An agonizingly difficult decision

(Note: The below discussion, which began on October 27, continues as of October 30.)

Alan Roebuck writes:

I agree with your general view of the election situation, especially with your assertion that a McCain defeat will likely (not certainly, of course) lead to more effective conservative resistance to liberalism and a slowing or even a halt of the Republican Party’s leftward movement. But I am also impressed with your position that if we were convinnced that Obama represents an “existential threat” to the nation, we would be obligated to vote for McCain. And therefore I’m starting to lean toward voting for McCain, for the following reasons.

Since one cannot predict the future, let alone a conditional future such as “if Obama wins, the following will happen…,” one would have to vote against him if one thinks that it is a reasonable possibility that Obama will irreparably harm America. And this is certainly a reasonable possibility, even if he is planning to govern as a moderate most of the time, because if Obama is elected, it appears that his election would unleash powerful leftist forces that he would be powerless to stop even he wanted to. Since he is running as a leftist messiah, the left will have its blood up if Obama is elected, and they would then be likely to make a major bid for power, as the ’60s radicals did. And since they control the formal apparatus of power, they could do a lot of damage.

Just remember, I’m beginning to lean toward McCain. I have not fallen into his camp.

- end of initial entry -

Joseph C. writes:

I have read the recent comments by Alan Roebuck and I still tell myself the same thing. To justify voting for John “Gang of 14” McCain, it is not enough that Obama represents an existential threat to the country. Obama must represent a threat that would be reduced or eliminated by the election of McCain. I regret to say that electing McCain also represents an existential threat to the country.

The single greatest issue facing the country is the fundamental existence of the American people and their right to maintain their sovereignty against the forces of transnationalism. With his fanatical support for open borders, his employment of Juan “Seventh Generation Mexicans in America Should Think of Themselves as Mexicans First” Hernandez as his Hispanic Outreach Director, and his demonstrable contempt for the grassroots opposition he has elicited, McCain will only speed our demise. Either way, the West will be under assault by migration from the underdeveloped world, an assault McCain will do nothing to repel and will in fact encourage. But again—as you have stated so many times before—only with the election of Obama will the true conservatives oppose the White House and Congress, whereas with McCain they will justify it. And only by opposing open borders liberalism will America beat back the threat to its existence.

Kristor writes:

Exactly what would be the threshold that Obama would have to cross before it became clear that he poses an existential threat to America? We know, or can pretty reasonably infer, a number of things about him:

• He’s against private property, capitalism, markets, success, all that stuff.

• He would raise taxes and increase regulation in the teeth of a severe recession.

• He wants to nationalize and socialize healthcare, housing, God knows what else—banking and finance, to be sure, now that the bailout is in place as a mechanism.

• He would not defend this country.

• He believes the U.S. is a racist oppressor, the source of the world’s problems.

• He is for open borders.

• He believes in the “global test.”

• He wants to beggar us to correct for variations in solar weather.

• He would appoint socialist judges.

• He supports the Fairness Doctrine, and his people are already using brownshirt tactics on political speech they consider inimical.

• He supports infanticide.

• He adheres to a theology centered on the elevation of one race, and the destruction of another.

• He’s the candidate of al Qaeda, Rev. Wright, and Louis Farrakhan; in fact he is the candidate of all our enemies.

• He proposes the formation of Obama Youth.

• He has messianic pretensions, and intoxicated fanatical followers—millions of them—who utterly control the media, the academy, the schools, and all agencies of government.

What more do we need to know about the guy, exactly, that would put him over the top as far as we’re concerned? A passionate interest in the occult?

It may be that Obama’s election will indeed stimulate the right. So did FDR; they were able to jaw him down to a 90 percent top marginal tax bracket.

Don’t get me wrong. McCain is an incoherent liberal—a redundancy, no? But at least he does not hate the West.

LA replies:

All along, Americans have failed to oppose the steady takeover of America by the cultural left, because they didn’t see the left as the left, they saw it as ordinary, all-American liberalism. They saw cultural and moral radicalism as normal. The left’s presentation of itself as mainstream, and the resulting inability of mainstream Americans to grasp its radical nature, have been among the greatest factors in America’s surrender to the left.

Now we have a possible president who, notwithstanding his soothing rhetoric and persona, is a genuine leftist. If, as president, he pursues the agenda that Kristor has outlined, the nature of the left will be seen in full daylight for the first time. This will create consciousness, it will create understanding, it will create intense opposition. I do not think that even a President Obama and a majority Democratic Congress will be able simply to do what they like. Public opinion, even without votes in the Congress, exerts a political force. Passionate and convicted resistance to the left’s program will make it harder for the left to pass it. If Obama takes off the mask, if the left for the first time reveals itself as it has been all along but kept concealed, Americans will never again see leftism as ordinary and normal. They will see it as alien and destructive, and they will fight it.

Things give rise to their opposites. The genuine leftism of Obama, unveiled, will give birth to a genuine conservatism.

I don’t say that any of this is a certainty. I say that it is a reasonable possibility.

