America sundered

The ascendancy of the left and its tyrannical agenda has brought about, or made plainly visible for the first time, the splitting of America into two distinct peoples—two peoples that cannot abide each other. The other America wants to bring us under the power of a dictatorial government that will control the entire society. Naturally we reject that. The more we resist their will to put us under their will, the more enflamed against us they become. They don’t want us to resist. They don’t even want us to complain. They want us to submit. If we protest the passage of the greatest expansion of government power in American history, they portray us as crazed bigots screaming in hatred of black people. In the pages of the nation’s two leading newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, their star columnists portray us as the lowest, most disgusting things alive. No one should ignore the expressions of dehumanizing hatred toward conservatives that are standard fare even in, or especially in, the “elite” precincts of the left, any more than one should ignore what the Koran says about infidels. The leftists regard us as dangerous enemies of all that is good and holy, and therefore feel compelled to dominate and crush us. They cannot help but feel this way, since their “religion,” liberalism, commands it, just as Muslims cannot help but feel the way they feel toward Jews and Christians, since their religion commands it. These are the kinds of things that people fight wars and civil wars over.

Can there be any peaceful resolution of this? Conceivably there could be. Since the crisis was brought about by the election of a leftist president and leftist Congress to a position of unopposable power over the country, it could be ended by the electoral removal of that president and Congress. The defeat of the Democratic House majority in 2010, followed by the defeat of the Democratic Senate majority and the Democratic president in 2012, by removing the left from power, possibly for a long time, combined with the repeal of Obamacare in January 2013, could end the crisis. An even more hopeful scenario would be that the total electoral crushing and rejection of the Democrats might so stagger them that if they ever did return to power, many years in the future, they would never again try to do what Obama did. In the most hopeful scenario, during the liberals’ many years of powerlessness, an Alan Roebuck would send out conservative missionaries, like Boniface going into the savage forests of Germany, and convert the liberals to conservatism.

But what if neither the electoral removal of the Democrats from power nor the repeal of Obamacare happens? In that case the civil war-like condition I described above will continue and deepen, and I can see no resolution to it, since the two sides have mutually irreconcilable and passionately held ideas of what America should be; the leftists want to keep expanding their statist death-grip over the country, and that is unacceptable to us. Indeed, even if we drove them out of Congress and the presidency and repealed Obamacare, it wouldn’t necessarily be over, because they would keep struggling to return to power and bring it back. We would remain two peoples who cannot abide each other living in one country, and there would be no end to the struggle and the hatred.

In the absence of a decisive political solution (i.e. the crushing electoral defeat of the Democrats), there are, logically, only two remaining ways through which peace could come about: through one side subduing the other by force; or through the two sides separating into separate nations. The second option, variations of which have often been proposed by right-wingers, seems on the face of it out of the question, given that the two groups are geographically mixed throughout America. The fact that some states are mostly red and others mostly blue does not mean that two viable independent nations can be formed out of these intermingled red and blue patchworks. So the only likely future seems an endless future of conflict within the existing U.S., becoming increasingly bitter and ultimately violent. But (reverting back to the option I just rejected) maybe the hatred and violence will cause a series of internal migrations, with conservatives moving to red areas and liberals moving to blue areas, with eventually two relatively contiguous regions emerging which can form separate self-governing polities. But then how would these two warring polities co-exist on the same continent, with one having the coasts and the ports and the big cities, and the other having the interior and the more rural areas? It still seems impossible and unworkable.

So, to sum up what I’ve said so far, I see only two ways this gathering conflict can be ended, a peaceful way and a horrible way.

The peaceful way is that the Democrats are wiped out in the polls and driven from the Congress and the presidency, so demoralized by their defeat, and so discredited in the public’s eyes by what they did to the country, that they will have no prospect of returning to power for many years to come.

The horrible way is that one side or the other becomes a dictatorship and subdues the other side by force, a process in which many people would be killed and much of the country would be ruined.

However, to return to an idea I’ve already twice raised and twice rejected, the last option is so horrible, that it might push the two sides to separate into two countries, since even a deeply dysfunctional separation of the two sides into two countries would be preferable to the violent suppression of one side by the other which will happen if they remain together.

