Counter-Currents
4,463 words
A short paper on demography by Benjamin Franklin consisting of 24 numbered paragraphs, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, Etc.” (1751), provides interesting insight into the thoughts of one of the most astute and discerning of the Founding Fathers. I will focus primarily upon Franklin’s demographic insights and perceptions of race and whiteness, though he also discussed economics. In quoted passages I have modernized archaic capitalization and italicization.
The essay was written in 1751 (when America and Canada were still British colonies) and privately circulated. It was finally published anonymously in 1755. Between that year and 1770 the essay was republished ten times in America and abroad.
The paper influenced Adam Smith, David Hume, Lord Kames, Samuel Johnson, Richard Price, Turgot, and William Godwin, “as well as nearly every American writing on population during the latter half of the eighteenth century,” according to University of California-San Diego political science professor Alan Houston.
The second edition of Thomas Malthus’ 200,000-word Essay on the Principle of Population (1802) reiterated a central Franklin premise on its first page: It is “the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it. It is observed by Dr. Franklin, that there is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other’s means of subsistence. . . . This is incontrovertibly true.”
Founding Father
Franklin’s business, scientific, political, and social accomplishments are so numerous and varied that it is difficult to wrap one’s mind around them. This thumbnail sketch will not attempt to summarize them.
Franklin was born in Boston in 1706 to tallow chandler Josiah Franklin and his wife, Abigail née Folger. Josiah was born in England; years later Franklin visited his ancestral home and wrote about it in his autobiography. (To see the names of Franklin’s ancestors, click here. Click “Show” if the box is unexpanded.) Abigail was born on Nantucket Island to Puritan immigrants.
By his first wife, Anne Child, Josiah had had 7 children—Benjamin’s half- brothers and sisters. By Abigail he had 10 more, for a total of 17. Benjamin later had three children, one illegitimate and one of which died in infancy.
According to Wikipedia, citing Jewish historian Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003),”Franklin’s parents were both pious Puritans. The family attended the old South Church, the most liberal Puritan congregation in Boston, where Benjamin Franklin was baptized in 1706.”
“The first generation of Puritans had been intolerant of dissent, but by the early 18th century, when Franklin grew up in the Puritan church, tolerance of different churches was the norm, and Massachusetts was known, in John Adams’ words, as ‘the most mild and equitable establishment of religion that was known in the world'” (quoting Jewish historian Bernard Bailyn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 1967, 1992).
Despite being raised a Puritan of the Congregationalist stripe by his parents, who ‘brought me through my Childhood piously in the Dissenting Way,’ Franklin recalled, he abandoned that denomination, briefly embraced deism, and finally became a non-denominational Protestant Christian.
As a member of the Second Continental Congress, Franklin served on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, a document he also signed. He famously remarked, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
In 1776 Franklin was appointed American emissary to France, where he secured grants, loans, and other aid for the colonies in the struggle against Great Britain. In 1778 he negotiated the treaty of alliance with France that signaled the turning point of the American Revolution, and five years after that, with John Adams and John Jay, negotiated the Treaty of Paris (1783) ending the Revolutionary War.
During his long stay in France, Franklin, a lifelong Freemason, belonged to one of the foremost Masonic lodges in the country, where he met prominent philosophers and future leaders of the French Revolution (1789–1799). Although Franklin favored liberalization of the French government, he opposed violent revolution.
Returning to America in 1785, he was a delegate to the US Constitutional convention and a signer of the Constitution.
Franklin’s extensive writings are characterized by empiricism and specificity rather than abstract speculation. Although his longest single text is his short, masterful Autobiography, the definitive edition of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Yale University Press, 1959–2011), 40 volumes long and counting, has now reached the year 1783—when he was still a diplomat in France.
Demographic Analysis
According to “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind,” many factors combine to enhance fertility and population growth: acquisition by the state of new, vacant territory, or territory from which the natives are removed to give space to white people, effective laws promoting trade, rising employment, improvements in agricultural techniques, inventions, and business innovations. Persons responsible for such things “may be properly called fathers of their nation, as they are the cause of the generation of multitudes, by the encouragement they afford to marriage.”
2. People increase in proportion to the number of marriages, and that is greater in proportion to the ease and convenience of supporting a family. When families can be easily supported, more persons marry, and earlier in life.
The central role of marriage in population expansion recurs again and again throughout Franklin’s paper. He implicitly links marriage and procreation.
It is essential to bear in mind that Franklin was writing before the European demographic transition, an historical watershed—an enormous decline in white fertility that accompanied the Industrial Revolution.
White procreative behavior in Franklin’s time therefore differed radically from behavior afterward.
Moreover, many births today—of whites, part-white hybrids, and non-whites—occur out of wedlock. This is historically unprecedented:
There exists, of course, fertility outside of marriage, generally called illegitimate. Historically, levels of illegitimate fertility in the West have been insignificant as (at least until the last few decades) [emphasis added] the vast majority of reproduction has taken place within the context of marriage. (Massimo Livi-Bacci, A Concise History of World Population, 4th ed., Blackwell, 2007, p. 240, n. 13)
In his paper, Franklin differentiates between demographic statistics derived from European urban areas and “full settled old countries,” and “new countries, [such] as America.” The old statistical tables do not fit the new situation.
“America” means North America, including Canada, but not Latin America. So even in 1751 North America and Latin America were viewed as two different worlds despite common European origins. Of course, demographically Latin America was (and is) majority nonwhite.
In European urban centers, Franklin notes, many people delay marriage due to a shortage of jobs and high living expenses. Others remain single. “Cities do not by natural generation supply themselves with inhabitants; the deaths are more than the births.”
Franklin possessed keen observational and analytical abilities—keep in mind also the incredible range of his interests and high level of accomplishment within them. Two-and-a-half centuries later, population geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza wrote:
Until recently [emphasis added], cities, unlike rural regions, had negative net reproduction rates and were not reproducing themselves. Urban growth was thus maintained by immigration, and urban people typically represent a sample of the population of the whole area from which the immigrants have originated. (The History and Geography of Human Genes, abr. pbk. ed., 1994, p. 105)
Comparable forces operate countrywide in fully-settled areas of Europe, depressing overall population growth. Only because migration moves from rural to urban areas to fill the cities’ population deficits do births modestly exceed deaths in the countryside. Otherwise, there is overall equilibrium or slow growth: “Europe is generally full settled” with farmers and manufacturers “and therefore cannot now much increase in people.”
By contrast, America is chiefly occupied by “Indians” “who subsist by hunting.” Of all men, “the hunter requires the greatest quantity of land from whence to withdraw his subsistence”—the “husbandman” (farmer) subsists on “much less” and the “manufacturer” on the “least of all.”
Franklin here distinguishes between the hunting-gathering (also called foraging) mode of existence (in this case, of the American Indians) and the predominantly agrarian mode of existence of the white settlers.
Cavalli-Sforza: “The most important innovation allowing an increase in the carrying capacity of the land and the accompanying increase in population density was the transition from food collection (foraging) to food production through plant cultivation and animal breeding” (p. 105). Today this is referred to as the Neolithic Revolution.
Franklin continues:
The Europeans found America as fully settled as it well could be by hunters; yet these having large tracks [tracts], were easily prevail’d on to part with portions of territory to the new comers, who did not much interfere with the natives in hunting, and furnish’d them with many things they wanted.
6. Land being thus plenty in America, and so cheap as that a labouring man, that understands husbandry [farming], can in a short time save money enough to purchase a piece of new land sufficient for a plantation [farm], whereon he may subsist a family; such are not afraid to marry; for if they even look far enough forward to consider how their children when grown up are to be provided for, they see that more land is to be had at rates equally easy, all circumstances considered.
