← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Frederick William I
Thread ID: 13598 | Posts: 18 | Started: 2004-05-07
2004-05-07 16:07 | User Profile
[url]http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a19aa2e58d8.htm[/url]
PRINCIPALITIES and POWERS by Samuel Francis
The Constitution, R. I. P.
On July 22 of this year, the Washington Times published, as the weekly installment of its "Civil War" section, a long article by a gentleman named Mackubin Thomas Owens, described as "professor of strategy and force planning" at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, under the headline, "Secession's apologists gut Constitution, history." The burden of the article was to argue that both the Confederate defenders of seccession in 1861 and their intellectual descendants today (in what is some- times dubbed the "neoconfederate movement") were and are full of beans. Professor Owens, a disciple of Lincoln apologist Harry Jaffa, expressed the view -- shared by Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln, among others -- that the U.S. Constitution, far from being a "compact among the states" as the Confederates claimed, is really an act of a single united people. It follows from that view, of course, that neither "states' rights" in any significant sense nor secession, let alone such doctrines as "nullification," are constitutionally valid; that the seceding states of 1861 were engaged in acts of treason and rebellion; and that those who support their doctrine today are not only in error but also probably of dubious loyalty themselves.
It was not the first time that the Times, whose editor likes to describe it as the "official voice of the conservative movement," gave prominence to what is generally (but not very usefully) known as the "nationalist" theory of the Constitution. In 1998, the editorial page published a long letter from a reader articulating the same view of the Constitution, which was challenged in a subsequent letter, published some days later. In the case of the Owens article this year, however, no one seems to have bothered to question the accuracy of his interpretation.
Yet the truth is that professor Owens--as well as Hamilton, Marshall, Webster, and Lincoln, not to mention Professor Jaffa --is the one who is full of beans. The "nationalist" (let us, for the sake of clarity, call it the "unitary") interpretation is wrong; indeed, it is so obviously wrong that its partisans have to rely almost entirely on unsubstantiated assertions to make the case for it.
My purpose, however, is not to rehearse the argument for the compact theory or to refute the unitary interpretation. The simplest way to substantiate the compact theory is to point to both the content and the grammar of the Declaration of Independence, in which the "representatives of the United States" declare that "these united colonies" are free and independent states" and assert that "they" (the "states") posess "full power . . . to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do." The point is that the Declaration does not establish a unitary state but recognizes 13 states, which are consistently spoken of in the plural throughout the document (as they are in the Constitution). The other obvious point is that at no time did the American people as a whole vote on national independence, adoption of the Declaration, or ratification of the Constitution, nor indeed do they so vote today. They assented to independence, the Declaration, and the Constitution as and by the states, and even today there is no single elected federal officeholder who is chosen by the vote of all the American people apart from the states. This is clearly true of senators and congressmen, but it is also true of the president, who remains chosen by the votes of the Electoral College, which is appointed by the states. Moreover, it is three fourths of the states that are able to amend the Constitution, not a majority or super-majority of the American people as a whole. The primacy of the states is and always has been obvious, and there is little more to be said about it.
Nevertheless, as Professor Owens' article and similar expressions make clear, the compact theory of the Constitution, regardless of its historical and legalistic correctness, is virtually defunct as an operative doctrine of constitutional interpretation; and with its consignment to oblivion, the rest of the Constitution has vanished as well. Although there seems to be some revival of interest in the Tenth Amendment, states' rights--the heart of real federalism--died with the compact theory. States' rights make no sense if the compact theory is false, the union was really formed by a single act of the whole people, and states are mere administrative units of the central government. Along with states' rights vanishes much of the rest of the Bill of Rights, at least in its original and correct function as a restraint on the federal government, as well as any other restraint on big government. If the federal government is the direct representative of the "people" as a whole, then it can do pretty much whatever it wishes to do, and we are delivered into territory perilously close to Rousseau's General Will. The use of the Commerce Clause and the "Incorporation Doctrine" to overturn state and local laws has largely completed the process. Today, the United States simply no longer has a constitution at all, apart from what the ruling class and its running dogs on the Supreme Court say is the constitution. Moreover, so defunct is the real Constitution that neither most academics, like the learned Professor Owens, nor most self-described conservatives, such as a good many of my former colleagues at the Washington Times, any longer know what the real Constitution was or even that there used to be a Constitution quite different from the one that now is purported to prevail.
