The pagan and Christian West has a long tradition of hospitality toward strangers - a sentiment apparent in both the Odyssey and New Testament, as well as numerous other writings.  This Christian sentiment, however, recently has been exploited by managerial elites, turning a code that largely dealt with guests and traders into a carte blanche acceptance of mass immigration.  One need only look at yesterday’s news to find an example:  the Senate testimony of Rev. Leith Anderson, head of the National Association of Evangelicals.  He argues:

We [Christians] believe that undocumented immigrants who have otherwise been law abiding members of our communities should be offered the opportunity to pay any taxes or penalties owed, and over time earn the right to become U.S. citizens and permanent  residents. The process of redemption and restitution is core to Christian beliefs, as we were all once lost and redeemed through love of Jesus Christ.

Since when do redemption and restitution have anything to do with mass immigration?  With religious leaders like Rev. Anderson, the West will be in for a real treat.

Richard is correct about the future prospects of gold, but this raises an interesting point.  As the demand for gold increases, what about the supply?  As these two charts demonstrate, the demand for gold exceeds current supplies.

Despite this gap, gold mining operations were not immune from the 2008 crash.  For instance, American Century’s Global Gold, investing in gold mining operations around the world, dropped from $26.03 to $8.89 a share, while the price of gold continued to rise.  Regardless, Global Gold has climbed back up to $20, and even more impressive is the recent action among Canadian junior miners.  Gold stores that were unprofitable to mine when gold was $700 an ounce are now attracting major investment, which reminds one of the last major surge in gold mining: 1975 - 1980.  Attempting to pump up enthusiasm for the mining sector, Lorimer Wilson recently wrote:

Back in the mid- to late 1970’s, as gold went up from its 1972 low of $60 to $850 in 1980 (and silver to $50), gold and silver stocks realized absolutely amazing gains:

Lion Mines – 1975 price: $0.07 / 1980 price: $380 i.e. an increase of 542,757%.
Azure Resources - 1975 price: $.05 / 1980 price: $109 i.e. an increase of 217,900%.
Wharf Resources - 1975 price: $.40 / 1980 price: $560 i.e. an increase of 139,000%.
Mineral Resources - 1975 price: $.60 / 1980 price: $415 i.e. an increase of 69,067%.
Steep Rock - 1975 price: $.93 / 1980 price: $440 i.e. an increase of 47,212%.
Bankeno - 1975 price: $1.25 / 1980 price: $430 i.e. an increase of 34,300%.

Will we see another such surge in mining to accommodate the growing demand for gold?

Although I am fond of Mark Hackard’s pieces on Russia, he seems to cast our pre-Christian ancestors into darker recesses of Hades than did Dante (who found much to value in his pagan predecessors).  Although concepts like amor fati and a fallen world play important roles in understanding pagan religions, their abstract nature obscures the concreteness of the spiritual lives the pagans lived.  Although heroic themes are central to epics, the daily lives of pagans would have been replete with more mundane deities and ancestral obligations.  Their world was animated by a tapestry of spirits interwoven with their own family histories.  For the 19th-century Breton Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, author of Ancient City, the pagan religions were largely ancestral where procreation played a central role in passing along these generational obligations.  In short, familial and ancestral duties were everything - exemplified by Aeneas saving his family and ancestral gods from burning Troy.  In this sense, pagan religion is not only about a set of ideas, but blood.  Their gods were their ancestors, both in the immediate domain of gods like the lares and in the removed sphere of lineages traced back to major gods (e.g. Romans tracing their lines to Aeneas to Venus, or Germans tracing their lineages to the Vǫlsungs to Odin).  And it is one’s duty not to let the family line, interwoven with the gods, die out.  It’s no coincidence that maritare in Latin means both “to wed” and “to procreate.” Preserving the tribe meant everything.

Regarding this debate at TakiMag, it’s noteworthy that everyone is in agreement about the pitiful state of Christianity today.  The religion that gave us Chartres Cathedral and Bach today produces:  strip-mall Christian bands singing classics like “Jesus Rocks”; a Jacobin pro-life movement denouncing abortion as racist and a violation of universal human rights; religious leaders from all political persuasions arguing that it’s our Christian duty to accept mass immigration from the Third World; and liturgies espousing the universal brotherhood of man.

I suppose the real debate is an academic one:  Has Christianity had these tendencies from the beginning (as argued by Alain de Benoist) or are they perversions of the Enlightenment (as argued by Thomas Fleming in the Morality of Everyday Life)?  I tend to side with the latter, but wonder whether these transformations can be undone.