In any case, the outcome of the election, now one week off, will be what it will be. Given the polls, it is highly likely that Obama will be the next president of the United States, whatever we may think or say or do about it. So my argument here can be seen, not as a case against voting for McCain, but as our best hope, in the event of the catastrophe of an Obama victory.

Paul K. writes:

Largely through your discussion of this subject, but also in accordance with my own gut feelings, I’m convinced that a McCain victory would be a greater evil than an Obama victory. But call me an undecided voter, as I haven’t decided which presidential candidate other than Obama or McCain I will vote for.

Some of my conservative friends tell me I’m wasting my vote when I tell them that I will cast it for a third party candidate. I remind them that as a resident of a Blue State, my presidential vote is essentially meaningless anyway, so I might as well expend it to my own satisfaction. It seems to me that as a New Yorker you are in the same situation.

LA replies:

As I’ve mentioned before, I personally do not use the fact that I live in a Blue state to escape what I see as my responsibility of casting my vote as though my vote will or ought to decide the presidency. By casting a vote, I’m expressing my will that the outcome should be as I voted. If I decline to vote for McCain, and Obama wins and revolutionizes America, I will have it on my conscience that I failed to vote for the defeat of the person who brought this catastrophe. As far as I’m concerned, that’s true whether I live in New York or in Utah.

David B. writes:

I have read several threads at VFR about the disaster Obama’s election will be. We are forgetting who is most to blame. That would be George W. Bush. If Bush, after 9-11, had sealed the borders and started a program of attrition to deal with illegal immigration, along with severely restricting future legal immigration, he would have won over 60 percent of the vote in 2004. He could have avoided loans to minorities and the Iraq invasion. Bush insisted on having Colin Powell as Secretary of State, with Condaleezza Rice succeeding him. Having Powell and Rice had a lot to with paving the way for a character like Obama to be President of the United States.

If McCain (or any GOP nominee) was continuing these policies, he would win the 2008 election handily. Obama’s supposed charisma and establishment support would not be enough in this scenario. You can blame Bush’s neocon advisers, but he did what his “gut” told him to do.

Andrew W. writes:

I’m fascinated by what could happen if McCain should somehow win the election. My perspective is probably skewed due to the fact that I attend a liberal law school in a very liberal city, but I see the potential for unbelievable balkanization if Obama doesn’t win next Tuesday. Many in the mainstream media have expressed the opinion that Obama could only lose due to white racism. Will they even try to hide their contempt for white non-liberals going forward if McCain wins? And it’s not just the media. The level of enthusiasm (some might call it fanaticism) the left has for Obama is very high. As Mark Levin put it, there’s something positively cult-like about his supporters.

Based on the liberals I know, the anger the left will feel in the wake of an Obama loss will make their disappointment at George Bush’s re-election in 2004 seem like a pittance in comparison. Finally, there is the issue of blacks. Police departments are apparently preparing for riots no matter who wins, but it seems to me that riots are more likely to occur in the event of an Obama loss. Even if blacks do not riot, the anger and resentment that community feels towards whites will only rise. Undoubtedly the end result of all of this will be very ugly.

Peter H. writes:

Obama says: “…I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay…”

Given the rest of the quote you posted, I suppose he thinks someone else should pay for his sandwich, too. [LA replies: Sure sounds like it.]

More seriously, though, he continues: “[The Supreme Court] didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution…”

So he thinks the Supreme Court should break free from those constraints. Very bad. Moreover, his answer is reasoned, and the passage of time cannot diminish it as he had already been a con law professor, I believe, and would have known better even then.

I have followed and agreed with your take on this election, that an Obama victory would, in the long run, be better for the country because conservatives would fight him, learn, hopefully, from the mistake of presenting an enemy as a candidate, and nominate a more palatable candidate in the future, hopefully beginning to heal the Republican Party in the process. This quote, however, clearly strikes at the heart of our republic and may be approaching, at least in my mind, an “existential threat” to its continued existence as we know it. A president with radical proclivities who openly wishes to unmoor himself from the Constitution isn’t something we’ve seen before, at least in such explicit terms. In this quote, he’s talking about redistribution of wealth. But once you’ve freed yourself from the Constitution, any lunacy becomes possible. Indeed, why pay any attention to the Constitution at all? After all, it’s just an impediment t to doing anything you damn well please.

This is the most disturbing thing I’ve yet heard from Obama and has me thinking about whether I can withhold my vote for McCain, as odious as it might be to cast it. In the next election (or whenever Obama’s finished) the Democrats probably won’t be able to find someone this destructive (i.e. their next nominee will be to the right of Obama). So maybe we should reconsider withholding our votes from McCain.

LA replies:

I think it should be evident from everything that I’ve been posting that I’ve been reconsidering that for some time.

David B. writes:

I forgot to add that a liberal Republican president will inevitably fail. When he goes to the left, he antagonizes his voters and gets no credit from liberals. It happened with both Bush 41 and Bush 43. McCain says that he “will work with Democrats.” This is more of the same and will bring defeat for Republicans at all levels. Reagan was able to keep a majority of over 50 percent. A GOP President can succeed only by governing from the Right. Have the geniuses at the neocon magazines managed to figure this out?

