← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Stanley
Thread ID: 17245 | Posts: 29 | Started: 2005-03-11
2005-03-11 15:08 | User Profile
Sam may be gone, but at least we still have Joe.
[url=http://www.sobran.com/wanderer/w2005/w050303early.shtml]Sobran's Washington Watch[/url]
Poor Sam Francis. His enemies were dancing on his grave before he was even laid to rest in it.
A new neoconservative newspaper, The Examiner, greeted Sam’s death with an extraordinarily rancorous opinion piece by its editorial page editor, David Mastio, who wrote, “Sam Francis was merely a racist and doesn’t deserve to be remembered as anything less.... America is a better place without him.”
Mastio’s article doesn’t even show a real familiarity with Sam’s writing. It was obviously cobbled together from the files of Abe Foxman, Morris Dees, or the other victimhood vigilantes who practice character assassination under the guise of fighting bigotry.
By the way, do we desperately need yet another neocon paper? By my count, this country has about 50 neoconservatives and 100 neocon publications. It wouldn’t surprise Sam that they are attacking him; he might have taken a grim satisfaction in the fact. He was as tough a critic as they had, and they knew it.
What does it mean to call Sam a “racist”? It would be hard to find, in all his writings, any unflattering words about racial minorities. And even if you found a few, they would be a small fraction of his total output. Yet Mastio makes it sound as if he were a Johnny One-Note who seldom wrote about anything else.
As a matter of fact, Sam was a fine observer who addressed many subjects. To reduce his career to only one of them, as Mastio does, is to have missed nearly everything. Sam wrote less about race itself than about the race racket, the spurious exaltation of minority groups by liberals. It was liberals, not minorities, that were his real target, as any careful reading of his work makes clear.
Original Sin
Among those liberals were the neoconservatives. Sam rightly saw from the start that the neocons weren’t conservatives at all. They were actually liberals masquerading as conservatives, while trying to discredit and marginalize real conservatism. He unmasked them without mercy, so it’s no wonder that they continue to attack him even in death.
After all, if you’re going to usurp a word, it’s all-important that you discredit those to whom the word rightly belongs. The heretic always claims to be the only “true” Christian, while insisting that true Christians are idolaters and bigots.
Sam’s talent for exposing ideological fraud made him a special threat to the neocons. He understood that their interests weren’t driven by American patriotism, but by a pro-Israel ideology which led them to urge America to make war on the enemies of the state of Israel.
Sam didn’t often write about this explicitly, but the neocons rightly sensed that if he penetrated the race racket, he was seeing through their racket too. But he gave them few grounds for smearing him as an “anti-Semite”; they had to settle for calling him a “racist,” and feigning indignation about his racial views — which were actually more moderate than those of their idol, Abraham Lincoln, who opposed citizenship for free Negroes and hoped to “colonize” them abroad.
Sam was always a shrewd and biting exposer of liberal hypocrisy, and his exposures became even more trenchant when liberals refused even to admit they were liberals. When they called themselves conservatives, or “neoconservatives,” he was especially scathing.
He did, however, stop short of defaming the dead; his sense of honor, alas, is not shared by his enemies.
He also hated the identification of Christianity with liberalism. He liked to point out that the Bible never condemns slavery — a plain fact that would appall and amaze most liberals. St. Augustine held that slavery, war, government, and private property are all consequences of original sin. I suspect that Sam would at least have seen his point.
Being a Southerner, with an inherited memory of bitter defeat, made Sam immune to facile optimism and suspicious of those who espoused it. But the rejection of optimism is enough to make you vulnerable to the charge that you “hate” the objects of liberalism’s bogus benevolence. In Sam’s case, his dark view of human nature, applicable to race as to everything else, allowed his enemies to portray him as “racist” and to ignore nearly all he had to say on other matters.
But it was the totality of Sam’s views that won him his devoted readership. When you read him, you knew you were getting an honest vision of political reality. It might be painful; it might err on the side of cynicism; but at least it was no bluff. Sam refused to pretend that all was well when you, and he, knew better. He saw the world without illusions, as we all need to do.