There is, of course, sort of a constitution, and you may discover something about what it says by listening to the college students surveyed several years ago who believed that the statement "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" came from it. This passage from the Communist Manifesto, which served as the official motto of the Soviet Union, is in fact a fairly accurate description of what the current constitution holds. How the new constitution came to be adopted has been the subject of several expositions in recent years by, among others, Garry Wills, James MacPherson, and Columbia University law professor George Fletcher.
Last year, in this space, I quoted Professor Fletcher's view, published in the New Republic in 1997, that the original Constitution was abolished by the American Civil War and that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "signals the beginning of a new Constitution" in which "equality, absent from the original document, comes front and center. . . . . the United States evolves from an elitist republic into a democracy 'of the people, by the people, for the people." Professor Fletcher's view is almost identical to that of Professor Jaffa and his disciples on the "right," except that they claim that Lincoln merely restored the real Constitution. Professor MacPherson argues much the same as Professor Fletcher, that Lincoln was a "revolutionary statesman" who presided over the "Second American Revolution," as does Garry Wills, who writes that "Lincoln was a revolutionary in another sense as well, the one Wilmoore Kendall denounced him for -- he not only put the Declaration in a new light as a matter of founding law, but put its central proposition, equality, in a newly favored position as a principle of the Constitution (which, as the Chicago Times noticed, never uses the word)."
What is perhaps most important about this revolution that abolished the old, real Constitution and established the new one is that the revolution has been so complete and that its defenders and apologists do not even feel the need to explain how a Constitution purportedly founded on the consent of the governed could be abolished simply by acts of force in the course of the Civil War and a new one, encapsulated in the Gettysburg Address, enthroned without any pretense of amendment or ratification. So irrelevant is the real Constitution to such scholars as Mr. Wills that he can glibly acknowledge that "equality" is the main principle of the new constitution even though the word was entirely absent from the original one. The apologists for the new constitution know that the destruction of the old and real Constitution has been so complete that they do not even need to pretend that the transition to the new one took place in a manner consistent with the procedures prescribed by the old one. The old Constitution was the product of Southern slaveowners and allowed for their political predominance, and because it did not mention "equality" and was, in fact, anti-egalitarian in many of its premises and provisions, it has therefore been discredited by the animating doctrine at the heart of the new constitution.
There is little doubt that the "New Constitutionalists" are essentially correct. Although both James J. Kirkpatrick and the late M. E. Bradford correctly argued that the old Constitution survived the Reconstruction amendments and the Supreme Court's interpretations of them, the Civil War nevertheless mortally wounded the Old Republic and the Constitution that defined it, and Lincoln, whatever his role and whatever his intentions, has become the human symbol of this revolution, just as Lenin and Castro are symbols of other revolutions. The Old Republic and the real Constitution lingered on until the Roosevelt Supreme Court and its successors killed them off for good.
But the new constitution did not displace the old one simply because Lincoln and his armies smashed the old Constitution and its defenders. The new constitution flourished because it served the purposes and interests of the emerging social forces of the nation, mainly what the Marxist scholar Barrington Moore, Jr., called "the last capitalist revolution," the leaders of which quickly evolved into the plutocratic ruling class of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The political changes and their military enforcement were merely the icing on the underlying cake of social and economic transformation and the new elite that gained power from it.
What was involved in the death of the old Constitution, in other words, was a bit more than a change of mind on the part of a lot of Americans or a plot carried out by a handful of ambitious and unscrupulous men. If the decline and fall of constitutional government in the United States had been only that, it might still be possible to change men's minds back, persuade them of the virtues of the old Constitution, and restore it. But the victory of the social, economic, and political revolutions that swept it away suggests that one of the main reasons for the failure of the old Constitution was that a declining number of social interests found it a useful instrument of government. In virtually every confrontation in early American history between the compact theory and the unitary theory, the compact theory lost: The Federalists prevailed over the Anti-Federalists; John Marshall's views triumphed over those of his critics; Andrew Jackson triumphed over John C. Calhoun in the nullification controversy; and, of course, the Union prevailed over the Confederacy. And one reason for these victories is that lots of people stood to gain a great deal from a unitary government that could unify the country, suppress centrifugal pressures, establish a national market for profitmaking, and prevent the nation from disintegrating. Only the Southern states retained a strong vested interest in a decentralized republic and the doctrine of states' rights that helped guarantee it; and by the early 20th century, even these states were willing to compromise on their rights when they stood to gain from doing so. By the time of the civil-rights movement and its revolutionary demand for the fulfillment of Lincoln's egalitarian rhetoric, the South's resistance to the unitary state had become so compromised by its own hunger for farm subsidies, defense contracts, highway funds, and other federally financed internal improvements that its insistence on states' rights principles as the reason for its opposition to racial integration could no longer be taken seriously.