Does all this seem like a vast prospect of misery? But that’s what happens when the left takes over a country. The left divides a society in two. It destroys civilizations. That is its job.

- end of initial entry -

Mike Berman writes:

There are other conceivable scenarios. Although the laws being enacted now are revolutionary in concept, their impact may be slow in developing. America may gradually drift into being a country which more resembles Brazil or Argentina as the percentage of whites in the nation fades. Another possibility is economic collapse as minorities sooner or later run out of the white man’s money. Most parasites seem to know how to avoid killing off the host organism, but are inflated-ego blacks smart enough to recognize the source of their wealth?

Also, in the space of my lifetime, New York City’s white population has declined from 93 percent to 35 percent. This is a shocking change to me, but it happened gradually enough to go virtually unnoticed by most.

Mark Jaws writes

Wow. You raise some grim prospects here. I think there is yet another option to be played against the left, which I have discussed before and which I call Semitic Surgical Strike. We all know that the Jewish left provides the American left with the bulk of its financial support and intellectual firepower. In fact, you cannot possibly begin to understand the American left without first studying the Jewish left. And, it is no coincidence the most virulent anti-white race baiters just so happen to be Jewish (Frank Rich, John Deutsch, Rachel Maddow, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, et al.). [LA replies: while the putrescent Rich is in a class by himself, is this group as a whole any worse than, say, Olbermann or Matthews?]

If the options are dictatorship, civil war, gut wrenching secession, I say we finally fight leftwing Jewish fire with right wing Jewish counterfire. The left prides itself on diversity, so if they want to talk about race and ethnicity, let’s give it to them. Why not then show up the Jewish left by illustrating its near total control of the American media, the entertainment industries, and the Democratic Party? Call them out. Label them hypocrites. It seems they want diversity for everyone but themselves. This may also work to drive a wedge between the Jewish leftists such as Andy Stern of SEIU and Nat Adler of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund who are salivating at the prospects of a brown, semi-literate America, which they can more readily control.

It is time for us right wing Jews to begin the first counterstrike. If America is to be sundered, let’s sunder Semitic America as well.

LA replies:

We’re talking about a cataclysmic division of the country into two warring countries. I don’t see how it’s true or helpful to make the Jewish aspect of this the most salient aspect.

Jeff W. writes:

America is definitely splitting up into tribal divisions. I would urge everybody to take a good look at this map of cultural zones, which is from a course in American Ethnic Geography at Valaparaiso University. Political beliefs and voting behavior in the U.S. follow the patterns of these cultural zones.

Speaking as a 100 percent Midland culture person, following are my grievances against the people from the Yankee zone: (1) They have allied themselves with minority groups to achieve a majority at the ballot box. They have used taxpayer money from the whole nation to buy the political support of these groups; (2) They support open borders as a way to consolidate their power; (3) Through feminism they have built a pseudo-tribe of white women that they have brought into their alliance. They have used taxpayer-financed schools to indoctrinate young women into the feminist ideology; (4) While their corrupt, dysfunctional local governments have largely destroyed manufacturing in the states they control, their zone continues to prosper on the backs of other Americans through government-financed hospitals, universities, the largest banks, and open trade with mercantilist China; (5) In their efforts to bring moral reprobates into their alliance, they have trashed traditional morality; and (6) They display arrogant contempt for all U.S. whites who are not from their culture. They constantly trash the religion, the history, the traditional beliefs and customs of American whites who are not part of their group.

They have no more respect and sympathy for middle Americans and Southerners than General Sherman had for the white people of Georgia in 1864. And I believe they will treat us the same way as Sherman’s Army treated the Georgians if they find it to their advantage to do so.

I am somewhat reluctant to condemn a large segment of Americans in such harsh terms, but I speak the truth as I see it. Speaking for myself, I do not want to live in the same country with these people. Let them wreck their own country, not mine.

