Red Phillips has written an article in response to the debate over republicanism we are having on this website, and which has come up many times before on Facebook, which he connects to some recent changes in the League of the South.
In this article, he presents the Southern Nationalist camp as being divided into roughly three factions:
(1) Paleocons who, on the vital question of what the US Constitution really meant, believe that the Constitution wasn’t a radically centralizing document. Like most of the original Southern Nationalists, these people believe that Lincoln subverted the US Constitution and the original American Republic, but they may or may not support contemporary secession from the United States.
(2) Paleocons who, on the vital question of what the US Constitution really meant, believe the Constitution was a radically centralizing document, but who believe the Union was always terrible bargain for the South, and who support contemporary secession from the United States for various reasons.
(3) The “new guard” of anti-republicans who reject Americanism root-and-branch and want to secede for contemporary reasons.
There’s also the “heritage movement” which is centered on the SCV and various flagger groups. This faction is focused exclusively on defending Confederate memory and generally eschews interest in contemporary issues. The vast majority of these people are Rainbow Confederates who oppose modern day secession. They are not Southern Nationalists, but there is so much overlap in these circles that including them in the broader “Southern movement” is warranted here.
Insofar as the League of the South goes, there’s a broad spectrum of views within the organization, but the imperative of seceding from the present day United States is the common ground that unites us. There’s a consensus that “anything is better than this” and other points of contention can be sorted out after secession. We’re also united on the point of opposing the demographic displacement of White Southerners.
In any case, secession isn’t what is being debated here. Instead, it is the rise of the “new guard” and our ideas within the League. It’s true that there are anti-republicans within the League. Since I am closely associated with this faction, I will act as our spokesman and lay out our point of view on several key areas of disagreement:
1.) The US Constitution – Why are we even debating this at a time when the US Supreme Court is preparing to legalize “gay marriage”?
Shouldn’t it be obvious by now that the US Constitution was a failure? If we grant that it was a failure, why should we revere it? Why should such a failure, which has guided us toward this disaster, be our model for moving forward?
Does it matter at this far gone point what the US Constitution “really meant”? If it has been an abject failure in sustaining a culturally conservative society in practice, it was clearly flawed. What’s more, examining those flaws and taking measures to correct them should be our starting point for creating our next government.
2.) The Articles of Confederation – This scheme of government lasted for all of six years – please note this website is now older than the Articles of Confederation – before it was scrapped by the Founders themselves. Why should a form of government that was so unstable and so quickly undermined by speculators inspire confidence as a model for creating a new government?
3.) The Confederacy – Like the Articles of Confederation, the Confederacy lasted all of four years, which was due in large part to its own instability. The Confederacy was an attempt to create a slave-based republic. Otherwise, the Confederate Constitution was a close copy of the US Constitution with only a few minor changes.
The Confederacy lost the war because the South was polarized and divided over slavery. Large swathes of the Upper South were anti-Confederate, indifferent to the Confederate cause, or fought for the Union. But why insist on dredging this up now? Slavery is a moot issue. No one in the Southern Nationalist movement wants to restore slavery. Labeling ourselves “Confederates” or “Neo-Confederates” only accomplishes one thing … linking our cause to a dead republic, which no one can ever bring back, that was fought over a moot issue that no one cares about anymore.
4.) The “Old Republic” – There are a lot of paleocons who romanticize the “Old Republic” that was destroyed by Abraham Lincoln.
Should this “Old Republic” be our model for moving forward with our next government? It’s worth noting here that this “Old Republic” lasted for all of three generations – roughly 70 years – before it too collapsed under its own weight. It died on the battlefield where the winning side was fighting for a “new nation” which was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Now, the argument will be made by paleocons here that it was Lincoln who subverted the “Old Republic,” but they can’t ignore the fact that the winning side in that war, which represented the majority of White Americans, was the one that fought for abolitionism and an egalitarian proposition nation, and which spent the next twelve years after the war trying to “reconstruct” the South along those lines.
Is this not disturbing? Is this not thought provoking?
5.) Republicanism – This is the core issue that divides the anti-republican camp from the paleocons: upon close reflection, anti-republicans have serious doubts about the stability of the republican form of government, and would prefer a different form of government altogether as a model for moving forward.
The “Old Republic,” which is revered by paleocons, was destroyed by Americans who were convinced that the United States wasn’t republican enough, which is to say, it wasn’t free enough or equal enough. The whole course of American history has followed the leveling trajectory unleashed by the American Revolution. There’s no room for any debate within the “mainstream” in the United States outside of the boundaries of liberalism with its two poles of “freedom” and “equality.” According to Americanism, nothing else in life is good except more freedom or more equality.
Paleocons deny that America is a product of the same Enlightenment liberalism which convulsed all of Europe in the Age of Revolution. In order to do this, they have to deny that America’s philosophical foundations are rooted in classical liberalism – in John Locke, Montesquieu, and the British Radical Whig tradition:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
The Declaration of Independence lays out the most famous statement of “rights talk” classical liberalism in the world: the notion that the sole purpose of government is to secure the individual rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The government here is just a social contract, a grand bargain, between individuals with equal rights that can be abolished whenever the principles of liberalism are felt to be violated.
Paleocons strangely deny that the American Revolution was an ideological war while turning a blind eye to how the legacy of the American Revolution, the toxic ideology of Americanism, was invoked by each and every single successful leveling movement that followed in its wake, whether it was Jeffersonianism that leveled the “Old Republic” into a full blown democracy (while the ink was barely dry on the US Constitution), or the abolition, free love, and women’s suffrage movements which drew their strength from the radical legacy of the American Revolution, or the Civil Rights Movement, which first became an issue after the war, or contemporary feminism and women’s rights and the ongoing struggle for homosexual liberation.
Maybe Yankees are to blame for all of this though and separating from them would have sufficed to check this downward spiral into the dark pit of “social justice”? That’s a comforting thought, but it fails to take into account that republican extremism, and the historical absence of a culture that blossomed in the bosom of slavery, is the reason why Yankees are like that in the first place. Without the practical reality of having to manage millions of negroes in their midst, Yankees set out about following the destructive abstract principles of Americanism to their ultimate radical conclusion.
The French took republicanism to even greater extremes during the French Revolution where the same conflict that played out in the United States between the South and the North over slavery, white supremacy, and “rights talk” was replicated in the conflict between Saint-Domingue and metropolitan France. The course of republicanism in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Ireland and other Western countries should raise even graver doubts about the stability of the republican form of government.
The bottom line here is that it is hard to look around the modern world and see much hope for a stable, conservative society in the numerous examples of countries that have adopted the republican form of government. Wherever we look (Lincoln’s America, Jacobin France, and Weimar Germany being only three of the worst examples), we see nothing but a landscape of social decline in the West after countless elections.
6.) The Confederate Battle Flag – See the Confederacy.
See also the “New Confederate Army” and CSA.Gov. We have no objection to 1.) defending Confederate memory or 2.) honoring our ancestors. At the same time, we fail to see the point of living in the past and getting bogged down in debates over moot issues when our very future existence as a people is now under threat. Also, it doesn’t help matters that the last two generations have spent so much time trashing the aesthetic of the CBF and ghettoizing its appeal into a symbol of a degraded subculture:
7.) Focusing on the Present – We believe that our cause, which is a fight to secure the future existence of our people, dwarfs the cause of the Confederacy in its importance. Existence matters far more than independence. Our existence is under threat and nothing else remotely comes close in our priorities.
8.) Ethnonationalism – Ethnonationalism emerged during the 19th century Romantic movement in reaction to the 18th century civic nationalism of the French Republic. The US was founded on the older concept of civic nationalism, which is to say, the ideal of the union of free men against tyrants. The American Founders rejected their English heritage and Anglophobia dominated the US until the twentieth century when the rise of Germany forced an Anglo-American rapprochement.
9.) The Proposition Nation – From the very beginning of American history, Americans thought of their country as some kind of shining beacon of republican freedom, a “City on a Hill,” that other European countries were supposed to emulate, or else.
To say that America wasn’t driven by ideological fervor requires ignoring inconvenient facts like how Jefferson cheered on the French Revolution, or how Americans glorified European revolutionaries like Kossuth and Garibaldi, or how the US clashed with the Holy Alliance, which represented the old order, or supported the spread of republicanism in Latin America, which culminated in an intervention in Cuba.