The old Constitution, in other words, died because hardly anyone in the United States really wanted it to survive, and those who did were often not very serious about it and eventually became powerless to keep it alive. Today, it no longer matters how cleverly we refute the unitary interpretation or articulate the compact theory, because the document to which they pertain is effectively defunct, and its death is obvious not only in the triumph of the civil-rights movement but also in the victory of every constitutional fantasy concocted by the Supreme Court.
Excellent old article by Sam Francis
2004-05-07 16:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie] Indeed, I would argue that a "return to the Constitution" (even if fully realized) would do little to implement the sorts of changes that we would like to see. Where in the Constitution does it say that we can't have open borders with Mexico, outsource jobs to Eastasia, or bring in Somali Bantu refugees? Where does it say that English should be our official language? Where in the Constitution does it say that the entertainment industry can't glorify homosexuality, promscuity, abortion, and miscegenation? Where does it say that our elite universities can't peddle multiculturalism? Where does it say that Jews can't dominate our institutions through tribal nepotism?[/QUOTE] AY, I agree with your main thesis. However, most of the ills you lists (open borders, outsourcing, etc) are and always have been very unpopular with the citizenry of most of the states. It is the discarding of the Constitution that has made it easy for the elites (especially via the federal courts) to impose these things on the country. So, although the Constitution does not specifically forbid these things, it is unlikely that they would come have come pass in the Old Republic.
2004-05-07 17:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]However, for the "realist" right, who believe that models of state and economic systems are tools rather than ends in themselves, there are any number of alternative paths to produce the true desired end, which is a conservation of Western culture and Western identity. One doesn't need to subscribe to 18th century models of state to believe that Western culture is superior to other cultures and that it is inextricably linked to the people (i.e. the white race) who created it.
I'm not sure I agree with you here exactly. Conservatism teaches that the forms are not malleable, anymore than the people themselves are malleable. I think the exact path we must take to be workable is fairly definite. However, whether it is the exact path envisioned by advocates of the old Republic is certainly questionable.
Indeed, I would argue that a "return to the Constitution" (even if fully realized) would do little to implement the sorts of changes that we would like to see. Where in the Constitution does it say that we can't have open borders with Mexico, outsource jobs to Eastasia, or bring in Somali Bantu refugees? There is believe it or not an argument here. In the old Republic states determined citizenshipship, not the national government.
However, the old Republic also allowed the slave trade, true enough.
Where does it say that English should be our official language? Where in the Constitution does it say that the entertainment industry can't glorify homosexuality, promscuity, abortion, and miscegenation?
Bork wouldcertainly argue here that at least it the Constitution emphatically doesn't protect these activities, like modern "constitutional theory" does.
Where does it say that our elite universities can't peddle multiculturalism? Where does it say that Jews can't dominate our institutions through tribal nepotism?
The vigilence of a free people, which the founding fathers always argued was the biggest question mark on the whole enterprise.
The question is, at some point we have to determine iftheenterprise was a success or a failure, and if a failure, what then? And why? This is the biggest thing I think we're dealing with now.
A "return to the Constitution" might help rid us of a few odious state-sponsored pieces of subversion such as affirmative action, Roe v. Wade (though it would do nothing about legal abortion at the state levels), and "hate speech" laws, but it would do nothing to take our civilization back from the private sector elites that have done as much to destroy it.
Now really "hate speech" laws are blatantly unconstitutional. But your overall question about constitutionalism is valid. Our constitution per se hardly makes us unique - its been copied widely the world over, including in the old Soviet Union
So not only is a return to an 18th Century unworkable (because of the complexities of modern infrastructure and economy), I don't even consider it to be the optimum means of conserving that which we wish to see conserved.[/QUOTE]
Hard to say what's optimum.
In any event, its unfortunate that, IMO, the WN, by their dogmatic insistence on some sort of NS orthodoxy, whatever it is, Linder Franco's Hitlerite bromides or Trisk's convoluted intellectual esoteria, isolate themselves from any rapport with the American political landscape.
