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Thomas Fleming confirms what I said about him—that he has given up on America
Gintas writes:
I went over to that article at the Chronicles web site in Spanish, which VFR discussed yesterday, and looked through the comments. Fleming says this:
When I first discussed the kind offer to translate our articles into Spanish, Scott Richert wondered if there were any nativist dummies so stupid they would use this against us. Somewhat naively, I said I thought no one could be so stupid, especially since Chronicles was fighting the immigration fight before some of these people were born.
I remember when “conservatives” were eager to study all things Spanish, if only because the right side won the Spanish Civil War. How many Spanish-speakers are there, world-wide, in Spain and Latin America. In the past several years, some of the best and brightest right-wingers I have met come from Spain, Chile, and Argentina. Rather than talk to such people, we should associate exclusively with monoglot xenophobes who pride themselves on their ignorance.
A commenter named PcH takes up the challenge:
The good news is that perhaps more than 85% of the US population is against immigration. Not only are genuine conservatives such as Clyde Wilson, Paul Craig Roberts, Patrick Buchanan, and Joseph Sobran completely against it, but even neocon talk show hosts such as Sean Hannity are against as well as a majority of the Left.
Immigration is a litmus test between the mainstream Left and the radical Left.
Since Tom Fleming has come out of the closet as a radical assimilationist in full support of the invasion, this puts him in company with the radical left.
Tom cannot remove what he has already posted. He has published an article in Spanish which he indicates is for the exclusive benefit of the criminal aliens. He openly admits that the genocidal invasion is a good thing and compares it with Greece and Rome.
He even uses Lincolnian arguments of the propositional state to back himself up.
Tom Fleming is a radical Leftist.
I call for his immediate resignation from Chronicles and his shunning by the conservative movement.
Fleming’s Reply:
I don’t recall inviting PcH to address me by my first name, and it is unlikely that I would give such permission to an obvious liar who refuses to follow an argument. I do not recommend any plan because I regard the ethnic situation—like the cultural, moral, and spiritual situations—in this country as beyond all hope of remedy. I am shutting down this discussion but I will post some or all of my contribution to our book on immigration on this site.
LA writes:
Well, the commenter PcH says some stupid things. But Fleming is being disingenuous. A man who describes English-speaking Americans who oppose open immigration as monoglot xenophobes who pride themselves on their ignorance has made it precisely clear where he is coming from. And it is not in favor of the preservation of America as a distinct nation and culture. Since he has clearly abandoned the fight that Chronicles once led, it is dishonest of him to appeal to his past opposition to the Third-Worldization of America as proof that he still opposes it.
But it gets worse. He writes:
“I regard the ethnic situation—like the cultural, moral, and spiritual situations—in this country as beyond all hope of remedy.”
Here he indicates, not just indirectly, as with his put-down of regular Americans, but explicitly, that he’s given up combatting the demographic destruction of Anglo-European America, and that he’s given up trying to turn around America’s internal moral and cultural nihilism. So why does he complain when accused of having surrendered on the immigration issue? And why is he still the editor of a traditionalist conservative magazine at all? What does he have to offer conservatives—other than telling them to give up on the defense of their culture, and calling them monoglot xenophobes who pride themselves on their ignorance if they don’t? Which, by the way, is a close cousin of the neocon Mark Helprin’s repellant put-down of the Minutemen: “a febrile militia of Willie Nelson look-alikes … armed geezers.”
On another point, the South American elite conservatives Fleming says he wants to reach almost all read English. So his notion that he must publish articles in Spanish to reach them is nonsense. He published the article in Spanish not to “reach” anyone, but to send a message—that he accepts and will do nothing to fight the Hispanicization of the U.S. Thus, when PcH says that Fleming “has published an article in Spanish which he indicates is for the exclusive benefit of the criminal aliens,” that is of course not literally correct, but it captures the spirit and the essential import of what Fleming has done.
—end of initial entry—
“Monoglot xenophobes who pride themselves on their ignorance.”
The late Sam Francis, monthly essayist at Chronicles, theoretician of the Middle American Radicals, must be rolling over in his grave.
John Hagan writes:
I’m not surprised to see that Thomas Fleming has shut down any more discussion of his complete capitulation to the invasion. This poser has spent years running down what’s left of Chronicles, and when confronted about this he predictably runs away. If anyone has had the misfortune of reading his pretentious ramblings over the years they would realize that this man is not, and never has been a conservative.
