The anecdote R.J. relates regarding Sam’s candid remark on pornography actually took place at Accuracy in Academia’s Conservative University when I was running the organization. The point of the panel was to get four figures representing various strains of right-leaning thought. My hope was that some fireworks would erupt between strong personalities advocating diverse outlooks, but they were too well-mannered to take my bait. Alongside Sam were James Bovard, Jonah Goldberg, and Lori Waters--a Christian Conservative, who, after explaining the religious right’s outlook on a number of questions, including pornography, elicited Sam’s humorous response. Aside from the fact that one got the idea that Sam knew of what he spoke, what made the episode particularly funny was the blushing, weirded out facial expression of the Southern Belle Cole.

Well, I am an Antipodean and a big fan of Dr Francis so that makes two of us!

If Sam were alive today, he would be have been purged by the likes of John Zmirak as an evil white racist. He believed that there should be an open discussion of race in mainstream society, Today’s paleos want it all swept under the rug.

Rob,

Thanks much for this great tribute to Sam.  He was a great man, and a great friend, and I miss him greatly.  He had, as you say, a wonderful sense of humor, as well as a vast knowledge of many subjects.

Unfortunately his “Principalities And Powers” essays from Chronicles Magazine are apparently no longer on line.

Out of all the people I regret not having had a chance to meet before they passed on, Dr. Francis stands out the most in my mind.  On the days his column came out, before I read anything else I would go to VDare to see what he had to say.  His were the first articles I would turn to in Chronicles every month.  He was certainly an extraordinary writer and thinker.  In response to R. J. Stove’s remarks in his first paragraph, there is a dearth of awareness of the late Dr. Francis here in Canada as well, although I recall Kevin Michael Grace quoting him favourably in the Western Report from time to time.

“The great men I have met amount, in truth, to only five. They were B. A. Santamaria, the Australian political philosopher-activist”

Santamaria may have been a tireless worker for conservative Roman Catholic causes, but he was a complete and utter disaster for Australia as a nation. Consider some of his handywork:
Leading role in the split of the Australian Labor Party that led to the creation of the Roman Catholic church-backed Democratic Labor Party. This split gave the socialists virtual control of the ALP.
Leading proponent of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war.
Leading proponent of Asian (particularly Roman Catholic Asians) immigration to Australia.

Santamaria may have been passionate, but he was a classic example of the disasters that can flow from mixing your religion with politics.

I only met Sam once, but he remains my favorite contemporary thinker to this day. Francis’ “Anarcho-Tyranny: The Perpetual Revolution” tribute cover story in Chronicles, I have framed, and hangs abve my office desk.

In the aftermath of the Republican convention and Sarah Palin, I keep remembering Francis’ hope that “the Republican Party must be destroyed” in the sense that conservatives are eternally strung along by the slightest hope that they might gain a foothold in the GOP, when experience and history suggests otherwise.

Francis knew better. More should know Francis.

Jack

Rob Stove’s review of my 2006 anthology, SHOTS FIRED: Sam Francis on America’s Culture War (http://www.takimag.com/site/article/unkilling_whitey_the_achievement_of_sam_francis/), remains one of the most insightful assessments of Sam’s ideas and impact. Rob is a terrific writer (see his website: http://www.rjstove.com/). I came to appreciate Rob’s sharp sense of humor when we spent some time together during his visit to the U.S. some months back. It’s encouraging to know people like Sam and Rob can keep things light—and in perspective—while dissecting doom and gloom theories.

Great anecdotal information on the late Dr. Sam Francis.  I’ve read many of his books and articles, but I unfortunately never met the great man.

John Smith,

Gah samfrancis.net appears to be down.

I did manage to download them all at least, from 1989-2002, in pdf form.

These all appear to be from what was published at Chronicles.

I never understood why paleos are so techno-unfriendly. The internet is the great opportunity and largely unexploited in cases like this.

Due to copyright laws and the fact that I don’t have a running website atm, though some friends do, I wouldn’t wish to host them without permission. But these should exist somewhere on the web.

Peter Ramus,

There’s unfortunately a good bit of truth to what you say, but at the same time the turn TOQ has taken allowing articles on genetic engineering and cybernetics is insanity.

It would appear then an embrace of genetics and materiality can become an extreme as well.

Or perhaps it’s simply that since decent society and mainstream Christianity demand biological race as well as racial identity not be mentioned, the issue is relegated to the indecent…

That writers can state with a straight face that South African Bushmen could become, say, fully Swiss within a few generations is surely a Herculean feat.

I reckon it’s much easier to defend culture than race, but then again there’s a reason for that: race is much more opposed to the managerial state than culture, which could conceivably be polished with a little political correctness and transmitted.