Zachary W. writes:

I don’t see how an Obama victory over McCain will “raise consciousness” in any practically different way.

Obama operates shrewdly, knows he’s got eight years to achieve his goal of empowering the basest, stupidest, laziest members of society at everybody else’s expense. He’s not going to antagonize conservatives right away by dropping the mask at his inauguration. He’ll have the patience and confidence of a Christian holding four aces, to quote Mark Twain.

Broadly speaking, the demographic enemies of traditionalism are women and minorities. Most women are simply incapable of understanding that only a traditionalist society is stable and functional, and that a liberal society is a slow motion train wreck (or better yet, a slow motion thrill ride off a cliff). Most minorities, fueled by awareness of their insufficiency, don’t give a damn about America’s stability and long-term functionality at all.

Leftism being a luxury, the only thing that raises consciousness is catastrophe, after which the ignorant women and clamorous minorities (out of necessity) settle into their natural positions, and give sober white men a chance to take over. In this way, a McCain victory followed by terrible, barbaric riots would be much better at raising consciousness than a Machiavellian Obama presidency, decomposing America by slow degrees, with the complicity of an insidious media.

I should add that economic catastrophe, which may happen whoever wins, doesn’t necessarily raise conservative consciousness (as we’ve seen). The indignation against the free market becomes too strong. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich (who call the shots) don’t care much about America’s long term future: their lifestyle and their progeny are safe whatever happens. So, they collude in the process to keep things as stable (and profitable) as possible for themselves in the short term.

Richard W. writes:

One reason it is hard for me to consider voting for Obama is that I was born and raised in Detroit. [LA replies: I didn’t think anyone posting at VFR was actually considering voting for Obama, as distinct from not voting for McCain.]

Following the deadly Detroit riots of 1967 the city voted for change and hope, dumping the incumbent white mayor and electing the first black mayor of the city, Coleman Young.

What happened then is the stuff of legend. Detroit’s decline was already underway but it greatly accelerated under Young. Detroit should serve as a cautionary tale of what well meaning but incompetent leadership riding on the coattails of “racial healing” can do.

Like Obama Coleman Young was a radical progressive. He belonged to a number of radical organizations, including the Progressive Party. He served one term in the Michigan state senate before winning the mayor’s job.

Young served from 1974 to 1993. He was the subject of numerous FBI corruption investigations, fathered a child out of wedlock, and oversaw the on-going shrinkage of the city. He raised taxes (Detroit as two percent higher income tax than the rest of the state), no doubt accelerating the departure of many remaining well off residents to the suburbs. His signature accomplishments were a few big showcase buildings, the riverfront Renaissance Center chief among them. Offsetting these was the departure of nearly half the residents. A city that was once home to two million Americans now has a population of under one million, and is still shrinking.

Detroit has been the butt of jokes for most of my adult life. The maladministration of Coleman Young was a key catalyst to the final destruction of the city.

The culture of corruption that he created has never been rooted out. Today’s news contains the sad story of multiple gang shootings at the city’s Ford high school, including one fatality. Amazingly the shooter is the son of a Detroit police homicide detective. The involvement of the Detroit Police in crime is legendary in the city, rivaling LA’s worst excesses.

The incredible arrogance and incompetence of the school administration is fully on display in this article, as is their laughable contention that the solution to the schools problems is more “African-centered educational programs.”

The lesson I take is: elections matter, and a political culture once embedded is often impossible to remove or fix. Coleman’s successor, Dennis Archer, also a black man, was, by all accounts, a decent fellow who understood that for the city to prosper it needed to work with the surrounding suburbs and regional businesses. Still, citizens and bureaucracy had become used to the cultural corruption of handouts and patronage jobs that Young had fostered. Archer served only one term, and his designated successor was defeated by the Youngian demagogue Kwame Kirkpatrick. He, of course is infamous, having recently resigned as mayor after a felony conviction. Kirkpatrick is Coleman Young’s true legacy.

This site has done a great job of pointing out the dangers to the nation of a McCain presidency. They are immense. Still, many of the arguments contra McCain include the idea that a disastrous Obama presidency will create a momentum for real change at some point in the future. That is a comforting idea, and perhaps will prove correct in time.

Still, Detroit is there to remind us that there is a different outcome. Detroit graphically demonstrates that once a politics of racial spoils, incompetence and disintegration sets in it can be impossible to reverse.

October 28

Bruce B. writes:

I guess I’m not convinced by the “existential threat” arguments against Obama, if only because the GOP’s current beliefs and policies are an existential threat to our America. When my youngest son is my age, he’ll be a minority. That’s based on the census bureau’s numbers not mine. That’s little more than one generation. And I suspect that this date will continue to be pushed up as our dispossession gains momentum. McCain and his type are an imminent threat to us.

Regarding Detroit, it’s literally an African majority city so I don’t think Detroit’s condition is merely a result of African leadership.