Regardless, the future appears bleak; Richard is correct that Christianity’s real growth will be in the “global south,” and this future will not be Western in any meaningful sense of the word.  I’m reminded of a recent canonization in Mexico where “dancers dressed in feathered Aztec costumes shook rattles and blew into conch shells” and priests “read from the Bible in Spanish and in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs”; or the recent phenomenon in Brazil of removing European traditions from Christianity and replacing them with African or Amerindian ones.

Regarding Richard’s recent comment, I’d like to address a couple points.  Richard claims to find a contradiction in my view that liberty is an abstract concept from the Enlightenment and that it can have influence today.  (For the record, I never said it’s a “phantom of some philosophe’s imagination”; in fact, it was popularized by numerous figures.)  I see no contradiction here.  There are other abstract ideas created by Enlightenment thinkers that still have enormous influence today, e.g. equality.  And since we are still by and large operating under the paradigm of Enlightenment thought, it is unsurprising that the concept of liberty has the influence it does today.

Richard also claims that this past year “dreaded ‘globalization’ has been dramatically reversing.”  I must have missed something.  Obama has not only pledged to keep NAFTA and other trade agreements in place, but he has recently hinted at a sweeping amnesty.  I suppose it all depends how one defines “globalism,” but I see as its three basic elements free trade, immigration, and interventionism - all three of which Obama supports.

The intent of my post was to question whether “liberty” should be the highest good in political discourse.  Given that primary threat to European countries today is hostile immigration and the dissolution of historic European nations, “liberty,” I think, would rank low on my list of concerns.  And, besides, what is more likely to restrict liberty in European countries:  right-wing political parties or Sharia law?  Given the dire threat European countries now face, survival should trump an abstract appeal to liberty.

Regarding trade, Justin infers that “super-protectionists” are “national socialists.”  This, in fact, is a legerdemain often used by neoconservatives to silence anyone in the conservative movement opposing free trade.  They typically claim that free trade is essentially conservative, while only Old Labor or National Socialists would oppose it.  (I have heard Rush Limbaugh peddle similar myths.)  This line of critique overlooks the historical reality.  By and large, many, if not most, of nineteenth-century rightists in Europe were quite skeptical of free trade, and it was those on the left who supported it.  As noted by others on this site, it was in fact Karl Marx who said: 

”[T] he protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.”

And, as Tom Piatak has pointed out, Frédéric Bastiat, nineteenth-century liberal critic of protectionism,  praised free trade as the “peaceful, ecumenical, and indissoluble union of the peoples of the world.”  Hardly sounds conservative to me.

Finally, regarding the J. Enoch Powell quote, when Powell said he would fight for a communist U.K., I assume he meant that although governments are transient, the U.K. is a real historical nation, and that he would be fighting for the preservation of his extended family, the English tribe, and not for the continuity of communism.  The same cannot be said for the United States today - which no longer is a real nation, but an ideological empire.  So, as the U.S. continues its descent into “pomo socialism,” I might consider joining Richard in finding the nearest exit.

Justin Raimondo fears recent right-wing phenomena in the U.K. might be a “threat to liberty.”  And?  I can think of many things I value more than liberty:  family, extended family, tradition, my ancestral duties, the survival of the West—to name but a few.  And I must ask myself:  what has this idea of liberty, a liberal abstraction from the Enlightenment (unlike liberalis in the classical sense meaning non-slave), brought us? Hedonism and reality TV?

Aristotle said that man is a “political animal,” meaning that man is fundamentally social; he must live in groups.  The Greek denoting the individual, one unconstrained by the public, is an idios, whence we derive the word ‘idiot’.  One man’s poison is another man’s profit.  And for those of us defending the traditional West, “liberty” should be a mere abstraction, a distraction from the more important matter at hand:  the actual people and their shared ancestral traditions.  As J. Enoch Powell once said to Margaret Thatcher regarding her lofty defense of abstract principles:  “No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.”

Update:  Read More.

In response to Razib Khan’s recent post, it should be noted the traditional notion of a nation is prior to the state.  As the Latin nasci suggests,  the word ‘nation’ implies link by blood.  Members of a traditional nation believe they are ancestrally related.

Discussing the traditional concept of a nation, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote some years ago:

“To be a nation, a people must believe they are a nation and that they share a common ancestry, history, and destiny.”