A Brave Corrective
If there was anything missing from Sam’s vision, it was Christian hope. At times his picture of the world was too grim. He could see that the world was largely going to Hell; I’m not sure he saw that part of it, at the same time, was going to Heaven. This is perhaps why his skepticism sometimes spilled over into downright cynicism.
Nevertheless, Sam was a brave corrective to an age that pressures all of us into a false unanimity. He wasn’t afraid to stand alone, to be the only man willing to express an unfashionable view — and not because it was unfashionable, but simply because he thought it was true.
And the neocons knew that if even one man opposed them, he had to be dealt with. They managed to get him fired from The Washington Times; they kept him out of their own forums; they refused to answer his arguments; they tried to act as if he didn’t exist.
And yet, when Sam died, we found that his enemies were well aware of his existence, and felt that he still had to be dealt with, if only by posthumous defamation. Hence Mastio’s attempt to reduce him to a single topic, one lost cause.
But Sam Francis was never smug enough to assume that a lost cause was a bad cause. He fought for any cause he thought worthy, regardless of whether it had any chance of prevailing. He was resigned to losing; he was even resigned to being misrepresented and smeared.
So brave a man surely deserved better enemies.
2005-03-11 15:52 | User Profile
...By the way, do we desperately need yet another neocon paper? By my count, this country has about 50 neoconservatives and 100 neocon publications. It wouldnââ¬â¢t surprise Sam that they are attacking him; he might have taken a grim satisfaction in the fact. He was as tough a critic as they had, and they knew it.
One of the worst aspects of the neocons is just how damn boring they are. Seems that every second FReaker has a "blog" parroting the Regime's flaccid tawking points.
Say what you will about the admirable and lamented Dr. Sam--he was never a bore.
2005-03-11 16:25 | User Profile
[QUOTE]By my count, this country has about 50 neoconservatives and 100 neocon publications. [/QUOTE]
I only wish that were true, but hell, it's still a funny line.
Here's one that's not so funny.
[QUOTE]He understood that their interests weren’t driven by American patriotism, but by a pro-Israel ideology which led them to urge America to make war on the enemies of the state of Israel. [I]Sam didn’t often write about this explicitly[/I], but the neocons rightly sensed that if he penetrated the race racket, he was seeing through their racket too. [/QUOTE]
Frankly, he barely wrote about this at all, let alone explicitly. But that's ok. If I make you my hero, that in no way compels [I]you [/I] to run into every burning building you see to rescue the widows and orphans just to spare me from experiencng disillusionment. Frankly, the swill Mastio vomited up wasn't half as cruel and degrading as the bile Linder excreted on Sam, and [I]postmortem [/I] for God's sake.
[QUOTE]He also hated the identification of Christianity with liberalism. He liked to point out that the Bible never condemns slavery — a plain fact that would appall and amaze most liberals. St. Augustine held that slavery, war, government, and private property are all consequences of original sin. [/QUOTE]
Now here [I]is [/I] a bone of contention. In the first place, even Joe knows Francis was - at most - a lapsed Christian, if not an outright skeptic. In the second place, the man who points out that [I]slavery is ok with me since it's ok with God[/I] has no ground to bitch about having [I]become [/I] a slave in his own country. And oh, how it rankled him! Joe, too, never stops pointing out how - compared to the men of the Founders' generation - we are closer to slaves than free men. And he, too, grumbles about it. But if it [I]is [/I] ok with God - and no man may know the mind of God - then who is to say that what has befallen the South has not been [U]ordained[/U] by God, as punishment for hubris or what[I]ever[/I] reason? (Here, too, it must be noted that these men live fairly comfortable lives - they're not picking cotton or lugging stones for Pharoah, they're paying too much in taxes and have no access to political power.)
But even if the above were [I]not [/I] the case, sotto-voce racialist conservatives like Sobran and Francis - who abhor the extremists in their midst, and clothe themselves in the raiments of Common Sense - ought to know that harping on such a subject can only create further polarization. It's fresh meat for the Linders and a blood transfusion for the liberal Jews. Hell, if I wanted a diet of [I]one step forward, two steps back[/I], I can just read the VNN Forum!