Jeremy G. writes:

Andrew W. and Zachary W. write that a McCain victory may bring greater balkanization of the country and even race riots, which may be better for raising consciousness than a victory of the smooth talking Obama. This reasoning has some merit, but there are other possibilities to consider as well. First of all, a McCain victory brings a collective sigh of relief from white conservatives whereas an Obama victory brings dread. A collective feeling of dread among tens of millions of whites is far more conducive to consciousness raising and opposition to leftism than collective feelings of relief. And this relief would be sorely misplaced because a McCain victory also moves the country leftward. Secondly, blacks may not riot in large numbers following a McCain victory. If they do riot, the liberal media would go into overdrive blaming it on racist white people and most white liberals would agree. Therefore rioting may help the left discredit what’s left of America. Wouldn’t it be better for raising consciousness if blacks rioted following an Obama victory? In that eventuality, liberals would be trying to cover it up, rather than celebrating it. Thirdly and most importantly, a McCain victory further alienates blacks and white liberals, it animates and mobilizes the left to pull the country ever leftward. We’re hoping that an Obama victory has a similar effect on white conservatives. This is highly likely because an Obama victory would make it crystal clear that whites are no longer in control of the country. Leftists in Congress would become more open about their radical views. The next eight years and probably longer will be a shared experience of racial dispossession and racial panic. Even if Obama is super careful about what he says, many leftist Democrats in Congress won’t be. Wouldn’t this contribute to the mobilization of conservative whites? At least as much as a McCain victory would contribute to the mobilization of white leftists and blacks.

The unpleasant reality is that Bush positioned the Republican party in a harmful direction, McCain will continue down a destructive path, and Obama is the only alternative. No one looks forward to being out of power and under siege. Nietzsche wrote, “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.” As long as Obama and the left are not able to kill us (e.g., shut down conservative talk radio, shut down conservatives at universities, throw Jared Taylor, Peter Brimelow, Larry Auster in prison, etc.) we will emerge from this disaster as a stronger people.

Mark J. writes:

Interesting comments by Richard W. regarding Detroit. There’s a key difference between the Detroit situation and ours, however: whites could simply pack up and move ten or twenty miles to the suburbs and escape the Detroit problems. That meant that the outrages perpetrated by blacks and black leadership in Detroit didn’t lead to a white awakening that motivated whites to change Detroit—they could just leave, which is a much easier way to deal with the problem. But white American conservatives can’t just leave America to avoid the problem. Beyond the fact that it’s a much bigger change to leave the country than it is to move a few miles to a different town, there’s really nowhere for us to move. This is it, America is our last stand, for better or worse.

An analogy to the Obama/McCain situation might be the 9/11 attacks. The Muslims made a terrible strategic blunder by making such an aggressive move. (I believe I’ve read that bin Laden or the al Qaida #2 has admitted as much.) They awoke our resolve—at least for a while—and were set back on their heels by our response. A much more effective strategy for them is the quiet demographic infiltration. I think an Obama/Democrat sweep would be much like a 9/11 for non-leftist whites. As one commenter pointed out, Obama is probably not stupid enough to show his true colors from day one, but I suspect he will not be able to resist pushing his leftist agenda harder than he really should. On the other hand, a McCain win would have the same sort of effect as a quiet Muslims demographic invasion—the mass of white non-leftists will be lulled into complacency for another four years while the character of the nation continues to be perverted towards the transnationalist, multicultural left.

Gintas writes:

The continuing saga of rightists who are now leftist:

Jeffrey Hart writes at Taki’s Magazine that he supports Obama “because he is conservative in comparison to the Republican Party as it is.”

There are many reasons a rightist could give for voting for Obama—usually having to do with slapping some sense into the Republican party—but because he is the more “conservative” is the most far-fetched one. He’s not just voting (however grudgingly) for Obama, he’s supporting him. Because he’s more conservative!

LA replies:

I’ve discussed Hart’s increasing liberalism and support for Obama before. Here are past VFR mentions of him.

LA continues:

Hart’s article is extremely brief. Here is the totality of it:

Why I’m Supporting Obama

Posted by Jeffrey Hart on October 28, 2008

In 1968, I was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, then-Governor of California, when he thought he might get the Republican nomination. When Richard Nixon was nominated, I joined the Nixon speechwriter team in New York City. I have been a senior editor at National Review since 1969, but was fired last month.

I support Barack Obama because he is conservative in comparison to the Republican Party as it is.

I am a Burkean conservative, that is, one suspicious of abstract theory in politics.

In 1789 the French radicals, Robespierre, St. Just, Marat, et al., wanted to make France a Republic. Not a bad idea. And they wanted to do it all at once, according to Republicn theory.

But Robespierre would have been astonished at the idea of making Iraq a democracy of Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, all of whom have been locked in religious hostilities for quite some time. Yet in a speech at Whitehall, Bush said Iraq would become a “beacon of liberty in the Middle East.”

Robespierre would have been appalled.

A trillion dollars, 10 billion a month, carnage—all predictable.

