“Liberalism must be defeated everywhere throughout the United States”

In a comment earlier today, I said that forced approval of homosexuality may force conservatives to start seceding from American society. But will they be able to?

James P. writes:

You can run but you can’t hide. Some conservatives think they’ll be able to move to Wyoming or some other state that’s still very white to escape liberalism, immigration, and their associated pathologies. Alas, there are always people like this guy, Kevin Drumm, who find the existence of majority white enclaves “shocking” and unacceptable, and strive to eliminate them, if necessary by importing minorities. Liberalism must be defeated everywhere throughout the United States, or it will make the entire United States uninhabitable.

This is from an article, “Diversifying Middle America,” in Inside Higher Ed:

… Kevin Drumm, the district’s president, said the area is becoming more diverse all the time, as it has plenty of jobs to offer—mostly energy-related work with coal, natural gas and oil. Because of its recent growth in comparison to its relatively small population, he asserted that Wyoming is actually the most rapidly diversifying state in the country.Using this as a backdrop, Drumm came to the district in 2004 with the ambition of creating a more welcoming atmosphere for different kinds of ideas, cultures and students. “As a president who moved to Wyoming from a city and college in Massachusetts that was majority minority, it was a bit of a culture shock moving to an institution that was 97 percent Anglo,” said Drumm, who was previously vice president for enrollment at Springfield Technical Community College. “I began to cogitate how we could begin to intentionally diversify this college.” …

Claudia Colnar, director of international programs, said the colleges began making a concerted effort to attract foreign students to Wyoming, of all places. Although it seems a hard sell, the district has sent a number of delegations overseas—particularly to China, where there is great interest in American education—to try to recruit students who wish to study in the United States. …

In the classroom, Drumm said the institution is still working to further integrate a global awareness component in its curriculum. Though more and more faculty members are beginning to “internationalize” their courses, he acknowledged there has not been buy-in from everyone.

“Some of my faculty will say, ‘Oh, that’s an eastern thing,’ ” Drumm said. “And they’ll mean it as an insult.”

The efforts to diversify have also not been without some resistance in the local area.

“We have a very dark [international] student who has been stopped five times by the local police and has never been cited for anything,” said Drumm, referring to instances of prejudice in his community. “Also, we raise a lot of money privately, and fund raising could become an issue because of what we’re doing. So far, however, that hasn’t happened.”

LA replies:

As I’ve always said, I support Sam Francis’s call for the reconquest of America, and reject the idea of secession, at least for now. But we must acknowledge that there may come a point when the evil and coercion of the prevailing system become so great that we will simply have no choice but to try to break away from it. James P. makes an effective counter-argument to that: we can run but we can’t hide.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas writes:

Since you mention Sam Francis, here’s an essay by him: “An Infantile Disorder”, about Southern dreams of secession. I point this out because there is no section to which we can run and hide and be left alone. The elite own all the hives (“cities”) and governments.

Francis wrote:

But even if secession were possible, it would be a bad idea. Today, the main political line of division in the United States is not between the regions of North and South (insofar as such regions can still be said to exist) but between elite and nonelite. As I have tried to make plain in columns in this magazine and many other places for the last 15 years, the elite, based in Washington, New York, and a few large metropolises, allies with the underclass against Middle Americans, who pay the taxes, do the work, fight the wars, suffer the crime, and endure their own political and cultiaral dispossession at the hands of the elite and its underclass vanguard. Today, the greatest immediate danger to Middle America and the European-American civilization to which it is heir lies in the importation of a new underclass from the Third World through mass immigration. The danger is in part economic, in part political, and in part cultural, but it is also in part racial, pure and simple. The leaders of the alien underclass, as well as those of the older black underclass, invoke race in explicit terms, and they leave no doubt that their main enemy is the white man and his institutions and patterns of belief.

LA replies:

It’s not clear to me from the excerpt why, if secession were possible, it would be a bad idea.

Gintas replies:

I think Francis’ main point is the conditions for a Southern-style secession don’t exist, and the Southern secessionists aren’t accounting for the current state of things.

There aren’t clear sections anymore, like North and South used to be. The liberalism in the elites is pervasive across the country—isn’t every newspaper, every TV station, every government, every city, pretty much the same in its liberalism?—and there is the same black and Mexican underclass everywhere as well. The liberal elite and their underclasses are nicely distributed across the country.

