Counter-Currents
1,160 words
One of the unmistakable features of modern conservatives is their not-so-veiled hostility toward heritage America. Some attribute this to ethnic hostility, given the infiltration of the Right by neoconservatives. Initially, these people made the journey from communism to anti-communism and were never conservative in temperament. Of course, the royal lifestyles of many conservatives has made them into unpleasant snobs. All of that is true to one degree or another, but it obscures an important point about modern conservatives.
The Official Right has a different interpretation of American history than most normal white people. Blacks, of course, fixate on slavery and segregation, so their view of American history is through hostile eyes. Whites generally accept the conventional narrative. If you ask a normal white American to tell the story of America, he will start with something about how the Puritans came to America to escape religious tyranny. Once the colonist got things going, the King tried to tax the colonists, so there was a revolution.
The Official Right has a different view of American history. They look at the Founding as an imperfect result. First and foremost, they view the tolerance of slavery, and the enshrining of it in the Constitution, as a great sin. Rather than embrace the principle of liberty for all, because all men are created equal, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution created a compromise. While all citizens were free and equal under the law, slavery created a class of people who were not citizens.
In the view of the Straussians, the intellectual movement based on the writing and teaching of Leo Strauss, the Constitution was not just a flawed document, but an immoral one, because it violated that core principle of equality. From this perspective, the Civil War was a purification of the country, removing the origin sin of slavery and forming a new Union, based in equality and universal liberty. For the Official Right, America was reborn in the Civil War and Lincoln was the Moses who ushered in the new republic.
This is why the Official Right has a Lincoln fetish. For example, Rich Lowry, the dull-witted editor of National Review, wrote a Lincoln book. The neocons treat Lincoln as if he is an Old Testament prophet. Jonah Goldberg regularly writes about Lincoln as if he is a god on Mt. Olympus. For the Official Right, Lincoln is the Founding Father. Those guys who wrote the Constitution are not entirely dismissed, but they are secondary figures in the story. For the Official Right, the American story starts with the Gettysburg Address.
A big part of this is due to a guy named Harry Jaffa, who became something of a cult leader for the neoconservatives. His framing of the Civil War as the second founding, allowed the neocons to see themselves as proof of the concept. The original founding excluded them from the narrative, while the second founding not only included them in the story of America, it made them proof of its righteousness. Lincoln’s America was not just for the founding stock. It was for whoever could get control of it.
Of course, the old WASP side of the Official Right was also willing to embrace this notion of the second founding. Since northern conservatism was mostly just a clean up crew that followed Progressivism around, the story of the second founding made their unwillingness to oppose the Left seem noble. Since Reconstruction, the role of what passes for conservatism has been to fill the void after every great spasm of Progressive activism overturned the old order. The Official Right’s job was to make it all work again.
The problem with this telling of history is it assumes a core immorality of the founding stock and the institutions they created. It also locks in the notion that it is the role of Northern reformers to be the guardians of civic morality. The Left need only appeal to the notion of universal equality and liberty and their opponents were disarmed. After all, the party of Lincoln, if it stands for anything, stands for universal equality and liberty. The conservatism of Harry Jaffa is nothing but a complex apologia for Progressivism.
A fun gag is to talk to the grandees of the Official Right about Lincoln’s actual views on race relations. The quickest way to get hurled into the void by angry Buckleyites is to quote Lincoln on the issue. The fact is, Lincoln was a man of his age, when it came to race, despite his zealous opposition to slavery. Like all abolitionists, he did not care about the slaves, he cared about the slave holder. That was the soul he sought to save. The slaves themselves were just props on the stage of the morality play that was abolitionism.
The Official Right can never accept this. One of the criticisms of Harry Jaffa on this score was that he was not a scholar of Lincoln, so much as the chief polemicist for the cult that formed around him. His telling of history left out anything that contradicted his concept of the second founding. This is true not only from an academic perspective, but also from a human one. This telling of history leaves out most of the country. For anyone outside the northern alliance, their ancestors are either villains or non-entities in the narrative.
