Category: Conservatism

Nationalist Conservatism

by David Hamilton

Conservatism was an attempt to preserve traditional ways and differed from Liberalism but became Liberal, Classical then Social Democratic - abstract rights, capitalism, economics, laissez faire and self interest- now Cultural Marxism.

Like the other parties they offer the electorate incentives to get into power and at election time pretend they will introduce popular policies like controlling immigration but once in office pursue their own agenda. This should be a criminal offence and the Party name subject to trading standards law.

Academic Conservatives have tried to revive Conservatism by turning it into a competing ideology but it has no goal only living life by belonging to a historical community and culture and passing it on to one’s children. It is not a different opinion in a rational debate but an attitude and temperament in life. Rational plans and formulae are for the rationalist-ideologues: which is why these are “intimations” not a blueprint and cannot be stated a priori like utopian ideologies. There is more to human nature than reason.

It is not just reaction to current dominant doctrines nor a rejection of future utopias as fantasy in order to re-live a past utopia, not an attempt to turn back the clock to a bygone time but is a traditional way of thinking and feeling for one’s own ethnic community. The turning point is now as we who feel alienated and dispossessed begin re-developing a tradition for our common good and to revive our collapsing civilisation. We value wisdom over rationalist ideologies.

Continued...

I promise you

From the Wikipedia page on Plato’s Republic, commenting upon the inappropriateness of the title as given in English:-

An ancient Greek politeia was considered to be a way of life; so in actuality a proper translation would be ‘how we live as people’

How we live ... we.  In ways we all understand, the whole of the 20th Century was a working out of the question of how we may live, justly, as people of the modern era.  The answer to which postmodernity, ably assisted by certain interested parties, seems to have brought us is that our children’s generation and all the generations that follow them shall never take up arms against their neighbour nor threaten the Jewish destiny nor enslave the backward African. 

For these, the worst sins in the world, our children shall be of a people no more.  They shall be consigned to racial anonymity.  One among many, they shall be atomised individuals laying claim no more to the lands of their fathers.  Their lives shall be lighted no more by the ancient, natural virtues of dignity and honour, which all European peoples have held dear, but by a petty tolerance, fairness and false decency.  Mindless work shall fill the daylight hours and dedicated consumerism shall follow.  Drinking, drug-taking, gambling, football shall dull their senses, analgaesia in consolation for the loss of everything.

Continued...

How to get wiped out intellectually in one easy lesson - Updated 29.03.07 (and updated again)

As I’ve mentioned before, I hang around Troy Southgate’s New Right Forum a fair bit, shooting up the clouds when there’s nothing else to do.  By and large I am a rather disruptive presence, I think, behaving particularly badly towards a white American Moslem (who’s never done anything to upset me!) and one or two other “creatures of the right”.  But tonight I got my chance to put up (a proper argument) or shut up.  I put up, of course, and now wait to be attacked ... or ignored.  If it isn’t the latter I’ll update the following accordingly.

The thread was about a new post on revisionism at Welf Herfurth’s New Right Australia/New Zealand blog.  Welf is in the habit of announcing new posts, which are usually very long (not as long as this, though) and often interesting, on Troy’s Forum.  On this occasion he added some afterthoughts, amongst which was this:-

Continued...

Derbyshire: Race and Conservatism

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=3891&sec_id=3891

Alas, there is no justice in politics.  Republicans got stuck as the party of racial discrimination.  Since racial discrimination soon came to be seen as the most unspeakable of all evils, and since, from the 1970s on, most conservatives were Republicans, it is not very surprising that conservatives don’t want to talk about race.

I think we should, though.  Our current silence keeps us out of present trouble, I’ll grant; but I believe it stores up future trouble. Let me try to explain.

IEmphasis added)

I think that says it all about Conservatives today, in general.

Conservatism, to me, is the politics of the Cold Eye.  It strives to see human beings as they are, not through a smeared lens of wishful thinking or abstract ideology.

That’s what I thought too, but clearly it isn’t if self-professed Conservatives are to be believed.  By that metric I am a Conservative, but I’d just as soon leave the appellation to the mass that claims it.

In any case, the piece makes for a good read.

Is the free market inimical to conservatism?