If it is esoteric to say constitutionalism itself will save us, it is also estoric to say constitutional/legal considerations and conservative attiudes are superfelous - that any racially oriented gov't whatever the form, will be satisfactory for us, and all other political considerations are a diversion.
2004-05-07 17:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]My point was that a return to the Constitution WOULD get rid of SOME odious things (hate speech laws, Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, etc) at the Federal level but it would do nothing about these things at the state level, much less the private sector. Even the strict Constitutionalist par excellance, Joseph Sobran, conceded that a return to the Constitution might mean having New Hampshire be libertarian and California socialist. Although some regioal differences are inevitable, you overlook I think that a return constitionalism on the state level inherently would be easier than on a federal level.
Now some regional differences are inevitable, such as the North/South diffrences regarding the rights of minorities. But serious differences, as Bork noted, can be resolved through proper federal constitutionalism. Bork outlined how.
More importantly, many of the developments in the private sector, academia and mass media are by default protected by the Constitution because there's nothing there authorizing the State or any other authority to crack down on these things. You ignored my point. Unless their rights are constitutionally protected, the state certainly is authorized to act, even to a most real constituional nitpickers.
My point is that if the goal is a racially homogeneous society with a return to normative western cultural institutions, it is not going to be achieved through minimal government. What institutions other than a very un-Constitutional state authority could ever excise the cancers that have spread through ALL of our institutions, public or private?[/QUOTE]
We can argue for the virtue of the old institutions, political and cultural. Probably adherence to them would have prevented many of the illnesses we are encountering. However whether application of them by any means constitutes an effective cure - i.e. how much of the old order is really restorable, remains a matter of open debate among realistic paleo's, as Francis basically suggests.
What I can't accept is such paleoconservative debate is pointless, futile, or even illegitimate, as much of the WN thinks.
2004-05-07 17:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]My point was that a return to the Constitution WOULD get rid of SOME odious things (hate speech laws, Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, etc) at the Federal level but it would do nothing about these things at the state level, much less the private sector. Even the strict Constitutionalist par excellance, Joseph Sobran, conceded that a return to the Constitution might mean having New Hampshire be libertarian and California socialist.
Well, exactly. In a true federal system, very little is done at the federal level. What it would mean, however, is that it could then be done at the state level.
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie] More importantly, many of the developments in the private sector, academia and mass media are by default protected by the Constitution because there's nothing there authorizing the State or any other authority to crack down on these things.
The Constitution applies to the federal government. It does not need to authorize the states to do anything. By virtue of removing the current unconstitutional control of the states by Washington, the states would be able to crack down on whatever they wished.
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]My point is that if the goal is a racially homogeneous society with a return to normative western cultural institutions, it is not going to be achieved through minimal government. What institutions other than a very un-Constitutional state authority could ever excise the cancers that have spread through ALL of our institutions, public or private?[/QUOTE] I think it would be possible to excise these things at the state level, if the states were truly restored to their rightful place.
2004-05-07 18:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I never really understood why so many on the Right naively believe that "if only powers were returned to the states, everything would be set aright."[/QUOTE] You misunderstand my argument. I don't maintain that returning power to the states would magically fix all our problems. However, as a Southerner who has seen the federal government and courts thwart the will of the peoples of the Southern states too many times to list, I absolutely believe that we would be better off with power returned to the states.
2004-05-07 21:18 | User Profile
Returning power to the states would do wonders for whites in mostly white states. Those living in other states could move.
2004-05-07 21:59 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]Indeed, I would argue that a "return to the Constitution" (even if fully realized) would do little to implement the sorts of changes that we would like to see. Where in the Constitution does it say that we can't have open borders with Mexico, outsource jobs to Eastasia, or bring in Somali Bantu refugees? Where does it say that English should be our official language? Where in the Constitution does it say that the entertainment industry can't glorify homosexuality, promscuity, abortion, and miscegenation? Where does it say that our elite universities can't peddle multiculturalism? Where does it say that Jews can't dominate our institutions through tribal nepotism? [/QUOTE]
As I pointed out on that other thread, the obvious solution to this problem is to write laws preventing those things into the Constitution, and then deny the right to vote to any but White Gentile men.
Again, the main problem isn't "eighteenth century concepts of statecraft" -- the main problem is twentieth century notions of racial and gender "equity."
Back in the eighteenth century, our ancestors got it right -- only White Christian men were allowed to vote.