[QUOTE]Nevertheless, Sam was a brave corrective to an age that pressures all of us into a false unanimity. He wasn’t afraid to stand alone, to be the only man willing to express an unfashionable view — and not because it was unfashionable, but simply because he thought it was true.
And the neocons knew that if even one man opposed them, he had to be dealt with. They managed to get him fired from The Washington Times; they kept him out of their own forums; they refused to answer his arguments; they tried to act as if he didn’t exist. [/QUOTE]
Not to belabor this point, but - it's almost as if Joe's saying "what did he have to lose by calling them what they [I]were [/I] - Jews and gentile-rabbit apparatchiks?" He certainly had no timidity about saying the word "Negro"! But Negroes can't make you an unperson, and I think Francis couldn't bear the Gauntlet to Limbo he'd surely be made to run if he'd done that - not at his age, and not after everything they'd [I]already [/I] taken from him.
[QUOTE]So brave a man surely deserved better enemies.[/QUOTE]
Mastio was not his enemy; to quote Don Corleone, he was an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill. Francis had, pound for pound, the deadliest enemies a white man can have in this day and age. That he preferred to mask his contempt for them didn't prevent them from doing everything they could to destroy him.
2005-03-11 17:19 | User Profile
From a [url=http://mediamatters.org/items/200412130001]website[/url] devoted to the thoughtcrimes of Sam Francis.
From the July 27, 1995, Washington Times column that led to his dismissal:
If the sin is hatred or exploitation, they [Southern Baptists repenting their support of slavery in the mid-1800s] may be on solid grounds, but neither "slavery" nor "racism" as an institution is a sin. Indeed, there are at least five clear passages in the letters of Paul that explicitly enjoin "servants" to obey their masters, and the Greek words for "servants" in the original text are identical to those for "slaves." Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the early church condemned slavery, despite countless opportunities to do so, and there is no indication that slavery is contrary to Christian ethics or that any serious theologian before modern times ever thought it was.
Not until the Enlightenment of the 18th century did a bastardized version of Christian ethics condemn slavery. Today we know that version under the label of "liberalism," or its more extreme cousin, communism.
[...]
What has happened in the centuries since the Enlightenment is the permeation of the pseudo-Christian poison of equality into the tissues of the West, to the point that the mainstream churches now spend more time preaching against apartheid and colonialism than they do against real sins like pinching secretaries and pilfering from the office coffee pool. The Southern Baptists, because they were fortunate enough to flourish in a region where the false sun of the Enlightenment never shone, succeeded in escaping this grim fate, at least until last week. This is only occasion I know of that he discussed slavery in print. He was certainly not advocating slavery. He is ridiculing the Southern Baptists for repenting a 'sin' that none of them had committed and the Bible unmistakably condones, while in the process spitting on the graves of their ancestors, Francis' and my own.
2005-03-11 17:28 | User Profile
I was doing a search on David Mastio when I ran across this freeper thread about Dr. Francis. Not to bad for "Free" Republic. 35 posts and only 13 removals. "Vic Mackey", I know you have been banned, you're welcome to post here if you don't already.
[url]http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1345839/posts[/url]
To: Vic Mackey
Francis, apparently unrepentant to the end, continued to publish intellectual fodder for racists, mostly in obscure outlets, up until his death. Samuel Francis was the intellectual tribune of the remnant of America's white supremacists. **America is a better place without him.**
26 posted on 02/23/2005 5:30:42 AM PST by steve-b (A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
No, America is drearier without him.
2005-03-11 17:45 | User Profile
[QUOTE] Mastioââ¬â¢s article doesnââ¬â¢t even show a real familiarity with Samââ¬â¢s writing. It was obviously cobbled together from the files of Abe Foxman, Morris Dees, or the other victimhood vigilantes who practice character assassination under the guise of fighting bigotry.
Much of neoconservative commentary strikes me as a cut and paste from the ADL or JDL websites, so why should this be any different?
By the way, do we desperately need yet another neocon paper? By my count, this country has about 50 neoconservatives and 100 neocon publications.