7. Hence marriages in America are more general, and more generally early, than in Europe. And if it is reckoned there, that there is but one marriage per annum among 100 persons, perhaps we may here reckon two; and if in Europe they have but 4 births to a marriage (many of their marriages being late) we may here reckon 8, of which if one half grow up, and our marriages are made, reckoning one with another 20 years of age, our people must at least be doubled every 20 years.
8. But notwithstanding this increase, so vast is the territory of North–America, that it will require many ages to settle fully; and till it is fully settled, labour will never be cheap here, where no man continues long a labourer for others, but gets a plantation of his own, no man continues long a journeyman to a trade, but goes among those new settlers, and sets up for himself, etc. Hence labour is no cheaper now, in Pennsylvania, than it was 30 years ago, tho’ so many thousand labouring people have been imported.
Franklin opposes immigration as a means of increasing population size, putting him sharply at odds with contemporary replacement-migration advocates who insist millions of non-whites are required to replace the dying white race in every European nation.
Instead, Franklin contends, immigration “will gradually eat the natives out”:
21. The importation of foreigners into a country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provisions for subsistence will bear; will be in the end no increase of people; unless the new comers have more industry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. — Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country; for such vacancy (if the laws are good) will soon be filled by natural generation. Who can now find the vacancy made in Sweden, France or other warlike nations, by the plague of heroism 40 years ago; in France, by the expulsion of the Protestants; in England, by the settlement of her colonies; or in Guinea, by 100 years exportation of slaves, that has blacken’d half America? — The thinness of inhabitants in Spain, is owing to national pride and idleness, and other causes, rather than to the expulsion of the Moors, or to the making of new settlements.
In the 1600s Spain’s population dropped by 1 million, from 8.5 million to 7.5 million (-12%). Historical demographer Colin McEvedy attributed the decline to Spain’s selection of a Catholic-Mediterranean-Southern European economic orientation over a Protestant-Atlantic-Northern European one, causing the country to be “badly hit by the economic crisis of the early 17th century—during which the population dropped,” as well as the seizure of its empire by “allies and enemies” in the early 1700s.
Like Franklin, he does not attribute the decline to Spain’s settlement of Latin America or the expulsion of 150,000 Jews in 1492 or 250,000 Muslims (“Moors”) in 1609–14 (Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History, Penguin, 1978, p. 100).
Franklin likens pre-demographic transition population adaptability to a “polypus,” a genus of octopuses:
23. In fine, a nation well regulated is like a polypus; take away a limb, its place is soon supply’d; cut it in two, and each deficient part shall speedily grow out of the part remaining. Thus if you have room and subsistence enough, as you may by dividing, make ten polypes out of one, you may of one make ten nations, equally populous and powerful; or rather, increase a nation ten fold in numbers and strength.
He concretely illustrates his point:
22. There is in short, no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each others means of subsistence. [Emphasis added.] Was the face of the Earth . . . empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenish’d from one nation only; as, for instance, with Englishmen. Thus there are suppos’d to be now upwards of one million English souls in North–America, (tho’ ’tis thought scarce 80,000 have been brought over Sea) and yet perhaps there is not one the fewer in Britain, but rather many more, on account of the employment the colonies afford to manufacturers at home. This million doubling, suppose but once in 25 Years, will in another century be more than the people of England, and the greatest number of Englishmen will be on this side the water. What an accession of power to the British empire by sea as well as land!
Proposals are sometimes advanced urging governments to create incentives encouraging large families. However, there are now so many nonwhites permanently ensconced in the former First World that such measures would undoubtedly prove harmful. The proposals would not be limited to whites, and indeed might actively discriminate against them, and cast further economic burdens upon their shoulders.
On this subject Franklin noted: “15. As to privileges granted to the married, (such as the Jus trium Liberorum among the Romans), they hasten the filling of a country that has been thinned by war or pestilence, or that has otherwise vacant territory; but cannot increase a people beyond the means provided for their subsistence.”
In Roman law, jus trium liberorum (L., “right of children”) was a privilege conferred upon a parent who had several children.
Among the factors that diminish populations Franklin enumerates:
1. Conquest. Conquerors exact economic tribute, thus driving down the living standards and birth rates of the native inhabitants as “foreigners” expand.
(Note: I’ve moved the next sentence from Franklin’s “Bad Government” to the “Conquest” subsection.) “People not only leave such a country, and settling abroad incorporate with other nations, lose their native language, and become foreigners; but the industry of those that remain being discourag’d, the quantity of subsistence in the country is lessen’d, and the support of a family becomes more difficult.”
Sounds like a template of contemporary Jewish-US-UK-EU-UN Middle Eastern policy!
Franklin does not clearly indicate whether he conceives of “incorporation with other nations” and “becoming foreigners” (i.e., loss of individual or group racial or ethnic identity) substantially in biological terms or, in common with most liberals and Romantics of the period, with the loss of language. Given his inquisitive mind—he was a scientist—and incredible range of interests, I suspect that somewhere in his vast collection of Papers he touched upon the issue of racial hybridity/miscegenation.
2. Loss of trade.
Franklin’s wording here is unclear, but he seems to be saying that the export of manufacturing facilities to foreign countries reduces population in the homeland. This interpretation is confirmed a few of paragraphs later when he tightly links protectionism (to use today’s terminology) to healthy population growth:
16. Foreign luxuries & needless manufactures imported and used in a nation, do . . . increase the people of the nation that furnishes them, and diminish the people of the nation that uses them. Laws therefore that prevent such importations, and on the contrary promote the exportation of manufactures to be consumed in foreign countries, may be called (with respect to the people that make them) generative laws, as by increasing subsistence they encourage marriage. Such laws likewise strengthen a country, doubly, by increasing its own people and diminishing its neighbours.
17. Some European nations prudently refuse to consume the manufactures of East–India: They should likewise forbid them to their colonies; for the gain to the merchant, is not to be compar’d with the loss by this means of people to the nation.
3. Loss of food.
4. Bad government, insecure property, and heavy taxes discourage industry; “the quantity of subsistence in the country is lessen’d, and the support of a family becomes more difficult. So heavy taxes tend to diminish a people” (Emphasis added).
In light of the crucial role taxation played in the American Revolution, this last belief is significant. Whatever the motives of merchants such as John Hancock or Carter Braxton, or southern planters such as George Washington and James Madison, Franklin, at least, clearly viewed excessive taxation as a direct attack upon family formation and population size.
He was also convinced that “luxury” (wealth) and a plantation system based upon Negro slavery were demographically harmful and detrimental to character and families. However, for general philosophical and prudential reasons clearly stated in his autobiography, he never would have expressed or emphasized such deep differences of opinion with his fellow revolutionaries in a provocative or confrontational manner.
5. The introduction of slaves. (See the subsection “Race” below.)
I reserved one factor for last because it has implications for the establishment of an ethnostate:
Loss of Territory. Thus the Britons being driven into Wales, and crowded together in a barren country insufficient to support such great numbers, diminished ’till the people bore a proportion to the produce, while the Saxons increas’d on their abandoned lands; ’till the Island became full of English. And were the English now driven into Wales by some foreign nation, there would in a few years be no more Englishmen in Britain, than there are now people in Wales.
Loss of territory is closely linked to conquest, above. Worldwide today both processes are destroying white populations because of governments’ unshakable determination to genetically eliminate the white race (commit genocide).