Sam in my opinion, only having read him was refreshingly great.  And so he was a wellspring.  He could feel where others were (intuit it quickly with accuracy also due to his vast intelligence and learning) and if he disagreed, he could sense where the default was and so sought to help incisively with his insight.  Or, if conversely he knew the default was rather obdurately defended, well, his only way to help was to bravely express his displeasure.  Fortunately for us all (yet) out here in the world, it was a *help. 

I’m someone who just because I may have understood what you articulated even if I didn’t think it before myself, doesn’t mean I will automatically agree with you even momentarily. 

I can’t remember a single time in reading Sam whether I had thought it myself or not I didn’t agree with him.  What a man!  It doesn’t mean that for health reasons or whatever reasons because he apparently died rather young it takes anything away.

I’d apply to that the observation, that often the good die young.  Sam!

Thanks for writing this lovely little piece on Dr. Francis, Rob. Had we met (a very unlikely event to have had happened), he would probably have less interest in me than in the remotest outposts of Commonwealth. All the same, I admired his intellect from the very first time I saw his writings on VDare, and throughout until the bitter end. He is sorely missed.

[i/There’s unfortunately a good bit of truth to what you say...

Sam Francis apparently abandoned Christianity for virtually all of his adult life. In fact, he once wrote that he preferred Greek mythology to Sacred Scripture! I always took his attraction to Burnham as an artificial substitute for an historically Calvinist worldview.

Sam grew up as the Southern Presbyterians were rapidly backpedaling on the old Dabney/Thornwell views on race, This scandalized him. I think the issue was less that he abandoned the church than it abandoned him. 

The current cadre of paleocons would rather write Sam out of existence. He raises too many questions. In fact, there have been big, self-righteous demonstrations of anti-racism both here and on the Chronicles site. It’s insane.

Yesterday’s neocons ideas are today’s paleocon ideas. This whole stupid fad of distributism, for example, is just another way of admitting the necessity of a post-Western managerial order.

Peter Ramus,

Francis wrote favorably about distributism. I like much about it too, and I’m right strong on issues of ethnicity, though it could be I’ve misjudged something.

Dr. Fleming opposes what he calls ideological nationalism, but much of his thinking is similar and compatible nevertheless - at least I continue to find new, useful bits in his articles. There aren’t many experts in his field who are so readily available and so tolerant, either.

---

The fairly recent article at Chronicles about the Southern music might have given me an ulcer though heh - there was something in it that screamed Rainbow Confederate…

More Southerners should read Dabney and Thornwell to be sure. Burnham’s good too for those who’ve strayed - if they can’t believe then they at least oughtn’t work to undermine the faith.

Rob,

Reading your reflections on Sam Francis brought back several personal memories of Sam. Those of us who knew him closely (I had the good fortune of having worked with Sam when he was the book editor of The Occidental Quarterly), such as some of the regular readers or contributors to Takimag, deeply miss his intellectual spark and wit. I feel privileged in having had the opportunity to work with Sam for several years up to the very end. Receiving the news of his death the following morning from one of Sam’s closest friends was the equivalent of losing an immediate family member. It was quite a shock. Thanks for this unexpected stroll down memory lane.

Sam Francis is irreplaceable.  How much we miss the carving from his stiletto-like pen.  He would have so much enjoyed this election season.

RE: Peter Ramus,

Sam and I were on quite friendly terms, though we only met once. I personally took the unfair entry submitted to “American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia” and rewrote it in respectful and balanced terms. The article is signed with my name, so you can go read it for yourself. Get your facts straight before you start slinging accusations. I always do.

John Zmirak, if Sam were an up and coming writer, instead of an elder statesman, you wouldn’t be treating him with respect or balance.

Worse, you’re telling me that ISI commissioned something slanderous, which you had to go back and fix. You proved my point. With friends like these, who needs the Kristols?

er, I don’t know what the fuss is all about regarding John Zmirak’s bio sketch of Sam in the American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia—I even quoted from it in my introduction to the Sam Francis anthology SHOTS FIRED. I would have put a slightly different spin on the entry, but I don’t think it would have got by ISI’s editors.

ISI didn’t “commission a slanderous piece.” They commissioned an article, weren’t happy with its fairness, and gave it to me to fix for that reason. They bent over backwards in the book to be fair to a wide variety of thinkers, and did an excellent job. I didn’t write something “spun” to slip past any censorship, but wrote exactly what I thought, as I always do. ISI is a sane and tolerant place, so they published it.
I didn’t endorse his racialism, and don’t, but also declined to demonize him--as was fitting for a piece in a scholarly book.

John:
I meant no offense—I think your entry is fine and don’t understand what other critics are posting. Yes, I would have written it somewhat differently, but that’s probably why they asked you to pen something and not an ideologue like me.

a new collection of sam’s best writing is available

sam francis:  essential writings on race

http://www.amren.com/store/essential_writings.html

Dear Peter,
No offense taken or intended! I just wanted to be clear that ISI is not afflicted with the same ideological narrowness as many other conservative organizations, and I want to give it credit where it’s due. Thanks for a great book!
John

John, either truth matters or it doesn’t.  As for ISI, it was built as Bill Buckley’s haven for his courtiers. The people there are ivory tower types who wait for the day the neocons take over, like the last British rulers of Hong Kong.