America as an ethnonationalist republic makes even less sense considering how Britain was America’s primary antagonist in the 19th century. The fact is, Americans have always wanted to spread their cherished “institutions” overseas – and here too, remember, because the Yankees came here to teach us the true meaning of “freedom” and “equality” after the war. The postwar South was not up to their “republican” standard.
10.) True Southern Nationalism – For some reason, Red has convinced himself that only republicans can be Southern Nationalists. It’s as if the history of the South begins in 1776 and is synonymous with the United States. Nothing else that happened before that date counts on the republican calender.
In reality, the formative years of Southern culture were in the colonial era when slavery and the plantation system were introduced. The South already had a distinct culture before the American Revolution. What made the South distinct from the Northeastern colonies is due to the legacy of that time period, not to republicanism, which was adopted by both sections of the United States. The primary difference was that the Southern colonies were slave societies which led to the same sort of cultural conservatism found in the British and French West Indies which also proved resistant to the excesses of republican ideological fervor.
By the 1850s, George Fitzhugh and other Southern antebellum writers had become severely critical of the suffocating influence of Jefferson’s republicanism.
Conclusion
America has now evolved into its final form as a cultural and political dung heap of liberty and equality – just like every other republican experiment in the modern West. No one has any reason to believe that rolling the dice again on republicanism will produce a result any different from what we can see on display right now.
Those who are alienated and miserable underneath the results of republicanism (we won’t get into the Jew issue here, which is a can of worms republicanism made possible) would like to consider our options before making a leap of a faith on the basis of a romanticized fancy. Conservatives who revere the past believe they can vote their way to an America, one that has never existed, which is not embroiled in a perpetual state of social revolution. Good luck with that!
Note: For the record, Pabst Blue Ribbon and Waffle House have nothing to do with this debate.
So what form of government do you support? If a southern state gained independence next year, what form of government would you recommend?
That’s why I have become a Monarchist. I would welcome a like-ethnicked, hereditary Christian monarch who was the ‘little father’ over his people.
The fallacy that someone with an inferior intellect is my ‘equal’ was my first step in realizing that Aristocracy is both a) and inevitable and b) eminently biblical, concept.
The Tribes of Israel were chosen from among all the other Adamites, and the Adamites were chosen from among all the other hominids. And nowhere, does God rescind that choice- for if the non-Adamites, or the non-Tribed Israelites were ever to be included into the Body of Christ, EVERY single prophecy in the OT would be rendered invalid.
And I don’t believe God either a) can lie, or b) changes his mind.
Now, having said that, I find myself in a land where everyone thinks they’re our equals, and that all opinions are equally valid. In short, I am in an Athenian Greek’s worst nightmare…. a mobocracy of idiots.
The sooner this geographic area splits, the better.
My preference would be monarchy, but I am open to persuasion on the subject. I just don’t think going with another “republic” should be a foregone conclusion in light of the track record.
Very thought provoking read Hunter. Thank you. I have forwarded it to a few friends.
I am going to read it a few more times, think on it & post a reply.
Well said HW. I’m an old northener and the South was alien to me because it had vestiges of non-republicanism in my youth. I’m republican by nature and it’s fine if your town is all German or Norwegian and maybe even Swedes but it’s a leveling ideology ever on the prowl. Northern conservatives all carry this ideological virus
When thinking about such things, the important factor isn’t what anyone intended, but the actual results.
I’m sure the Founders didn’t “intend” for us to be discussing Brian Williams’ daughter’s analingus scene on Girls or how 2Chainz is a “superstar,” but we must face facts. This is the cultural level we have been lowered to under the republican system of government.
That’s a good point.
Because of slavery and the plantation system and the practical implications of equal rights on our enormous black population, the South’s cultural DNA had enough vestiges of non-republicanism to resist the Northeast as it pulled the country in that direction.
Aren’t the southern states examples of successful republics?
You’ve documented very convicingly that the southern states have resisted abolitionism, desegregation, sodomite rights, and the third-world invasion.
Every step of degeneracy has been forced upon them. I can’t think of any way in which their republican form of government has harmed them.
If the South was free of the North, we would undoubtedly be much better off than we are today. That’s due to the vestigial elements of our non-republican cultural heritage.
Is independence a panacea though? Look at Ireland which is independent of the UK. Look at Scotland which came close to seceding from the UK. Look at Norway which is free of the EU.
And as far as self-evident rights, are you saying that people do not have a right to resist a government that tries to murder them or confiscate their property?
And are you suggesting that in the South, there be established a system of hereditary privileges that some white people will enjoy and other white people will not?
1.) If I took up arms against this government, I would be dealt with like Bob Mathews. The government wouldn’t acknowledge my “right” to start a violent revolution. That’s just empty rhetoric.
2.) I’m saying that there should be a long debate over the next form of government rather than banking on the next “republic” not to implode like all the previous ones.
The US constitution is a bastard document of classical British tradition and Radical Whigism/Jacobinism. Throwing aside every assumption made regarding the early Republic would be throwing out those important classical assumptions that are deeply ingrained into the conscience of the British Isles and it’s diaspora.
In this current day and age, there is no suitable monarch fit for rule over the North American states (I don’t think the Windsor’s have an interest in ascending power or ruling over a country that has been removed from the empire for well over 200 years), nor is it plausible to convince the population to submit to that order.
What the American traditionalist counter-culture should is focus on the liberal protestant polity as a means, not a cause in itself. It should also take the common Anglo-conservative approach to encourage limits on democracy and a rejection of egalitarianism. We should cite both citizens of the republic who belonged to this practice as well as early British/colonial society and consider ourselves the heirs to that tradition.
The largest mistake would be to rely on foreign ideologies and concepts. The nation (Southron or otherwise) does not want to become Russian Orthodox Monarchists, clerical fascists, Judeo-reactionary techno-commercialists, or Anarcho Capitalists. The nation wants a functioning and familiar order.
Both articles (by Red and HW) are very good. Of course, I agree fully with HW and believe Red represents an older US constitution-focused brand of conservatism. Any such focus on the US constitutions (either the present monstrosity or the Articles) is necessarily a Union-focused position. It might posit a favourable view of the South or even support our independence (as Red does), but it is fundamentally a view focused on words on paper and structures of government. Even as recently as perhaps George Wallace’s campaign in 1972 this position of constitutionalism would have been relevant as a means to preserving our people and culture. Our focus as SNs (and that name truly best describes what we are, contrary to what Red asserts) is on the survival and well-being of our people and culture. We are ethnonationalists who have expunged the virus of civic nationalism (proposition-based governments and societies). No matter how decentralised we do not a union with those who are not our people or those whose culture is egalitarian-focused. The concept of America (an experiment in combing and ultimately blending together different types of people under the same government) is something I reject completely. Our Southern ancestors, as both HW and I have documented, moved steadily towards a SN position and away from Americanism throughout the Antebellum period. Sadly, after losing the War many Southern US conservatives like Davis fell back upon constitutionalism to justify what they did. Thankfully that course was reversed some later. But these 2 tendencies of thought have long been present and at odds in the Southern mind.
“anything is better than this”
Maybe not. Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched and a boat load of other cliches. Just because it’s bad doesn’t mean it can’t get worse. That’s the conservative position.
I don’t want a King because how are we to make sure the King isn’t an idiot? I’d rather have a Republican form of government because it takes more than one idiot to screw things up.
The present form of our government is skewed due to a hostile elite attacking the people in the country. It hard to focus on any kind of statement about the utility of government without rationally taking account of this process.
One step might be to get rid of direct election of Senators. The Senators would then be beholden to the States. Doesn’t mean they can’t be bribed or blackmailed but there would be at least some influence by the State legislatures. It would slow Federalism cost foisted on the States. It might pass on State cost to the Federal government from the States but at least they would have to be paid for.
The idea that we’re going to get a King and some guys with fuzzy hats as guards and all our problems will be solved is fantastical to me. I wonder why various reactionalist (read Jewish) sites are all calling for Kings. Reactionalist is just another “ist” or “ism” to distract people.
If you are referring to Jews, it was all that republican rights talk about freedom, equal rights, and religious tolerance that broke down the barriers and propelled them to the pinnacle of power and influence in the US. That’s what emancipated them too in Europe in the wake of Napoleon’s armies.
If only we could convince those republicans to stop talking about freedom and rights, our kings and queens wouldn’t get their heads lobbed off.
Wasn’t the royal family and their children murdered in Russia? And didn’t they fight tooth and nail to stay in power? So how come the monarchy didn’t work out there?
Whether it was in the US or France, the republicans won this fight a long time ago, which is why we are living with the consequences. We live in a republican political culture where nothing else in the world is good except for more freedom, equality, tolerance, rights and individual self expression.