Significantly, the establishment of a small, vastly reduced ethnostate effectively constitutes a loss of territory in Franklin’s sense. Theoretically preferable would be Samuel Francis’s proposed “reconquest” by a long march through the institutions, a William Pierce-style revolution effectively aimed at reconquest, Pan-Nationalism, or a Richard McCulloch-type ethnostate incorporating major elements of an existing state (see McCulloch’s subsection “Thirteen Principles of Racial Partition;” he has devoted decades to thinking carefully about this problem).
Only such large-scale approaches avoid Franklin’s dilemma. In Germany, nationalists took control of the existing state, thereby avoiding demographic marginalization and probably permanent, cataclysmic population decline.
Small ethnostates, besides being politically marginal, economically and militarily vulnerable, and easy targets for hostile intelligence agencies, effectively abandon the vast majority of the white population. In South Africa, Orania has attracted only a tiny handful of whites post-takeover. It is a laboratory example of the failure of the ethnostate idea where it logically should have worked well. Until recently Afrikaners possessed a racial-religious-linguistic-ethnic constitution that was among the strongest and most cohesive in the white world. Nevertheless, they completely failed to coalesce into a sizeable, vital ethnostate after South Africa’s externally-imposed anti-white revolution-from-above.
Race
Paragraph 12 of Franklin’s paper deals with slavery versus free labor. The thrust of his argument, directed at the British, is that American slavery will not undercut wages paid to British workers. Franklin contends that labor economics are such that the cost of slaves exceeds the labor costs of English workmen. (He does not point out that American Negroes were not employed in manufacturing.)
Franklin owned two slaves (possibly more earlier), which he freed after his return from France in 1785. In 1789–90 he authored three abolitionist pamphlets. And one of his last public acts was signing, as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, a Quaker petition to the US Congress urging abolition of slavery and the suppression of the slave trade. Two months later he died in Philadelphia at the age of 84.
Opposition to slavery is not the same as race denial, multiracialism, anti-white racism, or promotion of genocide via race-mixing. One would need to examine Franklin’s antislavery pamphlets and related writings closely to properly gauge his ideas on such subjects. My guess is that he was not anti-white, or a multiracialist, because that was not normative during his era, and he avoided extremism as a matter of principle.
Franklin’s future abolitionist views were presaged in the 1751 article, where he argued that slavery “diminishes” white nations:
The Negroes brought into the English Sugar Islands [e.g., the Leeward Islands, Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe], have greatly diminish’d the Whites there; the poor are by this means depriv’d of employment, while a few families acquire vast estates; which they spend on foreign luxuries, and educating their children in the habit of those luxuries; the same income is needed for the support of one that might have maintain’d 100. The Whites who have slaves, not labouring, are enfeebled, and therefore not so generally prolific; the slaves being work’d too hard, and ill fed, their constitutions are broken, and the deaths among them are more than the births [emphasis added]; so that a continual supply is needed from Africa. The Northern Colonies having few slaves increase in Whites. Slaves also pejorate [make worse, depreciate] the families that use them; the white children become proud, disgusted with labour, and being educated in idleness, are rendered unfit to get a living by industry.
Franklin here seems to foresee, or perhaps discern at a remarkably early stage, an important feature of the upcoming European demographic transition: that “luxury” diminishes fertility in white families. In paragraph 18 he asserts:
Home luxury in the great, increases the nation’s manufacturers employ’d by it, who are many, and only tends to diminish the families that indulge in it, who are few. The greater the common fashionable expence of any rank of people, the more cautious they are of marriage. Therefore luxury should never be suffer’d to become common.
The last two paragraphs of Franklin’s paper focus explicitly on race. These passages were the ones that struck me most forcefully when I first read the essay years ago.
Franklin, a Pennsylvanian, was hostile to the colony’s large contingent of German immigrants (by 1775 they would comprise one-third of the colony’s population), who he perceived as markedly foreign:
And since detachments of English from Britain sent to America, will have their places at home so soon supply’d and increase so largely here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion.
“Palatine Boors” refers to the Pennsylvania “Dutch” (a corruption of Deutsch), many of whom hailed from a region of southern Germany known as the Palatinate. “Boors” means farmers.
Franklin’s hostile attitude toward these people mirrored Tory-Anglican opposition to their admission to England at the time rather than the welcoming stance of the Whigs.
Political scientist Alan Houston writes, “Franklin was not the only English-speaker to be worried by these developments. Patterns of immigration were matters of state, and were closely watched by Parliament. An early manuscript copy of the Observations was eagerly read by leading MPs. Proposals to mitigate the perceived effects of German immigration were floated.”
In light of America’s subsequent experience with continental European immigrants, one would expect Franklin to have been wrong in his belief that the Germans would “never adopt our language or customs.” Yet it was not until after WWII that Pennsylvania German finally died out in favor of English. Indeed, the language persists to this day among the more insular Anabaptists such as the Old Order Mennonite and Old Order Amish.
Finally, Franklin unfavorably noted the Germans’ dark complexion, perceiving them as in some sense nonwhite. His idea of German foreignness thus linked the single physical trait of skin color with cultural traits of language and customs. As a freethinker, the religion of the Germans (most of whom were Protestants) did not trouble him.
Franklin’s final, racially-oriented, paragraph is worth quoting in full. It is an unabashed expression of white pride coupled with idiosyncratic confusion over what constitutes whiteness.
24. Which leads me to add one remark: That the number of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal body of white people on the face of the Earth. I could wish their numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its people? Why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in America, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red?
Along with the bold expression of white pride and striking point-of-view from outer space reminiscent of the opening passages of Francis Parker Yockey’s Imperium, what is most conspicuous here is the puzzling classification of an unusual selection of six big European nations as not-quite-white, or perhaps nonwhite, based upon the single trait of skin color. Few No one else has concurred with this eccentric assessment, either then (Linnaeus, Blumenbach) or since. Franklin seems to regard only the English and a subset of Germans (the “Saxons”) as “purely white.”
However, in letters from the 1750s Franklin counts as “White” the Dutch, French, English, Scottish, Irish, and Germans.
In the quoted paragraph, Franklin explicitly contrasts “whites” with blacks, tawnys, and reds, thereby distinguishing four major continental races. But he also contradictorily and inexplicably shifts from a negative (“tawny”) to a positive (“lovely Red”) categorization for Indians.
Franklin concludes his paper with the following sentiment, which, despite having been penned 261 years ago, remains far in advance of benighted 21st century opinion: “But perhaps I am partial to the complexion [whiteness] of my country, for such kind of partiality is natural to mankind.”
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33 comments
I must confess that the idea that Swedes and most Germans are “non-White” and indeed of “swarthy” complexion strikes me as so hallucinatory that I have difficulty seeing the rest of Franklin’s essay as being helpful.
I might also add that there seems to be a contradiction btw. attributing Spain’s pop. decline to economic decline, and also explaining pop. decline by “luxuries” due to, presumably, economic growth. I guess this is what D. Bell called the “cultural contradictions of capitalism”: save save save [to create capital] but also spend spend spend [luxuries etc.]; capitalism encourages luxurious living which in turn causes a decline in the more Puritanical virtues; eg, the 60s.
Also, wasn’t Spain’s economic decline really caused by the enormous influx of gold?
Coincidentally, I’m using my new Kindle to read Moby Dick on the subway. Arriving home, I check the commentary in my old Penguin ed. by sex-crazed Melville scholar Harold Beaver [!] and learn that when Melville refers to John [Pilgrim’s Progress] Bunyan as ‘swart’ he is “alluding to his calling as a tinker.” Perhaps Franklin disliked Germans and Swedes because there were too many damned tinkers?
Also, perhaps because I’m temping at a Catholic charity, I can’t let go of this “Spain declined because of Catholicism” nonsense. Isn’t the rap against the mackerel-snappers that they have too many children? And don’t the economically well off Prots have fewer children?
