The Sniper's Tower
Before anyone jumps to conclusions: No, I’m not endorsing McCain (I’m voting third party), nor am I pulling some GOP ”what about the judges” ruse, nor am I even saying that McCain is the lesser of two evils. What I wish to address are the strategic arguments in favor of an Obama victory.
The weaker argument, which I’ll keep brief, runs as follows: anti-war libertarians have argued that Obama will end the war in Iraq–and this above all is the determining issue. There remains, however, no indication that he will end it, and if he does, Obama’s likely to launch more fashionable wars elsewhere (e.g. Darfur). Furthermore, Obama is just as bad as McCain on immigration and trade, and to boot seems to harbor an animosity towards working-class white Americans.
The stronger argument, advocated by some paleoconservatives (myself included), runs as follows: A McCain victory will be the end of conservatism. But an Obama presidency will be so bad it will spark a healthy right-wing reaction.
This stronger account seems more plausible, I supported it for a while, but the more I think about it, the more holes I find.
First, the media will interpret an Obama victory as a general mandate for post-Marxist liberalism, which will push the political spectrum even farther to the left. One will have even more ground to back-peddle in 2012.
Second, an Obama victory will fuel the neocon media outlets, which could result in the election of another (albeit less ideological) neocon in 2012 (perhaps someone in the mold of Romney). In other words, an Obama victory will not necessarily discredit neoconservatism, but could only ensure its return (perhaps in a modified form) in 2012. Sadly, things may have to become worse for neoconservatism to be discredited. It may take yet another incompetent GOP administration finally to convince your average conservative Americans that the neocons are not their allies. They trusted for a while that Bush was one of their own (until immigration reform came along); but with McCain there will be no illusions. Instead of the AM radio talking heads attacking Obama, they will be compelled, by listeners, to assail McCain.
Third, McCain probably will not serve a second term, which will leave the GOP nomination open in 2012 (depending on who his VP is).
Fourth, a humiliating defeat for Obama could give leverage to an anti-globalist moderate seeking the Democratic nomination in 2012, perhaps someone in the mold of Lou Dobbs. (This is highly unlikely, but one can hope.)
Fifth, although America is in precipitous decline (especially in terms of her economy), what the United States does still has symbolic value around the world, especially in the West, and having a multicultural, untethered president like Obama could “send the wrong message.” Is it inconsequential that almost every Anglo or European conservative I know fears an Obama presidency just as much as, if not more than, a McCain one?
Finally, make no mistake about it, Obama is a radical leftist. He will establish a PC regime in DC (or rather, expand the existing one) in search of the dragons of inequality and social injustice to slay. (Justin Raimondo and Caleb Stegall may finally get their purging from institutions in the small but remaining pockets of anti-egalitarian, politically incorrect thought.) A few years from now, commenters might be posting at TakiMag about the good old days of the ADL, SPLC, and Waco. (Not that McCain is any better in this respect, but at least his dragons reside overseas.)
Come on, is Obama really any better than McCain? Or are they both, as Buchanan would say, “two wings of the same bird of prey”?
I am at the Constitution Party’s national convention held this week in Kansas City, where only moments ago the delegates voted, and with promising results. First, the delegates prevented the Straussian neocon Alan Keyes and his supporters from taking over the party. Second, they overwhelmingly elected, in light of the fact that no stronger candidate stepped forward, Chuck Baldwin as their presidential nominee. (The VP nominee, who hopefully will not be Alan Keyes, will be nominated this afternoon.)
Now that Ron Paul is effectively out of the race, there may again be a candidate for paleoconservatives (notwithstanding Gottfried’s obituary) to support. For those of you unfamiliar with Baldwin, he’s a pastor at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, former activist in the Moral Majority (who since has repudiated the Religious Right’s groveling for crumbs before the GOP), a radio personality, and a columnist, whose pieces regularly appear at VDare and numerous other sites. He is sound on immigration, sound on trade, and sound on the war.
Unless another, more electable third-party candidate steps forward (like Lou Dobbs), Baldwin may be one’s best bet for two reasons. First, voting for a minor third-party candidate sends a better message than abstaining or voting for a Leftist like Barack Obama (who’s hostile towards working-class Anglo-European Americans, wrong on immigration, dishonest about trade, and probably will start a war in Darfur), which would be interpreted as a general shift of the “conservative” electorate to the multicultural Left. Second, as Chilton Williamson Jr. argues in his recent article “Time for a Multi-Party System,” there could be long-term gains (such as a “multiplicity of parties, representing a multiplicity of interests") in abandoning the two major parties, which have become a “broad and contradictory coalition of factions.” (Better said than done, but a sizeable defection is a start.)
Some anti-war libertarians have expressed support for Bob Barr, former representative from Georgia, but, like Jim Webb, he seems to have drifted to the Left on immigration. Although previously sound on the issue (ABI gives him a career grade of A+), on Neal Boortz recently, Barr peddled the same propaganda as Barack Obama or John McCain: “I think as a practical matter, that makes a lot of sense [amnesty]. I’m not sure how you would go about rounding up millions of people and trying to deport them.” (Ever hear of attrition or incentives to self-deport?)
With the sorry pool of candidates this year (and with those from the two major parties differing from each other in no substantial way), Chuck Baldwin may be the lone beacon of light on an otherwise dark horizon.
While I often agree with what Grant Havers has to say, I must take exception to this recent article on neopaganism, especially with regard to his remarks on Leo Strauss.
While I am no neopagan (nor even a paleopagan) the pagan observation that post-Enlightenment Christianity (Protestantism and Catholicism) has become infected with egalitarianism or “universal human rights” ideology remains valid. In fact, paleoconservatives have argued the same. But whereas neopagans have abandoned Christianity because of these liberal manifestations, paleoconservatives have tried to steer Christianity back towards its more traditional moorings. (Vide: Thomas Fleming’s Morality of Everyday Life)
Regarding Strauss, it is stretching it to say he shared significant characteristics with the neopagans. His life’s work involved the revisionist project of reading modern values into ancient texts, i.e. of wallpapering over the real West with liberal abstractions. The Greeks and Romans, very tribal and superstitious people, Strauss rewrites as classical liberals guided by “natural right.” N.B. that for writers like Cicero the basis of morality was not some abstraction, but rather the concrete mos maiorum, the tradition of his ancestors. So, in their revisionist projects, the real enemy for the neocons is (as Claes G. Ryn has noted) “the ancestral.”
Furthermore, Leo Strauss was either an atheist or an agnostic. And hostility towards Christianity alone does not a pagan make. Actual pagans were very religious people. Take a look at E.R. Dodds’ The Greeks and the Irrational, or investigate some of the mystery cults of ancient Greece and Rome, or the religious practices of pagan Germanic and Nordic tribes. These people were “religious” in the traditional sense, in the sense of the Latin “religio” of a “binding” in a tribal and local sense.
The typical MO of Strauss (and his followers) is to drag out the bogeyman of historicism/relativism and then invoke liberal universals (from “natural right") to combat these Quixotic threats. The perceived problem and solution places Strauss and the neocons, I believe, antithetical to any traditional understanding of paganism.
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