This depends on what you mean by "neocon." As far as hardcore, Kristol-style ideologues of neoism, there probably are only a few dozen. But there are thousands of fellow-travellers. It is no more accurate to do a head-count of neoconservatism by those who call themselves such than it would have been accurate to guage Communist sympathies in the 30's by counting party membership cards.
As a matter of fact, Sam was a fine observer who addressed many subjects. To reduce his career to only one of them, as Mastio does, is to have missed nearly everything. Sam wrote less about race itself than about the race racket, the spurious exaltation of minority groups by liberals. It was liberals, not minorities, that were his real target, as any careful reading of his work makes clear.
I have to disagree with Sobran here. Like Buchanan, Sobran seems to believe that minorities themselves are not a problem (in fact, he goes beyond Buchanan in saying that Mexican immigrants as such are not a problem). Francis was valuable in that he was probably the only guy with a syndicated column who recognized that a multiracial society is problematic as such, whether it's "conservative" or "liberal." The difference is crucial.
Samââ¬â¢s talent for exposing ideological fraud made him a special threat to the neocons. He understood that their interests werenââ¬â¢t driven by American patriotism, but by a pro-Israel ideology which led them to urge America to make war on the enemies of the state of Israel.
Sam didnââ¬â¢t often write about this explicitly, but the neocons rightly sensed that if he penetrated the race racket, he was seeing through their racket too. But he gave them few grounds for smearing him as an ââ¬Åanti-Semiteââ¬Â; they had to settle for calling him a ââ¬Åracist,ââ¬Â and feigning indignation about his racial views ââ¬â which were actually more moderate than those of their idol, Abraham Lincoln, who opposed citizenship for free Negroes and hoped to ââ¬Åcolonizeââ¬Â them abroad.
In the last few years, Francis had quite a bit to say about the Israeli lobby and its machinations. However, Sobran is right to say that even if he never talked about AIPAC, the ADL, and Likudniks and never hobnobbed with David Duke, he would still be tarred with the "anti-Semite" brush just for talking about neocons. Anybody who can catch on to neoconservatism as a distinct entity is bound to recognize what it's all about and whose interests it serves.
If there was anything missing from Samââ¬â¢s vision, it was Christian hope. At times his picture of the world was too grim. He could see that the world was largely going to Hell; Iââ¬â¢m not sure he saw that part of it, at the same time, was going to Heaven. This is perhaps why his skepticism sometimes spilled over into downright cynicism.
Once on recognizes certain realities, it's very difficult to have much hope (Christian or otherwise) for where the world is headed, at least during our lifetimes.
2005-03-11 18:01 | User Profile
Sam's own words on the slavery column (Chronicles, April 1996):
I argued that it made no sense in Christian theology for individuals to "repent" of a sin they had not personally committed, and that in any case there is no evidence that owning slaves is a sin in traditional (or fundamentalist) Christian theology. Indeed, I wrote, there are at least five clear passages in the letters of Paul that explicitly enjoin "servants" to obey their masters, and the Greek words for "servants" in the original text are identical to those for "slaves." Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the early church condemned slavery, despite countless opportunities to do so, and there is no indication that slavery is contrary to Christian ethics or that any serious theologian before modern times ever thought it was. The point was to argue that the Baptists seemed to be motivated by a desire to accommodate themselves to modern political sensibilities rather than by serious religious or ethical precepts, and that this trend did not augur well for the future of the traditionally conservative denomination.
2005-03-11 18:11 | User Profile
From Jerry Woodruff's tribute to Sam at [url]www.samfrancis.net[/url]:
Sam was devotedly loyal to his friends, a quality some of them did not share. After Sam had been denounced in the press as "racist," the frightened editors of the formerly courageous New American of the John Birch Society quietly dropped Sam's name from the masthead where he had been listed as a contributor.
At the time of his death, he had begun work on a new book, very tentatively titled, "Conservatism and Race," which he described to friends as the first attempt to weld conservative political theory with an understanding of the role of race in the development of culture. It would have been an important and immensely valuable contribution to political theory; but, alas, it was not to be.
