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Time for a divorce?
James H. writes:
I know you hate defeatism, but I just do not see how this Union can survive. After considering the behavior of leftists before and after the recent events in Arizona, don’t you think it is time to start separation talks? I am totally serious. Is there a point at which even you would be ready to throw in the towel? Do you seriously think the leftists have not thought ahead? Believe me, they are thinking real estate! I don’t think they believe they have a chance at getting the southern coasts, but they would try to take by force Maine, the more conservative areas of the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay. The sheer energy of the leftists just overwhelms me. I was recently on a jury with a committed leftist, in the local federal district court. That experience alone taught me that this union needs to be dissolved!
LA replies:
I have not dismissed separation or secession. To the contrary, I have always acknowledged the possibility that we may come to that point. And starting last March 21 with the passage of Obamacare I began saying that we may have come to that point. As I wrote two weeks later:
[W]ith the passage of the health care bill America has now become in effect two mutually irreconcilable peoples (they want to impose unlimited state power on us, which we don’t want to be imposed), and the only two logical resolutions to the conflict are that one side crush and dominate the other, or that the two sides go their separate ways.
This topic was discussed very extensively at the site last spring, at the above-linked entry and elsewhere.
And there are other issues that can be “Union-dividers” as well: the institutionalization of homosexuality, which, as I discussed the other day, is leading and must lead to the official elimination of the concepts of mother and father; and, as we’re seeing right now, the all-out demonization of conservatives by liberals, in which conservatives are made responsible for a mass murder they had nothing to do with. How can we continue living under the same government and in the same society with people who regard us as evil haters simply for not sharing their beliefs?
At the very least, this issue needs to be brought to the fore. Conservatives need to start calling liberals’ bluff. They need to say to the liberals: “How do you expect us to continue sharing the same society with you, if you think we are so evil just for being conservatives?” Or: “If you think the Republican Party is so violent and criminal, why don’t you call for it to be outlawed?” Honest retorts such as these might wake up at least some liberals to the fact that they are pushing conservatives toward a breakup of the U.S. that the liberals would certainly not want. Maybe it will get them to moderate their agenda and their hate-spreading rhetoric.
Unfortunately, the mainstream conservatives don’t have it in them to take things to that conceptual level. They never call out the liberal rhetoric and positions for what they really are: a form of warfare against society and against conservatives which is totally unacceptable. Therefore the liberals will have no incentive to pull back from their outrages, until things get so bad that we find ourselves helter skelter in some kind of civil war.
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Nile McCoy writes:
There was a prescient line from George W Bush’s first inaugural address, “And sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country.” Conservatives recognize it, but there hasn’t been the “Reichstag event” that will force us to political whole of the country to admit it and discuss the avenues of separation. We’ve had some close calls, but so far, the country has pulled back from the events.
James P. writes:
You wrote,
At the very least, this issue needs to be brought to the fore. Conservatives need to start calling liberals’ bluff. They need to say to the liberals: “How do you expect us to continue sharing the same society with you, if you think we are so evil just for being conservatives?” Or: “If you think the Republican Party is so violent and criminal, why don’t you call for it to be outlawed?” Honest retorts such as these might wake up at least some liberals to the fact that they are pushing conservatives toward a breakup of the U.S. that the liberals would certainly not want. Maybe it will get them to moderate their agenda and their hate-spreading rhetoric.
They will not call for the Republican Party to be outlawed, but they are calling for verbal opposition to liberalism to be outlawed as “hate speech,” and they will outlaw the actual practice of conservatism by passing laws like those that permit gay marriage and gays in the military. [LA replies: You are absolutely right. They are not seeking to outlaw, or even implying that they want to outlaw, the Republican Party; they are seeking to neuter the Republican Party and conservatism by making it impossible for Republicans and conservatives to oppose liberalism.] From a cynical perspective, a Republican Party that is toothless and legally constrained from doing anything effective to advance conservatism or retard liberalism is much more useful to liberals than a Republican Party that doesn’t exist. That is why the most useful thing the Republican Party could do, especially in places like California, would be to disband itself, eliminate faux “two party” rule, and make the evil and destructive nature of one-party Democratic rule readily apparent even to the stupidest citizen.
Liberals will never voluntarily permit conservatives to secede; they prefer to see conservatives writhing under their heels. As the saying goes, hold your friends close, but your enemies even closer. For conservatives to create a conservative nation out of part of the USA would be, for the liberals, akin to re-creating the Confederacy, Nazi Germany, or South Africa. They would not rest until the new country had been destroyed one way or another. The new country could no more hope to be left alone than could South Africa, Israel, or any other victim of Washington’s relentless liberal meddling.
A reader writes:
As a trial lawyer, I’m dying to hear James H.’s story about serving on a jury with a Lib. Could you facilitate?
Daniel H. in Seattle writes:
James P. writes:
“They would not rest until the new country had been destroyed one way or another. The new country could no more hope to be left alone than could South Africa, Israel, or any other victim of Washington’s relentless liberal meddling.”
