Against Frenchism: Conservative Liberalism vs. Organic Nationalism

October 12, 2019 Hunter Wallace American Nationalism, Americanism, Conservatism, Cuckservatives, Featured, History, Identity, Liberalism 35

I enjoyed this podcast with David French.

In the podcast, David French talks about conservative liberalism, nationalism, Donald Trump, Confederate monuments, DC vs. Marvel movies and Star Wars movies. I love to attack David French and Frenchism because he makes it so easy to strike a contrast between the rising nationalist, populist and illiberal Right and the flailing conservative liberal Right.

David French sees himself as a conservative liberal. He is a lawyer who is defending the “American Founding.” As a conservative liberal, he says that he differs from progressive liberals on “issues,” but he shares with them their understanding of the Republic. In contrast, he might agree with us on certain issues, but we disagree on the larger framework of Americanism. Thus, there are two culture wars going on. There is the traditional culture war between conservative and progressive liberals over issues and the new culture war between liberals and illiberals.

The liberal story of America is an abstract doctrine that begins with a single line in the Declaration of Independence which is ripped out of context. It moves from there to the Bill of Rights which is similarly taken out of context. It leaps from there to the Gettysburg Address and the Reconstruction Amendments. Finally, it leaps from Reconstruction down to mainstream conservatism which was launched by National Review in the mid-20th century where it tells us that America “is an idea” that has no racial, ethnic or cultural foundation.

How would we explain America to a conservative liberal?

In our theory of history, the true founders of America arrived in 1607 in Virginia and 1620 in Massachusetts in the age of King James I of England, Scotland and Ireland. The American colonies began under the Stuart monarchs several generations before the Glorious Revolution and John Locke published his Two Treatises of Government. These plantations of the English nation had nothing to do with liberalism which was still in the future. New England was founded as a religious project while Virginia was founded as a commercial and geopolitical one.

In between Jamestown and Plymouth and the American Revolution, six organic cultures emerged between the Atlantic seaboard and the Appalachian mountains. These organic cultures all thought of themselves as English, Christian and free. As they became more ethnically and racially diverse in the 18th century as a result of Scots-Irish and German immigration and the importation of African slaves, they increasingly began to define themselves as White. These organic cultures were already free in the sense that they were English, who contrasted their own Protestant culture with the common law with Catholic absolutism on the European continent, and because they were barely governed by Great Britain down to the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War.

America wasn’t born in the American Revolution. 150 years had passed between the founding of New England and the American Revolution. 170 years had passed between the founding of Virginia and the American Revolution. It would be more accurate to say that the American Revolution was our equivalent of reaching young adulthood. The American colonies had grown up and essentially rebelled against parental authority which was being flexed for the first time in memory. They were forced to make common cause in order to win their independence.

The colonists were incensed that their rights as Englishmen were being violated and the American Revolution was justified by the Founding Fathers on the basis of “Nature, on the British Constitution, on Charters, and on immemorial Usage.” John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government was first printed in Boston in 1773 when it was seized on to justify the Boston Tea Party. Americans were unfamiliar with Locke who wrote South Carolina’s original constitution for his patron the Earl of Shaftesbury. Locke’s constitution was ignored by South Carolinians who revolted against the Lord Proprietors and molded South Carolina to their liking. The American Revolution was already in progress before the rhetoric of “natural rights” was seized on as the safest, but not the only ground upon which to justify an American rebellion against the sovereignty of the British Parliament which was legally questionable.

The thing that resonated with Yankees about Locke’s work was his interpretation of the biblical story of Jephthah in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Judges. When the Israelites begged Jephthah to take up their cause against the Ammonites, he in turn asked God to decide the controversy. Jephthah made an “Appeal to Heaven.” Locke argued in the Second Treatise that in extreme cases when a ruler betrayed his people and the judges with the authority to hear their cause sided with the tyrant, the people could make an “Appeal to Heaven” when all other avenues had been exhausted. It was this “Appeal To Heaven” flag with the green pine tree that was adopted as the symbol of the insurgency in New England in the heady days after Bunker Hill. The insurgents in New England were the descendants of the highly religious Yankee Puritans who came of age in the aftermath of the Great Awakening. These people were incensed by the Quebec Act which granted religious freedom to French Canadians and which placed the Midwest under the administration of Quebec. It was condemned as one of the Intolerable Acts.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was published on January 10, 1776. Although it was certainly the most popular political pamphlet of the American Revolution, Common Sense cannot explain why ordinary Americans took up arms against King George III either. Common Sense was published after the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and the invasion of Canada. George Washington was already on the field in Massachusetts at the head of the Continental Army when Americans were reading Thomas Paine.

