The Next American Civil War?
Sounds interesting. When I bought this book a few weeks ago, I was immediately attracted by the title. I was also persuaded to buy the book because Lee Harris is the author. If Harris had written this book, I knew it was going to be worth reading.
A few years ago, I bought another one of his books, Civilization and Its Enemies, which remains an all time favorite. There is an important discussion in that book about what Harris calls “fantasy ideology” which has never left me.
The fantasist is a common fixture in these circles. Understanding how they operate and see the world enables you to identify and avoid them. It is never a good idea to let yourself become a prop in the role playing fantasy world of others. The fantasist always forgets that you are a person with thoughts and feelings of your own.
In recent weeks, intellectuals have been taken to the woodshed around here. My firm opinion is that most intellectuals are useless. With intellectuals, it is always hit or miss, and usually miss. An intellectual can either bring great clarity to some given problem or hopelessly obfuscate the issue. They either hit the bullseye or fire completely off target.
As proof that the vast majority of intellectuals are useless, I offer the editorial page of the New York Times (which I read daily), the iron curtain of political correctness that reigns over American academia, and what passes for analysis in the academic journals of the social sciences. It goes without saying that most of us find that type of material highly disagreeable.
If we concede that the majority of intellectuals are useless, then we must grant that a minority of them are truly brilliant. This minority is capable of producing valuable and penetrating insights into the nature of their own societies. We would be foolish to ignore their wisdom.
The Next American Civil War is about an impending revolution that is gestating in America. There are two sides in this conflict: the “cognitive elite” with its utopian vision of progressive transformation and the “natural libertarians” who are determined to rule their own lives and are now being pushed to the point of rebellion.
Framing the Argument
There’s a shouting match going on in America between the Blues and the Reds. Fingers are being pointed. Accusations are being made. Grievances are being aired. Battle lines are being drawn.
The gulf between the Blues and Reds – the cognitive elite and the natural libertarians – has grown to the point where neither party speaks the same language, dreams the same dreams, lives for the same future, or can even understand the perspective of the other side. America has bifurcated into two nations.
In the Blue corner, Frank Rich of the New York Times speaks for the “cognitive elite”:
We’re smarter than you. We’re better than you. You’re ignorant, backwards, reactionary, prejudiced, and paranoid. Your kooky ideas are an embarrassment. You’re racist. You’re too White. You’re suffering from irrational anxiety about the future.
The better sort – judges, bureaucrats, technocrats, intellectuals, academics, the media elite – should make all the important decisions in America. You are too stupid to manage your own lives. Your antiquated traditions are standing in the way of modern progress and must be demolished.
We will use the mass media and public education system to nudge and brainwash your children and turn them against you. If force is required to drag you kicking and screaming into our utopian future, as it was required in Civil War, Civil Rights Movement, and now Arizona, then so much the better.
In the Red corner, Joe the Plumber speaks for the “natural libertarians”:
You’re not better than us. This is America. We’re equals here. If you are so smart, how did you spend over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money – collected from little guys like me – and produce depression level unemployment? Given your disastrous track record, why should anyone trust you? I prefer to think for myself.
What you call progress looks more like decline. Undermining the family, the church, the community, the nation, and the entrepreneur weakens the institutions which are necessary to preserve our independence and prosperity. You want to reduce citizens to subjects of government and lord over us, denigrate us, and exploit us like a new aristocracy.
In the name of tolerance, you look down your noses at us and seek to take away our freedom for you can erect new privileges for so-called “protected classes.” The last thing you believe is that ordinary people are your equals. You also want to redistribute our wealth to corrupt interest groups. We’re not going to take it anymore.
I’m as free of prejudice of as man. I don’t hate minorities. Some of my friends are minorities. It is starting to seem like it is impossible to live up to your standards. I am going to be called a “racist” no matter what I do. I’m starting to think you hate me and look down on me because I am White.
This is America. We rule ourselves here. Government rests on the consent of the governed. That means it can be withdrawn.
Keep pushing me. Keep disrespecting me. If you keep this up, I am eventually going to lose my patience, and like a rattlesnake I will strike. You will regret the day you dared to tread on me.
That’s the significance of the Tea Party. It isn’t so much a set of ideas as it is an attitude. It is also a thinly veiled threat. If you keep pushing us and rubbing our noses in the dirt, eventually it will spark a rebellion.
White America is starting to feel like an “outsider.” The “Real America” has been submerged underneath the utopian post-national America of the progressive ruling class. The new outsiders are organizing to “take our country” back.
Insiders don’t rebel. Outsiders do.
White America is now the outsider. How did the descendants of Jefferson and Washington become the have nots? What are the long term consequences of this epochal transformation?