Sam Francis was by far the best conservative thinker and writer during the last 15 years of his life. Insofar as Sam was more impressionistic than rigorously analytical (but what sane impressions! and how well-expressed!), that may be saying rather less than it appears to. There seem to be hardly any serious thinkers on the Right anymore discussing matters from first principles (Thomas Fleming, whose relentless avoidance of the issue of race, on which Sam wrote so courageously, makes him unpalatable to me personally, is admittedly an exception; Paul Gottfried is a brilliant analyst of present political realities, but as the Right’s problems all stem from refusing to face and accept what Sam had to teach us, esp about the impossibility of viable multiracial republics, what we really need is not so much empirical as moral political analysis - specifically, a philosophical synthesis of traditional conservatism and racial realism).

The most admirable quality of Sam (shared by only a few other paleos, such as Gottfried) is that, though he may have occasionally omitted to air ALL of his opinions about particular matters (I know for a personal fact that Sam had little love for The Jews, considered collectively, but he rarely wrote on that topic), he was NEVER politically correct. He would never throw some gratuitous comments into his essays to show that he “didn’t really mean it”, or otherwise to ingratiate himself with the PC ‘brotherhood-of-man’ types, including those types infesting paleo sites (you know who you are). Even the estimable Pat Buchanan, who’s done his patriotic duty again and again, felt compelled to demonstrate his “broad-mindedness” in 2000 by picking a ludicrously unqualified black woman as his VP running mate (a good conservative, don’t misunderstand me, but the decision had the stench of PC all over it).

Sam was a man of unfailing honor and integrity (and yet he never felt the need to parade his moral character, as so many other conservatives do). I wish there were more Americans, or at least conservatives, or AT LEAST PALEOconservatives like him. But there aren’t very many.

It’s sort of the Gordian knot: is it we can’t have a multi-racial Republic or the at least more obvious
impossibility of not being able to have a multi-cultural Republic – (or both?)

Rome sought to answer those same problems and the result after a couple hundred years of preparation was to put it all under the umbrella culture of xianity.  Sure culture is bio-cultural - the genes, the landscape of the developing pocket of peoples, history/chance or providence etc. precede any emerging culture of significance and so who a people are is both a result of mother *Nature & as later complemented by their culture (*nurture).

So we’re conceptual-CREATURES or Creatures (nature) now complemented by the fact that we pause at the conceptual level prior to planned activity (culture).

I would venture to say what at this point we *know is impossible is a multi-cultural *Republic.  America frankly speaking was liberal enough to allow all forms of Christianity but as soon as she crossed the line in permitting any so-called ‘religion’ within her borders without outlawing it here, believe it or not (we ‘talk’ about separation of religion & state) that is when we crossed the line of what’s possible and what’s not and we chose ‘religion’ and putting it on a pedestal even if it’s not Christian over being able to actually have and keep a Republic.

The net effect of this error is that today culturally we are essentially judaic or second class Jews which regrettably has become the (inevitably) *singlular culture of the land or nation as there can only be one (whatever it will be.) And, since as most people do not yet realize the judaic culture is hierarchical and dictatorial look for that in the near future as well.

I would agree with you Leon the human race may have the *same vibration but it’s not *identical thus even though we’re more alike we’re also slightly but importantly different (nature.) However, frankly speaking the sameness aspect of different or non-identical people (racially) can be amplified if they all share approximately the same culture (nurture) as long as they all are on approximately the same page on in the same single culture.

However xianity culturally is almost the diametrical opposite of the judaic culturally and to use a Lincoln metaphor a nation divided *culturally cannot stand.  It’s the age old cultural battle: xianity (X is Greek for Christ) is essentially Athens & the judaic is essentially Jerusalem.  Jews celebrate Hanukkah every year which is celebration of the defeat of the greek; while at the same time of year we are celebrating the beginning of the reign of the Prince of Peace as being the law, and the word or logos made flesh (plato) and that life is always an occasion (not just on Sunday) for indebtedness & responsibility (aristotle).

The real hubris in my opinion is in ‘believing’ that one’s culture or in effect religion can accommodate even the other religions that are its opposite or eneimies.

At least we *know that is not possible.

Perhaps it is a self-defeating hubris as well though to take it all farther than that as a pet-peeve into demanding some sort of absolute racial purity.  Especially since that perhaps imbalanced perspective at this stage of history may only be a losing cause.

In other words why sacrifice the possible on the altar of the impossible?  If you demand that as a part of your own conceptual level (culture) isn’t it possible then that you too are not within the christian or xian culture?  And, what is it that you ‘gain’ by it, other than some kind of highly personal satisfaction?