LA replies:
Then what is he? How would you describe him?
John Hagan replies:
I think Fleming is a self-important poser. The kind of individual that drops a lot of references to antiquity in his essays alluding to a classical education, but when you read him you see that his classical understanding runs a mile wide, but an inch deep. On a personal level he has the amazing ability to poison a magazine with his anger. You’re not the first person I know who just gave up on Chronicles in the early 90s, and just walked away from it.
Kevin JV writes:
Fleming is right.
There is nothing left to conserve in the West, it’s dead. I appreciate your attempts but it’s in vain. I give the U.S. 20-30 years before it’s broken apart along racial lines and Europe less than 50 years before it’s completely dominated by Muslims. Christianity is dead in the “first” world, it’s only hope is in the Southern hemisphere. It will never be the dominant religion of the “developed world” again unless there is a major apocalypse that completely destroys the socio-economic order. Then, maybe… Over centuries there might be a revival, it could be re evangelized by missionaries from S. America and Africa… Maybe.
You know I’m right, as much as you loathe to admit it. Hell, I loathe to admit it. There is no point in denying it any longer. Liberalism has destroyed Western civilization.
LA replies:
Snap out of it.
There’s plenty to preserve, there’s plenty to fight for.
Also, if you believe it’s gone, but that it might come back some day, why not start working for the return now?
And look at your desire to make me accept your defeatist view as true. Why do you do that? Why is it not enough for you to feel it’s over, but that you want to convince me that it’s over as well?
Because what you can’t stand is the fight itself.
Kevin JV replies:
I don’t need you to accept anything. I have accepted it and left the Western social order as much as I can while I still live in the U.S.A. Moving is not really an option, if I had infinite resources, maybe. I’ve fought the fight BTW, I’ve lost jobs, friendships and risked my academic credentials.. For what? There are a very few bastions—Catholic and Anglican traditionalists; a small group of theologians (mostly Anglican and Roman Catholic) [ Radical Orthodoxy] and &c. The white nationalism you espouse is really only a result of the Enlightenment, it’s fundamentally a liberal paradigm which accepts Darwinist evolution as dogma.
I’m a Buddhist because I no longer care for the world… It’s filled with ignorance, hatred and clinging to that which changes. I used to be a Roman Catholic, but that organization is now an enemy of all that is good, true and beautiful. It may have been among the last to submit to the regime of liberalism but it has inexorably submitted. Nothing stands, everyone is a liberal… Yes sir, even you.
LA replies
“The white nationalism you espouse is really only a result of the Enlightenment, it’s fundamentally a liberal paradigm which accepts Darwinist evolution as dogma.”
What? If you think I’m a Darwinist I’m afraid you haven’t read very much of me. This statement is so off-base I don’t know where to start replying to it. Also, I don’t call myself a white nationalist.
“I’m a Buddhist because I no longer care for the world… It’s filled with ignorance, hatred and clinging to that which changes.”
Well, uh, I don’t know how to reply to someone who denies all the value of the world. Talk about two people not having a common ground—in this case the world itself—as a basis for discussion!
In fact, your description of the world, “filled with ignorance, hatred,” sounds like the left’s description of America. Wait—it also sounds like Fleming’s description of America: “xenophobes who pride themselves on their ignorance”
See? It happens so often. Once a person gives up on a cause, an allegiance, or his country, he doesn’t simply give it up and retire from the scene, he joins the enemies of his country. Consider Benedict Arnold. Arnold had every reason to be disenchanted with the Patriot cause after the rotten way he had been treated. But he didn’t simply quit the army and go home, which he would have been entirely justified in doing; he went over to the enemy and sought to defeat his own country. Not that I’m accusing Fleming or anyone of Arnold type treason. I’m using Arnold as an example of a general pattern. Calling anti-open immigration Americans—his own readers—by the left-wing smear word “xenophobes” is Fleming’s personal equivalent of Arnold’s going over to the British.
Gintas writes:
Here’s an essay by Murray Rothbard, it’s from 1993. It really is worth the read, because it’s a traditionalist Rothbard here, and he’s calling out the sellouts and the quitters. What a contrast with the quitter Thomas Fleming!