A few posts down, a certain commentator put forth the view that a defence of what we conservatives (used in the broadest sense) hold dear is necessarely threatened by the free market. Here is my reply, after cogitating much on the questions and dilemmas raised by the debate.

It was stated that we need an economic policy that best serves our interests, with which I can scarcely disagree, and then this was used to conclude that we need a more socialist one then what we have now. I would disagree, arguing on the contrary that reducing the burden of taxation and regulation on middle class enterprise and small business would lead to both greater wealth and a more secure yeoman class (or its modern equivalent). We can argue about this, but we must first stop pretending that pragmatism must necessarely mean more governemnt power.

Mention was made of Enron and Oprah as examples of market failure and I would have to agree with that assessment. But what about the great American car companies? (That is, before the US goverment’s irrresonsible taxation policy sold them down the river). What about Tesco or Sainsbury, companies which provide their customers with good agricultural produce? What about the UK mills which created its prosperity? Those comapnies which, like Enron, engage in underhand methods often find themselves quickly out of business, with angry investors and corporate lawyers hot on their heels.

More generally, further evidence that private actors are more efficient than the state can be provided. We saw how the USSR and the West before the 80s attempted and failed to run much of its heavy industry. In the UK, coal mining was a viable enterprise until three decades of state ownership had crippled it, leaving the tax payer without his money, and, eventually, the coal workers without their jobs and the country without its internal coal supply. And as for the USSR and, say, Chernobol, that scarcely requires any elucidation. This should concern as especially, as we believe that it is essential that certain industries stay within our borders.Government over-regulation and over-taxation has played a great part in creating the sell off of the western industrial base.

Continued...

TAC Symposium: What is Left? What is Right?

http://www.amconmag.com/

What is Left? What is Right?

Does it Matter?

Since its inception, The American Conservative has been dealing with questions of what Right and Left mean in the modern context and to what extent the terms even apply anymore. Commentary memorably took up similar issues in a 1976 symposium, and, 30 years later, in a time of renewed ideological flux, we think a reconsideration is in order.

In the interest of hosting a lively discussion, we chose contributors from across the political spectrum and asked for their thoughts on the following questions:

1. Are the designations “liberal” and “conservative” still useful? Why or why not?

2. Does a binary Left/Right political spectrum describe the full range of ideological options? Is it still applicable?

Not all of these authors share TAC’s editorial orientation, but we believe there is wisdom in the council of many, and each was chosen as representative of a particular perspective. We leave our readers to decide which insights most accord with their own.

Mind the Gap in the Salisbury Review

The author of Tomorrow is Another Country, Myles Harris, has popped up with a free article in the current Salisbury Review.  It is titled “Made in Broadcasting House” and, fairly obviously therefore, is an attack on the liberal media’s long culture war against the native British peoples.

Here are the best bits:-

Three weeks after the bombings an 18 year old black teenager was murdered by a white thug in Liverpool. Dreadful as it was it was given air time out of all proportion to its significance. Even though it came soon after the London bombings, it was instantly elevated to first place in the news. Senior police chiefs talked sombrely of it, pundits were called in to condemn it and the story was kept alive for months. This was in marked contrast to the way the BBC covered the ‘ordinary‘ murder of a 28 year old white man by a black man in the same week and in almost identical circumstances. It was hardly mentioned on the news, no mention of the race of the victim’s assailant was made and it was quickly dropped. It took a huge number of protests before the BBC gave the story adequate coverage.

The message was clear. Fifty six Britons may have been murdered by religious fanatics, a young white man of 28 may have been casually stabbed to death defending his girlfriend on the top of a London bus, but the murder of a black teenager was far more important. A black man killing a white man or Islamist terrorists killing and maiming people on the tube are crimes but they are not racism. A white man killing a black man is racism and therefore incomparably worse. Racism points to something deeply flawed in a society. So flawed - goes the unspoken message – we can begin to understand how the tube bombings themselves might be ‘explicable’ or even ‘justified‘ in the eyes of a racial minority such as British Moslems, (6% of whom thought them justified). Once we have accepted our racism we will be able to see our society as morally equivalent to that of the Islamist bombers. This view, that all actions are equivalent, that there is really no difference between our society and any other, has been creeping up on us for years. It is a product of extreme liberalism, and its ultimate consequence is a bestial society in which anything is permitted.