The United States of America was created by 5 of the 6 of these regional organic cultures which did not understand themselves as being a single nation. Ethnic nationalism is a doctrine of the 19th century. The phrase “all men are created equal” attracted little notice at the time because far from being seen as a mission statement of liberalism it was understood as only being an acknowledgement that the struggle between the British and the American Patriots was about replacing a monarchy with a republican form of government. The Articles of Confederation was a treaty between sovereign states. It did not create a liberal state. The American Constitution that replaced it did not create a liberal state either. It created a federal republic that divided sovereignty between the federal and state governments. Federalism is alien to liberal theory.

The Founding Fathers created a federal republic for the American people. The American people were the citizens of each sovereign state. The Constitution was created for their posterity. The Bill of Rights only restricted the power of the federal government. The Tenth Amendment reserved vast powers to the state governments including the right to define the nature of citizenship. The Naturalization Act of 1790 required immigrants to be “free white persons” and dozens of subsequent naturalization acts in the 19th century and the early 20th century preserved America as a European country all the way down to the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952. This is why America was nearly 90% White in the 1960s. It was due to the restriction of non-European immigration and naturalization which was no accident. America was designed to stay White.

In 1860, only 5 New England states recognized black citizenship, which was down from 6 because Pennsylvania had repealed black citizenship in 1838. The Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court had recently established that blacks were not American citizens and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it.” The country was being torn apart over the rise of the Republican Party. The specter of what was called “Black Republicanism” or “Radicalism” loomed and the election of Abraham Lincoln as a “Black Republican” president triggered the collapse of the Union. The Southern states seceded from the Union in order to avoid being forced to live under abolition and a dystopia of civic, political and social equality which would result in the amalgamation of the races and the destruction of the Southern economy. In other words, the nightmare that Southerners sought to avoid was liberalism.

The “American Founding” had established a federal republic, not a liberal state. The American Republic was dominated by Southerners until 1861. The Southern social order was based on plantation slavery, white supremacy, racialism, patriarchy and a strong defense of states’ rights through the Democratic Party. Meanwhile, the Northern social order was coming to be based on liberalism, industrialism and free-market capitalism. The constitutional order established by the Founding Fathers had allowed each of America’s organic cultures to evolve in their own way. The states enjoyed vast powers. The federal government had only a few powers.

Illiberalism thrived in the White Republic under the shield of state sovereignty. There was no such thing as birthright citizenship or “equal protection of the laws” until Reconstruction. Americans drew sharp distinctions between natural rights, civil rights, political rights and social rights. It was up to each sovereign state as a political body to define the nature of these rights. In practice, this meant that women and slaves did not enjoy equal rights. Husbands were recognized under the common law as the heads of their households and the franchise was thought as a privilege, not a right. Slaves were the property of their masters. Free blacks and unmarried women could exercise natural rights and civil rights. Social equality was anathema in the North and South.

As we have discussed in detail, it took the Reconstruction Amendments and federal civil rights laws of that era to reverse the traditional relationship of power between the states and the federal government to impose liberalism on the states. In the late 19th century, the Supreme Court retreated from Reconstruction and created the loopholes which allowed the Jim Crow system to be created in the 1890s and 1900s. Far into the 20th century, American national identity which was the broad consensus of its organic regional cultures remained White, Christian and free, even though blacks and American Indians were recognized as minorities and were extended citizenship and rights which they had previously not possessed. Women were also extended political rights, not social rights, by the 19th Amendment.

In a culturally confident White America, Anglo-conformity remained the dominant cultural model of the United States until the mid-20th century. European immigrants were expected to assimilate to Anglo-American norms. They were expected to embrace a White American identity. The Immigration Act of 1924 was driven by concerns about assimilation and went even further. It was designed to shutdown immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe to keep America a predominantly Northwestern European nation. White identity, Christianity and Anglo-American cultural norms like the English language worked together as boundaries to restrain liberalism. A century ago, Americans still thought of themselves as being more than “freedom” and “equality” as even progressives were comfortable with eugenics and segregation.

David French is a product of the culture of late 20th century American mainstream conservatism. It was only in the late 20th century in the wake of World War II that American identity was redefined as liberalism to compete with communism. White identity was stripped out during the Civil Rights Movement. Anglo-conformity and Christianity were stripped out in the social revolutions that followed in its wake. They were replaced by multiculturalism and political correctness which delegitimized the White Christian racial and ethnic core of America which had previously been a dominant force in American history and had no problem asserting itself.