LA replies:

I wish that in a discussion of one topic, which is already difficult enough, readers would not make analogies to other topics which are highly controversial in themselves and will only distract us from the issue at hand. Jeff’s comment makes it necessary for me to defend Gen. Sherman from what I think is an unfair comparison. I don’t believe that it is at all correct to suggest that Sherman demonized and hated Southerners as people, which is what today’s left does to non-liberal whites. Sherman had a stated, limited, practical goal, and he carried out certain clearly stated and delimited actions aimed at achieving that goal. His goal was to break the Southerners’ will to continue fighting (which to his shock and dismay had not been broken by his army’s capture of Atlanta), and thus to bring about peace and the reunification of the country. And he pursued and attained that goal by devastating Southern property in a miles-wide swath (I think it was 30 miles wide) between Atlanta and Savannah, and between Savannah and Columbia, South Carolina. And his policy worked. He broke the Southerners’ will to continue fighting. He always expressed his fondness for the Southern people, while also expressing his absolute determination that the Southern secession be ended.

Southerners may hate and condemn Sherman to this day. But he is not like a modern liberal. It’s a bad analogy.

(See a lengthy discussion of Sherman by me here.)

Richard W. writes:

One of the most chilling and needed columns you have ever written. I, too, was stopped almost speechless by the raw hatred that both the NY Times and Washington Post chose to feature this weekend.

Discussion of partition, secession and civil war are now common, across the Net and in many communities. This is a very sad juncture for America.

It becomes clear that one of the goals of people like Frank Rich and Charles Blow is to anger the right. It is also obvious that there is a huge sense of racial grievance; the Tea Partiers are hated for being white and gentile. Whites are hated for tenuous connections to whites of the past, which is really just an excuse. Whites are hated for being white.

This is exactly the situation in South Africa. Despite all the talk of healing and a new nation, the facts on the ground are that the whites of South Africa are hated, they are preyed upon, and they know it. They made a huge mistake in choosing to surrender their nation in hopes that a multi-cultural, multi-racial replacement could be created. In retrospect the separate homelands concept was a much better survival strategy for them.

One would like to think that this isn’t the best outcome for whites, Christians and conservatives in America, but the fact that the rules of the debate today is so one sided, the deep boiling hatred for us, makes it something we must seriously consider.

I do take some small solace in the fact that all of the writers are older people. I’ve noticed that blacks from the Civil rights Era seem stuck in that era. It’s amazing to me that they still write about slavery as if it happened to them personally. Whether this is an affectation or an affliction, or both, I can’t say. But I am sure our body-politic will be much better when that entire generation of Jackson, Wright, Farrakhan, Lewis, etc. has passed on. [LA replies: let’s not forget Condoleezza Rice, who even as Secretary of State representing the United States to foreign countries, would constantly tell foreign audiences that as a girl she had lived in Birmingham, Alabama when a black church was attacked and black children were killed; and that America is still racist and still has a long way to go before it attains racial justice, and therefore has no right to judge other countries. For example, she constantly indicated that America is no better morally than Iraq, which at the time she was speaking was a place of constant terrorist mass murders. She also said that anyone who doubted that Iraq was ready for democracy was “condescending” and “racist.”]

Rick U. writes:

It seems to me that beyond regaining the Congress and Presidency from the electorate, conservatives must also strive for the long term goal of repealing the 16th Amendment (income tax) and 17th Amendment (popular election of U.S. senators). The 16th to starve the federal monster of funds and make every citizen pay an equal share of the tax burden, and the 17th to strengthen states rights in the Senate. These two amendments form much of the liberal power base, so to eliminate them would provide some insulation from future electoral tyranny from the left. There are surely other good ideas long term, but this would be a good start.

Mencius Moldbug writes:

Again you mistake forms for realities. Removing the left from elected offices does not remove the left from power. Elected offices are not the source of the left’s power. Without elected offices, the left has great difficulty in moving forward, but remains entrenched in the bureaucracy. Moreover, it can consolidate its support by pleading oppression—by Bushitler, etc Waah. Poor left. [LA replies: but in my “peaceful” option I was not speaking of ending all leftist power, including cultural power, but of ending their present political power to impose a tyrannical regime on us. I clearly indicated that a likely flaw of the “peaceful” option was that even out of power, the left would continue to struggle to regain power, and that the left-right conflict would be unending.]

To remove the left from power, you don’t just need to elect right-wing officials. You need to give actual sovereign authority to those right-wing officials. They need complete control of the entire government. If they can’t fire the entire State Department, for instance, they are not in power.

And this doesn’t just mean the formal government. It means all the agencies that aren’t formally part of USG, but in practice act as part of USG, i.e., all agencies that (a) receive government funds, (b) form government policy, (c) have privileged access to government secrets.