On Resisting Evil
How can anyone, finding himself surrounded by a rising tide of evil, fail to do his utmost to fight against it? In our century, we have been inundated by a flood of evil, in the form of collectivism, socialism, egalitarianism, and nihilism. It has always been crystal clear to me that we have a compelling moral obligation, for the sake of ourselves, our loved ones, our posterity, our friends, our neighbors, and our country, to do battle against that evil.
It has therefore always been a mystery to me how people who have seen and identified this evil and have therefore entered the lists against it, either gradually or suddenly abandon that fight. How can one see the truth, understand one’s compelling duty, and then, simply give up and even go on to betray the cause and its comrades? And yet, in the two movements and their variations that I have been associated with, libertarian and conservative, this happens all the time….
And finally, what the heck, if you fight the enemy, you might win! Think of the brave fighters against Communism in Poland and the Soviet Union who never gave up, who fought on against seemingly impossible odds, and then, bingo, one day Communism collapsed. Certainly the chances of winning are a lot greater if you put up a fight than if you simply give up….
Our stance should be, in the famous words of Dos Passos, even though he said them as a Marxist, “all right, we are two nations.” “America” as it exists today is two nations; one is their nation, the nation of the corrupt enemy, of their Washington, D.C., their brainwashing public school system, their bureaucracies, their media, and the other is our, much larger, nation, the majority, the far nobler nation that represents the older and the truer America. We are the nation that is going to win, that is going to take America back, no matter how long it takes. It is indeed a grave sin to abandon that nation and that America short of victory….
Let’s put it this way: we must not abandon our lives, our properties, our America, the real world, to the barbarians. Never. Let us act in the spirit of that magnificent hymn that James Russell Lowell set to a lovely Welsh melody:
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God’s new Messiah,
Offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet ‘tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong,
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above His own.
A reader writes:
Fleming made the decision to publish in Spanish and his acolytes, Aaron Wolf and Scott Richert, are right there backing him up: Richert with his comment about “nativist dummies,” and Wolf posting a comment in Spanish, accompanying the Sobran article that was reprinted in Spanish.
The reader continues:
Looks like Fleming is reading VFR. He writes:
I am reposting the conclusion to my article in the hopes that some of the people attacking us in the blogosphere will take the time to read what I have written. It should be clear that anyone who says that we do not oppose illegal immigration and mass immigration is a liar. Anyone who says that I am arguing that assimilation of mass-immigrants is a liar. And, I should add, that anyone who believes that, in reaching out to conservatives in Spain and Latin America, we are selling out the country to Third World indians needs to look at a map and find out where Spain is located. And anyone who says we hate America or have given up on our country should look in the mirror and ask: “How can we respect a country that gives the right to vote to imbeciles like this face in the mirror?”
LA replies:
But Fleming earlier said:
I do not recommend any plan because I regard the ethnic situation—like the cultural, moral, and spiritual situations—in this country as beyond all hope of remedy.
But now he says:
And anyone who says we … have given up on our country should look in the mirror and ask: “How can we respect a country that gives the right to vote to imbeciles like this face in the mirror?”
So, a person who reads Fleming’s words and derives their plain meaning—namely that Fleming has given up on America—is imbecilic, indeed, so imbecilic that the fact he can vote is proof that America is deserving of no respect. That’s got to be the most convoluted, not to mention absurd, putdown in history. “Don’t you dare read me and sum up accurately in your words what I’m saying! If you do, America is a country deserving of no respect!” If you see and state aloud the fact that Fleming has given up on America, that only proves Fleming’s point that America is no good.
Adela G. writes:
Kevin JV writes: “…I no longer care for the world… It’s filled with ignorance, hatred and clinging to that which changes…Nothing stands, everyone is a liberal… Yes sir, even you.”
Goodness but Kevin has a major case of the megrims. From a purely literary perspective, his unrelentingly gloomy tone has a lot to recommend it. I can imagine Roderick Usher intoning the words of the paragraph I just quoted.
But as a modus vivendi, his rather dramatic renunciation of the world leaves a lot to be desired. I am not of a perpetually sunny disposition, yet I find much in this world to delight me every single day. I cannot imagine being willing to renounce it simply because it is filled with ignorance, hatred and the clinging to that which changes. When has it ever been otherwise? And that this is so does not alter the fact that the world has also always been filled with knowledge, love and the ability to effect and adapt to change. How can anyone as intelligent as Kevin so obviously is fail to acknowledge, the dual nature of humanity, the brute living alongside the hero not only in society but even within the individual? To cite the former and ignore the latter is to be excessively cynical. In this, as in all things, balance and proportion are crucial to one’s perspective.