In recent years, however, this definition has become blurred.  People now use ‘nation’ where the word ‘state’ would be more apt.  (A state can consist of various nations.)  Adding to this confusion is the notion of nationalism.  Although a creation of the 19th century, nationalism is related to the ancient concept of the natio, but has taken on an ideological connotation.  In essence, there are two visions of nationalism:

(1) A traditional understanding of nationalism as it relates to the ancient concept of the natio -  the respect and admiration of one’s own nation, but the realization that it cannot, because it is ancestrally limited, be imposed upon others.

And its modern perversion:

(2) Ideological nationalism, the worship of the abstract state, and the drive to impose this ideology upon others.

If so, you should check out the Greater Kansas City Paleoconservative Happy Hour.

Regarding Richard’s insightful post on the fact that Darwinism is hardly friendly to Leftist ideology, I too am often disappointed that pundits on the pseudo-Right seek to undermine an insight that could strengthen their alleged worldview.  It’s no surprise that lurking below Intelligent Design there is an appeal to a form of universalism (and all its attendant condemnations), not unlike pro-life activists invoking civil-rights rhetoric and modern Christians championing universal human rights. 

In “Darwisnism and the Right,” John O. McGinnis makes a few interesting observations regarding the Darwinian picture of man:

1. Self-Interest and Politics. Like all other animals, our species has been shaped by millions of years of natural selection. Natural selection works through genetic inheritance and variation. Genes for many physical and behavioral traits are inheritable; such genes may also be variable within the population of animals of the same species. Because of recombination and mutation, animals within the same species differ in their genetic makeup. Some inherited traits will enable some individual animals to leave more offspring than others. Genes for such traits then increase in the population of the species.

2. Kin Selection. We have evolved an emotional life in which we have a tendency to take an abiding interest in the welfare of our kin, because they share a substantial proportion of our genes. Because children represent a parent’s genetic future, the parent - child bond has the potential to be particularly close. Thus, as conservatives have argued for centuries, the family is a natural unit of society, and family affections are not mere social constructs but are deeply rooted in our behavior and psyche. Policies that strengthen the family provide a reliable and lasting form of social insurance. 

3. Sexual Differences. A government that is careful to preserve rather than dissolve family ties is important for other biological reasons. Evolutionary biology predicts that men and women will have different degrees of attachment to their family. Because women are limited in the potential number of their offspring, they are naturally more child-centered in their affections. Men by contrast can have a huge number of children, and thus their relations with any particular child tend to be inherently less secure. Men do provide more care for their progeny than males in most other mammalian species because human infants face a lengthy period of helplessness and fare much better with substantial paternal investment of time and effort in their upbringing. Yet fathers are more likely than mothers to resent and avoid obligations that may deprive them of other mating opportunities. Men are innately more aggressive and obsessed with status than women for similar reasons: because of their low-cost role in sexual reproduction they have far more scope for converting resources and status into the creation of children.

6. Natural Inequality. Darwinism confirms the view that individuals have inherently unequal abilities and that these inequalities are likely to be greatest in the personality traits, such as intelligence and ambition, that are related to acquiring property. In On the Origin of Species Darwin himself formulated this law about natural variation: ``A part developed in any extraordinary degree or manner, in comparison with the same part in allied species, tends to be highly variable.’’ When a species breaks into a part of the design space of the world previously unexploited, enormous selective pressure develops in the genes of that species to make ever more effective use of this virgin territory. For instance, the beaks of Darwin’s species of finches are highly variable since these finches were able to exploit a large variety of previously inaccessible seeds on the Galapagos Islands. Likewise, since human beings have brains whose cognitive aspects are developed to an extraordinary degree compared to those of other animals, one would expect the human brain’s inheritable capacity to be highly variable. This theory is confirmed by recent studies suggesting that measurable personality traits are to a large degree inherited rather than shaped by the environment—and that intelligence is the trait most conserved through generations.

Natural inequality has implications for both the ideological and the structural content of politics. On the level of political philosophy, it undermines the basic premise of liberal egalitarianism: that it is possible to equalize outcomes by eliminating inequality in social circumstances. The engine of inequality is buried so deep in human nature that it is impossible to eradicate. Indeed, as Richard Herrnstein showed, equalizing social circumstances will mean that the inequality in outcomes will become dictated in greater measure by genetic inheritance.

One might add that kin selection can be extended to demonstrate that people will generally favor those with whom they share more genetic information (i.e. those of the same ethnic group), water which Richard Dawkins fears to tread; and regarding evolutionary theory providing insight into the family and gender roles, Thomas Fleming’s Politics of Human Nature proves invaluable.