So if you can’t either (a) close the New York Times, or (b) cut it off from the leaks that are its power source (e.g., by prosecuting it for stealing information, prosecuting those who leak to it, or even just firing them), you are not in power. If you can’t shut off the flow of grants to Harvard, you are not in power. If you can’t shut off the flow of policy from Harvard, you are not in power. If you can’t declare that (a) Harvard is acting as part of USG, and (b) USG no longer needs Harvard, so Harvard is closing tomorrow, the buildings will be torn down next week, the trademark is seized and confiscated, and the land will be sold to developers to build luxury condos and squash courts, you are not in power. If you can’t seize and shutter the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations, you are not in power. Etc, etc, etc. [LA replies: as I said to you the other day, your models of political leadership, the Tudor monarchs, were despots, and you are certainly showing your belief in despotism here. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.]

Now this would give the left something to whine about! By such whining, however, they would be unavoidably forced to realize that they used to be in power, and thus all previous whines are null and void. Which “discredits” them, as leftists love to say. Defeat is always discrediting. No one keeps worshipping a smashed idol.

Why did Nixon and Reagan fail? Because they, and the people who voted for them, didn’t realize that electing Republicans to executive office is about five percent of the job of defeating liberalism. America’s “silent majority” is in the process of being disenfranchised by immigration. It can’t afford to make this mistake too many more times. [LA replies: Your argument tracks Samuel Francis’s astute point which I’ve referenced many times, that conservatives thought that winning elections would defeat the left, but that they were superficial and didn’t see that behind the outward, political ramparts of the left was a vast leftist culture that they hadn’t begun to fight against. However, you go significantly further than Francis. He never urged despotism.]

And here’s an even more difficult task: selling this program to liberals. Liberalism, as you well know, is a deviant sect of Christianity. [LA replies: no, I do not know that. Liberalism is Christianity without God. Therefore it is not Christianity at all. The fact that liberalism is an off-shoot of Christianity does not make it a form or a sect of Christianity. This is a basic intellectual error which it is time for you to recognize and stop committing.] It’s a state religion. You can’t outlaw a religion. You have to turn it into a non-state religion—although, since the honey of state authority is one of the main attractions of liberalism, it’s not clear how attractive post-political liberalism will be. Nonetheless, there are still Catholics in England.

So liberals have to realize that liberal government does not achieve their (generally noble) liberal ideals, but the contrary. For instance, the moral and economic uplift of African-Americans has been one of the main goals of American political liberalism for the past half-century. How’s that workin’ out for ya, libs? Cheap individual medical insurance is one of the main goals of Obamacare. Libs, y’all are gonna see how that works out.

(What’s cool about Obamacare is that it is going to punish the actual leadership class of liberalism, the free-floating bohemian intellectual. As a free-floating bohemian intellectual myself, I am not looking forward to this. As an enemy of political liberalism, however, the prospect brings me great pleasure.)

But the bottom line is: regime change in America can happen only as a movement of national unity. It can exist only as an alliance of productive, civilized blue-staters and productive, civilized red-staters, against the pit of chaos, depression, corruption and despair into which this misgoverned country is slowly sinking. Period. [LA replies: I love the way you state the most difficult and complicated strategy, and then add “Period,” suggesting that it is simple.]

Mencius replies:

Your definition of “Christian” is unsatisfactory to me, because it is religious rather than historical. Perhaps we could agree that liberalism is a Christian heresy? Sects of all religions, including Christianity, have always tried to define each other out of the game. Often with much justice. I will agree that atheist liberalism is not good Christianity, but its historical origins are 100 percent Christian. [LA replies: one hundred percent Christian? You weaken your argument with these sweeping statements.]

I am uncomfortable with the word “despotism,” because, although literally correct (a neutral term meaning personal plenary authority), it carries the association of tyranny, i.e., unjust government. I favor just despotism, not unjust despotism. The former, contrary to popular belief, is by no means a historical rara avis.

Sam Francis was a democrat—he believed that, to change government, you first have to change culture. To change government, you have to change government. Liberal culture is the result of liberal government.