And that’s only the beginning of Bush malefactions.

[end of article]

Of course Hart is correct that the Bush-neocon policy of turning Muslim countries into democracies is insanely radical. And ending that policy could certainly be seen as a sufficient reason for opposing Bush and his successor McCain. But to say, on the basis of Bush’s Democracy Project, that Bush and McCain are more radical than Obama, while ignoring all the ways in which Obama is far more radical than Bush and McCain, is not responsible. Personally I had the feeling going back several years that Hart had gone soft in the head.

Spencer Warren writes:

The revelation of Obama’s 2001 interview now has me for the first time leaning toward voting for McCain. I vote in Virginia. Michael Savage reluctantly endorsed McCain last evening for the same reason.

Gintas writes:

The American Conservatives writes:

This election offers particularly dismal prospects for conservatives: the Senate’s most liberal member versus a Republican who combines the worst policies of George W. Bush with an erratic temper and a thinly veiled contempt for the Right. No third-party candidate has been able to break past the margins to mount an insurgent campaign.

Given these impoverished alternatives, no easy consensus emerges. So rather than contrive to deliver an official endorsement, we asked friends from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to discuss how they are voting, whether they see their vote as advancing a particular issue or fitting into a larger strategy, and what conflicts their choice might entail. Some may surprise, others confound, perhaps a few will persuade.

Here’s a summary from their symposium (I don’t know who many of the folks are):

Peter Brimelow: Baldwin
Reid Buckley: McCain
John Patrick Diggins: Obama (I think)
Rod Dreher: Not Voting
Francis Fukuyama: Obama
Kara Hopkins: McCain
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn: Obama
Leonard Liggio: Bob Barr
Daniel McCarthy: Ron Paul (write-in)
Scott McConnell: Obama
Declan McCullagh: Not Voting
Robert A. Pape: Obama
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.: Not Voting (I think)
Gerald J. Russello: Not Voting
Steve Sailer: Ward Connerly (write-in)
John Schwenkler: Bob Barr
Joseph Sobran: Chuck Baldwin
Peter Wood: McCain

Not all “Not Voting” are not voting at all, some indicated that they wouldn’t be voting on the president, but would for state and local positions.

LA replies:

I see that Steve Sailer intends to write in Ward Connerly. That’s a good idea, Connerly is a man of principle and courage, an outstanding American whom I admire very much. But, to my regret, Connerly supports homosexual “marriage,” the most radical social innovation in the history of the world; and not only does he support it personally but he has written an article advocating it. So I couldn’t vote for him for president. I’m thus still left with my previously expressed interest in writing in a vote for Charles (Chuck) Martel. Now, since Martel is not only dead, which would seem to be a bar to his election, but had been dead for over 1,000 years at the time the United States was founded, and thus was never even a U.S. citizen, natural born or otherwise, it may seem absurd to consider voting for him. However, a write-in vote for any individual for president who is not legally registered as a write-in candidate in the state in which the vote is cast is legally meaningless; the vote is not even registered by name at the state level. The upshot is that a write-in vote for Charles Martel has no less legal reality than a write-in vote for Ward Connerly; both votes are legally non-existent. At the same time, a vote for Martel would have important symbolic meaning, since Martel, more than any other figure in Western history, represents the separationist policy on Islam on which I think the West’s very survival depends: to stop the entry of Islam into the West, and to remove it from the West.

Michael Hart writes:

I see you are really agonizing over your vote. I want you to know that, whoever you vote for, I admire your effort to do what is best for your country, and the effort you are putting into making an honest decision. (Alas, not everyone is doing that.)

October 29

Paul Henri writes from New Orleans:

I have to vote for McCain. Obama with a Democratic supermajority is just too scary, and I am sure there is more bad news to come out about his past. I don’t want to look back and see myself as having made no effort to defeat this potential monster.

Still, I will pray that McCain will somehow be unable to hold office for long. Maybe an impeachment or a major scandal or an embarrassment or some other miracle.

LA replies:

“I don’t want to look back and see myself as having made no effort to defeat this potential monster.”

That’s my fear, that’s what keeps my mind open to the possibility of voting for McCain.

Irwin Graulich writes:

The choice this year is between bad (McCain) and horrible (Obama). It reminds me of the time in college where I had to register for a class and the three different teachers who taught the course were considered bad, badder and baddest!!!! I took the bad. Unfortunately in life we do not always have a choice between good and bad. I mean we had to partner with Churchill (good) and Stalin (bad) in WWII.

If B.O. gets elected, it will be the first leftist (not liberal) ever elected president. I can only hope that my theory holds true—that the president of the United States cannot do most of the things he actually wants to do—even if he has the majority in both houses. God help us if Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson becomes secretary of state! Personally, I think that Obama will harm race relations more than George Wallace ever did.

