, believing anyone to their right is a beyond-the-pale racist. “The only people who talk like that,” I thought, “are white supremacists, anti-semitic conspiracy theorists, and the like.” However, your solid writing on social and cultural issues kept me reading long enough to see that to speak about race in that way is perfectly commonsensical, and done by virtually every group on Earth except white Western liberals. Not to speak in that way is merely to tiptoe around issues that everyone knows are there, like the proverbial elephant in the room.
Also, before becoming a reader of VFR, I was a member of what you might call the “Bush is an evil genius” school of thought; the thinking that says that mainstream conservatives are always saying and doing things that appear to be liberal just to get their foot in the door of the mainstream debate, but once they have done so they will let slip the dogs of true conservatism. Thus, whenever George W. Bush expressed his compassionate conservatism by saying things like “When somebody hurts, government has got to move,” or when the pope would say that Christ’s work consists of liberation from all forms of discrimination, or when any number of mainstream conservatives would argue against affirmative action on the basis that it’s bad for black people, I would think, “Well, he has to say that, he has to do that.” I thought that all they were trying to do was win the sympathy of enough liberals to begin preaching and practicing true conservatism. It took a long time, but now I see that if one considers all of their words and all of their actions, it makes much more sense just to conclude that they actually believe what they’re saying; that is, that they have basically accepted the tenets of liberalism.
I would say that overall, the greatest thing that VFR has done for me is to show me the importance of making actual conservative arguments, as opposed to faux conservative ones that are fundamentally liberal underneath. Thanks in large measure to the arguments presented at VFR, I have become much more bold about taking actual conservative positions in real life. For example, in a political argument about terrorism at work, I recently had the guts to say out loud that Muslim immigration should be stopped, and was surprised to find that a white female co-worker agreed with me. (Of course, a liberal black man present, right on cue, immediately brought up Timothy McVeigh, which sidetracked the discussion.) However, I do also come across sobering reminders that even many “conservatives” aren’t ready for these ideas, such as just last night, when I was talking about immigration with my uncle, a Roman Catholic convert and devotee of Richard John Neuhaus, and found that he pretty firmly believed that the second and third generation offspring of these Mestizo peasants won’t be picking fruit and rioting, but will be fully integrated into American society, speaking English, well-educated, solidly middle-class. There’s a lot of work to be done in talking people out of the “America as abstract idea” theory.
I do think, though, that as our civilization continues to head toward destruction, native white Americans, even liberal ones in whom any sense of civilizational identity has lain dormant for several generations now, will begin to wake up and want to do something about it. If that happens while there is still time, it will be because of voices like VFR.
Sincerely,
Jacob M.