But the task is even harder than what the South faced in 1860. At least the South had a starting point of 11 states that formed a fairly coherent section. Even to get to a coherent section, a starting point for secession, we’d have to reconquer X states, in each state there’d have to be a minor Civil War to rout out the liberalism, a Gramscian counter-revolution. That’s probably what Francis had in mind with his reconquest idea, but the AmRen link in your other thread comes up empty.

If you can reconquer enough states for a secession, why not just reconquer the whole country?

Not that the task isn’t worth it, of course it is. At this point I think it requires divine help. I’m guardedly optimistic about a complete economic meltdown.

LA replies:

“I’m guardedly optimistic about a complete economic meltdown.”

LOL. Such is the alternative mental universe we trads and paleos inhabit.

Seriously, to the extent I’ve thought about this at all, which is not a great deal, my thoughts on this hadn’t gone to a whole section. The numbers of such a group would be tiny at first. So I was thinking in terms of one or two states, or of smaller communities scattered around the country; and, further, not of literal, 1860-type secession leading to a new sovereignty, but of a community (or communities) that while politically still a part of the United States was largely independent of the main currents in the society at large. Such a community would not only supply a refuge for its people for a decent life, but would be in a sufficiently independent position to fight back against the dominant liberal tendencies of America.

I’m always saying that in order to resist liberalism, we must stand on separate ground from liberalism. I’ve meant that, in the first instance, in the individual sense—that we as individuals must be mentally free of liberalism and standing on non-liberal principles. But the same obviously applies in the external world as well. To mount an effective resistance to liberalism, there must be actual, geographic and institutional communities in which liberalism is not the dominant ideology.

Jonathan W. writes:

I think Francis was trying to make the point that even if a geographic region of the United States was able to secede, such a region would still be left with the “elites” in the urban areas and the “Middle Americans” elsewhere. In order for a secession movement to be successful, the non-elites would all have to move to one area of the country and build a power base there. Otherwise, the seceeded region would merely be a smaller yet equally dysfunctional model of America today. For example, suppose the entire state of New York seceeded from the union tomorrow. The more conservative areas upstate would still be left with the poor non-white underclass in the city along with their elite enablers in the city and suburbs.

LA replies:

This argument doesn’t make sense to me. In order fo a state to secede, it would already had to have reached the point where it was not controlled by the liberal elite.

K. Miller writes:

I found your site via Vdare, and have been reading it for several months. I enjoy it thoroughly for the intellectual level of discussion within.

Your “Liberalism Must Be Defeated” section really struck a chord with me because I too have been wondering how to defeat liberalism and how to separate ourselves from its insidious grasp over our country, our lives and our children’s futures. I am married to a professional and have two children. We live in northern California which as you know is one of the liberal / homosexual / diversity/ illegal-alien cesspools within our country. I am truly depressed when I see what is happening to our country.

My husband and I pay a mid-five-figure sum each year in federal taxes alone. I jokingly told my husband that I would love just not to file taxes anymore as a protest, but of course he said, “Don’t even think that! We can’t afford to have me thrown in jail or have our income confiscated in expensive lawsuits, IRS penalties, and interest.” He’s right but I think there could very well come a day when people organize in their tax resistance, beyond the “Tea Parties” that are occurring. When thousands of people organize and decide en masse to stop paying their taxes will be the day when we can start “starving the beast.” This will come probably at a time when people have nothing else to lose, because confiscatory taxes will have taken everything and the anarcho-tyrants will have taken our freedom to congegrate and believe as we choose. In the meantime, I continue to vote for those who hold traditional/conservative values, vote for or against propositions that help/hurt our cause, send contributions to conservative/traditional groups, and last but not least, pray everyday for our country. If we don’t continue to fight and have faith, it would be all too easy to succumb to depression.

Jonathan W. replies to LA:

Francis seemed to be making the hypothetical argument that if secession were to occur in a vacuum, it still wouldn’t save America for the reasons he noted. But you are right that secession couldn’t occur unless the conditions necessitating it disappeared some other way.

LA replies:

Well, that’s a witty argument, but I don’t think it’s correct. Yes, if the conditions necessitating secession existed in a given state, the secession could not occur in that state. But the conditions might exist everywhere else. The idea is that some states are or would become (through a settlement there of conservatives) different enough from the rest of the country that they would have the will to secede.

David H. of Oregon writes:

A large problem in seceding from the Union is where to draw the boundaries without cutting major communication and supply lines. If we take a look at a nationwide map of pipelines, electric transmission lines, telephone networks, and highway systems, we see that it would be like trying to cut out a portion of a spider web.