Remember the scene in M. Python’s Meaning of Life [after the “Every Sperm is Sacred” number] where Graham [homo] Chapman is the uptight Scottish Prot who tut-tuts about those dirty Catholics down the street, and observes that having thrown out the Pope, he can march right into any chemist’s and “buy meself a rubber johnny” at which point his long ignored wife starts getting interested: “Really? You could? Right now?”
Even if Catholicism resulted in economic under-performance, it could hardly account for underpopulation. Does Bill Gates know about this?
I’m puzzeled by the “Lovely White and Red” remark if we take Red as referring to the Indians.
Earlier when mentioning Idians he didn’t refer to them as Red and seemed to prefer them being displaced from their huge exess of lands.
Or maybe he was trying to include Indians as citiznes, who were already here, as opposed to blacks who were being imported, as a way even in 1751 to show fellow Christians that he was not ractist???
We should probably take into account that the article wasn’t published for four years and then only anonymously. Franklin must have been afraid of the public reception of SOME people to SOME of what he was writig. Of course it could have been the merchant and slave owning classes he feared.
It could possibly be that by Red he meant the rudy component of the complixion of whites.
As to the Swedes being swarthy maybe he had never been to Sweden and was just confused.
Similar ingnorace may have caused his classification of Russians as swarthy. of whom he could hardly have had extensive experienc.
I also was struck by the seeming contradicition between “eases of supportiong a family” and “luxury”.
It is pretty common experience that poorer whites tend to have bigger families. But also it’s common experience that the rise in Western lving standards has paralled our fertility crash.
I personally don’t know what we should think.
His consignment of the Germans to the undesirable “swarthy” class may just have been an emotional result of his opposition to their language and culture.
“why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Compexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.”
If here Franklin is referring to Red Indians it’s clear from his earlier paragraphs that if “Red” is going to be increased the Indians would have to be turned from mostly hunting to husbandry (animal husbandry) and gardending, which takes even less land than herding.
No where did Franklin mention teaching Indians agriculture.
There may also be a clue in that Franklin referred to Blacks and Tawneys in the plural, but White and Red in the singular. What it might be I don’t know.
It’s possible extensive reading of other of his letters from the same period would clairfy what his style was.
Phil: Within the confines of the text several of the racial designations in the last paragraph simply do not make sense. The best one can say is that they exhibit an eccentric kind of confusion. (But several of his letters from the period do not duplicate the errors.) On the other hand, he was talking proudly about whiteness. He has been called “racist” as a result. One present-day academic called the words “shocking” and a “bombshell.” I’d say the prof was a tender soul if I took such melodramatic protestations of concern seriously, which I don’t. Such people are chock full of hatred themselves, whether of the virulent anti-white variety, cheering the assassination, torture, and slaughter of people abroad à la Hillary Clinton, or what have you. Not even Communist genocide bothers them. Franklin removed the last two paragraphs (censored them) after his political foes incited an uproar. It was the “Palatinate Boor” remark particularly that was used against him; he lost an election because of it.
James: I don’t know that I’d necessarily take McEvedy’s explanation of Spain’s decline as the last word on the subject; Franklin gave different reasons. I simply wanted to verify from a contemporary source that the population in Spain actually declined as Franklin said, and McEvedy’s is the book I have at hand that touches upon such things. Probably the key takeaway is that neither man attributed the decline to a population drain caused by emigration to the colonies.
Protestants used to have large families also. My parents and grandparents all came from large families . . . and look at Franklin’s Puritan parents. I think the numbers among Protestants dropped off sooner, however. When I was young, the Irish Catholics (more than other Catholics as I recall) still had large families on average.
In 1909 Mom was fourth born in a farm family of eight, seven of which survived.
Dad was third born of four, with three surviving.
There were three of us, my eldest sister had three children, the second two, and I none due to a late and short marriage.
Hamilton: “Small ethnostates, besides being politically marginal, economically and militarily vulnerable, and easy targets for hostile intelligence agencies, effectively abandon the vast majority of the white population.”
Well, there is small and then there is small. If the future White Republic is so limited geographically and in terms of natural resources that it can only amount to, in effect, something akin to one of the Baltic states, then yes, your criticism is valid. If it would max out at only one or two million residents, then yes, that’s a problem. Such a small state would always be vulnerable to the major players.
But what about a white ethnostate large enough to grow into? Large enough to support, over time, many scores of millions? When you look at some of the population levels achieved in Europe (a relatively small but not tiny Germany at approximately 80 million residents), it’s easy to see that a White Republic far smaller than the current United States could, in time, grow a huge population. In fact, it could in time develop a population larger than the current white population in the United States.
There are other considerations as well. For most of its history, the Baltic peoples have been surrounded by populations of more or less similar quality, but far greater quantity. Similar quality and tiny numbers versus similar quality and large numbers does indeed create vulnerability.
But if a White Republic can be founded in North America, the remainder of the continent will only get muddier and muddier. The non-whites might have the numbers, at least initially, but I wouldn’t consider a White Republic of thirty, forty or fifty million whites to be particularly vulnerable against a mongrelized, Brazil North that is clearly in decline. It wouldn’t be a situation akin to Estonia versus Russia, that’s for sure.
In the fullness of time the White Republic will likely be able to expand even geographically at the expense of the increasingly corrupt and dysfunctional Third World countries that become its neighbors. That’s a very different situation than what has been faced by most of the truly small nations that critics of the ethnostate point to.
I realize that the above is highly speculative and futuristic in some respects, but it does demonstrate some facts on the ground. Again, there is small and then there is small. Big difference between the two. In determining where the ethnostate will be, we have to consider what kind of population that it can ultimately support. We want a nation capable of defending its sovereignty, not just a marginalized and forsaken outpost that is incapable of demonstrating strength.
Hamilton: ” In South Africa, Orania has attracted only a tiny handful of whites post-takeover. It is a laboratory example of the failure of the ethnostate idea where it logically should have worked well.”
The Afrikaners were very, very foolish. Apartheid was a huge issue back in the 80’s and early 90’s, and even as a young teenager I followed it closely. There is no question in my mind that the Afrikaners could have established an all white homeland in part of South Africa. But it would have had to be all white, with no use of black labor. No guest worker programs, nothing.
Yes, such a nation would have been “small,” but as I noted above, small is relative. They certainly could have taken a chunk of quality land for themselves that would have allowed plenty of room to provide both for their physical security and future demographic growth. They couldn’t have taken all, or nearly all of the good land. But they could have taken a decent sized chunk of wonderful real estate for themselves. They could have had paradise. Had they done so, I’d probably have moved there years ago. Maybe I’d be speaking Afrikaner by now.
But no, they just couldn’t let go of what they had. They couldn’t walk away from their life of black servants and gardeners and farm laborers, never mind that these “friendly” servants had plenty of children, relatives and friends that, if looks could kill, every white in South Africa would be dead. Never mind that these various assorted hangers on of the “nice” maid were actively working to dispossess whites politically, when they weren’t raping and murdering them. Basically, by taking on one low productivity servant, you in effect draw in ten, twenty or more of their extended family that are working to hurt you and/or your nation.
Sometimes it’s necessary to take the bitter with the sweet, but to lose your entire country over a maid? Because you have such a sense of entitlement that you can’t even pick up after yourself or cut your own lawn, or hire some neighborhood white kid to cut it? Madness. Pure madness.
Talk about giving up one’s inheritance for a mess of pottage.
Because of their foolish refusal to let go of something that had clearly become unsustainable, they are now on the fast track to extinction. And that road to demographic oblivion, while it won’t be that long, will be full of plenty of rape, murder and general oppression along the way.