Either Buddhism is a far drearier belief system than I ever realized, or perhaps Kevin hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet. In any case, the mere fact that we are in a dire situation—and I agree that we are—is cause for alarm, not capitulation. I will resist modern liberalism in any way I can for as long as I have breath in my body. And I am perfectly prepared to be a majority of one, if need be (which is not to say I place any credence in Kevin’s assertion that even Mr. Auster is a liberal).
Meanwhile, I hope that Kevin’s mood is a passing thing, not a permanent fixture, and that he will soon regain some appreciation for all that is good and positive in this world.
August 9
Bill Carpenter writes:
“Nativist dummies”—he must be looking for a job at the Weekly Standard!
LA replies:
Again, as soon as they stopped believing in defending our country from the left and from Third-Worldization, i.e., as soon as they stopped believing in conservatism, they started using typical kneejerk leftist phrases to attack conservatives.
Bruce B. writes:
Gintas leaves out the rest of what Fleming wrote:
My basic argument in that book is: 1) when two peoples coexist in the same habitat or nation, it is more likely that they will influence each other than that one will force the other to assimilate. 2) Creative assimilation can take place but only when one culture is more advanced and more assured than the other. In the case of the USA, the Mexicans have a deeper sense of identity than Americans who long ago embarked on a process of self-destruction, as evinced by the civil rights revolution, multi-culturalism, anti-Christianism, and open immigration. The problem does not lie in poor Mexicans who come here seeking jobs, welfare, and opportunities for criminal behavior, but in ourselves that we are so weak, stupid, and suicidal.
It is pointless to recommend policies to a nation bent on self-destruction, but a process of expulsion and/or separation would not be at all impossible. The process would take place in 1) enforcing existing laws rigorously and passing stiffer laws with very stiff quotas and restrictions, 2) a steady push of illegals out of their havens outside the SW and a no-nonsense policy of expelling every alien, legal or not, who is convicted of a felony. 3) a plan to take back, city by city and state by state, the regions of the US and, if the whole is impossible, then cut off Mexified states from the Union. But why go on? No one in a leadership position in either party is willing to entertain, even for a minute, the end of existing policies that punish European-Americans and demonize their heritage. Whining does not get you anywhere nor does shouting “radical” slogans at the top of your lungs. To the extent that we here at the magazine have the resources to do anything, it is to educate some younger Americans into what they have been deprived of and to expose the logic that makes them victims. Any call to direct action, when the overwhelming majority of the population is opposed, is tantamount to terrorism. The end.
As far as I can tell, Chronicles has never abandoned the cause of immigration restriction.
As far as not believing in America, it’s not an unreasonable conclusion that an already polyglot nation covering an entire continent isn’t viable in that form and structure. I think this is especially apparent to Roman Catholics. I’m not sure Tradish Catholics and Protestants can coexist within a society and have their (very different at times) beliefs maintain sufficient public authority within those societies. That would be all the more true of Tradish Catholics and non-Christians or Protestants and Mormons or whatever. Jim Kalb’s indicated he thinks America may be too big and it’s not unreasonable to break it up.
I know you (understandably) love the America of your youth and the America a few generations previous to your youth and it’s much better than what we have now but it’s not an unreasonable conclusion to say that even that America’s composition wasn’t substantive enough to sustain itself indefinitely. I’m not saying this conclusion is self evident, only that it’s not an unreasonable one for a traditional conservative.
Our only realistic recourse may be to withdraw into communities of like-minded people and try to put and keep our lives and our families lives in a good and Godly order. That doesn’t mean we don’t still try to vote the bums out of office which is what I think Chronicles still advocates doing.
LA replies:
Bruce writes: “As far as I can tell, Chronicles has never abandoned the cause of immigration restriction.”
Did Bruce read the Fleming passage he quoted? Abandoning the cause of immigration restriction is exactly what Fleming just did. And why did he do it? Because he says it has no support at present! He’s simply cowardly given up fighting for what we must fight for. Just like the Islam critics who say that Islam is a mortal threat to us, but who never propose ending Muslim immigration, because “there’s no support for such a move at present.” Well, how does support for such a move get generated? By people advocating it and fighting for it.