This was not a unique phenomenon. It happened in every Western country that found itself under the umbrella of the American Empire during the Cold War. Every single one of these Western countries now has the same problem which is that their racial and ethnic cores have been delegitimized by liberalism. Conservative liberals like David French are conserving multiculturalism and political correctness and laughably calling that the “American Founding.” He recently described Drag Queen Story Hour as “a blessing of liberty.”

Would the American Founders have recognized David French with his adopted black daughter from Ethiopia and his deracinated bugman interest in Marvel and Star Wars movies as someone who is conserving the American Republic? Alternatively, would they have found our account of American national identity as being White, Christian and free a more familiar one?

Frenchism or conservative liberalism is a solvent that destroys all organic cultures which are the foundation of nations. It is not a product of the American Founding, but a doctrine that triumphed in the West in the context of the Cold War. Its history has been nothing but the conservation of leftwing social revolutions which it makes possible by the undermining the social fabric. It is worthless and unresponsive to the needs of its constituency, particularly its base in the American South, which seeks to reverse the tide of liberalism and the social disintegration it brings in its wake. Finally, there is nothing “conservative” about conservative liberalism, which is false advertising designed to dupe ordinary people with healthy instincts and resentments. It is an ideological obstacle based on a false theory of history to the reassertion of organic nationalism against the forces of demoralization and disintegration around the Western world.

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

32 Comments

  1. “David French sees himself as a conservative liberal. ”

    That’s like saying ‘ a virgin prostitute.’
    Makes no sense… Because Liberals (in the French Jacobin sense- which is the only type of liberal out there, these days) care nothing about conservation… except maybe, of their power and position. AND ONLY THEIRS.

    Oh. I guess you were right about French.

    • “conservative Liberal(ism)” isn’t as self-contradictory as you think.

      Zippy:

      The problem with our current situation, though, is that our most immediate ancestors, going back the past few centuries, were liberals. This turns modern conservatism into a self-destructive, self-hating, ignorant tendency to protect and preserve earlier iterations of liberalism.

      See the full article from whence I excerpted that quotation, here:

      https://wp.me/p2Bo5c-1nP

  2. At least we should be grateful to him for giving us a more apt use for the phrase “French surrender monkey.”

  3. For some reason the term Revolutionary Conservatism comes to mind as long as we understand conservatism in the European and not the American sense as the word as people like David French understands it. To a European conservatism is equivalent to conservationism. We are, after all, racial conservationists and that is what distinguishes us from both liberals and conservatives in America.Our revolution is a revolution against a profoundly unnatural order opposed to natural law and our conservation as a distinct people.

  4. David French is a JEW and his ONLY interest is “what’s good for the JEWS”, that’s ALL he cares about, his JEW tribe and the JEW tribe’s NWO agenda. Anyone who is a conservative and can’t see David French is a JEW and a FAKE conservative and can’t see that the JEW ONLY cares about his JEW tribe and the JEW NWO agenda is blind. I wonder what his real last name is, because “French” is not the Jew’s real last name. A fake name to go with a fake conservative, a fake name — for a real JEW. He’s a real JEW alright. His JEW face alone is enough to turn one’s stomach, I don’t know how any conservative could put up with this “French” Jew. Yet another Jew, another poseur, another phony, another fake. The Jews are all about acting, putting on acts.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that Hitler was RIGHT about everything he said about the Jews. I don’t know if Hitler was controlled opposition or not, both sides of the controversy make good points so it’s difficult to figure it all out, but what Hitler said about the Jews was RIGHT ON TARGET. About Jews, Hitler had THE CORRECT VIEW.

    And those who say Americans made a giant mistake to go to war against Germany in World War Two have THE CORRECT VIEW. It was a giant mistake to wage war against Germany. The Jews were the only ones who won WW2, because for sure The White Race — in every White country or formerly White country — LOST THE WAR. The Jews won WW2, us Whites did NOT win WW2. A lot of Whites can’t seem to grasp that, unfortunately.

    In terms of what’s best for the White Race, what’s best for the future of the White Race, it’s much more important for us Whites to see clearly that our White Race LOST WW2 than it is to figure out for sure whether Hitler was controlled opposition or not. Everything Hitler said about the Jews was RIGHT and the more Whites who can see that clearly the better off the White Race will be.

  5. Excellent analysis, enough material for a history book laying out these points, properly footnoted and written in a textbook style would be a good addition to anyone’s personal library. Amazon would quickly remove it from their inventory though. Perhaps David French could write the forward, something along the lines of a cuckservative’s lament of failure, what not to do.

    Just a thought.