Idiots. But are not we, by trying to hold onto the entire United States, when it is clearly no longer possible to do so, following in their footsteps?
A few words on Orania are in order, because it is often pointed out by our critics that so few whites have gone there. Orania is a tiny enclave with extremely limited economic opportunities. While I don’t know for certain, I’m assuming that they are unable to create large scale centers of employment there, without running afoul of discrimination laws. Could they even create an Afrikaner university there, without the requirement that they both admit black students and hire black staff? I’m very doubtful that they could. I’m very doubtful that they could have much beyond cottage industry there.
Point is, because of the idiocy of white South Africans twenty and thirty years ago, Orania probably has to stay small, at least under current conditions. Perhaps it will provide the nucleus of something greater as matters evolve, but for now very few whites can really live there.
This is not a repudiation of the ethnostate, it’s just the facts of life.
Orania simply doesn’t provide most of the benefits of a true nation. The idea of the white ethnostate is the full deal: not just our own neighborhoods and primary schools, but our own media, universities, laboratories, cultural institutions, utility companies, farms, gyms, businesses of all types and sizes, etc. And yes, our own military and our own spooks. The goal is to control our culture and economy, live under the laws of our own choosing and control our own destiny.
Orania offers virtually none of that. It is basically just a neighborhood, which is a great thing, but hardly covers the scope of what we aspire to. I’m sure there are plenty of all or mostly white neighborhoods in other parts of South Africa. Sure, they may be behind gated walls, but if all you want to do is huddle in a white neighborhood, do you really need Orania?
The idea of the ethnostate is to go beyond mere huddling at the neighborhood level, seize control of our future, and start rebuilding our cultural and demographic foundation. Huddling is just trying to be comfortable and safe while the race declines. Perfectly understandable and good as far as it goes, but it is not forward looing. It does not avert extinction.
But even as a glorified neighborhood, I think Orania has been a smashing success, and very influential in its own right. The most important thing is that they do not allow black servants. Whites do the work. If there is a ditch to be dug, whites dig it. If there is a street to be cleaned, whites clean it. Of course, whites being whites, they utilize machines to make this work easy, but the key point is: no black laborers. Therefore, no hangers on of those black laborers to swarm over the community, organize politically against it, claim victimization real and imagined, and scope out Orania’s households and residents for criminal violence.
Orania is a wonderful repudiation of the idea that whites “need” non-white laborers. We don’t. It is a wonderful example of an incredible cascade of benefits that result from whites doing their own work. Orania stands as an island of civilization, peace and tranquilty in a sea of incredible violence, viciousness, corruption and stupidity. It’s amazing what dispensing with non-white labor can accomplish!
Non-white labor is nothing but a curse, and Orania is Exhibit A of how living with this curse is entirely unnecessary.
The fact that Orania, for the present, must stay small for other reasons is not a repudiation of Orania, but simply the reality of living under the laws of a non-white regime that isn’t going to allow it to grow but so much. But what is really interesting is that even the savage blacks of southern Africa almost seem to respect Orania. Maybe they will ultimately destroy it in one of the fits of infantile rage that blacks are highly susceptible to, but clearly a land where whites do their own work instead of lording it over servile blacks is something that engenders at least some respect, and for the time being, a rather surprising level of tolerance. We can learn a lot from Orania. White nationalists should study it closely.
Lets do something other than talk. We can’t build an ethno state now. We will have to start with neighborhoods, that is little communities of racially aware whites. The Jews have done it for millennia. The Amish get away with it. The West Boro Baptist church is getting away with it. How about setting up a fund to have white high school graduates move to a select few rural market towns? The key is young white people and youth are the cheapest and most ready easily enticed to make a move.
Ideally we should get our people in the Northwest, but as yet no one will move. The Northwest front is too public. The feds are already in my opinion setting up a Rocky Mountain “conservative Christian and Orthodox Jew” bastion. It’s likely a Fed attempt to “suck up all the oxygen” so conservative whites will have an alternative refuge to flee to instead of joining a race conscious Northwest project. The Feds are afraid we would convert the conservatives to white nationalism, i.e., to revive the “our posterity” of our ancestors constitution.
The Feds have a problem though; their enforcers are abandoning them. This dates way back to the Green Beret Underground in the mid 1990’s. It continues with a less racial tinged reaction in Sheriff Mack’s Constitutional Sheriffs movement and the Oath Keepers of Stewart Rhodes. Even though non-racial they are in opposition to the emergence of a police state. Without unconstitutional abuses the ZOG cannot squash our white neighborhoods or prevent them from coalescing.
I’m not assuming that you disagree, but I’ll reiterate that “talk” is important. It’s how ideas spread, and we’re never going to get a White Republic without lots of it. One of the key means that our enemy has utilized to defeat us is by denying to us the ability to talk, and thereby the ability to culturally transmit our values to the next generation.
As for forming white communities, I’m all for it. To a certain extent, this is happening organically and without any particular plan. Whites are abandoning entire regions and heading to areas that are less overrun with the mud pestilence. Of course, many of these whites remain infected with liberalism, which is why we can’t stop talking.
Still, despite its imperfections, a great sorting out is in fact happening before our eyes. Non-whites tend to congregate together and in effect ethnically cleanse the euros. They then move into the next area, and begin the process anew.
Even amongst whites, conservatives tend to drift toward certain areas and liberals toward others. I’ve seen studies showing that the number of counties where seventy or eighty percent of voters choose a single candidate has exploded over the course of the last few decades. These sorts of lopsided counties used to be fairly rare. They are not rare anymore.
In other words, a political balkanization process is already under way. There are more and more parts of the country that have irreconcilable differences with other parts of the country, and are becoming so racially and culturally dissimilar as to be essentially alien to the other.
Good. This will inevitably lead to an increasing hollowing out of the legitimacy of the central system that has to hold the entire horrid mess together.
Time will tell, but I’m presently inclined to disagree that the Northwest groups are too public. I’d suggest that they not overdo it, but on the other hand, we want certain areas of the country to be seen as inhospitable to liberalism, as that aids the sorting out process. We want anti-white liberals to shy away from the emerging white ethnozones (pro-white liberals may appear in significant numbers in the future, and that will be a great thing, but that’s for another day).
Maybe one of those ethnozones will emerge into an ethnostate in the fullness of time. Maybe more than one.
I hesitate to say this, because it could be and likely will be misinterpreted, but right now the most important thing is to segregate pro-whites from anti-whites. We know the Jewish threat, and there is no way to end that threat short of removing the Jew from our midst. The Jews aren’t going anywhere until we force them out. Ditto for the black and brown locusts.
Anti-white liberals, on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish. We can segregate from him, and he by and large wants to segregate from us. The black and browns want to feed off of us, and the Jew wants to destroy us.
The white liberal hates us but, more often than not, wants to move away from us. And us from him. His mindset is very different from the other two groupings.
This is something that we can use to our advantage. To the extent that we can segregate from the anti-white liberal, we can move this polarization process greatly forward. That’s one of the things that has to happen.
I hate to look at census quickfacts and see that a 98 percent white county has gone down a few points to 95 percent white. That sucks…but it is not the critical point. The real point is whether the white population of the town is becoming more pro or anti-white. Are anti-white liberals moving in or out?
Obviously, as the non-white percentage creeps up damn near everywhere, this puts us in a race against the clock. We can’t play this game forever, but for now, it’s pretty much the only game in town, and it can work in our favor.
Since we can only achieve the ethnostate when we have a critical mass of whites who support it, the thing to do for now is to spread our ideology far and wide, but focus our personal choices at the local level. We want more and more pockets of whites who feel alienated from the central system. I say local as opposed to neighborhood, because localities are sustainable in a sense that neighborhoods are not.