2004-05-07 22:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]Returning power to the states would do wonders for whites in mostly white states. Those living in other states could move.[/QUOTE]
Exactly why we shouldn't be too quick to abandon federalism and other decentralized models of governance.
As long as non-Whites, Jews, and women don't have access to the reigns of power, it's still probably the best form of government.
2004-05-08 00:45 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I never really understood why so many on the Right naively believe that "if only powers were returned to the states, everything would be set aright." Honestly, are the morons and shysters who run things at the state and local level any better than the morons and shysters who run things at the Federal level? Consider the fact that the idiots and crooks who run Washington once ran things "back home," and the point should be driven home.
The problem is not one of whether power resides with the Federal government or with the states. Nor is the problem one of whether the government is too large or too small
Firstly, the federal gov't know sort of controls state gov't too, indirectly, but in a myriad of ways (mainly through purse strings, grants etc.) so the question is moot.
Secondly, you can argue that yes, they are better. Look at all centers of power in this country. As you go up the ladder, toward the most prestigious universities, the biggest cities and corporations, the tops of the gov't, you find almost invariably the group controlling them becomes more liberal, more one-worldly, and yes, more prominently jewish.
So devolution, and anti-authoritarianism/liberalism, in one sense is just the simple urge toward anti-establishmentarianism. Quit understandable. On a deeper philosophical level though I think its in expression of the concept that western men, because of their individualistic nature, do not do well in bureaucratic wars and maneuvering. The more power becomes centralized, the more it tends to exclude them, to the benefit of people from collectivistic cultures and mentalities like jews.
The problem, there as in the private sector, is with WHO runs things, not with the institutions themselves. The solution to idiots and shysters in the government is getting rid of idiots and shysters and working to replace them with our people who stand for the same things that we do rather than changing the institutions as such. If there are rats in your attic, burning your house down is not the optimum solution to the problem.[/QUOTE] True. However you also want to clean up the house. Certain houses attract rats.
Also, I don't really believe you mean that no institutional change is necessary. Institutionsalways change, as the people in them change, by necessity.
As an example. If your rule was true, strictly speaking all that would be necessary to deal with Judaism is for all of us to convert. Filling up the synogogues (or whereever else jews congregate these days) with whites would make judaism a good thing, since it was composed of good people. Even communism could be reformed that way, n'est ce pa?
Of course not. While people change institutions, institutions also change people. That's why we after al we're in politics.
2004-05-08 17:10 | User Profile
When speaking of the Constitution, Americans, regardless of religion or lack of, invoke the Gods of all preceding cultures. We vow we are a nation of laws and aver our laws, if not divinely inspired, were brought to earth by chosen people though not Jews. To this day Jews are deeply grieved and embittered that they were not consulted in the drafting of this document.
Yet much like other countries the United States is not a nation of laws, but of men who make the laws. The great problem facing America is not our law, but the people who make the laws and interpret them. Cowardice and deceit have become accepted traits in the American ruling class. Unless these character flaws are changed, we have little chance to survive.
2004-05-08 18:29 | User Profile
The problem today is not one of which system is best but what the best way to salvage the country and save it from the crooks and cowards running it and then expel enemies who threaten it. The same applies to some extent to Britain.
These arguments about Constitutionalism are superfluous. They would be more apt in an environment when the country was more like it was in 1789 and white aristocrats could engage in extended discourse on the spirit of the laws. When your survival is at stake you have to think of ways to survive and win.
We should learn from the Chosen. In each country they use a different method. In America PC, in Russia communism, in Israel nationalism and extreme race hate.
2004-05-09 01:55 | User Profile
**Paleoconservatives today, who are virtually defined by their adherence to the Old Republic established by the original and real Constitution, therefore need to make a decision. Their appeals to the old Constitution have now become not only politically and juridically irrelevant but have acquired the stale and arid odor of antiquarianism. Their cause is no longer well served by regurgitation of archaic constitutional niceties and invocations to constitutionalist idols. **
Put simple, we read antiquarian texts because the old books are better than the new ones. Who would you prefer, William Gladstone or Lawrence Tribe?
While we realize that the Old Republic can never be restored per se, it is key to our own history. It gives us examples of institutions that differ from our own in valuable ways. Any future America must maintain continuity with the Old Republic and cherish its ideals. You can't just create a new society from scratch.