That’s the source of the low level hostility toward heritage America that has been a feature of the Official Right and that is now its face to the rest of us. Since Gettysburg, the story of America has been the story of northern hegemony. On one side are the reformers and fanatics, always looking for a reason to put the lash to the legacy population. On the other side are the so-called conservatives, who hold most of the same views, but see their role as making the latest fads work, so the overall American project can move forward.
The Lincoln fetish that blossomed among so-called conservatives in the middle of the last century was a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Unable to conjure and sustain a moral opposition to the Left, they embraced Lincoln as their Moses. Their acquiescence to the Left was the result of deeply held principles with roots in the founding, the second founding. They were champions of “a new birth of freedom — that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
This is the great challenge in attempting to overturn the Judeo-Puritan orthodoxy that defines the America ruling class. It requires more than just defeating present day arguments over public policy. It means restoring large chunks of history that have been systematically erased by our zealous overlords. Killing off the cult of Lincoln and the political movement it animates, means telling a better story to the people charged with tearing it down. That inevitably means killing Lincoln as the founder of the nation.
21 comments
Another option is to argue that Lincoln’s “Second Founding” remains incomplete–repatriation of blacks being what remains to make the founding complete.
Someone ought really to play “Lincoln: Fear of a Black Planet” as a comedy.
Abe’s own administration worked against him for the repatriation plan, insisting that for each ship of ex-slaves sent out, twice that many would be born in the same period. Or more.
Yet Abe’s plan is in fact being carried out now by Soros et al. He was going to send the young, ambitious and committed lads to be the founders of a new all-black nation. The old and weary ex-slaves could live their remaining years out in peace.
A musical comedy number could actually be built around where it was these ex-slaves were headed, Trying to purchase land near present-day Costa Rica, Lincoln was smacked down and told to stuff it. “You just want to send your plague down to us!” they told him. Not a scene that would play well to the SJW market.
As to Lincoln being the “First president to invite Negroes to the White House” — in order to ask them to leave the country — you’d only have to borrow what Gore Vidal wrote about it.
If the Antifa folks are all like the ones I’ve met, the Death of Lincoln won’t matter much because they want Jefferson, Washington and all the rest also. If it would STOP at Abe, fine. It won’t. It won’t stop till whitey is down and out for good.
The Jews are the only ones promoting Lincoln. For years, I thought it was only the Jewish right (neocons). Then I saw McFeels get sent to Twitter jail three days ago for calling Lincoln a “charlatan” whose “hollow words and indefensible deeds have always been used by his apologists to justify even more despicable acts.” McFeels has a slow growing account but he never gets put in Twitter jail. Something is up. Something is definitely up with Jews and Lincoln. I don’t know what they are up to or why they should get so mad over an attack on Lincoln. I assume that Jews don’t particularly care about ending the slavery of blacks. The only thing I can figure is that Lincoln is responsible for the deaths of an unfathomable number of whites.
When did this concept of Lincoln start? It certainly precedes Jaffa. It’s for example strongly emphasized in Griffith’s 1915 “Birth of a Nation”, and that movie notoriously spawned the 20th century Ku-Klux-Klan.
Slight off topic: I see the “Straussianism” tab on this site as well as the sort of article that it is attached to, as well as generally negative image of Leo Strauss. I’ve never read him, but my second hand image of him is also generally negative. Recently however I’ve listened to a podcast by one ex academic, Matthew Johnson, who argued that Strauss was misunderstood and that, far from being the father of neoconry, he was a stern opponent of globalization, and what we came to call neoconservatism and neoliberalism. He also argued that many of those who attack him as well as those who claim to be his disciples appear to never have read him, as well as that his writing is as difficult as that of Hegel or Heidegger so that many “experts” stick with secondary material. Any thoughts on this? You can easily found the podcast in question by googling.
Emancipation was purely strategic and not idealistic. It was a means of taking away a military asset of the south. Slave labor freed up white southerners to fight.
And emancipation was designed to keep European powers from intervening on behalf of the South. Cold military and political calculations. Not high minded idealism.