Sure, it’s nice to live in a suburban white neighborhood surrounded by a sea of mud rather than live in the mud itself, but that’s obviously a “huddling” strategy with no real future. The future is in dominating localities – counties, smaller cities and towns – even if its no greater in population than many urban or suburban neighborhoods. Ultimately, it’s about dominating sustainable regions and then achieving a sustainable ethnostate.
Yes, Dr Pierce wrote very inspiring piece of just this once. The Voor Trekkers went into the wilderness risking everything for Freedom. And naturally prosperity followed once they had secured themselve against their enemies. But with the hand over to power to the Blacks, they sacraficed everything for luxury and convenience – so obviously they will lose even these as well in due time.
Arthur Kemp came to exactly the same conclusion as you: the tragedy of Nordic Man is always to lose himself in the populations he conquers. And more narrowly, his moral defect is that he can’t stand paying another White Man a living wage. And do the dirty work himself? Perish the thought. We have come to the brink of extinction through this foolishness. It’s change now or never.
In his book “March of the Titans”, he even speaks of Lost Civilizations founded by Nordic Blondes and Red Heads – and they had no more wisdom than we. Same thing: the last of the giant red heads were cornered in a cave by the Ute Indians and suffocated by a fire lit outside. Stangely, exactly the same story is given by the Natives of Easter Island. The Inca nobles were somtimes as fair as the Spanish. Their explanation? Their fathers had defeated a race of Blonde giants, killed the men, and taken the women to wife.
When will we change this broken record? Is it too late? Consider the Chinese in contrast: their expansion has been slow and methodical and what they conquer tends to stay conquered.
Franklin spent all of his time in Philadelphia and France. It was a common thing for Puritans and their descendants (it still is) to describe and prescribe for people whom they knew very little about. The ridiculous notion that people who owned slaves were idle was as unfounded as the existence of ‘swarthy Swedes’. Anyone with a brain can see that these writings by Franklin were a product of inheritance from those weird people to the north, in their relentless drive to arrange the world to their oblivious liking. Note that Franklin ‘disapproved’ of the French royalty.
Who began the culture of critique? Busybodies and agitators like Benjamin Franklin. Had ‘educated’ men like Franklin never been born, “the experiment” we suffer from today might never have happened.
Ipso,
Good points. The C of C can be traced to the Puritans, I think MacD actually does, or at least notes that the Puritan idea of identity based on ethical norms makes them vulnerable to such projects. Puritanism, vs. Anglicanism, is clearly an outbreak of the Semitic Spirit, which is why were tossed out of even famously tolerant Holland, and came over here to re-create the Old Testament. Of course, Protestantism is itself Semitic, but there are degrees of collaboration, as Burroughs would say, with “paganism.”
This is why the radio preachers still dismiss the RC as “paganism;” I think it cropped up in the Repug primaries recently. It’s an intriguing, “flat earth” view of reality, making for lots of excitement: Gingrich is on his third religion, this time RC [the favorite stopping point for Neo-con goyim], which makes him a convert to Paganism! And Romney, now there’s a problem! It’s clear to me that Mormonism is a [literally] home-made religion [Guenon has an interesting essay on the crypto-Spiritualist roots of “one of America’s most dubious ‘gifts’ to the world”] of the “We’re the real Jews” kind [in Starship Troopers, if you listen closely, the war is started by “Mormon pioneers” who set up Fort Joseph Smith on some asteroid in the Insect Zone. Damn Jews are behind every war! And Battlestar Galactica is clearly based on Mormon history and theology]. But to the Prots that just makes it a demonic parody of The Truth. To the outsider they clearly look the same, but “that’s just what the devil would want you to think.”
The point is, this stuff is so complex it makes my head spin. The Puritans came over to rebuild Jerusalem, so they exterminated the natives, just like the Jews did [and are doing again — one reason the Prots ae fervent Zionists], while the Spanish just wanted the gold, along with a nominal “conversion”, no born-again stuff. So the Spanish Catholic model seems more usable for us WN’s. But then, it was the gold that destroyed the Spanish economy. Or was it?
And Evola, of course, discerns two racial stains, [The Roman and the Church parts of the RC, as it were]; what he called the Mediterranean is the lazy, theatrical, mandolin playing, pasta-stuffing Wop of tourist posters, as opposed to the Roman; the latter corresponding to the Nordic, vs. the Alpine, in the North. So he had to that extent some sympathy for the Puritan spirit, as a superior racial trait to the lazy English peasant [Tolkien’s hobbits?]. Being, as it were, more Catholic than the Pope, he despised Catholicism as “worthless and weak” [as the ROTC guy says in Animal House].
I think, then, that Evola has a useful point, instead of talking about Puritans vs. Spanish Catholics etc. we need to first discern what elements, or strands, are being emphasized. Also, this is why he came to agree to the use of “The Jew” as a target, even though his more sophisticated analysis made Jews the puppets of occult powers, not the instigators as such; but is was, he said, useful in struggle to have a clear target.
Burroughs, by the way, has some very interesting letters from Mexico where he praises Mexican culture in very un-PC ways. The natives, he says, had the “good fortune to be conquered by the white trash of Europe” who largely left them alone and eventually mixed themselves into the natives. Mexicans are lazy, stupid, and violent proles, and he likes them just that way! As a drug addict and sex pervert, Burroughs was chased out of NY by the Puritans and out of New Orleans by the Catholic moralists [despite the legend of NO as “laissez les bons temps rouler,” it was against the law to BE a drug addict, so he was subject to arrest merely by exiting his house]. But in Mexico, “a police officer has no more authority than a bus conductor.” That’s because the French in NO and Irish in NY were influenced by Jansenism [a French puritanism, which the Irish picked up in French seminaries after the Brits took over Ireland]. Mexico’s Catholics thought outsiders weren’t really human, and left you alone, perhaps mildly amused at the gringos.
The same thing created Greenwich Village as a haven for fuck ups, since it was that part of Little Italy where the Italian grandmothers didn’t care who they rented to as long as they paid the rent. Hence, later, the mob-run gay bars [Stonewall!], all of which would have been impossible 5 blocks over at Henry James’ Washington Square, where the heroine of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth is socially ruined when seen ON THE STEPS OF A BACHELOR’S TOWNHOUSE!
This ethnic stuff is hard to figure out; hence, perhaps, the appeal of “we’re all the same”?
“That’s because the French in NO and Irish in NY were influenced by Jansenism [a French puritanism, which the Irish picked up in French seminaries after the Brits took over Ireland].”
James, thank you for imparting this bit of info to us. It explains so much (about the Irish); it’s a sort of “missing link” in my thinking on this topic. So much comes together, so many scales fall from my eyes. I never so much as suspected this. How’s that for a fancy-shmancy, overpriced “Catlick” ejumacation?
The Culture of Critique is strictly Jewish.
Franklin was not well traveled and not clairvoyant about the future.
He opposed importing blacks and said he and others naturally prefer their own people.
That’s why academia hates these views of a Founding Father being publicized. So spread the word.
“I’m puzzeled by the “Lovely White and Red” remark”
I assumed he meant peaches and cream – as in red-cheeked complexion.
Or sun-bunt white skin
White Red Necks.
The Swedes and Germans were probably called “non-white” by Franklin because of their tanned complexions (those German settlers probably worked under the sun all day). It’s my experience that Swedes and Germans easily get a tan in the summer sun while the Anglos get burned red. No idea why this is.
And yes, rich people who own slaves are idle and lazy. Being liberated from all work and day-to-day responsibility does have that negative effect.
No slaves, no prisoners, no weakness. Learn to pick your own damn cotton crops.