... For forty years the British - who had always believed to the contrary - have been told they are irredeemably racist and everything they have automatically thought to be good. We have been told that our police, the army, British tolerance and fair play, our justice system, are all irredeemably flawed. Instead we are constantly reminded that the police suffer from institutional racism, the British army tortures its prisoners, our security service is full of liars, uncontrolled mass migration is beneficial to the country…

At the moment traditional British society is lying whimpering in the floor of its cage under this assault. And like the battered wife awaiting a violent husband, urged on by the left, we are struggling to discover what it is we must do to prevent further blows ...  When all such possibilities are exhausted – and they always are - those who have learnt to be helpless do not remain passive. The beaten wife takes a knife to her husband, the dog lying whimpering on the floor sinks his fangs into the hand that produces a plate of food.

Continued...

The lost girls of Shibuya

What makes us free? According to liberals it is our liberation from whatever might impede individual choice.

But this is a definition which takes us in odd directions. Take, for instance, the views of Jessica Brinton, who recently wrote an article on the young women of Tokyo ("Maid in Japan”, Herald Sun, not online).

The article was intended as “a snapshot of a culture where radical fashion, sexual bravura and cultural weirdness are finally beginning to liberate its women.”

So what is the evidence that young Tokyo women are being liberated? First, there is a changing attitude to work,

Continued...

Poetry wars

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 it was greeted with enthusiasm by the young intellectuals of Europe.

The English poet William Wordsworth was no exception. He wrote verses in support of the Revolution, including these significant lines,

Once Man entirely free, alone and wild,
Was bless’d as free, for he was Nature’s child.
He, all superior but his God disdained,
Walk’d none restraining, and by none restrained,
Confessed no law but what his reason taught,
Did all he wish’d, and wish’d but what he ought.

In these lines Wordsworth is claiming that man is naturally free in the liberal sense of having no impediments to his individual will and reason. The individual man is superior to everyone else but God; he needs no restraints and recognises no laws except those accepted by his own reason; he follows his own will in all things (but always chooses to do the right thing).

A few decades later another famous young English poet, Shelley, was still holding firm to the same political ideal. In his work Prometheus Unbound (1820), Shelley advanced his ideal of a “new man” who would “make the earth one brotherhood”. This new man would be,

Continued...

David Cameron

What Britain’s new Conservative Party leader stands for is listed succinctly here.  Like John Kerry he appears to want to be everything to everybody.  It may even win him an election but whether it will do Britain much good is doubtful.

I think Britain has a long hard road ahead.

A wrong turn?

Have you ever read an article which begins well but then takes a disastrously wrong turn?

There’s an article being praised amongst some conservative groups here in Melbourne, written by Augusto Zimmermann. Augusto hails from Brazil but is undertaking his Ph.D in law at Melbourne’s Monash University (he appears to be of German descent). Augusto is an obviously intelligent young man, who appears regularly in the Christian conservative press.

His latest article takes aim at Victoria’s religious vilification legislation. Augusto begins by noting that the legislation contradicts the Western legal tradition by disallowing the truth of a statement as a defence. That’s why two Christian pastors could be prosecuted under the legislation for accurately quoting parts of the Koran to a private church gathering.

Augusto then criticises the idea that the legislation will help to create a “multicultural democracy”. He argues that not all cultures are equally committed to democracy, and that democracy and the rule of law might not be preserved if Australia “eventually decides to reject its own culture on account of multiculturalism”.

Augusto’s article then reaches its high point when he observes that,

Continued...

The unbearable blandness of being … a Tory moderniser

David Cameron, the young lion of the left of the Conservative Party … and the centre … and everywhere, really, where desperate men dream, has spoken.  And he has written.  So there is no longer any cause for doubt about what this blank-faced, almost smart, tolerably personable font of ambition stands for.  Besides himself, of course.  We have been told.

We have, in fact, been told this:-

Our task now is to move the argument forward: to show how a changed Conservative Party will offer an attractive alternative programme at the next election.

To be attractive, our programme must be balanced, compassionate and modern: balanced in the sense of improving the quality of life as well as creating prosperity; compassionate in the sense of helping people in Britain and the world who are least able to help themselves; modern in the sense of recognising the challenges of today’s Britain and offering effective solutions. And our programme must be based on optimism: trusting people and giving them the responsibility and the power to do the right thing for their families and their communities.