As for “period,” my argument once again is that the conventional, democratic incremental path is actually much longer and more difficult (I would argue, impossible) than my democratic coup. Which is improbable. But not impossible. It is not that you understate the difficulty of my approach, but that you overstate the facility of your own. When the impossible is ruled out, etc.

LA replies:

I suppose there is a reasonable case for calling liberalism a Christian heresy, and I think some notable Christian conservatives have called it such. But I’m not sure that it’s correct. I think it implies more similarity between liberalism (which is a political ideology) and Christianity (which is a religion) than is warranted. Arianism and Nestorianism and Monophysitism are Christian heresies, in that they are religions which are are offshoots of Christianity and even call themselves Christianity but depart from Christianity in key respects. But liberalism is not a religion. Though it has many aspects of a religion, namely Christianity, It is a different order of thing. Therefore it is not a Christian heresy.

However, I’m not fixed in that view and am open to arguments.

LA adds:

Arianism is Catholic Christianity, with the exception that it has a different view of the divine status of Jesus Christ (he is divine but not consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father).

Liberalism is opposed to any serious Christianity, period. Liberalism rejects the God of the Bible. Liberalism reduces Christianity to a bunch of (liberal) moral precepts. Liberalism is too different from and opposed to Chrisitanity to be properly considered a Christian heresy.

But again I’m open to further arguments on this.

LA adds to Mencius:

Also, regarding your point that I was speaking only of politics and not culture, you missed my reference to the need for the intellectual and cultural conversion of liberals to conservatism. I said it in a half-joking way, but the underlying point is serious. Check out Alan Roebuck’s linked articles in which he proposes a systematic campaign of intellectual persuasion (or “apologetics”) against liberal presuppositions, in order to bring liberals, one at a time, out of the dark pagan woods of liberalism.

Hannon writes:

Mark Jaws writes: “It seems they want diversity for everyone but themselves.”

This seems a good theme to develop in order to expose the real white supremacists: those who would establish and entrench their power based on an agenda of elevating minorities to pseudo-equality. In the media and government this general goal is glaringly obvious. My impression of private business and non-profits that brag of espousing liberal principles—voluntary affirmative action, feminist principles, encouraging diversity, etc.—is that they are dominated by leftist-liberal whites. What those minorities seem largely blind to is the fact that the real power always remains in the hands of whites. This should send a signal to minorities that any progress they make that is not based solely on merit is false and serves a master who will never be one of their own. The same phenomenon should also signal whites in general that the hypocrisy of their liberal brethren in these situations has risen to fantastic heights, as Mark indicates.

Ideally, a well-planned and patient documentation and exposure of this cruel farce that drains so much of our economy and energy could deliver a twin blow: the disillusionment of liberal whites, especially in a depressed economy, in utopian approaches to “equality”, and leaving minorities who have any dignity with nowhere to turn but their own initiative to find a path to success and political definition. Such a change in direction would absorb much of the energy now devoted to self-victimization and hostility to whites who have tried to help them.

Driving a wedge between minorities, who I believe have more potential to move toward conservatism than liberals, and manipulative leftist progressives who seek their allegiance seems a logical goal among others in steering us away from the precipice of leftism’s logical end point.

March 30

S.T. (Sam) Karnick writes:

Chilling stuff, Larry. I make the same points about an irreconcilably divided nation, using the health care issue as an example, here.

Josh F. writes:

While the liberal elite may be “strong,” the liberal masses are incredibly weak and unhealthy. They are, as you’ve stated previously, ready for dhimmitude. But Beck, Limbaugh and Hannity just don’t have that real mean streak to make dhimmis of them BECAUSE they are at root, liberal. There are literally no credible conservative faces that can scare a “liberal” into submission. Think of what that means. That’s what makes you such a controversial blogger. YOU ARE FIXING FOR A FIGHT by constantly questioning the strength and health of fellow conservatives’ truths who act as though they’re ready for the fight. But in truth, they are weak and unhealthy in their fundamental principles AND we’re still in the fight for our lives as men of God and as Free Americans. They must be set straight AS the liberals they are. Liberalism must not be destroyed but naturally placed back in its rightful position beneath Supremacy.

Liberals are winning mainly through domination in content dissemination. The dissemination of “equality” content is ubiquitous while the dissemination of Supremacy is being actively thwarted. Liberalism is literally everywhere we look while Supremacy is becoming increasingly rare.