As for Europe, the traditional order was unsettled by the Napoleonic Wars and later the World Wars.
3. The Confederacy
Which was organized largely around slavery and states’ rights, i.e. a labor-economic system and a political doctrine. Both basically are little more than collective opinions. And people can change their opinions as often as they change their socks, or as often as we hope they change their socks.
If I took up arms against this government, I would be dealt with like Bob Mathews. The government wouldn’t acknowledge my “right” to start a violent revolution. That’s just empty rhetoric.
I’m not asking if it’s prudent for you to start an armed rebellion.
I’m asking:
1) Do communities of white men, when their lives or prosperity are threatened, have the right to secede and defend their new formed states by military means?
2) Has God granted to a heriditary nobility a special right to govern?
Unless you answer no to 1 and yes to 2, you don’t have any cause to complain about the Decaration of Independence.
Re: QD
Last year, I spent a lot of time studying the history of Haiti for Black History Month. It was eye opening to see the parallels between the Haitian Revolution and the War Between the States.
In Saint-Domingue, the planters were swept up in the republicanism of the French Revolution, but their attitude quickly soured once they realized how explosive the implications of liberty and equality would apply to their own predicament.
The planters tried to secede and called in the British to Saint-Domingue. This allowed the rebelling slaves to present themselves as a patriotic fifth column to the metropolitan French on the basis of shared allegiance to the abstract “rights of man.” Sonthonax, one of the Jacobin administrators sent to Saint-Domingue, was vicious in beheading the white traitors with the guillotine.
It was liberty and equality which torched the whole social structure of Saint-Domingue which became Haiti.
Well, Southern leaders did ratify the Constitution which says something I think about what they thought of King George. The idea is that what we see around us is somehow a logical outgrowth of the founding principles has always seemed dubious to me. As late as 1857, the US Supreme Court ruled that under the Constitution blacks had no rights white men were bound to respect.
I don’t have a lot of time so I will be as brief as I can, and will likely miss a few points.
First of all, it was not my intention to suggest that there are three or four groups, as Hunter describes. I was attempting to make a broader distinction. Those who have traditionally self-identified or affiliated as specifically Southern conservatives or conservatives of the Southern tradition have generally been of like mind in accepting as correct the Southern take on the Constitution and the nature of the Union and obviously rejecting Lincoln’s and the Unionist’s take. As Hunter suggested in the other thread, this view can be seen in, for example, the post-War justifications of Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stevens. The point of including the dissenters who actually think the Constitution was more centralizing than the Southern tradition acknowledges, was 1.) because I believe this is the position Dr. Hill has come to believe over time, and 2.) to make the point that these folks, while potentially agreeing with the anti-Republicans in a sense, do not endorse something more authoritarian as a result but something even more decentralized and “weak” than the traditional Southern understanding of the Constitution and the nature of the Union. For shorthand, let’s call this understanding a “loose compact” as opposed to the Unionist belief that the Union was a “tight compact.”
Also, I think the mention of heritage organizations is a bit of a distraction, but I said in my article that restoring monuments and displaying the flag were not political acts as opposed to debating the true nature of the Union, which is. I have thought about it and now take that back. Especially given today’s harsh PC climate, those things actually are political acts and quite in your face ones at that. But to the point, those organizations are made up almost entirely by people who accept, take for granted really, the Southern belief that we were supposed to be a loose compact and all the things that flow from that – small, limited government, etc. Does anyone think we need to take a survey to establish this?
And Hunter, you are actually wrong that all paleocons reject the idea that the US is fundamentally flawed by liberalism. (FTR, many paleos, and I would include myself here, actually shy away from speaking in terms of a “founding” because that plays into the idea of America as the product of some revolutionary act. Instead the focus is on viewing the colonies as preexisting entities that were extensions of the Mother Country that then came together, but the Union was a continuation, not some magical beginning.) This is actually a vary vigorous debate that comes up all the time in wonky paleocon discussions. It would side track the discussion too much to describe the different groups that believe this but it’s interesting and worth a separate discussion. But in general, Southern conservatives, who can be viewed as a subset of paleos, are part of the contingent who reject this idea and defend the original union as not “fundamentally” flawed, although they will admit problems.
There is actually a long history of American liberals crowing about how the US is fundamentally liberal, Lionel Trilling comes to mind. It was conservatives like Russel Kirk and Mel Bradford who came along and said “Wait a minute. Not so fast.” and revived a native American conservative tradition. They described the essentially conservative nature of America, especially with regard to how it actually was, vs. rhetoric and platitudes.
So the overall broad point is that when we speak of a Southern view, that overwhelmingly means a certain thing, and it is this loose compact idea. It does not mean latent monarchism or proto-fascism or whatever. So denominating yourself as Southern is a misrepresentation. In the case of anti-republican Southern Nationalism, the Southern is essentially a regional distinction. It is not a natural distinction that arises from a real, distinct, historic entity.
Also, you are consistently making the same arguments that liberals make with regard to the nature of America. This all gets very complicated especially without referring to the specific factions in particular, but the paleos who do think America was fundamentally corrupted by the seed of liberalism, obviously see this as a negative and unfortunate thing, not something to be celebrated as Trilling or Jaffa do. It’s hard to explain unless you have traveled in paleo circles for a while, but your and PP’s broad characterizations are more reminiscent of the exuberant proclamations of Jaffa than the mournful concessions of illiberal paleos. I don’t think your statements are the product of an actual historical examination of how things really were on the ground. Rather, you have embraced a pop historical and superficial understanding that is peddled by liberals and you do so enthusiastically because it serves your purpose that I described in my article, to burn down the rhetorical house. Your proclamations are not nuanced. They are maximalist, because they are in the service of furthering your agenda, not accurately portraying history. History and reality are very complicated thing and understanding them generally requires nuance. That is why I concede that there are at least elements of truth in what some illiberal paleos say about America, I just don’t accept the “fundamentally” tainted idea. However, that America is a proposition nation, which is a related but not identical issue, is utter nonsense and so contrary to history that it is clearly a construct in the service of an ideology whether it’s being peddled by Dinesh D’Souza or anti-republican Southern Nationalists.
That is all for now.
Re: Red
1.) The United States was founded in a violent revolution, which was a break with centuries of tradition, which was justified on the basis of the fashionable Enlightenment liberalism of the 18th century. It was the first in a series of clashes between royalists and republicans in the wider Age of Revolution. The ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, and the British Radical Whig tradition are as European in origin as fascism or postmodernism.
2.) As Cushman has pointed out, the Union cobbled together the Southern colonies with the Northern colonies in an unlikely alliance which had no precedent. The Southern colonies, particularly Georgia and South Carolina, were far more like the British West Indies than New England. They were an organic extension of the slave societies of the Caribbean just as Connecticut and Rhode Island were organic extensions of Massachusetts.
3.) Jefferson, Franklin, and Thomas Paine were unquestionably men of the Enlightenment. Paine even went to France to support the French Revolution.
4.) From the vantagepoint of Europe, the United States was seen as a radical experiment in liberal democracy in the 19th century.
5.) Russell Kirk was not a Southerner.
6.) As I have already pointed out to you, “the South” was a distinct cultural and historical entity emerged in the colonial era before the American Revolution, which was a period which lasted for over 150 years. It was during this long gestational period, when the South was under the British monarchy, that it gained its essential character. You keep insisting that “Southern” is somehow synonymous with “republican,” especially the Old Republican states rights doctrine, when there is nothing particularly “Southern” about republicanism at all. The North was just as republican as the South, arguably even more, as the American Revolution was launched in the North and Yankees were far more likely to push republican doctrines to ever greater extremes.
If anything is true, the South is notable for its resistance to pushing the republican doctrines of liberty and equality to ever greater extremes. The South opposed all the leveling movements mentioned above because of its cultural conservatism which was due, not to republicanism, but to slavery, white supremacy, and the culture that grew up around the plantation complex, all of which were established in an earlier time period.
Were the American colonists fighting some other quarrel that is unknown to us?
1.) It seems unlikely that the American Revolution was an ethnonationalist struggle given that it was a radical break with the British, who were the most closely related people in the world to the Americans, in alliance with their historic enemy, the French.
2.) It seems unlikely that the American Revolution was a religious struggle given that it led to the disestablishment of all the state churches in the South. Also, the Revolution was waged in alliance with Catholic France.