Transformation of the Elites
“If religion is the opiate of the masses, then utopianism is the methamphetamine of intellectuals.” – Lee Harris
In the nineteenth century, the American elite wasn’t nearly as distinct from the American people as it is today. Back then, the rulers and the ruled were drawn from a common Anglo-Protestant ethnic stock.
The rulers shared the same culture and religion as the ruled. In the South, the planter class enjoyed drinking, hunting, chasing women, and playing cards as much as the yeoman farmers. They worshiped the same god in the same churches.
The rulers were average men with the faults of ordinary men. They weren’t necessarily more intelligent or educated than the ruled. At least after the Federalist Party was overthrown and the Jacksonian revolt ushered in the modern two party democratic system.
Over the next two centuries, American society would become increasingly complex. The growing technological complexity of society began to require more in the way of specialized knowledge.
In the mid-twentieth century, America adopted the meritocratic system of selecting its elites. Within a few decades, the WASP elite was displaced by a new elite which remains in place in our own times.
The advent of meritocracy radically shifted the delicate balance between rulers and the ruled. The catch of meritocracy is that it led to the creation of a new elite which puts a premium on high intelligence and education. By its nature, such an elite is highly selective and excludes ordinary people.
The new American elite was drawn from disparate sources. The new ruling class – which is disproportionately composed of intellectuals – came to radically differ from the American people in terms of their race, religion, ethnicity, social class, culture and ideology. They don’t even live in the same regions, much less in the same cities, states, or neighborhoods.
Ever since the French Revolution, intellectuals of all stripes have dedicated their lives to a single model of political organization: a utopian society, one ruled over by intellectuals, in which ordinary people are coerced, nudged, or guided to the realization of the millennium on earth.
Standing in the way of the intellectuals and their realization of utopia, there are millions of “natural libertarians” who are content to quietly live their own lives and enjoy the fruits of their own labor. Most of these people plan to ascend to heaven the old fashioned way. They also tend to be skeptical of delusional progressive schemes that never seem to work out.
Blues vs. Reds
The conflict between the Blues (the cognitive elite and their vassals) and the Reds (the people being nudged toward utopia) has evolved to the point where the Blues have suffered a total and complete collapse of legitimacy.
The Blues are now more unpopular with the Reds than King George III was with the American colonists on the eve of the American Revolution. The numbers are stunning:
– 21% of Americans believe the U.S. federal government has the “consent of the governed.” 61% of Americans believe the federal government does not have their consent. 18% are undecided.
– 63% of the political class (the Blues) believes the federal government has the consent of the governed.
– 71% of Americans consider the federal government a special interest group.
– 70% of Americans believe the federal government and big business are in collusion to hurt consumers.
– 75% of Americans are “angry” at the federal government.
– 63% of Americans believe it would be better if all members of Congress lost their jobs.
– 57% of Americans believe the federal government is a “direct and immediate threat” to their freedom.
– 11% of Americans have a “great deal” or “a lot” of confidence in Congress.
– Over half of Americans have “very little” or “no confidence” in Congress.
– 25% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers.
– 22% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in television news.
– 76% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military.
What institutions do Americans trust? Small business, the military, the police, and the church. What do these institutions have in common? They are institutions which the Reds have traditionally dominated.
A racial breakdown of the numbers would be even more illuminating. It is a safe bet that the Reds – White America – are even more radically alienated than the polls above (which include the Blues) tend to suggest.
A word of caution: it is a mistake to write off these numbers as just the latest example of the usual partisan bickering. The Republican Party and Beltway conservatives are even more unpopular than their Democratic counterparts.
“Unfashionable Observations”
This book is a treasure trove of “unfashionable observations.” There are too many to list here. I highly recommend you check out this book yourself. It was a delight to read.
In hindsight, a more appropriate title would have been something like “A Discourse on the History and Future of Liberty.” Among my favorite little gems of insight:
– Liberty doesn’t come from “natural rights” or any abstract universal theory. It is a living tradition that evolved as a response to a peculiar set of environmental circumstances.
– No one chooses liberty and anomie over the comforts of tradition. Liberty evolves when some emergency or catastrophe knocks a society off auto-pilot and forces men to be free. Some men thrive in these conditions and rise to greatness.
– The only effective check on the ruling class is the character type of the people, specifically, the moral virtues that favor independence.
– It is always a good thing to have a vibrant political ecology that includes multitudes of ornery, independent minded people who dislike being told what to do. Their presence works to the advantage of freedom and acts as a check on the utopian bureaucratic totalitarianism that has become a threat to liberty in our own times.
– Progressive intellectuals really are trying to sap and undermine the foundations of liberty in their delusional pursuit of a utopian society. This project can only end in rebellion and disaster.
– The people have only won their freedom when they have risen up and seized it themselves. Liberty doesn’t come from abstractions, intellectuals, or philosophers. The vital role of mobs, insurgents, and outlaws has been overlooked in the history of liberty.