Yes. I’ll go further: Emancipation was at least as evil as slavery itself. Esp. the enfranchisement of the illiterate semi-savages in order to subdue and utterly humiliate the confederates. And we now have a scholarly consensus that declares that slavery was the cause of the civil war–meaning that the enlightened North was fighting a humanitarian effort to free the slaves. Total B.S. Any honest appraisal has to begin by removing any insinuation that one side was more ‘enlightened’ on the issue of race. America was unanimously or at least 98% white nationalist.
Of course had there been no slavery there would have been no war but even a cursory glance at the conflict renders an unambiguous conclusion: No one cared about the Negro–other than to court assurances that they would be kept out of their territory, that if and when freed would be contained … in the South. Lincoln gave them all of these assurances and more.
Yes, even in 1865, Lincoln’s repatriation plan was unworkable. I toyed with the idea, that if he had annexed Haiti, and sent them there it could have worked. But no, there were between four to six million blacks in America back then, four to six million blacks that would have to be fed at least once everyday, four to six million blacks that would need to go to the bathroom each day, four to six million blacks that would be having babies everyday. With the slow moving sailing ships, even the short trip to Haiti would have been unworkable. However, there was one solution that would have definitely worked, there was a large standing Union Army, armed to the teeth.
@Peter Quint, who said: “Yes, even in 1865, Lincoln’s repatriation plan was unworkable.”
You must not be familiar then with the SS Great Eastern, the largest ship of its day, which existed during the lifetime of Abraham Lincoln. In the year 1858, years before Lincoln was assassinated, this giant metal steamship could carry 4,000 passengers all the way from the UK to far-flung Australia – without refueling. Ponder that, Mr. Quint, before you assert that the technology in the aftermath of the Civil War was insufficient to rid America of her obsolete, two-legged farm machinery.
Here are the facts:
1 – Haiti lies about 1,000 miles from Florida, the state where post-Civil War negroes would be staged in concentration camps for deportation to that Caribbean island.
2 – The SS Great Eastern was capable of making that thousand mile voyage in just three days, with a load of 4,000 negroes per voyage, and would be back in Florida to pick up its next load in a round-trip time of less than a week.
3 – With just one of these ships, some 16,000 negroes could be removed per month, or approximately 200,000 negroes per year.
4 – Admittedly, that would still take too many years to remove the negro plague from America. Solution? Build four more SS Great Easterns, for a total of five. With that many ships, approximately one million negroes per year could have been removed from America. Since you stated in your post that there were somewhere between four to six million post-Civil War negroes in the US, then it would have taken no more than four to six years to remove them completely from our land.
5 – Had the process been initiated by the year 1866 (time enough to build four additional SS Great Easterns, then America could have been free of them by 1870 to 1871. But certainly, even with delays, by the year 1875.
In conclusion, America emphatically had the technology to rid itself of its negro problem back then. If so, despite the fact that we have even more of them today, our technology to remove them is even greater and faster. So there is no reason on Earth not to accept the removal of negroes from America as a technologically possible feat.
In 1880, there were some 800,000 people living in Haiti. There is no way four million more Negroes would have survived, and certainly the Haitian government would not have accepted them to begin with.
Grotius said: “In 1880, there were some 800,000 people living in Haiti. There is no way four million more Negroes would have survived, and certainly the Haitian government would not have accepted them to begin with.”
And today, there are over 11 million negroes living on the island of Haiti, which is approximately twice the number that an additional 4 to 6 million negroes would have increased its population. As such, Haiti’s population back then would’ve been boosted to around 5 to 6 million had this deportation plan been carried through. So if Haiti can today support over 11 million negroes, then it stands to reason that it could’ve supported half that number back in the 1865-1875 time frame.
Now, would some negroes have starved to death once dumped like garbage on that Caribbean island? Of course. But that would not have been America’s problem, since these same negroes very likely would not have fared any better in their original environment of Africa. Nevertheless, Haiti has proven today that it can support a relatively high population despite being an island.
As for the Haitian government of 1865 “not accepting them”, US troops could have easily toppled their pathetic resistance and set up a more amenable government comprised of a few newly-freed negro slaves hungry to rule over their fellow blacks. Negroes in the same vein as Idi Amin, Jean-Claude “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and Robert Mugabe. And there would’ve been no shortage of them back then, as there are no shortage of them today.