LA replies:

First, as you know, I profoundly disagree with the argument that one must always and automatically go with the lesser of two evils. I see that position as a form of intellectual and moral slavery that empowers and encourages the lesser of the two evils to keep getting more and more evil, because he, the less evil one, knows that so long as he’s the tiniest bit less evil than the more evil one, he’s got your vote. This logic also encourages the more evil one to keep getting even more evil, since he knows that the less evil one will be empowered by the support of his base (i.e. you) to keep following the more evil one to the left, keeping just a couple of step behind him, with the whole dance moving the center of American politics in a more and more evil direction.

This doesn’t mean that I will not vote for McCain. But if I do vote for him, it won’t be because he is less bad than Obama, which is a relativist argument, but because Obama is so absolutely bad that he simply must be stopped.

Second, on the question of whether Obama’s election will damage race relations, whether that would be a bad thing depends on what you mean by “damage” and by “race relations.” See my entry from last spring, “Hanson: Obama has set back race relations by a generation”, to which I reply: “Yay!”, and list how much better race relations were in 1960 than at present.

Irwin Graulich replies:

Dear Larry

Please notice that I did NOT say the lesser of two evils. You should not put words in my mouth. That may work with some of your intellectually elite pals, but it won’t work on a “C” student from Brooklyn College like me!!!!!

I said “bad or horrible.” I did not use the term evil. If I were choosing between Hitler and Stalin or Chavez and Castro, of course I would do everything to fight them and NEVER vote for either of them. I do not think Obama or McCain fall into the “evil” category. Let’s keep that term exclusively for truly evil people. It is very dangerous to do what you just did by calling just plain foolish or bad people—evil. There is a GIANT difference. [LA replies: “The lesser of two evils” does not necessarily mean that we are speaking about literally evil people. Let’s say a liberal in 1980 who couldn’t stand Jimmy Carter nevertheless voted for him because he viewed him as the lesser of two evils. That doesn’t mean that he saw Carter as evil. It means he saw him as less bad. Thus “lesser of two evils” could mean literally the lesser of two evils, but generally, I think, it just means lesser of two bads.

I do take your point that if both choices were truly evil you would not vote for either. The problem is that the popular phrase, vote for the lesser of two evils, clearly implies that no matter how bad the less bad one becomes, you should vote for him. That’s why this widely used idea is objectionable, as I have explained.]

On another subject, even though there is some truth to what you wrote about the terrible consequences of various government policies to lessen discrimination, I really do strive for a color blind society which I think would be great. I do not think there is any inherent difference between a black or a white person. Just check out the Ethiopian Jews in Israel. [LA replies: You should read VFR more often, not just when I send you an article on my e-mail list.]

I believe that the United States was headed in some way toward that ideal. However, Obama has made comments that create animosity towards blacks and stress a basic difference between black and white people. Mr. B.O. smells good, looks good and speaks very well. However, he is a fox in sheep’s clothing.

By the way, your voting for a third party candidate in previous elections is a totally wasted vote. The only thing it did was satisfy your ego. [LA replies: Thank you for the respect you show for me and for decisions that I took very seriously, that I argued for at length, and that I still think were the right decisions. For example, if Kerry had won in 2004 (and I said throughout that year that a Kerry victory while disastrous in the short run would be much better for America in the long run), we would not now be looking at a destroyed conservative movement and Republican party. We would not now be looking at the election of a radical leftist as the president of the U.S. But I guess it was all about satisfying my ego, huh?]

Regards.

Irwin

LA continues:

Also, notwithstanding your insistence that you were not speaking of the lesser of two evils, anyone reading your e-mail would take the below passage to mean the same thing that most people mean when they speak of “voting for lesser of two evils,” i.e., not literally evil people, but the lesser of two bads:

The choice this year is between bad (McCain) and horrible (Obama). It reminds me of the time in college where I had to register for a class and the 3 different teachers who taught the course were considered bad, badder and baddest!!!! I took the bad. Unfortunately in life we do not always have a choice between good and bad.

Paul K. writes:

Slightly tangential, but Irwin Graulich writes,”I do not think there is any inherent difference between a black or a white person. Just check out the Ethiopian Jews in Israel.”

Is Mr. Graulich aware of the high unemployment, dependency on social services, drug and alcohol abuse, and crime rates of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel? Using this example to suggest that there are no racial differences does not inspire confidence in his reasoning.

Paul Henri writes:

Yes it is a tough call. Sean Hannity has been working on me through his radio show since the shocking news that McCain was going to be the candidate. I needed some solace. Sean just keeps on coming with how bad Obama is even though he has big problems with McCain. I never listened to his radio show before 2008. The Obama-related news often is so bad that I have to turn the show off. (Sean was an illegal-immigrant apologist a few years ago, but has been correct for years. I suspect ratings had something to do with the change.)