– There is an inherent conflict between civilization and liberty. An overcivilized society rots and degenerates over time. It increasingly takes on a pyramid form. Uncivilized behavior – mob violence, unlawful rebellion, racial imperialism, extremism – played the critical role in the creation of the free society that progressive intellectuals take for granted.
– The free society that progressive intellectuals take for granted sprung from selfish motives of dead white males. Rich smugglers like John Hancock played a vital role in fomenting the American Revolution. Western speculators wanted access to land beyond the Appalachians. Religious bigotry and pro-slavery sentiment was intertwined with the patriot cause.
If you examine the history of the American Revolution, unfounded conspiracy theories about the Pope and the Crown played a vital role in getting it off the ground. The Indians and negro slaves tended to fight for the British.
– Thomas Jefferson understood that rebellion was needed to renew a free society from time to time. This is an observation we would be well advised to heed in our own times.
Final Thoughts
The original American Revolution was a bloody affair. There are many parallels with the Tea Party, but this is not one of them. The list of grievances which the Reds could cite to justify their separation from the Blues dwarfs those of the American colonists. The Blues yearn for the cultural, economic, and demographic annihilation of the Reds.
King George III never aspired to anything so radical as the establishment of a complete dictatorship over the mind and systematic the redistribution of American wealth to racial aliens. He never thought so less of his misguided subjects as to appoint the bastard mulatto son of a White woman and an African foreigner as a colonial governor.
In the Civil War, President Lincoln only wanted the Confederates to remain loyal to the Union and respect majority rule, which is why Andrew Johnson served as his Vice President. The rift between the Blues and Grays over slavery was quickly healed once the institution was eliminated and the North abandoned its attempt to transform the South.
There are no “mystic cords of memory” or “patriot graves” or “bonds of affection” to swell the chorus of the Union this time around. The Blues and Reds have nothing in common to rally around and resolve their differences. Nothing but inertia and nostalgia holds our inverted society together.
Eventually, the traitors will be chased from the temples of power, and the meritocratic system which have facilitated their rise will be overthrown. It could happen as a national uprising (1776), a peaceful and bloodless reform (1828), or geographic separation into two nations (1861).
The 1776 route is the most likely scenario. Tellingly, its iconography has already been adopted by White America. The day is fast approaching when some overt act by the federal government will spark a revolution in the United States.
Couples who hate each other this much don’t stay married for long. They’re not going to stay together “for the kids” either.
Mr. Dithers,
I didn’t know that I had to remind you that Jews are drastically overrepresented among the American elite. That has only been pointed out … what, maybe two thousand times on this website?
Well, Hunter, I’m not counting but your comments about our new elites were couched in a manner that would have most readers guessing as to who they are.
In the future, I will use the asterisk to identify Jews.
“But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don’t act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s the growing gulf between the country’s thought leaders, as they’re called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we’ll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.
But I’ve never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm. In Washington they don’t seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They’re thinking something else. I’m not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don’t seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.”
+ “America Is at Risk of Boiling Over: And out-of-touch leaders don’t see the need to cool things off” by Peggy Noonan, WSJ, August 7th, 2010 – http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:declarations.html
Before people are willing to entertain the theory that there is a “hostile, Jewish elite who hates us and wants to replace us with foreigners” they first need to believe that there is a HOSTILE ELITE and that we are in fact in the process of BEING REPLACED BY FOREIGNERS. More and more whites are indeed starting to believe that the following two things are in fact happening before their very eyes. Perhaps soon they will be willing to entertain the full truth.
Relevant Quote: Somehow I get the impression that Peggy Noonan, the old Reagan Democrat, is worried that if Whites do get furious enough, they will deport the wetbacks, busloads of crying children and all. She doesn’t appear to be worried about us Whites.
Lockeford,
The country could easily stay together regardless of how much two segments hate each other. There are many examples around the world of countries that survive for generations with long-lasting animosity between two groups.
Quite true. On the other hand, peoples have also parted ways despite the absence of any sort of tremendous animosity; or parted ways on an explicit or ‘official’ basis for reasons other than that animosity.
There’s really only one thing I want to know after reading the post: Is it the case that the so-called natural libertarians can win?
I think they can. Their beliefs and mores tend to be more attuned (however unwittingly) to what objective science increasingly identifies as corresponding to “human nature.” This intellectual credibility enables them to draw away support from utopian progressives as the latter’s ideologues’ fears (human nature = gas chambers!) increasingly appear unfounded. Redistributionist progressives will remain but even they’ll be forced somewhat right if they wish to remain relevant. That’s my call. (Of course, it hardly needs to be pointed out, there really isn’t very much intrinsically racial to any of this.)