This brings us to an interesting place where we recognize that, hypothetically speaking, a benign dictator elected by a true election, as Mencius Moldbug calls it, is entirely feasible by that person who can dominate Internet content distribution. Hopefully, that domination arises through the dissemination of true and healthy content. Content that inspires one to strive for Supremacy. This is manifested supremacy and strong evidence of Supremacy.

The main reason the elite’s preach “liberalism” is so WE WILL PRACTICE IT thereby insuring their place of power WHILE THEY PRIVATELY PRACTICE a godless corruption of supremacy. [LA replies: Yes, this is part of the essence of liberalism.] These practictioners of anti-Supremacy are pushing degeneracy on the masses through a domination of content distribution that preaches equality through nondiscrimination and autonomy.

My plan is to change this paradigm.

Josh F. continues:

I should have said VISIBLE conservatives.

I believe image is an important aspect of content dissemination. The presentation is very important TO LIBERALS much more so than the substantive arguments.

Of the major faces in conservatism, only Hannity and Romney seems healthy, but neither seem tough enough to carry us across the goal line. Are there not strong and healthy traditional Americans that can articulate a vision that rightfully places liberalism under belief in Supremacy?

Where is the traditional American Supremacist?

Josh F. continues:

American traditionalists are, by definition, believers in Supremacy. God’s Providence is said to have reigned over America. If true, this could be for no other reason than Americans striving for Supremacy.

So how has liberalism come about and the worship of “equality” made virtually mandatory? How did we get to a point of denying Supremacy when we once wholeheartedly embraced Him? Does it even matter when the stark choice is Supremacist versus anti-Supremacist? Ascendancy versus degeneracy?

Clearly, the Supremacists ARE NOT BEING SUCH and so the defeating is rather self-evident. If we are fine with “equality” then we lose. Unless we once again strive for Supremacy IN ALL MANNER then there should be no expectation of victory. In fact, much of the discussion implies the inevitability of liberal dominance through culture when it is American traditionalist’s failure to articulate and then strive for Supremacy THAT IS THE FAILURE. Striving for Supremacy is the surest path to victory.

We must be Supremacists or victory for traditional America is impossible.

The Supremacists must rise above the liberal masses and subordinate everyday liberalism AND THE SHEEP THAT WALK TO ITS MANDATES. We must do this everyday and all the time as the fight is perpetual and unending. Yet, those are the very conditions that will set the Supremacist apart from the self-imposed anti-Supremacist who realizes he fights for nothing other than the corrupt supremacy of his Master. The liberal masses are docile and weak and eternally prepared for submission. Liberalism’s natural resting place is subordinate to Supremacy. And so liberal’s natural condition is to be subordinate to the Supremacist. Such is the consequence of a self-imposed anti- Supremacist belief system.

Mencius Moldbug replies to LA:

Liberalism is 100 percent Christian because it has no other organic sources—it is a product of Christian European civilization, zero percent anything else. It could be five percent Islamic, it could be five percent European pagan, it could be five percent Greco-Roman pagan. But it isn’t. All these other traditions were long since deceased by the time liberalism arose. Nothing to syncretize with. And not only is it 100 percent Christian, it is 99 percent Protestant. For the same reason. [LA replies: Mencius, I’m sorry to have to disagree with you again so strongly, but since you constantly insist on your superior historical knowledge, especially as compared with my lamentable ignorance of the “true” Western world prior to 1960, your wildly off-base statements are especially deserving of censure. When you say that liberalism is 100 percent based on Christianity, you have evidently forgotten, e.g., the rise of modern science, along with the idea that human society could be arranged in a scientific manner. Half of liberalism arises from that development. Yet it has nothing to do with Christianity per se. You have also forgotten the founding liberal idea that society must be rearticulated as a “level playing field” where there is no dominant substantive belief, but where all beliefs are treated as equal. That had nothing to do with Christianity per se, but was a reaction against the wars of religion of the 16th and 17th centuries, culminating in the terrible Thirty Years War. I don’t claim to be a historical expert, as you do, but I knew these basic facts about origins of liberalism, and you evidently didn’t.]