His passing leaves a terrible, black void, one that to his friends feels like an abyss. But we can take some solace knowing Sam lived his political life richly, as he wanted, fighting courageously for the cause and people he deeply believed in, no matter what the risks were to his otherwise promising career in mainstream conservatism.
2005-03-11 18:23 | User Profile
From a letter to the Examiner, published at [url=http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2005/02/the_washington.php]American Renaissance:[/url]
Finally, it is amazing that Mastio would say that a man who didn’t share the liberal orthodoxy on race shouldn’t be alive, and simultaneously revile that man for having supposedly hidden his non-liberal beliefs. In David Mastio’s America, anyone who thinks that race matters would be forced to conceal his views, out of sheer self-preservation from the kind of hatred expressed by Mastio. But, in fact, Francis did not conceal his views.
Lawrence Auster
From the Free Republic thread linked above:
To: ETERNAL WARMING
Many thanks for posting this obituary for Sam. If nothing else, the scurrilous denunciation of Sam on this thread by the diversity KGB shows that even in death Sam is a force to reckon with.
Interesting too that the Olympians decided not to pull this particular thread---perhaps because the embarrassment of pulling a article on Sam by a paper still respected in White House circles and the very publication that once employed Sam would be too acute. At any rate, WorldNetDaily webpublished today a tribute to Sam by Pat Buchanan. Whether WND or Pat are verboten here these days, I can't say---I'm not here enough any more to know or care.
32 posted on 03/07/2005 10:08:08 AM PST by Map Kernow ("I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" ---Thomas Jefferson)
2005-03-13 01:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stanley]f there was anything missing from Samââ¬â¢s vision, it was Christian hope. At times his picture of the world was too grim. He could see that the world was largely going to Hell; Iââ¬â¢m not sure he saw that part of it, at the same time, was going to Heaven. This is perhaps why his skepticism sometimes spilled over into downright cynicism.[/QUOTE]
Sobran is right about this, and if you squirm at "Christian," simply plug in "hope." With Sam, there was never good news. Nothing was a sign of better things to come. All was lost. That could be deeply wearying. Linder was out of control with the corpse-slapping for several reasons, but he and Taylor and others at least cry the cry that we have to at least try to win this thing. Sam was right on so many things, but he didn't understand what whites needed to hear to carry on. Taylor said at the last AmRen conference, in response to the query, "What are our chances?", that it doesn't matter. I had to agree. It doesn't matter what our chances are. We aren't real men if we don't at least try to fight back. Sitting around on the porch grousing that nothing can be done is the wrong spirit. And something tells me that we do have a chance. Hell, it's what I'm basing my life on.
As for David Mastio, if I ever meet him, I'm going to tell him that someone should break his jaw.
2005-03-13 02:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Hugh Lincoln] Taylor said at the last AmRen conference, in response to the query, "What are our chances?", that it doesn't matter. I had to agree. It doesn't matter what our chances are. We aren't real men if we don't at least try to fight back. Sitting around on the porch grousing that nothing can be done is the wrong spirit. And something tells me that we do have a chance. Hell, it's what I'm basing my life on.[/QUOTE]
Hear hear!
(hope is the Christian commission ... )
Who is Taylor?
2005-03-13 03:27 | User Profile
The non-Subway Jared. Editor of American Renaissance. Speaker of my current tagline.
2005-03-13 06:47 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stanley] [Joseph Sobran]... But Sam Francis was never smug enough to assume that a lost cause was a bad cause. He fought for any cause he thought worthy, regardless of whether it had any chance of prevailing. He was resigned to losing; he was even resigned to being misrepresented and smeared.
So brave a man surely deserved better enemies. [/QUOTE] Here, Here.
:cheers:
The Neocons will be the death of the Republican Party. As we speak... the Democrats are developing their contra positions... especially on immigration. Anyone remember what happened to Congressman Bob Dornan?