This perhaps is true. But this new nation would not be South Africa, or Iraq, or Serbia, or even Israel. Assuming we could get approximately 50 percent of current Americans, and those Americans who would want to live in a conservative society, we would instantly have the hardest-working, most diligent, and possibly most intelligent population in the world. And at that same moment, liberal America would instantly lose all its hardest-working, most diligent citizens. They’d still have some very intelligent people playing glass bead games in the universities, but most of them don’t add much actual value to their society, and the overall intelligence of the populace would be dragged down by all the liberal client groups. Certainly the liberal half could throw a very dangerous temper tantrum … but in any sustained antagonism, they would simply melt in the face of true, determined conservatism. How could it be otherwise? [LA replies: I don’t agree about the lack of important abilities and skills in the liberal half of the population. Take our astonishing medicine industry. I don’t know the figures offhand, but don’t you think that most people who work in medicine are liberals? What about the computer field? Aren’t the great majority of people in that field liberals—Silicon Valley and all that? What about the sciences generally? Aren’t most scientists liberals? And so on.]
Washington’s power to meddle in places like South Africa and Israel comes from its current ability to leverage the immense human capital of the United States and direct it toward its own ends. Oslo and Stockholm would meddle the way Washington does if only they could. But they lack the sheer power to impose their will. A rump-state liberal America would still be one of the largest, wealthiest, most powerful nations in the world, but it would be a shambling, clumsy wreck of a place compared to a true conservative America. If only we would stand up for ourselves, we have nothing to fear from these people. Deep down they are very weak, and they know it. This is another reason why, as James aptly puts it, “Liberals will never voluntarily permit conservatives to secede.” Well, let them try and stop us, I say.
LA replies:
A further major problem is what we mean by the conservatism that will constitute this new conservative nation. If conservative means “economically conservative, socially liberal,” then we’re back where we started from, with a “conservatism” hopelessly divided from within. But many self-described conservatives are indeed socially liberal. So, if the new nation is to be socially conservative as well as economically conservative, then we’re talking about only a fraction of self-described conservatives wanting to join it, and it wouldn’t be big enough to form a country. If the new nation is economically conservative and socially liberal, it will have a larger base of “conservatives,” but will be at war with itself from the start, meaning a war between social conservatives and social liberals.
Daniel H. in Seattle replies:
You wrote:
Take our astonishing medicine industry. Don’t you think that most people who work in medicine are liberals? What about the computer field? Aren’t the great majority of people in that field liberals? What about the sciences generally? Aren’t most scientists liberals? And so on.
You are right, of course. A great many useful and productive people are liberal. And conversely, plenty of people of questionable work-ethic and intelligence call themselves conservative. There are certainly gradations up and down the line, on several different axes. I overstated the case.
Let me rephrase and say that along with the pharmaceutical researchers and particle physicists, the liberals would take on a huge bloat of government workers, “women’s studies” PhD’s, “performance artists,” and other people who add nothing to society (and often deliberately sabotage it). And if there was a true conservative option—a nation filled with two-parent homes, local school boards with restored power, safe streets, and basic civility—we might be surprised to see how many intelligent people who act and speak liberally today out of simple self-protection and a desire to “be like folks” suddenly find themselves attracted to the non-liberal option. Maybe we won’t attract many climate scientists or graphic designers, for example, but I bet we’d get an awful lot of smart programmers and doctors.
Paul K. writes:
You point out the logical flaw in this fanciful notion of a Conservative States of America when you write: “A further major problem is what we mean by the conservatism that will constitute this new conservative nation.”
There are so many conflicts within conservatism that even a population of self-styled conservatives would have profound internal conflicts. I would prefer that my nation not station troops all over the world and involve itself in irresolvable conflicts, yet many of my friends seem to regard military action as the noblest expression of conservatism. There are conservatives—Limbaugh being one—that mock any concern about the environment.
Also, would there be free passage between the borders? Some people change their political views over the course of a lifetime, and children don’t always adopt the views of their parents.
As far as the usefulness of liberals, I have to admit this: when I get hungry driving cross-country I start looking for the nearest college town, knowing that only in a nest of liberals am I likely to get a decent meal.
LA replies:
Clearly you are the type that is not to be trusted. As soon as the Conservative States of America is set up, you will start calling for the mass immigration of white liberals in order to provide the new country with good restaurants.
Paul K. replies:
I do solemnly swear that in order to ensure the security of the Conservative States of America, I am willing to subsist on a diet of hamburgers, tuna melts, chicken-fried steak, and iceberg-lettuce salads, in perpetuity, so help me God.
Daniel R. writes:
Regarding the skills of liberal vs. conservative population: it’s important to remember that a lot of smart people are not so much liberal as able to tell what sorts of beliefs a high-status person should hold. The sort of people whose skills you want are all “basically liberal” (they will say or imply), but have a lot of nagging conservative ideas because they are smart and can analyze situations.
They just won’t allow their conservative ideas to lead them to a conservative worldview because high-status people don’t do that. I don’t entirely blame them. But these people are not political philosophers. Build a mighty conservative nation—and weaken the mighty liberal nation by the wealth and talent you remove—and they will become conservatives.
As it happens, programmers are much more conservative than the rest of the population and WAY more libertarian. This is because though smart, we are less socially savvy and attuned to our fellow man, and thus end up believing what seems correct instead of what we’re supposed to.
January 13
John Dempsey, who is a former restauranteur, writes:
Between this post and the older link which discussed Donald Trump’s hair, you had me laughing out loud yesterday.
When we settle our new country, I will try to share my experience, strength, and hope with others like Paul K. Maybe we can start a new twelve-step program and call it something like “Ethnic Food Lovers Anonymous”.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 11, 2011 02:29 PM | Send
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