2004-05-09 04:09 | User Profile
It is one thing to desire continuity with the 'Old Republic.' It is another to make this approach the linchpin of a political movement. Francis has attacked 'conservatism' many times, on the grounds that, if we are speaking of the American 20th C, truly conservative movements are also failed movements. This piece is more or less just another one of those attacks.
What Francis seems to mean is that those involved with conservative politics need to focus squarely on the issue of race, and the culture necessary for a race to flourish. Pointing out that we have wandered far from such a culture when it comes to the white race is significant, but it is more important to point out how to create such a culture for the future. No, cultures are not created out of whole cloth, but the fact is that the founding Constitutional scheme is long gone, and most of the central institutional structures of society have also long been perverted. We need to destroy them. That is not a 'conservative' impulse, in one central sense of 'conservative.'
Indeed, what white need above all else is the will to fight. Everything else will fall in place around this will.
But today, we languish in a hedonistic, materialistic poverty of values. Almost all avenues for rebellion are squashed by a state approved media-educational system. For many, changing this involves some basic knowledge of constitutional history. But the more fundemental issue is somehow coming to recognize that state-induced-and-supported structures of society are oriented for the racial destruction of whites and, in particular, Germano-Celtic peoples.
From this point, the discussion can branch out into complex issues of restoring the original intent of the Constitution, more broadly supporting decentralization, classical liberalism and libertarianism, the proper role of local state structures in supporting morals, protectionism vs. free trade, immigration, improving the white birth rate, the potential of genetic engineering and other reproductive technologies, secession, co-operation with whites in other nations, etc.
[QUOTE=Paul Kruger]**Paleoconservatives today, who are virtually defined by their adherence to the Old Republic established by the original and real Constitution, therefore need to make a decision. Their appeals to the old Constitution have now become not only politically and juridically irrelevant but have acquired the stale and arid odor of antiquarianism. Their cause is no longer well served by regurgitation of archaic constitutional niceties and invocations to constitutionalist idols. **
Put simple, we read antiquarian texts because the old books are better than the new ones. Who would you prefer, William Gladstone or Lawrence Tribe?
While we realize that the Old Republic can never be restored per se, it is key to our own history. It gives us examples of institutions that differ from our own in valuable ways. Any future America must maintain continuity with the Old Republic and cherish its ideals. You can't just create a new society from scratch.[/QUOTE]
2004-05-09 06:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]It is one thing to desire continuity with the 'Old Republic.' It is another to make this approach the linchpin of a political movement. Francis has attacked 'conservatism' many times, on the grounds that, if we are speaking of the American 20th C, truly conservative movements are also failed movements. This piece is more or less just another one of those attacks.
What Francis seems to mean is that those involved with conservative politics need to focus squarely on the issue of race, and the culture necessary for a race to flourish. Pointing out that we have wandered far from such a culture when it comes to the white race is significant, but it is more important to point out how to create such a culture for the future. No, cultures are not created out of whole cloth, but the fact is that the founding Constitutional scheme is long gone, and most of the central institutional structures of society have also long been perverted. We need to destroy them. That is not a 'conservative' impulse, in one central sense of 'conservative.' [/QUOTE]
Well what he really means is wrapped in these last sentences of his.
The decision paleoconservatives need to make is whether to abandon all appeals to constitutionalism and make use of alternative modes of argumentation for what those appeals have traditionally tried to defend, or whether, acknowledging the death of the old Constitiution, they should begin working for a new constitutional structure that seeks to replicate as many of the positive attributes of the old Constitution as possible, including its guarantees of federalism and local autonomy. Which ever course they choose will be no less radical and revolutionary than the path that led to the destruction of the old Constitution.
You are right to acknowledge that Francis does seem to attack conservatism, but from a principled conservative point of view. Of course this alienates him both from most of even traditional, non-neocon conservatism, who dislike his attacks, and the WN mainstream, who distrust his principled conservatism.
There's a rather odd similarity in the attacks from either side. Sometimes it almost seems like they're using the same manual. (Which could in fact, from their mysterious origins could possibly very well be :ph34r: )
2004-05-12 03:42 | User Profile
Food for thought.
2004-05-13 20:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar][I][B][COLOR=Red]Indeed, what white need above all else is the will to fight. Everything else will fall in place around this will. [/COLOR] [/B] [/I] [/QUOTE]I agree. Everything else is secondary.
2004-05-13 22:39 | User Profile
As a people, we ARE sufficiently intelligent. Of course, this doesn't apply to every white person....