:smoke:
2005-03-13 14:45 | User Profile
All too true! [QUOTE]Among those liberals were the neoconservatives. Sam rightly saw from the start that the neocons werenââ¬â¢t conservatives at all. They were actually liberals masquerading as conservatives, while trying to discredit and marginalize real conservatism. He unmasked them without mercy, so itââ¬â¢s no wonder that they continue to attack him even in death.[/QUOTE]
2005-03-13 15:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stanley]Sam's own words on the slavery column (Chronicles, April 1996):
I argued that it made no sense in Christian theology for individuals to "repent" of a sin they had not personally committed, and that in any case there is no evidence that owning slaves is a sin in traditional (or fundamentalist) Christian theology. Indeed, I wrote, there are at least five clear passages in the letters of Paul that explicitly enjoin "servants" to obey their masters, and the Greek words for "servants" in the original text are identical to those for "slaves." Neither Jesus nor the apostles nor the early church condemned slavery, despite countless opportunities to do so, and there is no indication that slavery is contrary to Christian ethics or that any serious theologian before modern times ever thought it was. The point was to argue that the Baptists seemed to be motivated by a desire to accommodate themselves to modern political sensibilities rather than by serious religious or ethical precepts, and that this trend did not augur well for the future of the traditionally conservative denomination.[/QUOTE]Like all of you I was and am a big Sam fan. That said,.... Sam Francis was not a theologian nor scripture scholar, and having had the opportunity to talk with him personally I found no real evidence he was Christian (I found Thomas Fleming's original tribute to Sam curious in its reference to a sort of crypto-Christian faith). Francis's line, "[T]here is no evidence that owning of slaves is a sin in traditional (or fundamentalist) Christian theology," is silly. First of all, traditional Fundamentalist Christianity? Does this mean all the way back to the 19th century and Warfield and Hodge at Princetion Seminary? Or perhaps all the way back to the Reformers in the 16th century who decided the Christian church- the Roman Catholic Church-- that had existed for over 15 centuries was all wrong, and they, with a Catholic book, the Bible, would set things straight?? Please. Many Church Fathers referred to the sin of slavery (e.g., St. Gregory of Nyssa) as did many saints. Vatican II Council, in its document, Gaudium et Spes, condemned all forms of slavery.
2005-03-13 15:24 | User Profile
Sobran wrote an earlier eulogy column for Francis in which he stated that a] he hardly knew Francis other than as an acquaintance, and b] despite this, he felt Sam wished he were a Catholic at the end. It was outrageous speculation rooted in nothing but wishful thinking. I tend to think a lot of this recent [I]slavery is Biblical [/I] business, besides being wholly counterproductive, is rooted in the same sort of wishful thinking. For that matter, doesn't the Bible admonish masters to mind their responsibilities to their servants as well?
Unrelated sidebar: I dunno you from Adam, Jack Cassidy, but in relatively short order you've become of the best posters here at OD. I've come to greatly look forward to seeing your 'byline'; by all means, keep it up.
2005-03-13 15:41 | User Profile
Sobran wrote: In Samââ¬â¢s case, his dark view of human nature, applicable to race as to everything else, allowed his enemies to portray him as ââ¬Åracistââ¬Â and to ignore nearly all he had to say on other matters.
Good point. Sometimes the Left behaves as if it's a much greater sin to harbor a "dark view of human nature," than to harbor specifically negative views of non-whites. The fundamental difference between the Right & Left is on what it means to be human.
2005-03-13 16:59 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Sobran wrote an earlier eulogy column for Francis in which he stated that a] he hardly knew Francis other than as an acquaintance, and b] despite this, he felt Sam wished he were a Catholic at the end. [/QUOTE]
I don't know if Sobran said that exactly. There is a certain "sensus catholicus" that many Protestants perceive but do not have. I think that's the point Sobran is making. So too, he and Francis probably had a lot of common friends and acquaintances, so Sobran had more to go on than his own experience. Obviously, Francis was a traditionalist, and it would only be natural for him to sense an interest or affinity for an institution in which Tradition is not only custom, but a source of Divine authority.
2005-03-13 18:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]Like all of you I was and am a big Sam fan. That said,.... Sam Francis was not a theologian nor scripture scholar, and having had the opportunity to talk with him personally I found no real evidence he was Christian [/QUOTE]
I'd been really looking forward to hearing him speak at the Randolph Club two years ago. Impressed over the years by some of his insights as well as the enemies I'd watched him rack up, but still dubious on a few scores, I was perhaps too hopeful.