Update: Another interesting aspect of evolutionary thought is how it compliments the classical notion of the ancestral.  In a very general sense, both emphasize the importance of one’s forebearers and the significance of past lives regarding those of the present.  For example, as I have written elsewhere, classical natural law is not based in any abstract set of ideas but, although equated with the mind of God, is manifest in the mos maiorum, in one’s ancestral traditions, customs that have been passed on through blood and progeny.  These time-tested customs, which have assured one’s survival hitherto, act as survival signposts to assist in the continuity of an individual and those sharing his extended pool of ancestors.

Richard makes some valuable points regarding my previous post on Obama supporting free trade.  Obamanomics may well be the biggest spending spree in American history, and will probably do little to alleviate our troubles.  It will most likely amount to bread and circuses to appease Obama’s constituents.  As Pat Buchanan recently wrote:

But does it make sense to include in a plan to prepare America for the 21st century borrowing billions from Beijing to mail out in $500 checks to folks who don’t pay income taxes, so they can run down to Wal-Mart and buy more goods made in China?

While Obama has proven not to be a protectionist, he probably does not support free trade because he believes it to be necessarily good for America.  To the contrary, as his recent quote suggests, he probably thinks it is the duty of the First World to support free trade.  I suspect his reasoning is not far from Paul Krugman’s, cheerleader for free trade at the New York Times.  As discussed by J.G. Collings, Krugman made an extraordinary confession a couple years ago.  Krugman admitted that global free trade has indeed depressed the wages of American workers and the cheap imports don’t make up the difference.  Yet, Krugman still champions free trade.  His reasoning?  Collins writes:

[Krugman is] concerned about the economies of countries where goods are produced.  Krugman foresees a catastrophe if the United States and Europe close off access to cheap imports.  “Where would that leave Bangladesh?... Where would that leave India?  Where would that leave Mexico?”  The hand-wringing doesn’t extend, apparently, to that 50-something father of four on the Chrysler assembly line who just got a pink slip…..

In a transnational economy that is permeated with open trade, wages spiral ever downward because of virtually unlimited supply of laborers from poor countries who accept lower wages for their work….

Krugman’s concern about the dire state of the economies of the Third World betrays a sort of imperialistic arrogance.  He acts as of there is some white man’s burden to sustain the economies of lesser-developed nations by purchasing their goods or, as is more often the case, manufacturing goods in the Third World for Western consumption.

This “moralist” support for global trade, as Collins suggests, is a product of empire, and probably is not far from the reasoning of many who support mass immigration and interventionism.  In fact, I think it’s debatable whether the three can be separated.

Such “humanitarianism” begs the question why cannot the United States act like other, non-ideological nations?  What is wrong with returning to America’s long-standing tradition of tariffs and acting in its own interest?  Buchanan wrote last year:

In today’s world, America faces nationalistic trade rivals who manipulate currencies, employ nontariff barriers, subsidize their manufacturers, rebate value-added taxes on exports to us and impose value-added taxes on imports from us, all to capture our markets and kill our great companies.

It seems to me that many free-trade advocates are asking Americans to show up to a gun fight with knives.  One must ask:  cui bono?

During the primaries and presidential debates some unfortunate souls might have been under the impression that Barack Obama was against free trade.  On the campaign trail, he often repeated talking points such as “we can’t keep passing unfair trade deals like NAFTA that put special interests over workers’ interests.”  He also hinted at overhauling NAFTA.

Astute observers of his campaign, however, realized this to be posturing.  While Obama was on the trail attacking trade, his aids were assuring the rest of the world that Obama was in fact a free trader and the rhetoric was mere “political positioning.”  And if that was not enough, his appointment of Rahm Emanuel (Bill Clinton’s “Rahmbo” who rammed NAFTA through Congress) as Chief of Staff should have been a good indication of what policy he favored.

If anyone is still uncertain where Obama stands on trade, this week’s actions should dispel any hope of a saner trade policy.  In response to the “Buy American” language in the economic stimulus bill, Obama now sings the necessity of free trade:

“I think it would be a mistake ... at a time when worldwide trade is declining for us to start sending a message that somehow we’re just looking after ourselves and not concerned with world trade….”

And for the icing on the cake, Obama has recently appointed offshoring supporters Sen. Judd Gregg and Diana Farrell to administration posts.  Farrell, former director of McKinsey Global Institute, oversaw research arguing that offshore outsourcing brings “substantial benefits” to the U.S. (Both Gregg and Farrell also support massive increases in H1B visas—tying trade policy to immigration.)

Should we be surprised? Considering that Obama has half-siblings around the globe and lists Thomas Friedman as a favorite author, should we really expect him not to be a globalist?