Oh dear.  Changed.  Attractive.  The man has been thinking about change and attraction.  As if the electoral angst of politicians hadn’t done enough to change Conservatism and repel people already.

What, young lion, is the history of post-Reform Conservatism but the failed effort to adapt to the sinking game of One-Man-One-Vote democracy and a liberal polity?

Continued...

Kevin Lamb and Human Events Magazine

Readers may recall Kevin Lamb was fired from his post as editor of Human Events magazine after a complaint from the SPLC, a hate organization. VDARE has just published Kevin Lamb’s account of his experience at Human Events. (permalink).

To my bosses, the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich was a faceless, nameless individual. Nevertheless, without hesitation or reservation, they accepted at face value her accusations and descriptions about my avocational work. Three years of collegial respect simply vanished instantaneously over accusations that were never questioned.

Today Mr. Lamb is the editor of The Occidental Quarterly and the communications director of the National Policy Institute. 

Wyndham & the Tory gentry

I’ve just finished reading The Cousins by Max Egremont. It’s about two members of the English gentry, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and George Wyndham, who were both politically active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The impression you get of the gentry in the book is largely positive. Being part of the tradition of a landed estate, and having a good education and time for leisure, seems to have made the gentry both more cultivated and more genuinely conservative than the upper class we have today.

Continued...

The “conservatism is dead” claim

The view that seems to be most passionately held among those that frequent this blog is that attachment to one’s Volk (or “ethny” in Salter’s terms) and its traditions is the essence of conservatism and that therefore conservatism in the Anglosphere died out sometime in the 19th century.  So what is called conservatism today is really just a variant of liberalism or individualism.  Mark Richardson is a particularly insistent advocate of that view.

Continued...

Rap will convince the Arabs of the virtues of “Democracy”

Another expression of genius from America’s only surviving ”patriots”.

A good response to that here. 

A victory for the SPLC

Most readers will be aware of the Southern Poverty Law Centre: a well-funded left-wing American group which targets those who don’t accept the “diversity” agenda.

Well, the SPLC have scored another victory, one which is politically revealing.

Kevin Lamb was managing editor of a weekly magazine called Human Events. It’s a magazine which professes to have conservative social values, in particular on family issues. Yet after just one phone call from the SPLC Kevin Lamb was summoned to his employer’s office and given his marching orders.

Continued...

Paleos distort history

Excerpt from here (For those who are unaware of it, Jacobins were extremists of the French revolution)

Nor do I understand the fashion among self-styled paleo-conservatives to conflate the expansion of Western values—which imperialism used to do, whether Athenian, Roman, Holy Roman, Crusader, Portuguese, Spanish, French, British, or American—with “Jacobinism.” Was Charlemagne a Jacobin? Cortez? Kipling?  President George W. Bush, they say, is one for sure, though I personally was unaware that anyone in Crawford, Texas, had ever heard of such a thing.

But paleocons can sniff out a Jacobin as witchfinder generals once discerned witches. The paleos froth at any mention of the word Jacobin and use it as a self-mesmerizing, all-purpose sneer and slur. It has become for them what “fascist” was for the Left—a nervous tic that leads them to the most ahistorical absurdities.

Continued...

Paleoconservatism

Most of the people associated with this blog appear to be what are usually called paleoconservatives.  There is an extensive and systematic exposition here of what paleoconservatism is.  I reproduce a few excerpts below with some comments of my own interspersed in red.  I have some sympathy with some of the things that paleos say but think that in general they are an example of that great outcast of British tradition: “The man who goes too far”.  Such a person is not far short of being a “bounder” or a “cad” in the British vocabulary of yore

“Paleoconservatism is the expression of rootedness: a sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture — an identity that is both collective and personal.  I feel such an identity with my British and Australian forebears and I am proud of their achievements and values.  I even have 19th century photographs of some of them on my walls. I don’t think they are the sole repository of virtue, however, and, like them, I believe in a “fair go” for all This identity is missing from the psychological and emotional makeup of leftists of every stripe — including “neoconservatives”— and is now disavowed by mainline conservatives of the Republican variety, seemingly bent on eradicating as much of the primeval stain as they can from their consciousnesses while apologizing for the faint discoloration that remains.