There’s nothing wrong with converting liberals, one at a time, to conservatism. But if bottom-up conversion is your only route to political change, it’s a long road indeed. How was England converted to Protestantism? Not a Catholic at a time, that’s for sure.

Both liberals and conservative, for their own reasons and in very different ways, worship Washington. All they can agree on is that Washington, or “America” as they sometimes mistakenly call it, is great. [LA replies: This is ridiculous. Mainstream conservatives do not worship our present bloated and dysfunctional federal government.] Beyond this, it’s divide et impera. You can stop worshipping Washington and remain a patriotic American conservative. You can stop worshipping Washington and remain a patriotic American liberal. Both sides can ditch the false idol, without ditching their ideals and perspectives.

Moreover, a sane government can tolerate both these religions. You do believe in religious tolerance, don’t you? I am not a Christian or a conservative, but I sympathize with conservatives because I see them writhing in the grip of an intolerant liberal government which is trying to crush them and destroy their culture. I have no interest in replacing this with an intolerant conservative government which is trying to do the reverse. Well, okay, it would be a change. But not a great change. [LA replies: I thought you wanted an absolute divine-rights despotism.]

Conservatives: don’t fall into the divide-and-rule trap! Liberals are not your enemies, but your fellow Americans. They hate you because they fear you—they oppress you because they fear that, if they stop oppressing you, you will start oppressing them. [LA replies: but I thought that you do want to oppress them. Correction: I see in a below comment by you that your despot would be more along the lines of Augustus than Henry VIII.]

For instance: liberals should be able to educate their children with liberal beliefs and values. Conservatives should be able to educate their children with conservative beliefs and values (at no extra charge). [LA replies: under a Tudor-style despotism?] Freedom of education is a basic human right. right now, very few children of liberal parents are being indoctrinated with conservative beliefs; quite a few children of conservative parents are being indoctrinated with liberal beliefs. I find this very objectionable—but I would not wish to reverse the polarity.

Unless you are a bad, crazy person, your goal is not to oppress liberals. Your goal is not to be oppressed yourself. Your goal is not to win America’s cold civil war, but to end it. Without losing it. Because right now, losing it you are—and have been for quite some time.

Since conservatives lack elite institutions, they lack an elite. Since they lack an elite, they are weaker than liberals, whatever their numbers. Every time conservatives try to win the civil war, they give a new burst of energy to liberals, who are otherwise sclerotic and apathetic, because their political system has ruled too long and is old and tired and broken and stupid. Political liberalism today runs on nothing but hate and fear of conservatives.

Moreover: knowing something of Washington, I can tell you that it is absolutely impossible to convert Washington into either (a) a non-liberal institution, or (b) a conservative institution. It’s as impossible as converting an old Chevy pickup into either (a) a new Ford F150 or (b) a new Ducati Monster. An old Chevy pickup which has just crashed into a tree. It’s a repair-or-replace decision. The decision is obvious. If I can get you to say these three words, “Washington is totaled,” I can stop sending you these long emails. [LA replies: I recommend that you stop demonizing “Washington,” which is confusing because it’s just the name of a city and it also momentarily confuses readers by making them think of George Washington (as when you speak of people “worshipping Washington”), and instead speak of the “federal government.” Demonizing the name “Washington,” as you and also Richard Spencer do, is not helpful. Washington in an honored name. You do not help lead the way to an American renaissance by turning the name Washington into a curse.]

Richard S. writes:

We may be approaching economic implosion. The United States is broke but keeps spending. In fact spending at an accelerating pace. Something has to give. A probable scenario? Hyper-inflation at Weimar levels. Should that happen social bonds will snap. Separation, though resisted by the center, might be possible in that circumstance. Would it be messy? Most likely. But given the horrors accompanying economic implosion—race war and general lawlessness—separation would come to be seen, by very many, as a matter of survival. How might separation (or secession) be realized? I have no idea. But doable? Yes.

