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Thread ID: 51 | Posts: 16 | Started: 2002-02-28

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PaleoconAvatar [OP]

2002-02-28 03:28 | User Profile

Pick Up Your Gun:  A Reply to Jonah Goldberg

by Paul Fallavollita

http://www.opinionet.com/commentary/contributors/ccpf/2002/ccpf16.htm

Jonah Goldberg challenged paleoconservatives in twin columns responding to Buchanan’s latest book, The Death of the West. The first, "Ideologues Have Hijacked an Important Debate," appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and the second, "Killing Whitey: What’s white, right, and wrong about Pat," ran in National Review Online. Their themes are contained in this quote: "The paleocons…denounce all conservatives who don’t toe their line as ‘neocons’ who’ve ‘caved’ to the liberals on all the important issues. But, that’s only true if you consider the important issues to revolve around this narrow and nasty emphasis on what Peter Brimelow calls America’s ‘specific ethnic core."

Goldberg should adjust his ranking of conservatism’s priorities. Peter Brimelow’s "National Question" even trumps "family values" concerns dear to social conservatives. Balanced budgets and booming economies are worthless if the moral fabric of society is in a shambles, but before we can redeem our people, the people first have to exist intact.

Goldberg describes as "narrow and nasty" what in the paleoconservative constellation of beliefs is merely a sort of "back to basics" movement. Liberalism, having run rampant for many decades, now threatens the most basic thing: Life itself. It’s high time conservatives mustered the courage to defend those basics, even in the face of the moral squeamishness that characterizes the Left and much of the so-called Right in this country. More endangers the continued existence of White Americans than the fertility rates Goldberg quibbles over in his columns, such as the convergence of high Third World immigration rates with a rising incidence of miscegenation. Buchanan’s book fosters open discussion of these threats, perforating the thick veil of political correctness.

Have the neocons caved to the liberals? Let’s take stock of the basic tenets of the Left. The Left holds that human beings are equal and interchangeable, that they are fundamentally good and perfectible, and that at base, they are rational and have a "harmony of interests." The Left also views human beings as products of their environment, rather than heredity. To them, we are all brothers, and there should be no conflict, competition, or "group egoism" among men.

Before the full ascendancy of the Left in the 1960s, the majority of Americans in every generation stretching back to the Founding Fathers struggled to preserve the European racial character of the United States, and passed accompanying laws. They were not egalitarians, but group egoists. One wonders, though, if Goldberg understands this historical fact, since he suggests paleocons have "surrendered" to a form of "Balkanization" promoted by the multicultural Left (who came to America much later). The neocons are the "odd men out," having less in common with America’s past and much in common with her hijackers.

To some, group egoism may seem "narrow and nasty." Yet, it has been a part of human life since time began, and even has survival value, as Michael Masters and Sir Arthur Keith argue. Our language has inherited a string of clichés confirming the centrality of group egoism in our development: blood is thicker than water; good fences make good neighbors; all’s fair in love and war. As conservatives, we must accord respect to this age-old fact. Even Goldberg is not fully exempt from group egoism, if his comparison of Buchanan to Yasser Arafat is evidence of his strong commitment to the State of Israel.

In his NRO piece, Goldberg doubts that the blessings of the West stem from any genetic component. In the LAT, he tells paleoconservatives "hiding out in their bunkers on the web and in the pages of a few obscure publications" that "race isn’t the point, so drop it, now." Much material in circulation challenges Goldberg’s position, though, maybe too much to "drop" so cavalierly. There are many scientific treatises, from Rushton’s Race, Evolution, and Behavior to Murray and Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve, suggesting that race is a meaningful category of study. Many find that there are significant differences between the races in terms of mental as well as physical characteristics, in ways that affect the task of carrying on a civilization such as ours.

Beyond the scientific dimensions of race, what is more interesting is that to many people, race obviously means something. Why all the taboos surrounding the topic, if race is of no import? Why all the PC censorship and hysterical thought police activity surrounding the issue? Who benefits from shaming Whites into silence about race? Why is Goldberg, a very influential conservative, worried enough about the popularity of Buchanan’s book to pen two columns?

It is in the interest of White Americans to vie for their share in the arena of the racial politics Goldberg sneers at, rather than pretending that arena doesn’t exist. Regular Americans, or middle class, White heterosexuals, ironically occupy the most besieged demographic in the very country their ancestors founded and built. Anybody can dump on them, from immigrants this side of the hole in the fence to any two-bit trumped-up feminazi. Ignoring race in this age of La Raza, the ADL, and the NAACP is akin to unilateral disarmament.

Goldberg states, "Rather than focusing on how to create a rational immigration policy that recognizes the permanence of America's ethnic diversity, [paleoconservatives] live in denial about how to get back to the days when America was 90% white." Well, liberals always nag conservatives to quit pining for the past. The Left brags that they own the future, that America is progressive and "hip" now. They advise us to just give up and "go with the flow." Well, I hope Goldberg will forgive me if I resist the coming brave new world. I am looking to the future, one in which the Left is an old memory, and the status quo ante reigns.

The clock can be turned back, if we had the political will to do so. The government made a political decision in 1965 to import a new, Third World electorate for itself, and one day it will make the decision to reverse the first. The situation is not as inevitable and unchangeable as Goldberg suggests; history is replete with examples of much bolder changes. Goldberg has a personal stake in making it seem impossible to effect change, to cultivate a defeatist attitude among paleoconservatives. Goldberg’s psychological warfare techniques are ineffective against the informed and dedicated.

Conjuring political will, by contrast, is a tricky thing for the squishy Right. Goldberg asks, "How do you win in a democracy when you take as a given that vast numbers of voters are essentially less American?" His question reveals the mistaken belief that America should be a democracy, something that the Founders clearly rejected in establishing this Republic. This is yet more evidence of Goldberg conforming to a liberal ethic.

His question also indicates a deeper flaw, one characteristic of the neocons. They seek to practice "regular" politics, as if this were a friendly competition with "the Democrats," all playing by the same rules, competing for votes, and the like. They fail to see that the standards of the Left-defined "mainstream" do not apply to our program. True conservatives, at this point in post-American history, are fundamentally different. We are not the party of government and politics; it is our task to resist, to turn back what liberalism has gained since 1913. Our goal is not to "go along to get along," for we are counterrevolutionary insurgents using political means, for now. Our mission is to overturn the current Establishment, a regime revealed to be illegitimate. There is no room for compromise or coexistence.

Goldberg tells paleoconservatives to "drop it" regarding race. Why take his advice? In the midst of a fight for our lives against the Left, he chose to drop one of his most powerful guns. Paleoconservatives aren’t hiding in bunkers, but fighting on the very battlefield that Goldberg and friends deserted.

Texas Dissident

2002-02-28 06:40 | User Profile

Excellent post that deserves to be in Neo-Con Watch.

Pomona

2002-03-02 04:10 | User Profile

Goldberg lives, and has always lived, in a cocoon.  He has always been kept away and protected from reality.  Whenever I hear from him, or people like him, it becomes quickly obvious that they do not have a clue about what is going on in this nation.  And they clearly do not want to know.  They think it is safer to pretend.

George Will is also in Goldberg's league.

Faust

2002-03-02 22:57 | User Profile

PaleoconAvatar:

Great Post!

"Liberalism, having run rampant for many decades, now threatens the most basic thing: Life itself."-Paul Fallavollita

van helsing

2002-03-05 02:30 | User Profile

note to lurking neocons:

yall can 'drop it' first.

or better yet, venture beyond the beltway out to flyover country...

Texas Dissident

2002-03-05 06:23 | User Profile