  6. If the Constitution was the first founding of the U.S., Reconstruction with its attendant civil rights amendments was the second founding we are now in the third re-founding of America. This third re-founding of America is based upon the racial replacement of the founding stock’s descendants and the later descendants of European immigrants i.e. real Americans. The plan is to replace the hated white Christian stock of the U.S. with Third World shit bums.

    The assumption of the ruling class is that they will continue to live in opulence and safety, enjoying their extraordinary wealth and power while ruling over a dystopian future. They will asset strip the U.S. in the name of “free market capitalism” just like they did the collapsing USSR. The same people who robbed the USSR are working towards the same ends here with their TPP, free trade, UN, World Bank, IMF, Federal Reserve, global warming etc.

    At least three other assumptions made by the ruling class are that America itself will not disintegrate, American military power will reign preeminent and the almighty dollar will remain the money of choice around the world. They believe that third worlders coming to the U.S. will keep the military and other high tech functioning in spite of evidence to the contrary, like S. Africa. Transgenders, wogs and other assorted freaks of diversity are our greatest strength according to the cuckservatives.

    These assumptions seem far fetched with the country tipping majority third world. All of the success in America (and the world) was caused by white people. Change the people and you get a third world country with all of its horrors such as Mexico’s massive crime, torture, failure and corruption. What happens to the nuclear weapons here when the U.S. goes tits up?

  7. With all kindness I will state that your 1775 Revolution has brought all this to pass. Did I not read on this site that in the late 18th century that Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were arguing in their state congress for interracial marriage that passed in Pennsylvania and New York because of them?

    If only you would have created a Roman style Republic instead of one based on universal standards that sooner or later you either practice what you preach or abandon your core principles.

    Catherine the Great recognized the danger of equality at the time. She stated this at the time. I read this in my father’s library. The book was written by Tuchman or the liberal Samuel Morison. Sometimes women are smarter and more clever than males. We understand manipulation and the human aspect of society and relationships more than men. At least the smart ones among us do.

    I could write on about what a Traditional Catholic like myself think of the 1775 Revolution but it is obvious. So I will only say that your Revolution led to the French Revolution which led to the communist revolutions of the 19th century which led to the Russian and other revolutions of the 20th century.

    In fact the Revolution never really ends does it?

    Cristina

    • ” In fact the Revolution never really ends does it?”

      Never for the instigators, hoi Ioudaioi!
      Revolutionaries from the foot of the cross. And beyond!

    • Cristina,

      My new nickname for you is going to be the “Empress Scorpion.” Thy stinger isn’t just for display but as a not so subtle flashing red warning light.

      • November,

        Thank you for that compliment. My impish little sister thinks that my scorpion stings changed me into part scorpion. She is 4 years old. She loves scorpions and had one in a jar. I was going to kill it but Father said no. He privately told me it would soon die in the jar which it did.

        We own a Mexican movie called the Black Scorpion. Reasonable but not great. I love US science fictions of the 1950’s.

        • Cristina,

          An Emperor Scorpion never stung me, but one did grab ahold of my index finger with its pincers in my invertebrate zoology class.

    • Cristina:

      In fact the Revolution never really ends does it?

      Nope. Which is why some of us took to calling it the “perpetual revolution” many moons ago.

  8. What do they do with these African kids when they adopt them in these stunts? This happens so often with these celebs and pundits. They’re too elevated to actually take care of the kids or interact with them, “parent” them. They’re too important and “busy.” It’s child abuse, plain and simple. Who do they palm off this important job to? I imagine it’s Caribbean nannies, who somehow are much better at child upbringing than U.S. black women, but it could be nobody, the kids run wild.

  9. Reasonably solid, but I have a few quibbles:

    The quote from the Dred Scott decision is taken out of context. This was *not* being presented as the opinion of Chief Justice Taney or the majority of the Supreme Court. This was a strawman – Taney was claiming that 18th century people believed this, in order to make 19th century Southerners look good in comparison in the eyes of free-soil Northerners.

    Also, you claim 18th century Americans “did not understand themselves as being a single nation.” How then do you explain Federalist #2, in which John Jay argues for union not on the basis of expediency, but on the basis of the Americans’ common ancestry, language, religion, political beliefs and folkways?

    Even more outrageously, you claim “Ethnic nationalism is a doctrine of the 19th century.” In reality, ethnic nationalism is ancient – no matter how far back in human history you go, you find ethnic nationalism, the sense of belonging to a group rooted in common ancestry, language, religion and political traditions.

    • BTI,

      Why are you here? Is there not a grey tweed blazer with brown patches on the elbows in dire need of your presence?

      We no longer have the time nor the inclination to debate the fine points of the fine print of 18th and 19th century legalese. This is a race against the clock, and it’s ticking quite loud.