“No slaves, no prisoners, no weakness. Learn to pick your own damn cotton crops.”
Southern bumper sticker: “If I’d know they were going to be this much trouble, I’d have picked my own damn cotton.”
PS: read a buncha SWPL types literally busting into tears on seeing said sign:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=365876
Btw, the Indians saw the English as Red Men not Whites. Don’t know if that influenced Franklin’s thoughts at all.
Does anyone know about Franklin’s famous letter about keeping the Jews out? Or is that a Movement Myth?
That’s a movement myth.
What other Movement Myths are there? That might be a fine topic for an article. Someone over at the Spearpoint said that Rabbi Israel Cohen and his plan to use Blacks to deliver America into their hands was a creation of Eustace Mullins.
And how about European Rabbi who said in his “famous” (but is it real) speech, “This is the last generation of Whites who will be born”?
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
Jaego has hit on a most wonderful question. Answering it completely is beyond the scope of this thread, but let’s mention the two key issues.
Jaego in blockquote:
(1) What “Movement?”
(2) More “myths” than can be imagined.
The solution to (1), the “White Nationalist Movement,” was sought by David Eden Lane, and Bob Mathews of The Order. They could not find it, and were guided to a synthetic model of rebellion. This failed.
The correct solution is not merely to moan helplessly about what THEY are doing to US. It is to learn from what they are doing that works for THEM, and make it work for us. It is, ultimately, to form a more perfect union, thinking globally, while acting VERY locally, starting with our selves, and those closest to us, leading by example.
Lane said, if he had it to do over, he would have built economic and culturally stable homogeneous ethnic economies and communities. Mathews supported linking these together in the Northwest, and tried to found such a community himself.
The counter to the Cultural Wars MUST begin at home, and must begin with home schooling, linked to local churches, which would link to local cooperatives and local credit unions. Each step, no matter how small, would be linked to a metapolitical objective, and the highest and best manifestation of that is Harold Covington’s model of the Northwest Republic.
As for the rest of “Movement” Past, to paraphrase Revilo Oliver, a century of failure is enough. Dr. Sam Francis provided excellent leading thoughts for us, leading to, in time, a Homeland for the Racially Conscious Community. Brigham Young provided an excellent example of organization, in the face of adversity, in the fulfillment of duty, leading to greatness.
The solution to (2) is simply to focus on the Truth, and not worry about the failures of Movement Past, save as educational experiences for us. Thus. Movement Past focused on everything but what we can DO. This was always defined in a temporal political context, in a manner that supported the Hidden Agenda of our The Destroyer, by speaking of nebulous, transnational agencies and Institutions, who were so powerful that all you could do was softly surrender to them, and send money to whoever was kind enough to make you feel comfortable, smug and even slightly superior in your impotence, in your very learned helplessness.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
“And yes, rich people who own slaves are idle and lazy. Being liberated from all work and day-to-day responsibility does have that negative effect.”
How would YOU know?
If you think that owning slaves liberated the owners from “ALL” work and responsibility you’re living in a feminine dream world, as was Benjamin Franklin. But then, that’s how we got to where we are today, accepting what we’ve heard as scripture and sending our sons to die for the cause. Never mind that the cause and the logic behind it, and the evidence for our views is non-existent.
Do you have any idea how much a slave cost an owner? Do you know anything of capital and investment? Of course you don’t. And you’re a perfect example of how soundbites are used to destroy, because you’re a robotized regenerator of television.
I guess it’s a form of the “Southerners are lazy” in general motif, although it’s only applied to White Southerners, of course.
There’s a wonderful euphemism for you know who among “racists”: ‘obsolete farm equipment.’
Was Henry Ford ‘lazy’ because he didn’t make each Model T by hand? On the other hand, Steve Jobs’ workers in China are arguably as bad off, or worse, than Southern slaves, yet he’s slobbered over as a Hippie Hero.
Until the Indust. Rev. got under way, there really was no way to profitably grow those crops without vast plantations and slaves. There’s an interesting correlation btw. mountains and freemen. Think: Switzerland. Or Afghanistan. Well, in that case maybe not ‘free’ but resistant to takeover or invasion. Now look at the US. New England: rocky, poor soil, mountains. Result: self reliance, Yankee ingenuity, abolition. South: broad, swampy land suitable for stoop labor.
Works even internally. Mountainous “West” Virginia seceded FROM Virginia when Virgina seceded from the Union rather than join the CSA.
Point being, it’s geography, not morality or laziness.
The very conclusion of Herodotus’ Histories expresses a similar view:
“Now a forefather of this Artaÿctes who was hung up, was that Artembares who set forth to the Persians a proposal which they took up and brought before Cyrus, being to this effect: ‘Seeing that Zeus grants to the Persians leadership, and of all men to thee, O Cyrus, by destroying Astyages, come, since the land we possess is small and also rugged, let us change from it and inhabit another which is better: and there are many near at hand, and many also at a greater distance, of which if we take one, we shall have greater reverence and from more men. It is reasonable too that men who are rulers should do such things; for when will there ever be a fairer occasion than now, when we are rulers of many nations and of the whole of Asia?’ Cyrus, hearing this and not being surprised at the proposal, bade them do so if they would; but he exhorted them and bade them prepare in that case to be no longer rulers but subjects; ‘For,’ said he, ‘from lands which are not rugged men who are not rugged are apt to come forth, since it does not belong to the same land to bring forth fruits of the earth which are admirable and also men who are good in war.’ So the Persians acknowledged that he was right and departed from his presence, having their opinion defeated by that of Cyrus; and they chose rather to dwell on poor land and be rulers, than to sow crops in a level plain and be slaves to others.”
Yes, I know, because I’ve met enough spoiled rich idiots in my life, who have never worked a day in their lives.
Owning humans as cattle does liberate your from work and responsibility, because you don’t need to do any work yourself. Period. I don’t know how it’s a “feminine dream world”, it’s just realism. And let’s not even mention how the white working-class people lived in a state of misery and poverty because the over-use of slaves kept their wages down. (On top of that, the poor whites were mocked as “white trash” by the plantation owners who sat in their mansions with their slaves all day) Slavery should never have happened. They should have killed the blacks instead of keeping them as slaves.
Oh, and “robotized regenerator of telelevision”? Did you really think that was clever or funny?
Emerson, representative of Puritan mentality, seems no friend of population growth:
“Enormous populations, like moving cheese — the more, the worse.”
“The guano-races of mankind.”
“The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.”
“Masses! the calamity is the masses; I do not wish any shovel-handed, narrow-brained, gin-drinking mass at all.”
Trainspotter:
· “I’m not assuming that you disagree, but I’ll reiterate that “talk” is important. It’s how ideas spread, and we’re never going to get a White Republic without lots of it”
· Definitely. You sound like you may be familiar with “The Mantra” and the Internet propaganda group at http://www.whitakeronline.org. They are spreading the term “anti-white” an attaching it to every anti-white policy; on mainstream chat rooms.
· “As for forming white communities, I’m all for it. To a certain extent, this is happening organically and without any particular plan. Whites are abandoning entire regions and heading to areas that are less overrun with the mud pestilence. Of course, many of these whites remain infected with liberalism, which is why we can’t stop talking.”
· Instead of the Chinese “Talk talk, fight fight” we should “Talk talk, build build.”
“Even amongst whites, conservatives tend to drift toward certain areas and liberals toward others. I’ve seen studies showing that the number of counties where seventy or eighty percent of voters choose a single candidate has exploded over the course of the last few decades. These sorts of lopsided counties used to be fairly rare. They are not rare anymore.”
Was this Cass Sunstien, “The Great Sort and Divide” 2007? Good news.