Thus, there remains no consequential reason why the deportation of America’s post-Civil War negroes could not have been accomplished. Back then, we had both the transportational means and the moral responsibility to that era’s white population not to impose the criminal violence and cultural destruction that – having failed to do so – has left us with today.
In summation, we have far superior transportational technology at our fingertips today than in 1865, and thus a far greater ability to remove America’s 35 million negroes back to Africa, where their kind and caring brothas and sistahs can take them in. ????
Grotius said: “In 1880, there were some 800,000 people living in Haiti. There is no way four million more Negroes would have survived, and certainly the Haitian government would not have accepted them to begin with.”
Or, to shine a different perspective on the number of people living in Haiti in the year 1880, today’s Haitian population has TWELVE TIMES AS MANY NOW as back then. So the argument that Haiti had “too many people back in 1880 to handle America’s post-Civil War negroes” is simply not true.
As such, many whites know two things: that, in their hearts, America would be a better place were every single negro deported. What few “football stars” and “movie stars” and “rappers” that our country would lose is far outweighed by all the robbery, rape, and murder that we are daily subjected to. And two, that the means to rid America of her negro population exists, but it’s a taboo subject because it’s so blindingly true. Never believe otherwise. ????
I didn’t know about the SS Great Eastern, but repatriation still would not have worked for the simple reason that blacks would not have peaceably sat around, and waited for their turn to be deported. Thus, I still refer to the use of the large standing union army armed to the teeth as the best solution to the problem.
Peter Quint said: “I didn’t know about the SS Great Eastern, but repatriation still would not have worked for the simple reason that blacks would not have peaceably sat around, and waited for their turn to be deported. Thus, I still refer to the use of the large standing union army armed to the teeth as the best solution to the problem.”
Although I will concede that some negro violence may have occurred during the deportation process, back then most were largely docile due to a century or more of servility to the white man. Also back then (unlike today) whites were far more likely to inflict major violence against any negroes who refused to do what they were told. Remember, there were no “civil rights” for them, no ACLU, no NAACP or anything else to impede their ruthless removal by an army of soldiers who still had the taste of blood-drenched killing in their mouths. If these Union soldiers could slaughter over a quarter of a million of their fellow whites do you really think they would’ve hesitated to go full-negro-genocide on any uppity negroes who gave them resistance? I don’t think so.
After suppressing a few (possible) negro revolts, the rest would’ve fallen meekly into line and submitted to train transport down to Florida for a restful stay at a Union concentration camp before shipment out on massive steamships like the SS Eastern. Once in Florida, Union “public relations officers” would’ve informed all negro detainees about the glorious life that awaited them in the “sun and fun” of tropical Haiti. Being (mostly) of low-IQ, uneducated, and ignorant about the world in general, America’s post-Civil War negroes were too soon off the plantation to know what awaited them – a sweltering pest-hole of tropical, fly-bitten, disease-ridden, malaria-infested living Hell, starvation (for some) and murder (for others) if the island itself didn’t kill them.
But think of it: today, all those who had suffered under American slavery – and later in the nightmare of mid-19th century Haiti – would now all be dead, with all the misery they suffered no more…
Quite often in human history, some must invariably and horribly suffer so that the worthwhile people of this Earth can rise up, reach out, and conquer the Stars.
I must concede that you make many good points. A very well thought out argument. I would like to point out that there were many black uprisings on slave plantations before the civil war, but you already know that. There would only be one small problem, it took them four years to build the SS Great Eastern! I know you can see the problem there, either the extra ships would have to been built before the war, or they would have to be built at separate sites after the war. Even if the extra ships were built at separate sites, there would still be a long wait for most of the slaves. However the old two masted sailing ships could have been pressed into service. This is of course, assuming that we had use of the SS Great Eastern.
@Peter Quint: “There would only be one small problem, it took them four years to build the SS Great Eastern!”
Keep in mind that a ship of the scale and magnitude of the SS Great Eastern had never been done before. Nothing even close. But in the realm of shipbuilding back in the 1850’s, it was that era’s technological equivalent of the Apollo moon project. It was not only a gigantic ship of its day (at that time the world’s largest ever built) it also made use of many new technological developments in hull construction, etc.