3.) It seems unlikely that the American Revolution was a racial struggle given that both sides in the conflict were, racially and ethnically speaking, the same people, although it is true that the specter of abolition is what scared the Lower South colonies into rebellion.
No, the American Revolution was a conflict that was fought between royalists (Tories) and republicans (Patriots). Just as it was in France, it was a conflict over establishing civic nationalism and its natural rights doctrine as our form of government.
Even if the constitution was perfect, and I do happen to think it was fairly well set out, it is ultimately just a piece of paper, and can’t protect any rights. That is up to the people no matter how you cut it.
Re: Lew
1.) The French Republic abolished slavery in 1794 and made every negro residing in the French Empire into a citizen.
2.) The French Republic emancipated the Jews in 1791. Was that a logical outcome of the republican principles of universal freedom and equal rights?
3.) You’re also glossing over a lot of American history here:
– The slave trade, for example, came under instant and sustained attack. It was abolished in 1808.
– Slavery in the North came under attack after the American Revolution because its existence was found to be inconsistent with Americanism.
– Massachusetts, which has always been in the vanguard of extending the principles of the American Revolution, repealed its anti-miscegenation law in the 1830s for being inconsistent with Americanism.
– Dred Scott was also the most polarizing and controversial Supreme Court decision in American history. Far from quelling the issue by denying that negroes could never be American citizens, Dred Scott was explosive and hotly contested in the North. It fueled the growth of the Republican Party whose appeals to the “higher law” than the Constitution convinced Southerners that the North had repudiated the decision of the Supreme Court which should have settled the matter of slavery’s legal status.
– By the 1850s, America was already brimming over with radical movements like abolition, free love, and women’s suffrage.
Re: Red
The inclusion of the heritage movement is warranted here because of the overlap. Some League members were at the flagging event in Lexington this afternoon.
Re: Clement Pulaski
1.) A “right” which is unacknowledged and immediately leads to violence whenever it is asserted isn’t much of a “right.”
2.) It’s not “self evident” that “all men are created equal” or that they have “inalienable rights” which are somehow analogous to the laws of physics. Governments are not instituted to secure individual rights either which are traded in some fictitious scenario when men decide to leave the state of nature and “enter” society. That’s just the start of what is wrong with the Declaration.
Too much hot air for me. I doubt that my Confederate ancestors ever thought much about the Civil War before it happened, and what worried them, from what little I know, were big city criminals from New York and Chicago, and being bossed around by Northerners.
Re: Red
Do you know of a single example of a constitutional republic where men have successfully voted their way to the stable, conservative society that you desire?
“Failed Republics”
One of the things I found out on the AR thread this weekend about Mount Holyoke College canceling the “V*gina Monologues” because “trans” women (men pretending to be women) think it’s transphobic is that there’s now such a thing as a “cotton ceiling,” that is, men pretending to be women are kvetching that lesbian women won’t have lesbian sex with them.
Failed republics? Our republic.
HW, if you were still doing your Amurrika Series, this would be right in your wheel house.
Hunter, it sounds like you’re talking about Political Correctness.
PC emerged in the 1980s. Republicanism was causing problems long before that.
A “right” which is unacknowledged and immediately leads to violence whenever it is asserted isn’t much of a “right.”
It seems like you’re just quibbling over terminology. Let me ask it this way: are communities of white men whose lives and property are threatened morally justified in seceding?
I will also ask again: do you think that god has granted to a hereditary nobility the right to rule?
Even if you disagree with how the declaration frames the issue, if you answer “no” to the preceding question, then your position would be just as subversive of the European ancienne régime.
just as long as its understood youre taking your slaves back with you.ALL OF THEM
There are no slaves anymore and no one is proposing reenslaving blacks. Slavery is a moot issue.
OTOH, republicanism is still making Whites soft and weak. It has been a gradual process since the days when the slave trade came under attack by the first philanthropists. I’m surprised that this hasn’t occured to so many people here.
What did you think would happen? Republicans have been preaching their doctrines of universal freedom and equality for centuries. Natural rights evolved into the rights of man which was found to be too sexist and which became human rights.
In some cases, yes. The case that comes immediately to mind are the Balkan and Caucaus countries that were raided for slaves that were sent to Mamluk Egypt and the Ottoman Empire.
As for the American Revolution, Britain fought a world war against France for the sake of securing the border of its American colonies, and all it asked in return was for the colonists to pay a few measly taxes, which disproportionately fell on the British West Indies anyway. That enormous expense was incurred for the sake of protecting their lives and property.
Who was unhappy? Land speculators who wanted to make fortunes in trans-Appalachia and Yankee smugglers who wanted to make illicit profits by trading with the French West Indies. Their predicament was not quite on the level of Serbia under the Ottoman yoke.
No, I don’t believe that any nobility has a God given right to rule. At the same time, I am absolutely sure that no parliament or legislature that has ever existed was backed by divine authority either. The American Congress, for example, was an institution created during a violent uprising.
I happen to know from inside information (duh, it’s obvious anyway) that the League of the South is planning on cutting off the welfare class of blacks, which clearly means they’ll be dumped on the North.
You need to free your people not burden them down with endless essays on intellectual minutae.
As a white man I want to be free of Political Correctness. If the mooslims slaughtered our “elite” I would go have a cup of tea, then go load some magazines.
IMO, those who live their lives bowing their heads to PC taboos only have themselves to blame. No one is stopping them from living their life otherwise. They choose to go along with the status quo because of the material advantage of doing so.
While we’re on this topic, twice this weekend I’ve read on AR on the Sharpton shakedown threads someone writing that if they were the CEO of a major publicly traded corporation, and the Sharpton-Jackson shakedown hustlers showed up, they’d tell them to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.
I’d do the same thing.
But…
Inconvenient truth time.
I’m not the CEO of a major publicly traded corporation, and neither are 99.99999…% of those who are reading these words here here on OD or on AR.
The sort of person who is such a CEO or has serious prospects of becoming one is inevitably the kind of squish who would buckle down to the Justice Brothers.
Why?
Because, the publicly traded corporation is to the business world what democracy and democratic republicanism is to societies in general. You see the same inevitable degeneracy in both.
HW, now that you’re a St. Louisan-in-law, I’m sure you’ve either read about or been told about a lot of the history of St. Louis’s most prominent corporate citizen. And as far as that goes, I’m sure you’ll agree that A-B was much better off when it was the business equivalent of a hereditary monarchy but started go down hill when it went public/became democratized. If August A. Busch III never got the bright idea to do an IPO, August A. Busch IV would be king/CEO right now and there would be no InBev, no Belgians, no piecemeal dismantling of the St. Louis operations.
Something just occurred to me … ask the typical Yankee/American to explain his identity and he will respond with something to the effect of “my identity is freedom” or “my identity is equality” or “my identity is human rights.” Lots of Southerners have bought into the virus of proposition-based civic nationalism that Cushman mentioned above.
Is that how we want to conceptualize the South? Is the South, rather than being a traditional blood and soil nation, nothing but “liberty” or “equality?”
No, I don’t believe that any nobility has a God given right to rule.
So your proposed monarchy doesn’t have any precedent in European history?
“The nation (Southron or otherwise) does not want to become Russian Orthodox Monarchists, clerical fascists, Judeo-reactionary techno-commercialists, or Anarcho Capitalists. ”
Andrew- what you want is immaterial. What we NEED is what we will have, or what we DESERVE is what we will have.
Thus, my call for a Monarchy. The futile, barren arguments about Anglo-saxon law and her ‘tradition’ is a moot point.
We have ALREADY lost at least two generations to a godless, amoral, bestial (read, nigger) JUDAIZED anti-culture. Miley Cyrus twerking is just the latest exemplar of that antichrist culture- think of Lady Gag-me-with-a-spoon and her ‘meat dress,’ then think back to Janet (nigger) Jackson’s pierced nipple ‘wardrobe malfunction’ on Nationwide TV, Gene Simmons’ phallic tongue/Kiss, Elton John, David Bowie,Lou Reed, and every other degenerate of the last fifty years. Hell, just think of Django Unchained a year or so ago, then trace the corruption back to Planet of the Apes/Logan’s Run/Soylent Green, and movies going back to the sixties like ‘Boys in the Band’/’The Good, Bad, and the Ugly’/’Guess who’s coming to Dinner’, etc. if you really want to know WHEN this Kulturkampf started!
The largest convert class of any “Christian denomination” is the Orthodox. No other group has a record of a culture that stands against this anti-culture. And, if/when enough people convert, you won’t have a ‘choice’ for a failed Republic, for it will already have degenerated into a stalinist gulag, if it isn’t already under O’Bummer, just waiting to happen.