Continued...

Abortion: Only conservatives care

This is an absolutely molten issue in America at the moment so I thought I might put up my attempt at good old Anglo-Saxon compromise in the matter

Abortion is a difficult issue for conservatives.  They seem to be fairly evenly divided about it.  But Leftists are not.  Leftists almost all seem to favour abortion. Why?

The key to understanding that is simple.  When Leftists get into absolute power—as they often did in the 20th Century—we soon see what their “compassion” really adds up to. From Stalin to Pol Pot, Leftists showed that they do not care about human life at all.  They murdered millions.  So what are a few unborn babies to them?  A mere bagatelle!

Continued...

The relationship between conservative psychology and conservative policy

It is not particularly hard to see how characteristic conservative psychology leads to characteristic conservative policy preferences but I thought I might offer a few notes about it anyway.  The various quotes I recently have put up from Reagan, Churchill and Oakeshott are only a few of many which show that there is large historical precedent for the current conservative preoccupation with individual liberty—and I think it is hard to dispute that a desire for individual liberty is a basic conservative policy preference.

Continued...

Scruton

I have always found Roger Scruton’s view of conservatism to be very idiosyncratic.  To me he is a reactionary, not a conservative. He summarizes his view here.  There is much that he says about conservative psychology which is correct and insightful (such as: “British conservatism has always been suspicious of ideas” and “conservatism is less a philosophy than a temperament") but he claims to say what conservatism is without once mentioning the major policy preference which springs from that psychology—the desire for individual liberty.

And is there ANY American—conservative or not—who would agree that “the future is the past”?  That is Scruton’s summary of a core conservative outlook.  By that criterion there are no (or very few) conservatives in America, I would think.  I prefer an infinitely more influential conservative’s view of what is important in conservatism, Ronald Reagan’s :  “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism....  The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.”

Confession about conservatism

I guess I should confess that I have a sort of hidden agenda in my many previous comments on conservatism.  People have been trying to define conservatism in terms of ideas. I don’t think you can do that.  As Feiling points out, the ideas vary so much from era to era.  Like many past and present observers of conservatism, I think that you can only define conservatism psychologically.  I do think that a conservative psychology tends to lead to preference for individual liberty rather regularly but I don’t think that such a preference DEFINES what a conservative is.  There are many overlapping and interlocking accounts of conservative psychology but the extract from Joseph Sobran below should give you an idea of what I (with many others) am talking about: 

Continued...

Reagan and Salisbury

Various people associated with this blog have a definition of conservatism that excludes most conservatives.  But surely no account of the nature of conservatism can give enough attention to the most loved conservative of the 20th century—and arguably the most loved conservative of all time:  Ronald Reagan.  Fortunately, The Gipper makes the task easy.  No real-life politician could have been clearer, more consistent or more emphatic about what he stood for than the Great Communicator.  Very little more is needed than simply quoting him.  Let’s start with just two small excerpts from the many cutting points he made in his famous 1964 speech in support of Barry Goldwater:-

“And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves....

Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they’ve had almost 30 years of it, shouldn’t we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn’t they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?  But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater....”

Continued...

This Conservative debate

This is an apposite moment, following John Ray’s “Oakeshott” post, to set down some fundamentals of my view of Conservatism – and invite considered criticisms accordingly.

The great and recurring difficulty in debating Conservatism is that there is much discussion of the phenomenon but no agreed definition of it.  As a basic direction in modern political life it is often thought to have dated from the accession to the English throne of Henry Tudor on 30th October, 1485.  Henry VII was a great and wise monarch who sought to entrench stability in his realm, to avoid expensive entanglements abroad and to place his exchequer on the sound foundation of equable taxation.  As a result he was able to bestow upon his subjects a rare and priceless period of peace and quiet, and to bequeath his son a settled and prosperous kingdom (which inheritance the turbulent fellow duly ruined).

Over the next three centuries or so this beneficent confection periodically appeared and disappeared, until it finally matured with the Ministry of William Pitt the Younger.  Pitt was a political genius and the acknowledged “inventor” of Conservatism proper.  Perhaps inventor is the wrong word.  But he formalised it into a complex and sophisticated political philosophy and a prescription for good government.

Continued...