Beyond dissidence, cont.

My comment at The Thinking Housewife that it’s too late in America for us to be Solzhenitsyn-type dissidents set off quite a discussion there which continues with a significant essay by Henry McCulloch.

I myself have not participated in the discussion, as the arguments were more complex than I was prepared to get a handle on and reply to at the moment (the same applies to replying to comments that I have received on the subject—I apologize to those readers I have not yet answered). A lot of the TTH discussion had to do with the idea, dear to many traditional and paleo conservatives, that the United States (the state or polity) is distinct from America (the nation or people). Just speaking in a preliminary way, it is my sense that this distinction, which applies to the nations of Europe, does not apply very well to America. This is because America (the nation or people) came into existence at precisely the same moment as the United States (the state or polity). This event was effected in the first and last paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people [LA replies: note that it speaks of “one people,” not thirteen peoples] to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation….

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States….

Before 1775-1776, the separate colonies had never acted as a political unit or federation, and the people of the thirteen colonies had not thought of themselves as one people. It was in the act of forming an independent political federation which encompassed thirteen states, that they also first articulated themselves as “one people.” The American people, and the United States of America, came into existence together. There has never been an American nation or people separate from their political organization, whether in the form of the Continental Congress (1776-1781), or the Articles of Confederation (1781-1788), or the Constitution (April 30, 1789 to November 6, 2012). The American people are uniquely tied to and defined by the United States, which in turn is defined by the Constitution.

But the United States is now a lawless leftist state hostile to the very existence of the American people and it cannot be fixed, because we are outnumbered by those who seek our dispossession and destruction. At the same time, notwithstanding the ruin of the United States, it is an existential fact that we are Americans, and will remain Americans. This may seem to contradict what I said before about there being no difference between America and the United States, but it is nevertheless true, because we are now in a new and unprecedented reality. Our job is to make sense of that reality and seek to create a new order, a new political and cultural expression for ourselves as a people. In the new polity or polities that may come into existence in the future, we and those who come after us will surely draw on some of the principles of the Constitution as well as our historic common culture and identity as Americans, and in that sense those new polities will be heirs of the United States (the polity) and of America (the people and nation). But they won’t be the United States of America, which is now a leftist, anti-white, anti-Christian juggernaut.

- end of initial entry -

November 16

Terry Morris writes:

You set the date of the expiration of the Constitutional United States at November 6, 2012. Whether this date is precisely correct or not, it is nevertheless a solid point of reference, and should be recorded in the annals of history as the Great Awakening Day. Let it be remembered that this discussion could not possibly have taken place on November 5, 2012, or on any prior date. Let it also be remembered that had the “missing” white vote not gone missing, through no concerted effort on the parts of conservatives, we would not be having this discussion. The hand of Providence is evident all over this from my perspective.

Having long-since abandoned any hope that my beloved America could be saved from impending ruin; having resigned the country to its fate three years prior to the death of Constitutional America (R.I.P.) as you’ve dated it, yet with hopeful expectations that others would come along in their own time and at their own pace, I find myself overjoyed in contemplating the prospect that there shall be, in this land, a rebirth of freedom, of a moral order; of legitimate, constitutional government. If I sound too optimistic at this early date, I can only appeal to the recorded thoughts of our revolutionary forbears:

You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means; that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even though we may regret it, which I trust in God we shall not.
—John Adams to his wife Abigail, July 3, 1776

I say it is time for a new Declaration of Independence, which might read in part:

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only with repeated injury. A government whose character is thus marked by every act which may define an absolute tyranny, is unfit to rule over a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our liberal white brethren. We have warned them from time to time of their government’s extending an unwarrantable, unconstitutional jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our deep roots and nativity here, and of the necessity of obeying the Constitution and the rule of law. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and break societal cohesion. They have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of the United States, as morally bankrupt leeches and parasites, and unfit to rule over us.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 15, 2012 11:42 PM | Send