Bruce writes: “As far as not believing in America, it’s not an unreasonable conclusion that an already polyglot nation covering an entire continent isn’t viable in that form and structure.”
That may be true. But one who believes it to be true has given up on defending America as a historically existing and distinct nation and culture, exactly as I have said Fleming has done.
Now it is true that we may all be ultimately forced into the expedient of some sort of internal withdrawal or separation, or even secession. But if we did that, it would be to preserve our being and way of life as European Americans and Westerners, and thus would still be consistent with traditionalism. What does Fleming’s extravagantly dhimmi-like gesture to the Spanish speaking world have to do with such traditionalism?
Bruce B. replies:
I’m probably being dense, but I don’t see where he abandons it. On the contrary, he seems to suggest a pretty hardcore agenda is what we need.
The “It is pointless to recommend policies to a nation bent on self-destruction” part may be what you’re focusing on but keep reading.
If I’m missing something in the text I quoted, please point out specific quotes (there’s 4 young children running around me right now so my reading comprehension’s not at it’s peak right now :-)
All of this is not to give a blanket endorsement to all of Fleming’s thinking. He’s insufficiently Anglo-centric for me. He’s a classicist and biographers tend to fall in love with their subjects.
Also, even if one doesn’t care for Fleming’s writing style, I’d still highly recommend Drs Trifkovic, Wolf and Richert. They’re all excellent.
LA replies:
He said these would be the things that we would do, if we wanted to do them, but he says there’s no point in trying to do these things, because there’s not enough political support for them. That’s giving up. I can’t explain it more clearly than that.
Well, maybe I can.
Let’s say Churchill had said to the House of Commons in June 1940:
Large tracts of Europe have fallen and will continue to fall into the hands of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule. If, as I personally prefer, the British nation wanted to resist the Nazi domination of Europe, then we would not flag or fail. We would fight in France. We would fight on the seas and oceans. We would fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We would defend our Island, whatever the cost would be. We would fight on the beaches, we would fight on the landing grounds, we would fight in the fields and in the streets, we would fight in the hills, we would never surrender. However, since there’s insufficient support in the British political system at present to do these things, there is no point in arguing for them. I therefore recommend that we immediately open peace discussions with Herr Hitler. Furthermore, as an expression of our need to reach out to the emerging world of the new Europe, I will have the proceedings of this House translated and published in German.
That, mutatis mutandis, is what Fleming has done.
Alan Roebuck writes:
One of the main reasons true conservatives sink into despair is that they cannot conceive of conservative apologetics, i.e., attempting to persuade people of basic conservative principles. Everybody’s model of conservative activism consists of attempting to rally to your cause people who already agree with it, but who are distracted. And once a traditionalist realizes how thoroughly liberalism has taken over all institutions (so that liberals can block the actual implementation of non-liberal policies) and how completely the general public supports liberalism (actively or passively), they draw the conclusion that nothing can be done. And so they despair.
That’s why it is crucial to spread the so-far-virtually-unknown gospel of true conservative apologetics: attempting to change minds.
One more specific point needs to be made here. The main emphasis of conservative apologetics must be to reach the young. The old leftists who run America will die one day, and be replaced with those who are now young. And the young have no great attachment to the status quo, so they can be reached with the truth.
In other words, the true traditionalist, who thinks long-term, knows there’s no reason to despair.
LA replies:
“One of the main reasons true conservatives sink into despair is that they cannot conceive of conservative apologetics, i.e., attempting to persuade people of basic conservative principles.”
Exactly.
If all you can do or conceive of doing is to grouse about how terrible things are and about how contemptible and imbecilic other people are, then, as things keep getting worse and worse, all you can do is grouse more and more, until you get so angry you just say, “The heck with it, the heck with this country, the heck with this civilization, the heck with everything.”
But, if you understand that this destruction of our society is driven by a specific set of beliefs that are intelligible (you can make sense of them), that are false and irrational, and that are destructive and unsustainable; and, further, if you understand that there is a truth that can be counterpoised to that falsity, then you have hope. And that why our spirits are liberated when we grasp (a) the central, controlling influence of liberalism in our society (controlling both liberals and “conservatives”), and (b) the irrationality and falsity of liberalism. Once we grasp the nature of that which is destroying us, we can see a way of saving ourselves. But so long as we fail to grasp it, we have no hope of saving ourselves.