      So take you “quibbles ” and you Starbucks latte, and Golf Foxtrot Yankee.

    • BTI:

      Also, you claim 18th century Americans “did not understand themselves as being a single nation.” How then do you explain Federalist #2, in which John Jay argues for union not on the basis of expediency, but on the basis of the Americans’ common ancestry, language, religion, political beliefs and folkways?

      All of that notwithstanding, 18th Century Americans saw themselves as being a single nation in certain specified respects, and only in certain specified respects. Which is the reason they created what I’ve referred to many times as “our national-federal structure” in the original Constitution. Moreover, Jefferson later said of the Constitution that it recognizes the members of the union as “several as to ourselves, one as to all others.” How do you reconcile that statement with the idea that 18th Century Americans understood themselves as being a “single nation” full stop? I can cite other examples to solify the point, but I won’t for now.

  10. Excellent essay, I agree with all of it. America was founded as a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant country, and a refuge for WASP’s.

    My only quibble, Pennsylvania was never part of New England. Those states are CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, and VT, and only those. VT is a late comer to the party.

  12. “As they became more ethnically and racially diverse in the 18th century as a result of Irish immigration and the importation of African slaves, they increasingly began to define themselves as White.”

    Finally we have some clarity on IQ (Irish Question). The irish have culturally been used as a wedge in the previously homogeneous white protestant culture of the colonies. Yeah, some of them are based, and the Departed is a great movie, but the Scorsese movie we should be looking at for a healthier understanding of the IQ is, Gangs of New York. The Irish in the end are just trying to let niggers into the church, joining thenunion army, and killing poor helpless rabbits.

    Think it’s a coincidence that the Irish and Jews both love them some potatoe pancakes, some fucking latkas? I think not. I think it could be nearing time for a potatoecaust on the right wing.

    Traditional white culture, is based on meat. Muh vikings right? Thus, keto nationalism has to be the dietary policy of the ethnostate.

    H.W. its time to issue a fatwa on the IQ.

  13. Why complicate matters? David French is just another Israel First neocon who likes to watch his wife get tag-teamed by large, muscular Negroes.

    • May I ask, Spahnranch1969, why you keep saying this? I mean, there is obviously no love lost between ol’ “Frenchiepoo” and me as per his politics and mine (and his religion vs mine, which informs his politics, as my religion informs mine), but what is the basis of your saying he enjoys watching his wife get tag-teamed by black “breeding stock” (my descriptive, not yours)? Is there a basis, or are you just making things up for the sake of, well, just making things up? If your purpose is to be “provocative” or whatever, well, I get it and all; but I would just caution that leveling unfounded accusations (if in fact they are such) is never a good idea no matter how much you despise the person in question and his religio-political nonsense. On the other hand, I have accused Mr. French, on numerous occasions, of being a “closet homosexual.” I believe that is true of him based on several items of evidence that I believe point to the fact. But I have no idea where all of this stuff about his enjoying watching his wife do this and that is coming from, with all due respect.

      • T. Morris,

        What religion does French claim?

        Based on objective and subjective evidence, I hypothesize that he is a non practicing Jew.

      • T. Morris: Can you look at French and conclude he doesn’t enjoy watching his nutty, slutty wife getting a train run on her? They also encourage their teenage daughter to date Negroes. Do you condone this sort of thing?

        • Spahnranch1969:

          To answer your first question, yes. This is, after all, what elitist white liberals do – they advocate for all sorts of crazy stuff that they themselves don’t engage, and are constantly making all sorts of unprincipled exceptions to their own philosophical beliefs that they foist upon everyone else. To your question, “do you support this sort of thing?”: Ha, ha! Don’t make me laugh. I have four sons and four daughters; ask any one of them that question of whether their father supports miscegenation and they will every single one be very quick to tell you that “sort of thing” is a banishable offense in their family of origin. They’ll also be very quick to tell you that “dad doesn’t give a flying hoot what anyone thinks of his position on the matter either.”

  14. That makes sense somebody being a Conservative Liberal. Heck at least he admits it. Conservative Liberals have been mixed with Libertarians, Zionism, and other forms of World Trash. The Young People of our kind have no use for any of it. The now is Nationalism and saving the White Race. Deo Vindice !

  15. As the world continues to stumble towards World War 3, it is good for the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic minority to remember where we came from. The Synogogue of Satan invented the Liberal virus and spread it to us. After the war is over, we must eradicate this virus and its vector completely from our midst. The vector can all go to Israel, and we must get legal and practical control of our women. In a Christian nation, they have no rights.

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