· “Time will tell, but I’m……presently inclined to disagree that the Northwest groups are too public. I’d suggest that they not overdo it, but on the other hand, we want certain areas of the country to be seen as inhospitable to liberalism, as that aids the sorting out process. We want anti-white liberals to shy away from the emerging white ethnozones (pro-white liberals may appear in significant numbers in the future, and that will be a great thing, but that’s for another day).”
· I’m just afraid the Feds will be too motivated to infiltrate any “Northwest Front” communities as the “Front” talks so much about armed resistance in the next half generation. Great for a novel but in reality it should be presented as plan B or C or D.
· I think I noticed a case of Jewish “organic” infiltration (i.e. not Fed financed) in one West coast community when I made a couple trips out there the last two summers. And there was at least one clear cut Fed sponsored x-con infiltrator at another local, who receives a Fed “mental disability” check too I might add.
“I hesitate to say this, because it could be and likely will be misinterpreted, but right now the most important thing is to segregate pro-whites from anti-whites.”
Haman, in the “Activism” section of Storm Front has detailed tactics for pushing these people out. It’s called the “Pioneer Little Europe” concept. It could be things as simple as having a house flying a Confederate flag to make liberals uncomfortable in the neighborhood. Probably even a house full of biker types could accomplish that job.
.
‘ We know the Jewish threat..”
Our greatest.
“This is something that we can use to our advantage. To the extent that we can segregate from the anti-white liberal, we can move this polarization process greatly forward. That’s one of the things that has to happen.”
Haman again suggested we pro-white dissidents join local civic clubs and veterans groups and slowly make our feeling known. I’d use the practical politics concepts again from whitakeronline and whiterabbitradio.net.
“I hate to look at census quickfacts and see that a 98 percent white county has gone down a few points to 95 percent white. That sucks…but it is not the critical point. The real point is whether the white population of the town is becoming more pro or anti-white. Are anti-white liberals moving in or out?”
That’s not really bad news. Lilly white areas see no Black and Brown “It’s bleeding so it’s leading” on the local 11:00 news. Thus whites in those areas don’t have the real gut griping familiarity with the joys of “Diversity” to help us organize them. I’d say 10-15% minority is about the best range to organize white resistance. Less and average whites aren’t motivated. More and the local Demonic party has too much of a base.
It might also pay to stay away from areas with Yellow people. We don’t want the presence of “model minorities” to weaken our arguments.
Thanks for the quickfacts citation. Do you have a link?
“Obviously, as the non-white percentage creeps up damn near everywhere, this puts us in a race against the clock. We can’t play this game forever, but for now, it’s pretty much the only game in town, and it can work in our favor.”
Time is not necessarily running all that fast against us. Without saying too much, I see signs like the Green Beret Underground, the Constitutional Sheriffs movement and oathkeepers.org indicating law enforcement/military are not going to be there for our Black Bolshevik.
There’s more. To keep it short, I think there must be right wing versions of Ted Turner, (who was mostly in the media billionaire game for the fun of it, gave a billion away to the U.N.) and who have right, as opposed to Ted’s left, social consciouses. There are probably lots of them. I think I’ve seen signs. But obviously till now they’ve had to stay under deep cover.
It may be time for some off the Internet conversations, snail mail or even a “quite” gathering of you’es guys. Are you all in the San Francisco IHR neighborhood? Haman is. Greg is. Or maybe a few interested people could get together mid-continent. Kansas City or Chicago? Dallas?
An economic crisis (a run on the banks? Deliberately set off by big bucks closet pro-whites?) could put everything into high gear in a few weeks.
“Since we can only achieve the ethnostate when we have a critical mass of whites who support it, the thing to do for now is to spread our ideology far and wide, but focus our personal choices at the local level. We want more and more pockets of whites who feel alienated from the central system. I say local as opposed to neighborhood, because localities are sustainable in a sense that neighborhoods are not.”
Agreed. That’s why rural market towns, 2,000 –20,000 population county seats, are a good area to create jobs for and/or subsidize young pro-whites to move to and congregate in. David Duke took 90% of the white vote in rural Louisiana. It wouldn’t take much to elect a constitutional Sheriff like Mack. He and another Sheriff from Montana won their case against the Clinton administration in the Supreme Court. That’s all the local back up we’ll need.
“..white neighborhood surrounded by a sea of mud rather than live in the mud itself, but that’s obviously a “huddling” strategy with no real future. The future is in dominating localities – counties, smaller cities and towns – even if its no greater in population than many urban or suburban neighborhoods. Ultimately, it’s about dominating sustainable regions and then achieving a sustainable ethnostate.
Four back to back family homes forming Wellington’s “British Square.” Just enough for close support and a breathing space at night.
Phil
Phil wrote above: “Instead of the Chinese ‘Talk talk, fight fight’ we should ‘Talk talk, build build.'” I think it would be better to say that we should talk, fight, and build. White nationalist thinkers, fighters, and laborers need to work together.
“Talk” — i.e. thinking, writing, speaking, publishing — is extremely important. But we need the right kind of talk. We need talk which inspires, guides, and supports action. As the activist slogan puts it, we need to “agitate, educate, organize.” None of these activities is possible without talk, but it requires talk of a particular kind.
I believe that we need a culture which values force of speech over freedom of speech. By force of speech, I don’t mean that our speech should be merely loud or repetitive, but rather that we need to make our words count. To do this, there are many things we need to do:
We need a style characterized by strength of mind and will.
We need to be firm where we need to be firm, and flexible where we need to be flexible.
We need to employ, to use Julius Evola’s terminology, a “Roman” rather than a “Mediterranean” style.
We need to think, talk, and act in a highly purposeful and disciplined manner.
We need to take a long term view and to act constructively in the real world.
We need to observe sensible priorities, which means concentrating on achieving worthwhile and practical goals, and accepting the sacrifices and discipline that accompany them.
We need to rise to our task.
We need to do much more than identify ourselves with a cause that is right — after all, everyone thinks that they’re in the right — we must serve our cause in the right way.
We need to improve our message, our techniques, and our skills rather than scorn or abandon our audience if they fail to listen or understand us.
We need to bring intelligence, knowledge, and skill to what we say and how we say it if we are to truly say something and say it well.
We need to be persistent, observant, and resourceful if we are to truly reach our audience.
We need to restrain egotism and vanity.
We need to back up our words with action.
We need to abandon the illusory freedom of being able to say whatever we like, whenever we like, as we like, in favor of the genuine freedom that proceeds from strength, the strength that gives us independence, initiative, and influence.
“The essay was written in 1751 (when America and Canada were still British colonies) …”
Canada was still a French colony in 1751, prior to the Seven Years War (1756-63).
Mr. Franklin’s criticisms aside, it should be noted that William Penn sent his agents into the German provinces with the express purpose of promoting his new colony for settlement by these industrious people.
Good point.
Settlement of Canada did not really begin until about 1650. During the first 100 years (1650-1750) Canada’s white population, though thin and limited primarily to the St. Lawrence region, was mostly French. This settled portion of south-central Canada was part of New France, which encompassed the Mississippi Valley and Louisiana in the present-day US as well.
However, Britain and France disputed Canadian territory.
A map of New France in 1750 shows that the British in that year controlled the entire region of present day Canada east of the St. Lawrence River extending north to Newfoundland, save for the mouth and valley of the river. Britain in 1750 also controlled northern Canada, east to west, including the entire region surrounding Hudson’s Bay—indeed, well south of it. This was known as St. Rupert’s Land.
In North America, Britain and France fought the French and Indian War between 1754 and 1763. In the year 1760 French Canada fell to the English.
It was a time of flux.
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