Then, only those who lived through the last regime like that, will have the knowledge, and depth of spirit to overthrow that satanic counterfeit to a godly realm. And that sure ain’t gonna be the Dispensationalist CZ Baptists!
Hunter Wallace says:
January 18, 2015 at 1:16 pm
“PC emerged in the 1980s. Republicanism was causing problems long before that.”
Incorrect. Look here:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racist&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cracist%3B%2Cc0
“Liberty, equality, fraternity” is just another form of PC, that got all the Whites in Haiti killed. PC goes way back.
“Liberty, equality, fraternity” is a liberal slogan. The roots of PC are in 20th century cultural Marxism.
I really do not have time to respond to all this. But here are a few things.
Hunter, I believe you are largely confusing republicanism with liberalism. While I am most certainly illiberal, not all liberalism (in the old sense) is bad. I’m kinda down with that whole habeas corpus and trial by jury thing, for example. America is an extension of our British heritage and therefore incorporates it. I agree very much with Andrew Lynn above who expressed it very well, although I don’t think there is anything particularly radical about our Whigism. Since it all goes back to England, American republicanism is very much in the Country Party tradition. They were not so much about ideological leveling as they were fighting corruption and centralization for the interests of the whole vs. special interests.
As someone who is carrying on about actually following the Constitution as originally intended, I don’t really have a leg to stand on when it comes to telling someone to be practical, but you have to work with what you’ve got. You can’t just impose a foreign system on a people de novo. Governmental systems arise organically. They can’t be imposed except in conquest by a foreign people or with a lot of bloodshed.
Re. monarchism, first of all, God explicitly condemns monarchy in the Old Testament when He allows Israel to have a King but warms them it is a bad idea. Christian monarchists have always baffled me. Before you can credibly make a case for monarchism you have to explain your views in light of those verses. That said, monarchism in a situation where there is no royal family or house or aristocracy is nothing more than an intellectual affectation. It’s the equivalent of putting on you top hat and monocle and declaring “I am more illiberal than thou!” The best you could maybe do is argue for the restoration of the House of Tudor or something like that, which would be that awful backwards looking thing, and we can’t have that.
You really, really need to read the Livingston article I recommended, Secession and the Modern State. We are talking about republicanism vs. anti-republicanism as a kind of short hand. The real distinction IMO is actually more pre-modern vs. modern. The US as a loose contract was really not all that republican, and it certainly was not very liberal. Only half of one branch was directly elected by the people. It had a very limited franchise. Only whites could be citizens. Sometimes I think that only paleos and America-hating libs like Howard Zinn actually get the illiberal nature of the original America. Most liberals and pseudoconservatives paint a fairy tale that makes them feel good. Once again, it is very odd that illiberal Southern Nationalists are telling the same tale that fabulists like Jaffa tell.
The loose contract with the key idea of separation of powers actually hearkens back to a more Medieval political order. It was Lincoln and his invasion that transformed the US into a modern state, meaning having a single unified, indivisible sovereign over a fixed geographic area. Most of the political systems proposed by people who want to fundamentally alter ours, such as fascism or 3rd/4th Position, (monarchism could go either way I guess) actually presuppose a modern state. Can you territoriality secede from a fascist state? Franco, who let’s call semi-fascist, sought to suppress the distinctiveness of Castile vs. Catalonia, for example, because he thought it was harmful to the unity of the Spanish State.
For another example, I am not anti-Putin or anti-Russia and think Crimea rightfully “belongs” in Russia, but legit ethnic Ukrainians in Western Ukraine kinda have a reason to be sore at Russia which staved 11 million of them to death. Cushman’s boy Dugin essentially said they need to quit their whining and get on board the Russian superstate or else get invaded. Yeah, why don’t you take that and try to sell it to the next Southern conservative get together. Good luck with that. A Whigish loose contract Union is significantly less modern than much of the foolishness proposed by anti-republicans.
But hey, you know how we could go about comparing and contrasting the competing options? Your team could actually propose a system instead of dodging the question. Any parent or teacher will tell you that someone who dodges a question really doesn’t want to tell you their answer. That ball, Palmetto Patriot is squarely in your court.
I’ll break this up for ease.
The real question, I think, is what kind of white man are you preparing, not what kind of governance is preferable. If you are white, then the sort of white man that will exist is being determined, every moment, of every day, by you–by what you avoid. If, for instance, you avoid being scornful of intellect, the chance is higher that the white man that will exist will not be scornful of intellect. A friend of mine once remarked to me that not even the least intelligent Jew he’d ever encountered failed to attach importance to intellect. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen, say, a Jew refer scornfully to “book learning.” Avoidance of the scornful use of that phrase would probably do more to bring about a thriving white race than would one thousand white-nationalist demonstrations.
Government and monarchy are synonyms. The United States is–and has always been–a monarchy, as was the England from which the country’s original elements (the thirteen English colonies of continental North America) seceded. The president is a monarch; instead of declaring that his successor will be his son, he declares that his successor will be determined by a so-called election–an event conducted by the president. He (the president) can no more ensure that the elected successor will become president than a King of England can ensure that his son will become king. A successor is king or president only if he has made himself such, by, in effect, saying, “I have succeeded to my parent’s throne,” or “I won the election.” Yes, in England, the monarch’s offspring or some other relative of him (or her) has become king for more than one thousand years now–but nothing has guaranteed that. That successional series has merely eventuated, not least because the idea of hereditary succession has found a solid seat in the minds of many English persons, just as the idea of succession by election is seated in the minds of many Americans.
The problem with America–the reason I don’t consider myself American, except in a patriotic, sentimental sense–is its Constitution, which, as I think I said quite some time ago at this website, does nothing at all to protect what government should protect: race and property. The manner in which the monarch operates is of no importance. It doesn’t matter, in other words, whether the polity is a so-called republic, with so-called elective representatives of the people. If the law is that a bill enacted by those representatives is law–then that itself is the law, the decree, of the monarch. (“I will hold elections in which you will be able to vote for your representatives. Whatever is approved by a majority of those representatives will be the law. That is my decree.”)
The question, in other words, is whether the law protects race and property. Whether there’s a legislature, whether there are elected representatives–nothing of that is important, either way. The U.S. Constitution’s only valuable element is protection of free speech. As long as freedom of speech is favored by a decisive portion of the populace, that protection will endure, as law, the monarch’s word. Protection of race and protection of property could be similarly created, with just a few words. If they were to be created, they would expose as meaningless the Constitution’s gimcrackery, as I would term it. Two-thirds of this, a majority of that, two-year electoral terms of this, four-year electoral terms of that. All of that is trivial. The entire Constitutional Convention was trivial–because nothing of it had to do with race and property.
Red, I notice you keep talking about American republicanism and American constitutionalism. Though you are pro-Southern and pro-White, the fundamentals of your worldview is different than mine in this respect. Americanism is what I seek to undo.
Re: Red
1.) First, I don’t care about fascism, third positionism, Dugin, or the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. I don’t write about those issues because I have no interest in them. I haven’t been influenced by any of that. The same is true of Jaffa and other the other historians you have mentioned.
2.) Second, I don’t want to get into a theological debate here because it will just derail the discussion about republicanism into various people riding their usual religious hobbyhorses and shouting at each other. I will just note here that John Locke was a critic of Sir Robert Filmer who was the conservative who expounded the divine rights of kings theory in his book Patriarcha.
3.) Third, the US political system didn’t emerge organically. It was imposed during a violent revolution against Britain, one of many in an “Age of Revolution” between royalists and republicans, which was justified on the basis of the fashionable Enlightenment liberalism of the 18th century. The origins of these ideas can be traced back to Europe to John Locke, Montesquieu, and the British Radical Whigs. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson were men of the Enlightenment. It was the American Revolution that embedded “rights talk” at the core of the American political tradition.
4.) Fourth, the real question here – the crux of this debate – is over the American tradition. I stress the “American” tradition because there is nothing particularly “Southern” about it. The “American” tradition is shared by North and South, East and West, and can be traced back to the American Revolution. It is the same tradition of liberal constitutional republicanism on both sides of the Ohio River.
There has never really been a true rightwing in the United States. The tradition which you keep talking about, which is the liberal tradition, goes back to John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Montesquieu, the Levellers and the British Radical Whigs. Liberalism and the Whig tradition are the same thing. We haven’t discussed Oliver Cromwell and England’s brief and disastrous experiment with republicanism here yet – a period that was also marked by extreme leveling because it sprang from the same roots. Isn’t it odd that we always seem to find the same symptoms of decomposition wherever we find this system?