Van Wijk writes:

The idea of getting enough people to stop paying taxes and “starve the beast” is, I think, actually less likely than upheaval and secession. This government has shown that it doesn’t mind simply printing more fiat money when it needs it, some of which can be used to build more prisons specifically for housing enemies of the state (apparently there are already several prison-like FEMA camps in existence which would be ideal). Certainly this would take its toll on the United States as a global capitalist powerhouse, but I think that’s exactly what our enemies want. They would much prefer a DDR-like police state, the better to secure power.

I think we would all prefer to think of the state as a rational entity that we can reason with, not so different from us. But that’s a dangerous gamble. When the state simply ceases to care about any law but its own power and sends its enforcers-with-badges to your door, where will your tax rebellion be then?

Not that many tax-payers would be willing to stop paying taxes and risk the wrath of the state on principle, but more and more white Americans are being brutalized by non-whites every day. Murder, rape, assault, and robbery of whites by non-whites is only going to increase, and it is this, coupled with a failing economy (and the probable legalization of 20 million Mexicans), that will bring enclaves into being. I picture an exodus into the Midwestern states where the majority of this country’s food is grown, and a new nation carved out under threat of an embargo on that food. You can’t eat currency.

At any rate, it will be interesting to say the least to see what happens.

April 11

K. Miller writes:

Massive tax resistance would probably only work if several thousands coordinated it together, and probably with an army of lawyers who would fight the other side’s army of lawyers. (I say this somewhat jokingly.) Would the government seriously round up thousands of its own citizens when it cannot even muster the will to raid factories where illegal aliens are employed? If the U.S. government started putting tax resisters or other enemies into FEMA gulags, the fallout would be huge.

A more likely scenario is that the government would bankrupt each “political enemy” by lawsuits, wage garnishment, penalties, and fees, killing each person’s livelihood and spirit; therefore not many would want to participate in such a tax rebellion. So Van Wyck is probably right that tax resistance alone would be less likely than secession. However secession would naturally bring about tax resistance. When a state secedes the people would no longer be subject to federal authority and federal taxes.

I think the Soviet Union’s collapse is the best example we have of where the USA could be headed. The Union could simply collapse, with several states or regions declaring themselves independent. The government would be too weak and bankrupt to do much about it. Perhaps the federal government would choose to reign in a few states, like Russia later did with Georgia.

I truly believe the American people are exceptional and will fight the liberal stranglehold on our country. What form this fight will take is anyone’s guess.

What can conservatives do in the meantime? Find like-minded people where they live and build support networks. I have found a conservative Lutheran group here in northern California with whom I feel an affinity. It helps me stay sane amid the liberal march into a hellish utopia.

Bill Carpenter writes:

In connection with this discussion, recommend Frederick Turner’s epic poem The New World (1985), about the former “Uess” in the 24th century. He traces the history of the dissolution through a series of Supreme Court cases. The result is the “riots,” as the cities are called, that exploit their subject “burbs”; and warring, post-liberal “counties.” The focus is on the Free Counties, in which religion, culture, and technological innovation thrive.

Gintas writes:

Speaking of secession, maybe we could help Vermont out the door:

The Second Vermont Republic is a nonviolent citizens’ network and think tank opposed to the tyranny of Corporate America and the U.S. government, and committed to the return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic and more broadly to the dissolution of the Union.

RB writes:

To follow up on Gintas’ comment regarding Vermont, at some point in the near future why not strike a deal with the Aztlan people? Offer them California reserving the northern fringe and Sierra foothills which are still largely white and salvageable. The Aztlan leadership would jump at the prospect of being given a large and still wealthy territory to rule. Since it is a law of nature that the liberal elite can never long deny a minority group something that they want, the governing class in Washington would yield without a struggle. The amputation would have the following salutary effects. It would directly cut down on the electoral clout of the Democrat party. It would also be a cold splash of reality for moderates in the Midwest who hold the balance of political power and who have often been too inclined to appease noisy minorities.

LA replies:

But the Mexican-American irredentists are not literally irridentists. They don’t seek the return of the Southwest to Mexico, nor do they seek a new, sovereign Hispanic country. They seek the Mexicanization of the United States.

However, if they were given such an offer, maybe they couldn’t refuse it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 10, 2009 11:47 AM | Send