James P. writes:

Mencius argues that we should elect a Dictator (in the Roman sense not the 20th century sense) to fix our problems and purge the government, media, and academia of liberals. Very well, but this would raise the same problem for liberals that the election of Obama raises for conservatives—how do you respond to the entirely legal election of someone who intends to destroy you through generally if not entirely legal processes? We’re hearing a lot of “secede, emigrate, or take to the hills” talk on the right these days; that would be nothing compared to the reaction of the left to the election of a conservative Dictator. The left’s rage in that case would be several orders of magnitude greater than the right’s reaction to Obama, because Obama is really only institutionalizing and making permanent the existing reality (conservative powerlessness), while a conservative Dictator would be taking away the vast power that the left currently enjoys. The left screamed “Fascism!” when Dubya made some tentative and ultimately unsuccessful steps to assert control of the bureaucracy. A real right-wing effort to do so today would entail what the Dictator Sulla’s “constitutional reforms” entailed in 82BC—civil war, proscriptions, and heads on the Rostrum. Does Mencius accept this as a cost of doing business? Or does he envision some way that a “democratic coup” could be peaceful?

Mencius Moldbug replies:

Yeah—that’s why a movement of national unity is required. The resulting regime cannot be politically acceptable to liberals, but it must be culturally acceptable. Otherwise it faces the problem James P. describes.

In fact, it probably has to be culturally more than acceptable—it probably should be culturally desirable. Ie, while stripping liberals of the political power they now enjoy, it should give them cultural and/or economic prizes they don’t now enjoy. Thus buying their consent, basically.

The only formula I can imagine for this is a formula of cultural autonomy. So under the new regime, Catholics can be as Catholic as they want, liberals can be as liberal as they want, Jews can be as Jewish as they want, Muslims as Muslims as they want, etc, etc. As long as they don’t use this freedom to cause any trouble for the Dictator, of course.

I’m not saying a pure Sullan solution can’t work. History proves it can. It’s much harder, though, and I really don’t want to see it. Since I am culturally liberal, I probably wouldn’t fare well under it.

James P. replies:

What “cultural and economic prizes” could the new regime possibly offer the left that they do not now enjoy and that would cause them to abandon their current position of power? The left already controls the major organs of culture in this country (arts, entertainment, the media, academia), and already controls the economy (GM and healthcare being about the last economic prizes left to grab). The new regime would have to break the left’s stranglehold on its existing cultural and economic prizes, and it’s hard to see what you could give the left to compensate for that as well as for its loss of control over the government.

Clark Coleman writes:

My reply to all the whiners and quitters talking about secession for the umpteenth time can be found in three comments published in a December 2008 entry. I don’t have anything to add at the moment, but I hope many of your readers will read my earlier remarks. I guess I could add this maxim: Leftists are not quitters, but many conservatives are.

Robert Bove writes:

I am especially in agreement with one of your statements inserted in a Mencius comment:

I recommend that you stop demonizing “Washington,” which is confusing because it’s just the name of a city and it also momentarily confuses readers by making them think of George Washington (as when you speak of people “worshipping Washington”), and instead speak of the “federal government.” Demonizing the name “Washington,” as you and also Richard Spencer do, is not helpful. Washington in an honored name. You do not help lead the way to an American renaissance by turning the name Washington into a curse.

This is crucial. Geographical abstractions are a pitfall into which Liberals fell long, long ago. They have exploited these abstractions for political success and personal profit; they seek to propagate their abstractions universally. They are very good at it, and they have the full backing of generationally entrenched statists behind them—and have for generations—and they no longer see the necessity of arguing in anything approaching traditional notions of rational argument. They are denizens of the fog of power. Elite, yes, but they no longer think.

Our pets are brighter.

We remaining Americans—dare I say, we remaining people seeking to be human—must not follow their decaying, downward course for success or profit in these perilous times. Yes, the lines are being drawn clearly between the party of the Tyrant and the party of Liberty.

I’d rather lose this fight than win it as a statist.

LA replies:

Could you explain what you mean by liberals exploiting geographical abstractions for political success and personal profit?

To underscore what I said about Mencius’ treatment of “Washington,” it is tasteless, offensive, and counterproductive for conservatives (or in Mencius’ case, anti-liberals) to turn the name Washington into an object of aversion. Washington is the name of the father of our country, and the name of our magnificent national capital, which normal Americans love, entirely apart from the character of the present bloated, leftist government that is headquartered there. People who use the name Washington as shorthand for everything that is wrong and hateful in the world are expressing, whether they realize it or not, a deep anti-Americanism which has no place on the right.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 29, 2010 06:00 AM | Send