5.) Fifth, our team really hasn’t settled on any particular system yet. We’re still searching. What we are really against is blind faith in Americanism and carrying on that tradition, out of conservatism and nostalgia, into whatever form of government comes next. Looking around, we can’t see this America that you are talking about, one that is “not so much about ideological leveling,” and one that has been really “conservative.” In fact, everywhere the republican system of government has been tried, it seems to produce the exact opposite of the type of stable, conservative society that we desire.
6.) Finally, I have a question of my own: where in the world is there an example of a people living under the republican form of government, or where parliamentary institutions are dominant, that have voted their way to a stable, conservative society, which is not plagued by a perpetual state of social revolution and ideological leveling? Surely, if this kind of cultural degeneration is not the hallmark of that system, there would be somewhere republicanism has produced the result that we all desire?
To be clear, I have little use for Locke and even less for Paine who was a vile anti-Christian. Locke’s idea of a state of nature and a social contract is purely a theoretical construct and describes no society ever. Governments arise organically over time influenced by circumstances and with a lot of trial and error and good old fashion intrigue and force, not because free individuals come together and sign over some of their sovereignty with some fanciful social contract. All government originally was tribal (extended family) and various systems grew from there. Contrary to Locke and almost all modern Americans, left or right, the fundamental unit of government is not the individual but the family, because the family has hierarchy that is then reflected in the hierarchical arrangement of government to citizen or subject. So here Hunter an I are in agreement.
I also concede that the Declaration of Independence is highly problematic. While all people are created equal in a certain ontological sense, they are certainly not created equal in a real sense. The fact that that statement has to be clarified and is not true in the most obvious sense, makes it an unfortunate choice of words. That said, and as I said in the other thread, Jefferson did not mean what the Jaffaites and their odd Southern Nationalist bed fellows say he meant. Jefferson was most likely asserting the equality of subjects of the King residing in the colonies with subjects of the King residing on the mainland. (You know where I heard that in most clear terms? A lecture from Dr. Hill I have on tape.) This issue is debated in the debate on equality I mentioned in the other thread between Southern conservative Mel Bradford and Jaffa. Once again, very odd that my Southern Nationalist opponents are taking the side of Jaffa vs. their fellow Southerner Bradford.
Also the notion of God given inalienable rights is both bad philosophy and bad theology. Natural rights are an intellectual plaything that can mean whatever anyone asserts they mean, as opposed to actual political rights like habeas corpus which are hard won historical entities. The Soviet Constitution asserted a right to housing and a living wage if I’m not mistaken. Not many rights talking American conservatives would be down with that I’m guessing. And while I think the idea of God given rights improves upon plain natural rights in that if you say God is responsible for them it is harder to say that you have a right to kill your baby or marry your same sex partner, if you are going to invoke God you have to back that up with Chapter and Verse. I don’t find that in the Bible. The Bible is about obligation and obedience, not rights.
That said, an argument can be made that Jefferson was primarily courting the French for their support with his flowery language, rather than making real arguments. But while the DoI is an ideological document at the beginning before it turns into a laundry list of grievances, it is modern day folks who tend to exaggerate its importance. The Jaffa inspired Declarationists (Rick Santorum, Alan Keyes) are the one who want to make the Constitution a direct ideological product of the D0I, but it wasn’t. The Constitution was a practical hammered out series of compromises that called upon our unique British heritage while also dealing with the reality of being former colonies who were of necessity having to make some of it up as they went along.
In fact, a common complaint seen in Southern writings prior to the WBTS was that the fed gov and Northern ideologues were attempting to illegitimately apply the ideas of the Declaration to the Union. My Southern Nationalist Declarationist opponents are saying the were right to do so. Lincoln venerating, right of secession denying Alan Keyes would certainly agree with them.
Also, I didn’t claim that Russell Kirk was a Southerner. I said he was an American conservative, although he is sympathetic to the South in many ways. In his book The Conservative Mind, he actually describes both historical Northern and Southern conservatives and from that you can detect distinct differences.
If I concede one “fundamental” liberal taint in the Constitution it was the unfortunate prohibition against religious tests for office. The failure to specify that the US should be a covenantally Christian nation with office holding restricted to believers was a serious flaw although not one that couldn’t be overcome as long as America remained overwhelming particularistically Christian and self-consciously so. However, I highly suspect that this is not the liberal flaw most anti-republican Southern Nationalists have in mind because a disproportionate number of them are pagans and they all complain about the fanatical Puritans.
Re: Red
It’s quite clear that Jefferson did not believe in the literal, physical equality of all races. Quite the opposite. At the same time, Jefferson believed in the existence of universal equal rights, which were kind of the social equivalent of Newton’s physical laws. That’s why he wanted to transport blacks to Africa where they could be free to enjoy their equal rights. If he didn’t believe in universal equal rights, he wouldn’t have been troubled by their predicament.
Mr. Red as to your belief about monarchy being strictly against Christian ideology; I would recommend Sir Filmer’s book Patriarcha. I believe if you would view it you might come away with at the very least a less negative view of monarchies.
“where in the world is there an example of a people living under the republican form of government, or where parliamentary institutions are dominant”
What you are observing is the fallen nature of man, not necessarily the working out of republicanism. That all governmental systems will eventually deteriorate is likely inevitable due to man’s fallen nature although some last longer than others. To the degree you are describing something in particular, you are describing liberalism. To ask you a follow-up question, why is England (and most of Europe for that matter) a few decades ahead of the US in spiraling down the road of liberalism – socialism, Godlessness and suicidal immigration policies?
PP, I agree with Clyde Wilson that much of what we consider Americanism is actually Southernism. Prior to the WBTS, the places outside New England were considered the “normal” part of the country, and New England was considered the odd outsiders. After the War, the victors rewrote the history as is wont to happen and made the South the outlier and New England the standard. You are accepting the enemies’ propaganda.
Also Hunter, it is not true that there is no conservative or right-wing tradition in America, although Lionel Trilling would agree with you and Bradford, Kirk and Nash would not. If the right-wing was for throne and alter, then it is right that there was never a significant throne element per se, but there was an established order element. And there has always been a particularly strong alter element in the Protestant tradition.
1.) America isn’t particularly original. Europe is where liberalism and other leftist movements were spawned.
2.) Europe has little experience with multiracialism. In the US, multiracialism was a check on militant labor politics.
Antebellum Southern writers attributed the South’s conservative temperament, reverence for the past (Classical Rome and Greece), and respect for established forms and social hierarchies to slavery. They contrasted the South with the North which was said to be fond of “novelties.”
Since Hunter and PP seemed to have slept through their Southern Apologetics 101 class, here is a little remedial work.
Here is the Livingston essay I’ve mentioned a few times. It used to be, and may still be, available as a booklet through the League of the South. Hmmm… imagine that.
https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=227986249604
Here is the Clyde Wilson essay on the hijacking of Americanism by Yankees after the WBTS. It is called “The Yankee Problem in America.”
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson12.html
Here is Livingston on Lincoln as a litmus test of american conservatism. This one is short.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/977270/posts
And to clarify something I said, I do think the Declaration is influential when it comes to the moral and philosophical justification for secession, which Southerners claimed was a quintessentially American principle.
If Yankees were a uniquely malicious breed, the degeneration we see in the modern West wouldn’t be as widespread as it is now.
John and Hunter, I am very aware of Sir Robert Filmer, and agree with his critique of Locke’s contract theory. In fact, if you read what I wrote about Locke, I think it reflects Filmer, especially the idea that the family is the fundamental political entity of society. I forgive Filmer much of his monarchism because he is a product of his time and was choosing a side as they existed at the time. I just think the Bible is pretty clear on the issue. The Israelites’ desire to have a king because everyone else did, does in a way make a natural order argument for monarchy. In order for a Christian to make the case for monarchy, they have to essentially say that monarchy was bad for Israel because Israel was a special case, but that doesn’t make it bad for every other national. That’s plausible, but I want to hear that case and specifically hear the verses in question addressed.
As far as the subject of failed republics go, you should check the example of the Dutch Republic, Hunter. IMHO, the Dutch were the ones to set the ball rolling for all the other ones that followed, specially as far as rebelling against a monarch was concerned (in their case, Philip II of Spain and his successors), plus, there was an ethnic component to it, given that the Dutch were rebelling against a monarch from another ethnicity. In the Dutch favor, though, one could say that republicanism was foisted upon them, given how the English queen and the French monarchs (Charles IX and Henry III) refused to make them their subjects.