Yes, it took “four years” to conceive, design, finance, and build the first ship – something that at that time had no equivalent. Even so, “four years” would not be needed to build four additional ships, since all the labor-intensive groundwork had already been completed – groundwork that would not need to be repeated, thus saving a great deal of additional labor and time.
So, at that point, all that was needed were the blueprints and the funding, with no uncertainty remaining that such a huge iron vessel could indeed be built; the existence of the SS Great Eastern had already settled that issue. Therefore, what took four years for the first SS Great Eastern would not have taken an additional four years for the construction of four duplicate vessels – provided four separate shipyards were assigned one each to build. As such, what took four years for the first “prototype” would now only take approximately two years for four duplicates, since they would be constructed simultaneously in four separate shipyards.
True, this would have been a momentous project, even for the US government. But certainly within the realm of achievability – especially when the end result would have been the removal of the negro burden from the shoulders of white America. Thus, with a committed government behind the project, perhaps two years would be needed to build four additional ships. But even if you doubled that time frame, America would’ve become negro-free no later than 1875.
“America would’ve become negro-free no later than 1875.”
Doesn’t that sound so good? The only thing that would sound better is that America would have become jew-free.
Peter Quint said: “America would’ve become negro-free no later than 1875.” – – Doesn’t that sound so good? The only thing that would sound better is that America would have become jew-free.
Removing Jews from America would have been an easy task, logistically speaking. Their numbers, when compared to the negro population during the Civil War years, were far less. However, unlike the negro, the Jew was shielded somewhat by Christian reverence for them, and this may have caused resistance over their forced removal. Even the Confederate government under Jefferson Davis had some high-ranking Jews serving it (Hitler’s too) so it’s problematical how this idea would’ve worked. But if the US government had implemented their removal, and carried out this goal with utter determination, then today there would not be a single (known) Jew left in America.
In the end, removing non-whites is an achievable goal, and would take about five years of round-the-clock effort using fleets of C-5M Super Galaxy cargo jets, ocean-going freighters, buses, and trains. The cost, which I have estimated, would be around five billion dollars and take about five years for complete removal of all non-whites from America- a bargain in both time and money when compared to the estimated six trillion dollars (and seventeen years) America has squandered fighting the Iraq/Afghan Wars.
Do you ever get the feeling that a White Nationalist government would have been the best choice of all to Make America Great Again?
“Rather than embrace the principle of liberty for all, because all men are created equal, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution created a compromise. While all citizens were free and equal under the law, slavery created a class of people who were not citizens.”
Beside the obvious immorality of slavery, slavery in North America brought blacks to a place where they were ill equipped to thrive and, outside of being slaves, not wanted. If blacks had not been forced to come to North America the main equality contention would not have materialized.
There is one idea here, but it’s the best idea I’ve seen in a long while. The Lincoln Fetish.
But actually…really…this is something that even Teddy Roosevelt (who saw right through it) slavishly endorsed. It’s nothing new, and it’s going to be hard to break away from. Lincoln wasn’t some hallelujah negro preacher like “doctor” King, he was a man of immense intellect and ability, and effectively the “founder” of the GOP as a viable party.
There’s no point in fighting the Lincoln cult. Better just to see him as a shibboleth. When someone raises him as an heroic talking-point, you can be pretty sure it’s time to put your earplugs in.
“…Lincoln supported a plan to recolonize the freed slaves. Regretfully that plan fizzled out…”
Did fizzle indeed. His own cabinet worked against him.
This cannot (and should not) stop any race realist of any colour from acting on his impulse.
Lincoln’s plan was simplicity itself: Whites in America were European and reflected their heritage, Blacks were African and will forever remain thus,
Simply put, they are not miscible, Louis Farrakhan has mentioned this more than once, and even did so in front of George Lincoln Rockwell. No reason the European derived people of the USA cannot continue a dialogue with “Marcus Garvey Blacks” and make a movement… however makeshift and uncertain it might be from the start.
In the end what it boils down to is survival or not. Blacks I have known are aware of this. Race aware whites need to take a hint. We have allies. They are waiting. But they won’t wait forever.
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