And an important way of failing to grasp the nature of liberalism is to imagine that we are conservative opponents of liberalism, when in reality we are devoted followers of liberalism. How can we oppose the liberalism that is destroying our society, if we falsely imagine that we are already opposing it while we are actually following it?
LA continues:
Another point brought out by Mr. Roebuck is that is order to oppose the trends of our society when they appear to be overwhelmingly against us, we must have a base to stand on that is independent of the trends of the moment. And there are two such independent bases: identification with a concrete culture, country, and tradition; and belief in a truth that transcends our existing society, whether that truth is conceived of as rational truth, or moral truth, or divine truth. Then you have a basis to say, “The dominant beliefs of our present society are wrong, are based on systematic denial of reality, are unsustainable, and are leading to destruction. Therefore, even though the rule of those beliefs seems irresistibly in the ascendant at the moment, it cannot last, and we can defeat it.” But, if you think the controlling ultimate reality is majority opinion, then you have no basis to oppose it. Thus the neoconservatives have always made the will of the American people their ultimate guide. For example, they constantly said that conservatism was proved right by the fact that the American people had twice elected Ronald Reagan in a landslide. But then what happens when the American people vote for a Democrat or a leftist or a liberal Republican like McCain? Then the neocons start moving left to adjust, because they don’t believe in any reality higher than the will of the people or the prevailing trends of the moment.
And now we see, ironically, that the one-time paleoconservative Thomas Fleming is similar to the neocons in this respect, though with a negative rather than a positive twist. His ultimate touchstone is not any rational truth, is not loyalty to a particular country, but rather the imbecility and idiocy of the American people who refuse to listen to a brilliant fellow like Fleming. So the heck with them. There’s nothing to be done to save European America, let’s start publishing Chronicles in Spanish.
Gintas writes:
Fleming shows contempt for folks who have a visceral love of home but who can’t bring out the appropriate quotes from Homer or Pericles.
In Fleming’s follow up (where he restates things he’s already said), he finishes thusly:
If American citizens prove themselves incapable of taking control of their future, by controlling immigration and restoring the institutions of their civilization, they will not so much be losing their country as acknowledging that it is already lost. In 476, when a German immigrant soldier sent the last Western Emperor into early retirement, he only made the fall of Rome official. Roman Italy had collapsed even before the Gothic sack of Rome that tipped of St. Augustine in 410. In failing to solve its immigration problem, Italy became the battleground for alien invaders for nearly 1500 years. The Eastern Empire was more fortunate: The emperors wrested control from the barbarian immigrants and embarked upon a cultural revival that made Constantinople the most glorious city in the world. Their empire, which endured the shock of Islamic terrorism and barbarian invasions, was far from perfect, but it lasted for a millennium. Which course America will follow is in the hands of the American people.
Note the detachment: it’s “American citizens”, not “we”; “they” not “us”; “in the hands of the American people”, not “in our hands.” He’s emotionally removed from America, from us.
LA replies:
I don’t think that’s a fair criticism. A writer doesn’t always have to use the first person when speaking of his country and about what needs to be done to save it. Especially here, as Fleming is putting America’s situation in a historical perspective.
Gintas replies:
I think I’m just fired up after reading that Rothbard essay.
Ryder writes:
You make some excellent points concerning Fleming and “giving up.” I suppose some may quibble about exactly how far Fleming has gone, but I consider your conclusion to be entirely warranted. I’ll go further: Fleming and his ilk are at best rather useless. I say at best, because it is quite arguable that they are doing far more harm than good.
Going beyond Fleming in particular, you raise a broader issue that I seldom if ever see discussed. Namely, when people “give up” on the possibility that traditional conservatism might succeed (or white nationalism, or whatever else on the Right), why this propensity to start proselytizing far and wide about how hopeless everything is? Why the need to spread defeatism?
The proselytizing defeatist seems to hold the contradictory notion that a person’s mind can’t be changed to help the cause, but somehow a person’s mind can be changed to hurt or give up on the cause. Apparently proselytizing only works one way with such types: to spread defeatism. [LA replies: excellent insight.]