I believe he was feeling ill that evening but -- his understandably lackluster presentation and ill-preparedness aside -- some of what he had to say in response to a man in plaid flannel during Q&A was so off-putting in its suddenly energized way that I figured it was a good time to go change for supper.
Having spent most of my life surrounded by Mindzenty sorts, I am not at all unused to those who see the world as it is and who speak quite frankly about it. But what's interesting about these folks is their good humor, their penetrating gaze and hopeful steadfastness. I thought I'd see little of the same fire in Francis but, instead, he was rather Eyeore depressing. A man who hangs his hat on the material in so many respects probably can't help a certain sense of inexorable pagan fate.
2005-03-13 20:59 | User Profile
I'm sorry to hear that your meeting with Sam was so disappointing, askel. I never met him myself, but his writings gave me the impression of a gloomy, irascible man.
What I found attractive was his sense of realism. Hope may be a virtue, but if the doctor says the cancer is terminal and there's nothing more that can be done, it's best to plan accordingly.
Francis wasn't that pessimistic, of course; he still pinned his hopes on the Middle American Radicals. But after the Buchanan debacle and the neocon triumph, the big question is, what is it going to take to wake them up? He had no answer.
2005-03-13 21:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Hugh Lincoln]Sobran is right about this, and if you squirm at "Christian," simply plug in "hope." With Sam, there was never good news...
[B][I]As for David Mastio, if I ever meet him, I'm going to tell him that someone should break his jaw[/I][/B].[/QUOTE]Perhaps that someone would be you?
2005-03-13 21:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Stuka]Sobran wrote: In Samââ¬â¢s case, his dark view of human nature, applicable to race as to everything else, allowed his enemies to portray him as ââ¬Åracistââ¬Â and to ignore nearly all he had to say on other matters.
Good point. Sometimes the Left behaves as if it's a much greater sin to harbor a "dark view of human nature," than to harbor specifically negative views of non-whites. The fundamental difference between the Right & Left is on what it means to be human.[/QUOTE]
There are two strains of thought on the Left that run counter to the conservative view of human nature.
One strain of thought is the Romantic view that says that human nature is at the core already perfect, but was corrupted by modern institutions (capitalism, etc). Interestingly, in this regard the Left-Romantics are identical to the libertarians, except that the former emphasize corruption by capitalism and technology and the latter corruption by state and government.
The other strain of thought sees human nature as an essential blank slate, in other words, there is no human nature, only products of society. In this worldview, Marxist social engineers are united with laissez-faire ideologues who think that the entire human condition can be reduced to consumption and production.
The authentic Right grounds politics in an understanding of human nature, both its strengths and weaknesses, and recognizes that while social engineering is misguided, human passions and individual greed must also be held in check. This is a more "pessimistic" view than that of the Left or Libertarian utopians, but also one that's more likely to actually work. Unfortunately, a realistic view is one that relatively few people find inspiring.
2005-03-13 22:22 | User Profile
My late friend Dr. Francis was a polite fellow but not a "hail fellow well met." He was a very serious person and sometimes that high seriousness was mistaken for a sour nature. Dr. Francis had a lot of respect for people who made sacrifices of various kinds for the sake of the movement. This respect had nothing to do with the person's intellectual attainments or the npossession of a slick personality. I saw this demonstrated many times.
I don't think Dr. Francis was a defeatist. I think he was looking for various possible revolutionary classes or possibly a "replacement elite" that would replace the awful folks running things now. I happen to think that his editor at Chronicles, Dr. Thomas Fleming (incidentially, a man I like and respect), is a lot more pessimistic than Francis. Francis showed that he was not a pessimist by lending his name, reputation and talents to the Council of Conservative Citizens and giving a lot of his time toward helping that group. I think some of the writers for Chronicles would look down their noses at the CofCC crowd. Francis could have gotten away with being an intellectual snob, but was not one.