Red,
It’s odd that you should be a fan of Filmer given that the rights bearing individual has always been the fundamental political unit of American society.
There’s a whole slew of failed republics which all ended up suffering from more or less the same problems. The Netherlands is a very important case because the Dutch experiment with republicanism is even older than the American version.
In some cases, yes. The case that comes immediately to mind are the Balkan and Caucaus countries that were raided for slaves that were sent to Mamluk Egypt and the Ottoman Empire.
As for the American Revolution, Britain fought a world war against France for the sake of securing the border of its American colonies, and all it asked in return was for the colonists to pay a few measly taxes, which disproportionately fell on the British West Indies anyway. That enormous expense was incurred for the sake of protecting their lives and property.
It’s strange that you didn’t include the confederate states as an example of a body of men that were morally justified in seceding, perhaps because their grievances were to similar to those of the American patriots?
But in sum, it seems like you really agree with the declaration of independence a lot more than you care to admit. I find this is often the case with most contemporary rightists who claim to be “monarchists”.
You agree that white men can equally pursue political power, and reject the idea that god ordained a hereditary nobility (the idea which was the bedrock of the European ancienne regime). You also agree that communities of men have the right to secede when their lives are threatened (although you think that the grievances of the American patriots were illegitimate).
You disparage Thomas Jefferson’s theory of political rights. Fair enough, but just as you don’t actually propose a workable alternative to republicanism, you also don’t propose an alternative theory of rights. In both cases, you leave entirely too many questions unanswered.
For example, if the British monarch was the legitimate ruler of the southern colonies in 1776 and the American revolution was illegitimate, then wouldn’t the British monarch still be the legitimate ruler of those communities? How could he not be?
Also, you are part of an organization promoting southern secession. How would this secession take place? Would you, following the example of the confederates, work towards conventions where delegates of the people would vote for secession, either as states or counties? Or would such representative government be too republican for you? Are you encouraging the southern people to do something that (in your view) they don’t actually possess the political authority to do?
Who was unhappy? Land speculators who wanted to make fortunes in trans-Appalachia and Yankee smugglers who wanted to make illicit profits by trading with the French West Indies. Their predicament was not quite on the level of Serbia under the Ottoman yoke.
The declaration mentions 27 specific grievances. Are you saying that these grievances taken together do not warrant secession, or are you saying that a cabal of land speculators fabricated these grievances?
The Americans had far more than taxes or other economic concerns to complain about. Probably the most interesting (from a pro-white perspective) is the complaint that the British monarch was riling up the red savages against the colonists.
From the declaration:
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
That single grievance alone warranted secession.
It is also important to note that the American revolution and the constitution are not pure products of the enlightenment. There were republican forms of government in operation in the Puritan colonies in the 1640s. The founders looked back to the Greco-Roman republics, as well as to the ancient Anglo-Saxon and German forms of deliberative government. (Incidentally, the Roman republic functioned for over 400 years). I’d also point out that the Boers in South Africa are another conservative, pro-white nation with a protestant and republican heritage. Along with American Southerners, the Boers were the last people in the West to accept cultural marxism, and like American Southerners they only did so when extreme external pressure was brought upon them.
While it is true that the American republic did not last very long, this is largely due to the radical economic and technological changes of the 19th century. The industrial revolution was a major disturbance in western civilization, and no western institution was untouched by it. The American system effectively barred the traditional avenues of tyranny, but it was not well equipped to deal with the massive new power of industrial magnates or media moguls. It is possible to critique the Constitution and suggest ways of improving/updating the system for our current circumstances, without trashing the memory of the founding fathers or of the confederates who so admired them.
That’s because I found the whole debate to be rather dull and boring after reading through the memoirs of Jefferson and Stephens. It ultimately didn’t matter whether there was a “right” to secede. It wasn’t acknowledged by the United States and the matter was resolved by an armed conflict.
No, I don’t.
I don’t believe the government exists to be an umpire to supervise rights bearing individualists. I don’t believe there was any “state of nature” where the rights bearing individualists left the “state of nature” to enter a social existence. I don’t believe there are universal human rights similar to the laws of physics either or that all of mankind was “created equal.” I don’t agree with any of that.
Please note that the divine rights of kings was an early modern political theory.
I’ve said above that we haven’t settled on alternative and that we are still in the process of exploring our options. We certainly aren’t ready to commit to rolling the dice on republicanism again in light of its track record.
Not necessarily.
Secession is just a means to disunion. There are other paths to that goal. I can’t say what path we will take.
Personally, I don’t want to work within a republican framework, but that’s up to the organization to decide. I certainly don’t want to see another “republic” emerge from the wreckage of the United States and go down the same road as all the previous ones. And no, I don’t agree with the premises of liberal democracy, so why would I recognize the legitimacy of the government in Washington?
What do you know of those grievances? Could they be exaggerated? The charge that King George III was inciting the Indians on the frontier was the most ridiculous charge in the Declaration for two reasons.
1.) The colonists were inciting the Indians by violating treaties and illegally encroaching upon their territory. This was a process that would continue until the late 19th century with many stops along the way such as when Georgia ignored the Supreme Court and seized lands from the Cherokee.
2.) Britain fought a world war to evict the French from North America and the Proclamation of 1763 was intended to restore order to the frontier by curbing the activities of land speculators.
Not really.
Modern liberal republicanism, which is focused on things such as universal human rights and rights bearing individualists creating proposition nations on the basis of a social contracts, is a radical departure from classical republicanism. Rome, for example, was never disturbed by slavery. The Romans had no conception of universal human rights.
South Africa is another example of a multiracial slave society creating a people with a conservative cultural outlook. Like American Southerners, republicanism among the Boers was tempered by a familiarity with inequality and hierarchy due to slavery.
I’m not buying it. America’s industrialization was largely a product of the war itself and the decades that followed it. France was also thrown into chaos by republicanism and that cannot be attributed to industrialization which only happened there much later.
I disagree.
The republican system is based on the foundation of liberty, equality, tolerance, and human rights. Freedom and equality resonate with extreme individualists who have problems with hierarchies and authority. We just live in a world that happens to cater to that type of people. Miley Cyrus twerking all over an inflatable penis or vulgar Charlie Hebdo cartoons is what we should expect while living under a republican system.
I hesitate to try to jump into the middle of this complicated discussion, but in general I agree with Red on much of what he has to say.
As for our degenerate ”popular culture” represented by Miley Cyrus and twerking and other such affronts to humanity, I would say libertarianism is by far a greater source of this ‘sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, and rap’ culture, and the hedonist youth-worship thing is a product of libertarianism in its popular, lowest-common-denominator form, at least.
Republicanism and Jacobinism are not one and the same, and most Americans today have a little to a lot of Jacobinism in them, which was not so true of past generations. The fact that today’s maleducated people have a corrupted understanding of ‘liberty’ does not discredit the idea. It simply means people need to be educated to a more mature understanding.
If we could only get rid of this egalitarian nonsense; equality can never co-exist with freedom or liberty, because equality requires coercion to establish and maintain. It is not natural and can’t be sustained.
Whoever said man’s fallen nature is to blame for the failure of most of our man-made political systems was right; a system is only as good as the people who embody it, and as good as the average citizen making up a country. We’ve deteriorated noticeably since the founding of this country, and are doing so at breakneck speed, especially with the demographics changing. The founders said our political system was meant only for a ‘moral and religious people’, and that it was unsuited to any other kind of people. And we are now, in the main, neither religious nor moral; we are as in the days of the Old Testament when every man ”did what was right in his own eyes.”
Re: Red
Personally I think that Sir Filmer makes an excellent reasoning as to why Monarchies are established by divine authority, by which he uses several passages from the Bible, and does his best to support his theory with them.
Sir Filmer writes, “Genesis iii, 16 where God ordained Adam to rule over his wife, and her desires were to be subject to his; and as hers, so all theirs that should come of her. Here we have the original grant of government, and the fountain of all power place in the Father of all mankind; accordingly we find the law for obedience to government given in the terms of honour thy Father: not only the constitution of power in general, but the limitation of it to one kind (that is, to monarchy, or the government of one alone) and the determination of it to the individual person and line of Adam, are all three ordinances of God.”
If you have read his work then I would believe you to already have some bearing on his other examinations of the Bible pertaining to Monarchy, and that of other governments. Personally I find his works extremely good and compelling, but it would seem he has a few flaws like his trust in parliament, and that malignant document the Magna Carta.