Sam B. writes:

Last week, while mulling over my mail-in ballot, I thought hard before I voted for McCain. Over the last several years, I regarded McCain much as I regarded Bob Dole—offering up Delphic wisdom on the Sunday morning talk shows. until I got tired of seeing their faces and hearing their droning, uninspiring voices, wondering why the three networks insisted on interviewing them week in, week out, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. During the primaries it was a toss-up between O.B. and Hillary. Then, suddenly, O.B. was the candidate, and it was time for a decision. I wouldn’t vote for O.B. I was considering not voting for either. But then all I’d have is the dubious satisfaction of maintaining my proud conservative credentials—not exactly a satisfactory denouement I could live with. But in the last couple of days, McCain seems to have come alive, what with O.B.’s encounter with Joe the Plumber, or Joe Everyman., and O.B.’s share-the-wealth utterance. I still can’t stand McCain, and should he be elected (which is not such a long-shot now as it was ten days ago), I will chaff under his stewardship. But I will expect authentic conservatives, both at the grassroots level and in the Congress, to hold his feet to the fire. Those conservatives—I understand Ann Coulter is one—who will vote for O.B. out of sheer sulk with McCain, had better Google the last Weimar elections before Hitler took power for a lesson in “the worse it is, the better.” If McCain wins—though it still appears unlikely—I’ll still be depressed, but not nearly as much if O.B. wins.

LA replies:

If McCain wins: profound depression, a depression unto death (paraphrasing Kierkegaard’s description of despair as the sickness unto death).

If Obama wins: profound horror, but also excitement and hope. Because at last the nature of the other side will be clear to all, and there will be a fight for our existence, instead of endless accommodation.

October 30

Zachary W. writes:

I understand that the conservatives in America will be braced by an Obama victory in a way they won’t be if McCain wins. That’s human nature. But the traditionalism that you support is so untimely right now, a traditionalist candidate so unpalatable to the great majority of Americans, that the best you can hope for is a demographic “holding pattern,” so that when the day comes when white Americans somehow realize that liberalism is a dead end, it won’t be too late.

Obama understands the power of demography. He’s a Machiavellian coalition-building community organizer. His overriding concern during his first term will be to get elected for a second. Amnesty for illegals helps the Democrats, so they are far more likely to pass it. He’ll be sure to work covertly at first, keep his hatred of “middleclassness” masked, and let the media provide the necessary air cover. More radical federal judges appointed for life that no-one knows about until they allow park benches as legal addresses. More money funneled into “community organizing” brownshirt brigades that stifle free speech, often under the radar. Rapid expansion of the government payroll, which always means more Democratic voters.

In the near future, we can be sure government and immigration and liberal morality will continue to expand whoever is in power; the question is how can we keep that expansion as slow as possible. Do you really think one term of McCain can be worse in this regard than the “coronation” of perhaps the most insidious character in all of American history?

LA replies:

This is very well put.

It’s sort of like, “Up against the wall, traditionalist!”

Kristor writes:

I notice that in your reply to me my rhetorical question (“Exactly what would be the threshold that Obama would have to cross before it became clear that he poses an existential threat to America?”) remains unanswered. I do indeed understand your argument, and hope you are right. But I have taken you to have argued in other entries that if Obama poses an existential threat, then we don’t really have the luxury of betting on the waking of the West; rather, we face the prospect of sitting at the wake of the West. In that case, we should vote for McCain. So is he an existential threat, or not? Does the fact that he wants to traduce the Constitution push him over the top? What would? I don’t mean to harass you, but rather to plumb your mind and heart. What more would Obama need to do, or say, in order for you to feel decisively that he simply cannot be risked?

LA replies:

You’re getting close to it now.

I was thinking just yesterday that the very fact that he said what he said about the Constitution, redistribution, and so on, even if he didn’t try to do those things as president, or even if he tried, but could be stopped, means that we simply must vote against him. A man who is an open opponent of our system cannot be allowed to be president.

Kristor replies:

Yeah, that pushed me over the top, too. It would be like the Germans electing Hitler. It will be interesting to watch him take the oath of office.

LA replies:

At the same time, President Roosevelt, in his 1944 State of the Union address, laid out a bunch of welfare-state type “rights” not unlike Obama’s approach. And Roosevelt, notwithstanding his leftism (or occasional leftism), is considered one of the great figures in U.S. history. So why is Obama considered so beyond the pale for saying things not unlike what Roosevelt said?

There are big differences of course. Roosevelt’s leftward veerings in the 1940s were widely opposed, not just by Republicans, but by the leaders of the Democratic party, the same leaders who later in 1944 orchestrated FDR’s choice of the centrist Truman to replace the leftist Wallace as vice president and saved America from a pro-Communist president. (This story is told in fascinating detail in Thomas Fleming’s “The New Dealers’ War: FDR and the War Within World War II.” At the moment I forget the name of the man who was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1944 and who was the key figure in the selection of Truman, but there ought to be a statue in his honor.) Roosevelt had no opportunity, as far as I know, to put his socialist ideas into practice. Today’s Democratic party is of course vastly different from that of 1944. And of course with Obama there is also the specfically racial motive to equalize blacks with whites by a major redistribution of wealth from whites to blacks. There is no question in my mind that this idea is at the core of Obama’s thought.