I certainly can understand defeatism. The odds do look long indeed. But I try to keep a broader view of history in mind: our people have faced long odds before, and yet they triumphed. We can do so again. We owe our ancestors and our posterity no less than to keep up the fight and do the best we can, regardless of odds. I also don’t think the current system is tenable in the long run, which will inevitably open up opportunities for us—IF we are ready. The defeatists seem to want to make sure that we aren’t ready to exploit the opportunities that will surely arise in the coming years.
And frankly, there are still hundreds of millions of whites in the world. It is ridiculous and senseless to “give up” when there are so many of us around the planet. Yet the defeatists love to crow that it is “too late” for Europe, that their birthrates mean that they are already doomed. Not that they are doomed if the present insanity continues for more generations (true enough), but that they are doomed as of today. It’s just too late, nothing can be done.
What hogwash. Um … there are still many hundreds of millions of whites in Europe. Yes, the birthrates have been terribly low, but the idea that somehow Europe is irrevocably doomed as of today is absurd. There have been population declines before (Black Death, anyone?) . People can recover, if they expel the aliens from their midst.
Other groups on the planet don’t give up even though they only number in the handful of millions—or less. We number in the HUNDREDS of millions, and yet we are told our situation is hopeless. It’s absurd. We are in big, big trouble. That much is true. But there is no question that this thing can be turned around, all across the Western world. We are down, but we certainly aren’t out.
Here in America, we still number in the neighborhood of 200 hundred million. Even if our numbers were only a quarter of that, that’s a lot of people. Fifty million white people are worth fighting for. We’ve got far, far more than that.
Even if I were to become an unrepentant defeatist (not gonna happen), I certainly would not lower myself to becoming a proselytizer of defeat. I would simply retire to my garden, so to speak, and leave the fight to those who still have the heart and stomach for it. Why can’t our current crop of defeatists do the same? Their gardens await. As the song goes, don’t go away mad, just go away.
The defeatists are wrong factually, and not satisfied with being wrong merely once, they then insist upon engaging in senseless and contradictory behavior. Again, the garden awaits!
Anyway, thanks for your insights and keep up the good fight.
LA replies:
Thank you for one of the best comments ever posted at VFR.
James S. writes:
The thing about Fleming is he seems like a very nasty fellow for a supposedly conservative Christian. Both times VFR has wrangled with him he surprised me by coming off like a jerk. (And I must say, as a sycophant, I’ve never seen you be a jerk like that.)
August 10
William D. writes:
Ryder writes: “We owe our ancestors and our posterity no less than to keep up the fight and do the best we can, regardless of odds.”
My family and I just returned home from a trip to Virginia to see family and friends. Our last stop was Washington, D.C. At my not-quite-eight-year-old daughter’s request, we spent one afternoon walking from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. We stopped at the World War II Memorial, which neither my wife nor I had visited before, and I talked to my children about their grandfather’s service in that war. As we walked beside the Reflecting Pool, my daughter recounted for us the details of Lincoln’s life as she recalled them from a biography I read to her over the course of a week or so at bedtime. I had not been to—been in—the Memorial since I was younger than my daughter is now. I think she will remember her first visit there even more vividly than I remember mine. Before I had even had a chance to read the Fleming thread, or Ryder’s comments, I had laid out before me my debt to my ancestors, my debt to posterity, and I knew what had to be done. Keep up the fight. Do the best we can—regardless of the odds.
And I finally get a chance to paraphrase Dylan. Not perfect, but I can’t resist:
“Don’t wanna defeat nothing at all except defeatism.”
August 11
Rick Darby writes in reply to Kevin JV:
The comment, “I’m a Buddhist because I no longer care for the world… It’s filled with ignorance, hatred and clinging to that which changes,” reflects ignorance of Buddhism. The Buddha taught compassion for every living creature. He taught that the world is full of suffering, and there is a way out of suffering—but that way consists of various forms of right conduct, not ignoring the world. In fact the highest ideal in Buddhism, other than the Buddha himself, is the Bodhisattva, and enlightened being who instead of being absorbed in Nirvana returns to the world to relieve suffering.
It is true that Buddhism—like Vedanta and Christianity—sees this world as less than the ultimate truth or reality. But all those religions recognize working for good in the world as a moral imperative. All believe that how we act when embodied as humans is the key to our growth in spirit.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 08, 2008 04:01 PM | Send
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