2005-03-15 02:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]Unrelated sidebar: I dunno you from Adam, Jack Cassidy, but in relatively short order you've become of the best posters here at OD. I've come to greatly look forward to seeing your 'byline'; by all means, keep it up.[/QUOTE] Wow, thank you for the kind remarks. If my postings here are getting better it is no doubt a result of all the keen minds on this forum rubbing off on me. :thumbsup:
2005-03-15 03:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=CornCod]My late friend Dr. Francis was a polite fellow but not a "hail fellow well met." He was a very serious person and sometimes that high seriousness was mistaken for a sour nature. Dr. Francis had a lot of respect for people who made sacrifices of various kinds for the sake of the movement. This respect had nothing to do with the person's intellectual attainments or the npossession of a slick personality. I saw this demonstrated many times.
I don't think Dr. Francis was a defeatist. I think he was looking for various possible revolutionary classes or possibly a "replacement elite" that would replace the awful folks running things now. I happen to think that his editor at Chronicles, Dr. Thomas Fleming (incidentially, a man I like and respect), is a lot more pessimistic than Francis. Francis showed that he was not a pessimist by lending his name, reputation and talents to the Council of Conservative Citizens and giving a lot of his time toward helping that group. I think some of the writers for Chronicles would look down their noses at the CofCC crowd. Francis could have gotten away with being an intellectual snob, but was not one.[/QUOTE]I remember a saintly old Domincan philosopher giving a talk on the prominent German Catholic philosopher Dietrich Von Hildebrand. This Dominican talked about how Von Hildebrand developed an angry tone in his later writings, but after he said this the old friar shrugged his shoulders and said, "But I guess there is alot to be angry about in this world."
Nowadays saints are thought of as nice (this is a recent phenomenon), and all those stalwarts of the faith not blessed with friendly dispositions are thought of as "knights". Sam Francis was knight for truth, and so far as he loved truth, he loved God, for truth and God are coextensive. One of my favorite quotes comes from Blaise Pascal: "It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth but merely to fight on its behalf." It's almost as if Pascal had Dr. Francis in mind.
2005-03-15 05:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=corncod]He was a very serious person and sometimes that high seriousness was mistaken for a sour nature.[/QUOTE]
Hey Stanley (that is YOU, Stanley, isn't it?)
It looks like Corncod is the much better judge. That may be what I saw and -- like many of the comments here which I find repulsive on principle -- maybe I should have stayed to hear more about what he had to say about the Bell Curve.
I always did enjoy his writings and it's true that the demeanor of Eyeore -- like the pessimism of Puddleglum the Marshwiggle -- served to mask the focused hope and steady courage which, in the end, saved the day.
2005-03-15 21:48 | User Profile
Yep, it's me, askel.
On further reflection, I realize the answer to my question, "What is it going to take to wake them up?" is local organizations like the CofCC that can bypass the mainstream media.
2005-03-16 01:53 | User Profile
[QUOTE=askel5] I always did enjoy his writings and it's true that the demeanor of Eyeore -- like the pessimism of Puddleglum the Marshwiggle -- served to mask the focused hope and steady courage which, in the end, saved the day.[/QUOTE] In my opinion, Francis was extremely adept at seeing through the chaos and disinformation, and succinctly diagnosing many of the problems that beset us. He was not a leader of men, he was not the rallying cry of a movement, and he was not a Capucin monk riding along the lines encouraging the Christian defenders of the gates of Vienna. I'm not saying this in any way to fault him; I'm merely saying that he should be appreciated for who he was and what he did (and that is no small thing.) Much as there is a place for people of different gifts and abilities in the Church, there is not only a place, but a need, for men of different gifts on the Right. Francis was not an activist; he was a theoretician who tried to make sense of our modern mess.
Askel -- Nice Narnia reference. :thumbsup:
2005-03-16 16:54 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie] One strain of thought is the Romantic view that says that human nature is at the core already perfect, but was corrupted by modern institutions (capitalism, etc). Interestingly, in this regard the Left-Romantics are identical to the libertarians, except that the former emphasize corruption by capitalism and technology and the latter corruption by state and government.[/QUOTE] AY, Excellent insight here. I enjoyed this post. :thumbsup: