If we conclude that America cannot be brought back, what do we do?

In response to yesterday’s discussion, “Is America is too far gone to bring it back?” (which is still continuing), Thomas Bertonneau writes:

Moods pass, as you remark. Just now my mood, like your mood, is bleak. [LA quibbles: I wouldn’t say my mood is bleak; my personal mood is pretty good. I was describing the way I see things now.] I have the grim intuition not merely that the traditional nation is moribund and will soon find its final resting place in a deep grave, but that it is already dead and has been for some time. This situation, if true, would make traditionalist conservatives a dispossessed remnant in a strange and increasingly savage land. It would also make them a dissenting minority in a new environment that is intolerant of and hostile to them and which nurses—just now at the fringe but with a trend towards the core—the fanatic’s dream of getting rid of the reviled “other.” The liberal embrace of Islam tells us many things about liberalism and one of the things it tells us is that liberals admire those who are murderously intolerant of dissenting “others.”

Supposing it is so—should conservatives abandon the project of restoring the nation? The thought simply of giving up and watching the disaster unfold is intellectually a tempting one. Eighty years ago, Oswald Spengler said that there was not much else that one could do. I believe, despite my admiration for Spengler, that conservatives have a civilized obligation to continue the project of restoring the nation even though it might seem vain to do so. However, I also believe that conservatives should begin to think about a parallel project, what one might call “the survival colony.” The “colony” or “ark” is familiar from a century of imaginative literature. We find versions of it in the work of a thoughtful liberal whom conservatives should read, H.G. Wells; and we find it in the work of Wells’s libertarian successors in imaginative literature later in the twentieth century. I am thinking of novels by Philip Wylie and Robert A. Heinlein, and by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in their collaboration.

At the recent Baltimore meeting of the H.L. Mencken Club, during the final panel over dinner, the topic of secession came up. I made a comment to the effect that conservatives tend to think of secession solely on the gross model of the disaffected Southern states “going out” after the election of Abraham Lincoln and that that narrow definition limits constructive speculation. I remarked that the idea of secession is replete with subtle implications, many of which are quite different from the gross model of Civil-War era secession.

In A Study of History, for example, Arnold Toynbee refers to the development of Christianity in the Roman Empire as having for a long time the character of an “internal emigration.” Christians continued to function as citizens of the empire, but they thought of themselves as having a higher allegiance in respect of which they seceded as much as possible from the various to-them-unacceptable aspects of the temporal society. By the end of the fourth century, this “internal emigration” was so pervasive that the Empire altered its religious character to become Christian. Before Constantine the Great, many Christians, as a price of “internal emigration,” endured indignity and harassment, as perpetrated now and then by intolerant pagan officials. So persistent were the Christians, however, that they finally inherited the polity. They benefited from having created over the centuries parallel institutions, such as schools and charity networks, and the Church, with its governing hierarchy.

Contemporary American conservatives, possibly in concert with their brethren in Canada and the European nations, might want to start thinking in the same long term as the first-century Christians and begin considering how they might order their “internal emigration” from liberal society so as to constitute a “survival colony.” The “survival colony” might be entirely ethical, not identified with a locus, but with explicit convictions and an insistent way of life; or it might, through the actual movement of people, take hold of a place, a region or a state, where conservative ideas would form the basis of law and policy.

These meditations are vague and perhaps fanciful. They are also troubled. They are troubled because the possibilities that the House will shift back to the Democrats and that voters will give Obama a second term (or that Obama’s minions will, by hook and crook, steal for him a second term) are not vague or fanciful. They are conceivable. Since we cannot fly away to Mars or another planet, we shall have to contrive our survival here, amidst a majority who will soon be candid in its scheme to harass and punish us for being who we are.

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Tim W. writes:

One thing that has liberals clearly frightened is the likelihood that they’ve just about drained all they can from the taxpayers. Liberals have been working for decades to reach a point where those on the dole constitute over half the population, and where less than half pay income taxes. The belief was that if the country reached that point, the left would be locked into power permanently and the productive, but outvoted, forty-something percent would take a boot to the face forever and ever.

We are nearing that point. The Tea Party arose because the productive people are fed up with supporting an ever-growing dependent class. The Occupy movement is actually an expression of fear from the left from the flip side. The crises in Greece, Spain, and other European welfare states show that you eventually reach a point beyond which the productive can no longer be plundered. The American left is starting to worry that just as they near the triumphal point of pushing income tax payers below fifty percent of the populace, we may also be reaching the point where no more can be squeezed from them for the unending string of goodies.

This frightens the left. They have jumped onto this idiotic Michael Moore-ish idea that there’s an unlimited cornucopia of revenues to be gouged from the top one percent of income earners. The fact that so many people in the top one percent are supporting the Occupy movement should be a clue to these dupes that there isn’t going to be any plundering there, but the Occupiers are too busy trying to get the autograph of the latest billion dollar celebrity who Lear Jets into town to endorse the Occupy movement to notice this. The Occupiers can scream for more free stuff all they want, but once they’ve plundered everything they can plunder, it’s all over.

Remember also that white liberals aren’t reproducing. That doesn’t matter to them much right now, because the corporate media, public schools and universities brainwash enough kids from conservative families to keep the liberal sham going. But that well will someday run dry, too.

It’s doubtful that America as a whole can be rescued, but a remnant of human liberty and prosperity can perhaps survive in a balkanized America. Or maybe I’m being too optimistic even to think it’s possible.

Dan K. writes:

You are looking at these unfolding events from a political direction. Unfortunately politics is not the PRIME MOVER but only a secondary effect that will be driven by something that already is happening, the collapsing of the global economy, as if a large tree has encountered a powerful wind and now is beginning to initiate a slow motion fall. Soon the global economy will accelerate its collapse to the extent that all can see it is happening. Panic is coming. War usually is the result and political concerns will bow before Mars. The USA will be transformed in the maelstrom and not escape its touch of physical destruction as it did in WWI and WWII.

Sauve qui peut.

Mark Jaws writes:

I agree with Mr. Bertonneau that those who advocate secession (as I do) ought to think long and hard about the implications and the ubiquitous second- and third-order effects such a move would bring. First, on the personal level for many of us it would mean the loss of government pensions and social security. There would have to be some sort of compulsory military service for all to protect the borders from frequent incursions by banditos and other assorted riff-raff. Second, a newly constructed, overwhelmingly white breakaway republic will likely face some sort of short term economic ostracism by some states in Europe and Latin America. For women in particular, shopping would initially be much more inconvenient. The black market would probably explode. Then the whole matter of establishing a banking system is likely to factionalize many. Third, to ensure the survival of the traditional American ethnoculture there would have to be some sort of federally mandated affirmative action to pump up the white birth rate in perpetuity—otherwise, within a generation our republic would make the same mistakes of 1960s America. So, in effect we would have to create our own heavy handed government at the federal level to survive and paradoxically become the very thing we are trying to escape. Odd, isn’t it? The BIG difference, though, and I mean REALLY BIG, is our federal government would not work against the interests of white people, as the current government does—but for them.

Buck O. writes:

Mr. Bertonneau’s “fanciful meditations” remind me of a movie scripted along the same but more narrow lines, The Village. It’s a clan of modern people that escape and fabricate their own isolated retro culture behind a fence, temporarily away from reality. They even create a monster to keep in their children. It too is fanciful and fantastic. The soundtrack is absolutely beautiful, and there’s a touching love story. The plot, though, is about the hopelessness of a people’s way of life and their desperate attempt to pretend for as long as they can.

Thomas Bertonneau writes:

The responses to my meditations are quite rich. I might address one or two of them.

Dan K. writes:

“You are looking at these unfolding events from a political direction. Unfortunately politics is not the PRIME MOVER but only a secondary effect that will be driven by something that already is happening, the collapsing of the global economy, as if a large tree has encountered a powerful wind and now is beginning to initiate a slow motion fall.”

Speaking for myself, I am thinking of the “survival colony” much less in terms of politics than I am in terms of culture, which is prior to politics. It follows then that I am also thinking much less in terms of economics than I am in terms of culture. In the Eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age, the people abandoned the once-resplendent, now burned-out cities and reverted to what, economically, was a Neolithic, village-based way of life. For four hundred years, however, these villagers remembered who they were: The descendants of the Heroes. That memory became the organizing kernel of the revived Greek civilization of the Archaic Period. Culture triumphed over the vagaries of economy. It should be a sign to conservatives that liberals are fanatically obsessed with eradicating European culture. They see culture as primary whether conservatives do or not.