Hunter,
3.) Personally, I do not believe that pro-White intellectuals are indispensable to victory. I can’t imagine a scenario in which these people will read a book or essay that will inspire them to do anything beyond read the next book or essay.
Perhaps not “intellectuals,” but “smart people,” yes. What are those people doing today? They’re immersed in their careers. They’re busy leading immensely fulfulling lives. They’re building the future — it may not be a future you think much of, but a future it is. They’re not despairing about any “collapse.” (See below.) Why would they be distracted from any of that simply because of a non-intellectual well-I-ain’t-never-liked-them-non-whites “just do it”-level argument?
5.) What’s indispensable to victory is acting in the real world to break the taboos against nurturing a positive sense of White identity. Taboos that are not challenged only grow stronger.
That’s true, though.
never surrender,
Once white people look around and realize it is okay to acknowledge their white heritage without fear of ostracism, then you know we are close to the disintegration of the stock market and the economy, which is why Limbaugh or one of the gate-keepers that holds back the true “Falling Down” backlash from occurring.
The stock market won’t necessarily disintegrate. Look at Brazil. It’s survived hyperinflation and wholesale currency collapses. True, the country’s held together by a cultural glue who knows how many times stronger than America’s (presumably — WNs are forever overestimating everyone elses sense of alienation), and the place sure as hell isn’t getting any whiter, but their stock market has quadrupled in the last ten years.
Lockeford: There may be many examples of countries that survive despite animosity between two groups, but would that be so if one group held most of the political power and constantly goaded the other, attacked its values and institutions, stole their wealth and squandered it, and essentially waged one-sided war on the other group? It’s not like the Flemings and Walloons in Belgium, each with their own territory that the other lot generally stay out of.
Silver: What currency does the Brazilian stock market deal in? If they don’t use Brazilian currency, why would hyperinflation matter to them? Let the dollar go stratospheric, and everyone’s stock market disintegrates.
Let the dollar go stratospheric, and everyone’s stock market disintegrates.
It’d be economically disruptive, sure, but stock markets across the globe wouldn’t “disintegrate.” Come on.
Brazilian public companies by and large turn a profit in Brazilian currency, and shares are likewise bought and sold with Brazilian currency. My point about hyperinflation wasn’t directly related to stocks; it had to do with the country surviving that economic tumult intact. Of course, hyperinflation, being so economically ruinous, must have had some effect on stocks. But the country recovered, as did the stock market; point being that if racially wildly disparate Brazil — posterchild for national dysfunction, to hear WNs tell it — can survive all that “collapse” predictions for America should be taken with a grain of salt (to say the least).
Silver: I make no claim of economic knowledge beyond the rudimentary, but when a currency begins to hyper-inflate, don’t the rich and well-connected switch to more stable currencies? Just as less wealthy people spend their pay as quickly as possible, converting paper money into canned peaches or shoes or anything that will keep its value? The Brazilian upper class didn’t just sit there and watch their money evaporate, did they? They moved as much as they could into other currencies, or into some kind of property that would keep its value, until the Brazilian currency stabilized. The dollar is the world’s reserve currency. What would dollar-holders do if the dollar hyper-inflated? Modern currencies are backed with trust, not with gold. What happens when trust evaporates? So does the money economy.
I’m not looking for an argument, BTW, I just don’t see how things can hold together when prosperity is based on speculation instead of production.
As far as surviving economic disruption, agricultural countries like Brazil have an advantage. The dirt is still there, the plows still work, the grain still grows, and people still want to eat. In the 1930s, half the population of France still lived on farms. A lot of the urban unemployed could go back to uncle’s farm and pull weeds or brush horses, which is why France pretty much escaped the Great Depression until 1937. “Post industrial” economies can’t even go back to making shoes or radios.
There is nothing new with America’s problems…. Peasants vs. Ruling Class…or The Uneducated vs. The Educated. In other words the Peasants are White (Wasps) and The Ruling Class is (Multicutural) Historically its an old story. The problem is that in every conflict opportunist take over… politicians, military men, etc. The peasant gets screwed in the end…. look at France. Russia, China. The solution: The
Whites must get Educated , then they will regain power..there are no shortcuts… Such an advance country like the USA cannot be ruled by Peasants.
JMO
This is so one sided. The democrats are pushing the republicans and treading on them? If this is true how can you explain Obama trying so hard to have mutual decisions. For example, when the debt ceiling needed to be raised, he put health care on the table. To the republicans however, this wasnt good enough. They wanted to default. All thy care about is make obama look bad… To say that the democrats are trying to push the republicans, proves that your only source of information is from rush, the drug addict.
So Shaan, let me get this straight… you’re saying that Obama and the Democrats know best and the stupid and stubborn Republicans are an impediment to progress. Doesn’t that prove the authors point?