Undoubtedly though, all of this is of no consequence, and this conversation will not change either entrenched sides opinions. Neither will any discussion of whether or not a Monarchy would rise in the South or some other government in the event of secession, be anything but futile, seeing how said event is entirely unknown to us and will remain unknowable until the time is right.
“Further study, too, of Western European Society, which has been engaged in continual revolution for twenty years, has satisfied us that Free Society every where begets isms, and that isms soon beget bloody revolutions. Until our trip to the North, we did not justly appreciate the passage which we are about to quote from Mr. Carlyle’s “Latter-Day Pamphlets.” Now it seems to us as if Boston, New Haven, or Western New York, had set for the picture:
“To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; and the remedy is, abolish it; let there henceforth be no relation at all. From the ‘sacrament of marriage’ downwards, human beings used to be manifoldly related one to another, and each to all; and there was no relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its grievances and its difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed all that by favor of Heaven; the ‘voluntary principle’ has come up, which will itself do the business for us; and now let a new sacrament, that of Divorce, which we call emancipation, and spout of on our platforms, be universally the order of the day! Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it certainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation that has any where grown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory to voluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition of the nomadic; in other words, LOOSEN BY ASSIDUOUS WEDGES, in every joint, the whole fabrice of social existence, stone from stone, till at last, all lie now quite loose enough, it can, as we already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of revolutionary rage; and lying as mere mountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c. over it, and rejoice in the now remarkable era of human progress we have arrived at.”
Now we plant ourselves on this passage from Carlyle. We say that, as far as it goes, ’tis a faithful picture of the isms of the North. But the restraints of Law and Public Opinion are less at the North than in Europe. The isms on each side the Atlantic are equally busy with “assiduous wedges,” in “loosening in every joint the whole fabric of social existence;” but whilst they dare invoke Anarchy in Europe, they dare not inaugurate New York Free Love, and Oneida Incest, and Mormon Polygamy. The moral, religious, and social heresies of the North, are more monstrous than those of Europe. The pupil has surpassed the master, unaided by the stimulants of poverty, hunger and nakedness, which urge the master forward.”
– George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters
The charge that King George III was inciting the Indians on the frontier was the most ridiculous charge in the Declaration
Just for the record, if George III really was inciting the Indians, would secession have been justified?
Modern liberal republicanism, which is focused on things such as universal human rights and rights bearing individualists creating proposition nations on the basis of a social contracts, is a radical departure from classical republicanism.
So are you opposed to republicanism in general, or only modern liberal republicanism? Would you accept classical republicanism as an alternative for today?
You also must admit that the founding fathers didn’t think that you could bring together people of different races and cultures and expect for them to sucessfully operate a republic. The founders were explicit on the point that shared race, language and religion, as well as high standards of public morality, were indispensible for a healthy republic.
The founders were raised on the classics, and frequently made reference to the classics in their political debates. Rome was especially revered because of its remarkable social harmony. Rather than concentrating all of its authority at the top (monarchy) or at the bottom (democracy), it provided a mixed form of government where the different classes could operate together for the common good. The founders attempted to imitate this feature of the Roman republic.
Also, regarding the puritans, are you saying that the puritans weren’t republican, and that the puritan heritage did not influence the movement for American independence?
Rome, for example, was never disturbed by slavery.
Just like the the republics that existed in the South, wouldn’t you say?
The republican system is based on the foundation of liberty, equality, tolerance, and human rights.
Surely these things are virtues, when understood as the founding fathers did, and whenpracticed in moderation. Within a state, there should be the liberty to choose your own profession, and to choose which denomination to join. There should be equality before the law. There should be guarantees about the individual’s ability to manage his own property and defend his own home. Wouldn’t you agree with all of those statements?
The Jews and other leftists have twisted the meaning of these words. There’s no reason why we should accept their false definition.
Miley Cyrus twerking all over an inflatable penis or vulgar Charlie Hebdo cartoons is what we should expect while living under a republican system.
These things would never have been acceptable in any period of American history prior to the rise of Jewish Cultural Marxism. Although Miley Cyrus twerking on an inflatable penis would have been quite amusing to monarchs like Nero or Charles II.
The colonists never had a “right” to unilaterally secede from the British Empire. In theory, the “right” of secession was established by the American Revolution which, after independence was won fro Britain, had created a contract or “compact-based” society to which the now sovereign states were parties. Secession was supposed to be a legal act by sovereign states whereas revolution is unlawful rebellion.
Classical republicanism differs from modern liberal republicanism in so many ways that I don’t really associate the former with the latter. They are only superficially similar in having institutions like, say, a Senate.
The Founders believed in universal equal rights and were eager to see American institutions spread overseas. A good example of this is the republican revolutions in Latin America which they recognized and supported. In the Constitution, the Founders didn’t spell out an American race, language or religion. On the contrary, established state churches were swept away during and in the aftermath of the American Revolution. Also, Madison’s theory of government which is laid out in the Constitution wasn’t based on “high standards of public morality.”
As I pointed out above, the Romans had no concept of universal equal rights. There was no Roman equivalent of liberalism or the Whig tradition, with its obsession with universal freedom, which sees “society” as the cumulative product of freely associating rights bearing individuals entering into a social compact. Rome was never anything like the United States or the French Republic. Like the Greco-Roman architecture on display in Washington, there are only superficial similarities between the American and Roman Republics. The substance was very different.
I mentioned England’s experiment with republicanism under Cromwell above. New England at that time was really just a small offshoot of that.
The Roman economy was always based on slavery. Seeing as how slavery is the exact opposite of liberty, I suppose you could say that slave-based societies in general are more resistant to republican extremism.
That’s a sleight of hand.
There’s a difference between, say, “liberality” understood as a classical virtue and “freedom” in the modern sense of the word as a universal “right” or abstract principle. The latter is treated as if it were the social science equivalent of a physical law. Any society that is based on the principles of “liberty” and “equality” is going to have a difficult time maintaining the authority of the social hierarchies that are necessary to impose standards.
What’s your objection to Jews?
As American citizens, are the Jews not supposed to have equal rights? Shouldn’t they be treated as individuals, not as members of a collective group? Shouldn’t their inviolable property rights be respected? And shouldn’t religious tolerance apply to them?
The pall of “liberty” and “tolerance” has just gradually expanded like a balloon over time in republics where “individual freedom” and self expression can be played as a trump card over every other consideration. See also the fall of the anti-miscegenation and anti-sodomy laws which were dispensed with for interfering in deference to the unfettered freedom of individuals to marry whoever they want.
Since Red has challenged me, I will repeat the system of anti-democratic reforms I have proposed elsewhere for an independent, SN-led South. I would like the franchise gradually rolled back so that a natural elite might more easily emerge and lead. For starters, we could disenfranchise Third World aliens in our borders and those on the dole. This assumes a situation where we gain our independence with the present system here largely in tact. With that single move we would arrive at a voting public which would be extremely conservative, nearly all White and open to the further reforms we would like to implement. We could present an anti-democratic outline to the Southern public so they would be able to slowly adjust to it. The next election cycle we would limit the franchise to those who own land. In this manner we would again establish a link between soil and government (as ee would have already linked blood and government). Then each cycle we could up the requirements from an acre to 5 to 20 to 100. In this manner the money interests and corporate power would be broken. Fewer and fewer people would be voting as we eliminated democracy. Pretty quickly we would arrive at a very limited republic much like Red might support. I would favour continuing this reform until we arrived at a monarchy. But even if most SNs disagreed with me and wanted to stop short of a monarchy we would immediately have an independent land with SNs in control and a government that was on the path to anti-democratic reform and also one where our ethnic group was firmly in control of its destiny.
The above scenario is an idealised one. It is highly unlikely it would ever happen just like that. But it does give Red and others an idea of what I would favour. As I have said though, independence under almost any system of government would be better than what we have at present. The further we distanced ourselves from universal suffrage, Americanism and liberalism the better. Along the way we could support our Western friends in Latin America and help them roll back democracy as well. This would create a large bloc of pro-White, traditionalist, anti-American countries which could hopefully stand up to rump America and its allies. Emphasising our shared history as plantation societies and our Western heritage could help us bring about a new Golden Circle. We would of course cooperate closely with nationalist-run France (which we might see very soon) and Russia to hopefully save the Western world. In my ideal world this is what we would do. But as I have said, Southern independence as a means to preserve my people and our identity and culture is my over-riding goal. All else would be icing on the cake.