Mark Jaws sees a possible contradiction in a survival colony, namely that it would need to be maximally governed. This prospect is not unlikely, but it bothers me less than it seems to bother Mr. Jaws. Conservatives would do well to study the clerical-authoritarian states of Central Europe in the period between the two world wars. The Hungarian State and the Austrian State might justly bear the descriptions of “maximal minimalism.” Within narrowly defined precincts the central government was absolute, but beyond those precincts the policy was laissez-faire, especially as it concerned the market. This might be a necessary formula for a viable conservative polity.

November 22

John McNeil writes:

I applaud Mr. Bertonneau for his visionary thinking on this subject. Critics of the idea of secession are right that such a path will be extremely problematic, but he is wise to bring up how Christian Romans handled separating themselves from the Roman Empire’s ways while remaining physically a part of the Empire. Indeed, it is possible to be a nation and have an identity without having a physical country/government. There are many ethnic groups throughout the world that are without a country and may be even be scattered, forced to live under the yoke of more dominant cultures. The U.S. will probably linger on, and no doubt continue pushing a left-liberal agenda. We’re going to have to think outside of the box and establish ideas for how to adhere to a greater identity while still being a part of the U.S.

I encourage conservatives to study the Afrikaner enclave of Orania. It’s an example of a survival colony that Mr. Bertonneau has in mind: a township for white Christian conservative Afrikaners seeking refuge from the oppression of whites in South Africa. They maintain a simple way of life which helps deter foreign migrants from seeking an El Dorado to claim, and their economy is local and their environmental policies promote sustainability which in turn enables Orania to be self-sufficient. They are also peaceful, renouncing the violent ways of militant Afrikaner groups which discourages the ANC from seeing them as a threat that has to be crushed. While Orania’s peaceful philosophy may be a disappointment for American patriots eager to re-enact 1776, I believe it provides a more realistic path for conservative whites. We are a minority after all, and a liberal U.S. hostile to its white American roots will still wield great military power, and after seeing how the U.S. can still flex its muscles (Libya being the most recent example), we must remember that we are essentially at liberals’ mercy. Oranians realize that they are at the mercy of the ANC, which can simply order a pogrom to exterminate the Afrikaner enclave. Thus there is a rational reason for Orania’s pacifism and “appeasement” to the ANC. And yet, despite this apparent loyalty to black South Africa, Orania is successful in upholding Afrikaner culture and heritage.

Mark Jaws writes:

Thomas Bertonneau wrote in response to my comment:

Mark Jaws sees a possible contradiction in a survival colony, namely that it would need to be maximally governed. This prospect is not unlikely, but it bothers me less than it seems to bother Mr. Jaws. Conservatives would do well to study the clerical-authoritarian states of Central Europe in the period between the two world wars. The Hungarian State and the Austrian State might justly bear the descriptions of “maximal minimalism.” Within narrowly defined precincts the central government was absolute, but beyond those precincts the policy was laissez-faire, especially as it concerned the market. This might be a necessary formula for a viable conservative polity.

I think Mr. Bertonneau misread my take, and for that I am partly to blame for being overly sarcastic. I am not bothered at all by maximum governance to ensure the continuation of our Western culture and the survival of the people who carry it in their genes. We will need it to survive because I know the cultural Marxists are not likely to let us break away in any fashion—spiritually, culturally, or politically—without a struggle. Any of those “rugged individualists” who think they can head for the hills and hold off the goons of the leftist police state with their shotguns are sadly fooling themselves. We will need a sense of communitarianism and solidarity to prevail against the left.

November 23

Thomas Bertonneau writes:

I am happy to have a better understanding of Mark Jaws’ meaning. Any practical “Sane Asylum” undertaken by traditional conservatives in an actual place will require much hardship and sacrifice from its founders—in part because founding a polity is the most difficult project that there is and in part because, as soon as it recognizes what is going on, the Great Liberal Order will move illiberally to quash secession. It is for this reason that a preliminary “inner secession” or “internal emigration” is advisable, part of which would be the refutation of the notion that the frontier no longer exists. The frontier does not need to be an unsettled desert, as it was for the pioneers. Indeed it cannot be. It might, however, be a place sparsely settled or losing population through the draw of the Babylonian cities.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 19, 2011 11:15 AM | Send