At the same time, to say that Obama has beliefs that are outside the pale of the American order—which he clearly does—is not the same as saying that he poses an existential threat or would be able to inflict existential harm to America. We’ve discussed many times that in his desire to be a figure of harmony and consensus he may hold back from acting on his radical beliefs once he becomes president. Or he may want to enact such things but will be stopped by an aroused public. He may find the political cost is too great, just as Clinton in 1993, for all his intense desire to order the military to allow open homosexuality, ran into such opposition that he just couldn’t do it.

But these are just possibilities. What we know about Obama is that he wants to revolutionize America. Isn’t that enough to say that we are rationally obligated to vote against him, period, no matter how abysmal his opponent is?

Given all the bad things we know about Obama, I recognize I’m in a seemingly losing position here in holding out against a personal decision to vote for McCain. But there is something within me, in my body, my guts, my nerves, that keeps me from voting for McCain. I don’t think that this is a rejection of reason in favor of feeling and instinct. Rather, I think that if my gut feeling is that strong, then I can’t ignore it, because it’s telling me something, and what it’s telling me is the sum total of everything I’ve thought and written about this subject, but which perhaps I can’t bring consciously to mind all at one moment.

The main thing my instinct is telling me is (as I’ve been saying all along) that it’s better that the left manifest itself fully now, that we have it out with the left now, rather than having a president who will suppress all opposition to the left—a president whose highest mission in his political life has been to suppress conservative opposition to the left. (To make sure there’s no misunderstanding, the person I’m referring to here is not Obama who is of course well known for his attempts to suppress opposition to himself, but McCain, who is well known for his attempts to suppress opposition to Democrats.)

At the same time, I see that that thought may be wrong, that the harm an Obama-Democratic ascendancy will do to America may be greater than the gains that I imagine will come from the conservative opposition to that ascendancy.

RB writes:

There is one additional consideration to introduce if I might. If Obama were only a typical socialist re-distributor as are most Democrats it would be tolerable. But there is much evidence that he detests white people. He pals around with virulent white haters such as Wright and assorted followers of Farrakhan. He has also admired and is admired by various Islamists and Palestinian activists. The group of whites he most seems to approve of are self-hating whites such as Pfleger and a cadre of ’60s radicals. Anyone on campus in the late ’60s and early ’70s is quite familiar with the type. Unlike their ideological forebears these “new” leftists actively hate their own race and their western cultural heritage. This is shown by Bernadine Dohrn’s admiration for the murders carried out by the Manson family. Obama’s attitude toward his own white relatives is shown by his comments regarding Grandma. Furthermore, in his own writings he condemns members of his family in Kenya who were simply employed by white colonialists.

Given all that, a serious question to be raised is whether Obama would do anything to protect a people he detests from attack by internal or external enemies. And if an attack occurred would he be expected to retaliate. Might it be that only if said enemies were foolish enough to attack a primarily minority city or region would they risk the wrath of Obama?

LA writes:

I’m not saying it’s good to have a bad thing in order to have a good thing. But I would point out this fact. When and how did conservatism (or, as I prefer, traditionalism, since “conservatism” can mean almost anything today) begin? It began as a reaction to the catastrophe of the French Revolution. The French Revolution sought to overturn, not just an oppressive monarchy, but the entire order of human society. Like the Communists who came after them, the Jacobins aimed at destroying every existing civilized society on earth and replacing it by their imagined reign of equality which was tyranny. It was in response to this attempted destruction of civilized order that conservatism arose, as a defense of, re-articulation of, and attempt to restore that order.

If the worst scenarios of an Obama-Democratic ascendancy take place, surely a new and more profound conservatism will arise to resist it.

Mark J. writes:

I’d like to offer a thought. You wrote: “The main thing my instinct is telling me is (as I’ve been saying all along) that it’s better that the left manifest itself fully now, that we have it out with the left now, rather than having a president who will suppress all opposition to the left—a president whose highest mission in his political life has been to suppress conservative opposition to the left.”

But what if Obama wins and the Left DOESN’T manifest itself fully now? What if they don’t overplay their hand? Obama is of the Alinsky school, right? Isn’t that school of thought all about taking things in increments, working up from small to big? Not trying to bite off too much at one time? Gaining the Presidency is a BIG bite for them. If they are smart—and Obama seems to be—he will spend his time being the great reconciliator, who mainly appoints reassuring white men to visible posts and does nothing but small but important things at the margin, like appointing liberal judges. Get whitey used to seeing blacks in the top leadership positions. Be the smiling Nelson Mandela of America. They will want to fully digest and assimilate this big leap forward, and ease those big changes into place incrementally so as not to arouse the “immune system” of the white population.

An Obama that pushed hard and was in our faces would be a boon to us. A quiet, incrementalist President Obama would be the most dangerous of all, just like quiet demographic-invasion Muslims are the most dangerous of all. And my reading is that it is more likely than not that Obama is just such a soothing incrementalist.

LA replies:

But if Obama conducts himself as you predict, his presidency will not be the catastrophe—or at least not the imminent catastrophe—that many fear. There will be time to regroup before Obama and the Democrats do their worst. And there’s always the next election.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 27, 2008 04:14 PM | Send