That patriotism did not demand “white power,” but it did not presume to permit “black power” either...

That’s exactly what many so-called “white nationalists” want to return to: a time when white interests were implicitly assumed, and when necessary explicitly stated, as part of an overall patriotism.  Loyalty to the country (white, black, and other) and loyalty to one’s fellow whites are not mutually exclusive.  Yes there are separatists (and worse), but a lot of people in the “white nationalist” camp would endorse the above article.

McBrown, prejudice is absolutely necessary for any kind of decision-making.  So is generalization.  You see a crowd.  Your thoughts on their clothes, demeanor, age, race, sex, and overall outward appearance are how you judge if you’re in danger, if you should run away, if you should move into their neighborhood. Such prejudice is even better when it’s buttressed here as it is by statistically backed understanding of group trends, which is what we’re talking about. In other words, statistics can confirm, modify, or refute some common-sense heuristic.  It might surprised liberals prejudiced in favor of tabula rasa to learn how different we are!!! 

But long-established prejudice in general is a good thing, and conservatives should know better than to demand individualized assessements when they are impossible or counter-productive.  Consider Edmund Burke’s words on the subject:

I am bold enough to confess that we are generally men of untaught feelings, that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

One of the most transparent fascist tactics--literally--is the exhortation to quit thinking and start doing, as if action always is better than clear thinking, or as if thinking and articulating thoughts in a democratic regime ruled by opinion is not itself an important species of action. Consider the old Nazi invocation “Deustchland Erwache” as if the program counseled by this party were so obvious and beyond criticism the only thing needed was “waking up.”

It’s true, there’s a time to do things, to put down the pen and take up the sword or the shovel as need be. But we won’t fix the liberal rot until we begin to change minds and stop the demographic bleeding. That change must occur chiefly on the right. And then that changed mind must be applied to built a politcial coalition around those parts of the rightist program that are reasonably popular, i.e., toughness on crime, nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, opposition to affirmative action and political correctness, hostility to transnational mercantalist machinations, etc.

Teu,

Can you explain what, precisely, you advocate be done immediately to address the state of our nation and culture?  I’m not trying to be argumentative - I’d honestly like to know what you have in mind in criticizing Christopher Roach here.

I’m very reluctant to use the F-Word but that appeal to raw passion and authenticity always gets my wheels turning.  What can I say, I thought Alan Bloom made sense on this particular.

Charity is not just a government thing, mind you.  And the government has other interactions where charity coupled with good sense matter.  Consider generic law enforcement against common law crimes.

McBrown, in deciding whether to stop a car and investigate the driver in a world where pretty much everyone is guilty of a minor traffic infraction, do you think it’s acceptable for the police to use racial profiling?  After all, we know white and black people both rob and kill.  Even wealthy white people like Robert Blake do this.  But does the fact that the cop sees a black guy with corn rows in an ‘82 Cutlass in a nice white suburb matter in predicting who is *more likely* to be up to no good?  And, if so, does this non-welfare-state application of street-knowledge offend your abstract ideal of good government?

Charity just means you care about the people involved. It doesn’t mean I’m endorsing the welfare state, which I’m not.

I like this post better than mine. Thank you, Mr. Roach.

“But does the fact that the cop sees a black guy with corn rows in an ‘82 Cutlass in a nice white suburb matter in predicting who is *more likely* to be up to no good?”

Heck, if I were the cop, I would pull him over just to chat him up about his fine taste
in automobiles.  I am glad that my father (a true “Oldsmobile man” in the sense those words
are used in the movie “A Christmas Story") passed away before the Oldsmobile was
discontinued.  We had a blue 1978 Delta 88 Royale.  Beautiful—I just saw one on the
street the other day and couldn’t keep my eyes off it.  Anyway, back to “serious”
comments on more important topics . . .

I have a soft spot for Detroit Steel myself.  I love old Cutlasses, Monte Carlos, and Regals.  But, it’s not for nothing my girlfriend calls them ghetto cars and begs me not to buy one. There are some great deals to be had out there.

You’re a good man, Mr. Roach.  The dialogue between you, Paul Gottfried, John Zmirak,
and Evan McLaren is the best I have seen on this blog yet.  Balanced and courteous and
meaty without being bland and boring.

McBrown I don’t like to see people fail, whether in hurting themselves or others.  Incidentally, Russell Kirk wrote an essay in Modern Age about 20 years ago about how the death penalty itself can be a form of charity, as a kind of deliverance from living with one’s disordered soul.  Have you ever read it?

Surely you don’t think just punishment and police harassment of criminals is bad for society--black and white--do you? Is this what conservatism has come to?

I asked questions so you could clarify the boundaries of your position.  This is a normal debate technique.  I offered that scenario as what to me is a bloody plain one of where I want and find acceptable police investigations rooted in stereotypes about cars, hair styles, race, age, sex, and the like.

I didn’t say you said anything.  You can answer or clarify as you wish.

Incidentally, willful blindness to reality and demands for proof in cases of the obvious is a kind of intellectual dishonesty too.

Thank you, Mr. Roach, for finding a prudent middle ground. Realism grounded in Christian charity and conservatism--amen to that!

I’d quit worrying about all disparate impact and let things sort themselves out.

PS You’ve now accused me and Tom Piatak of intellectual dishonesty.  If you said that to my face, I’d punch you in the mouth.  Please talk like an educated and decent person, even if you’re not.

Oh yea, taxes are too high, the government spends too much, blah blah blah.

The problem is our country is being turned into a third world country. It will soon have a president fathered by a third world polygamist and birthed by a mother that seems to have literally hated her own kind and her own country.

You know, <s>Auster</s> (turn away John) Amren, just linked to a 1958 article about ‘Negro’ crime.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,810262-1,00.html

1958, let’s see. Wasn’t that when we were all patriots, didn’t have abortions, sang from the same sheet of music? Wasn’t that before multiculty and ‘the Sixties’ and Vatican II and ‘the Pill’ and Vietnam and Feminism and the 68ers and whatever else you guys want to blame for the problems of our country (exception, the managerial society was well underway by then).

And yet there it is, Negro Crime. We knew what to do then, (we’ll I wasn’t around, but my folks did). Move away, and to keep ‘It” away restrictions and covenants.

Did this hurt the decent black person’s feelings. Maybe, but others just went out and created their own communiites (read Zora Neal Hurston).

Meanwhile, a white kid bleeds out on the streets of London, stuck by guess who… Of course, those blacks were supposed to be different, Caribbean, civilized, nice accents, hard-working. The African Americans were only beastly because of segregation and racism and ...

You guys need to get real...or maybe you should change your tag to ‘Midget Sized Doormat’

“A Christmas Story”

whose directed was killed by one of our visitors from the South, no doubt Zmirak would have got along swimmingly with him, obviously Catholic and really liked beer.

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/04/06/bob-clarks-dui-killer-illegal-immigrant-will-be-deported-to-m/

Amen, Chris. There’s still hope for you yet.

I apologize unreservedly for the doormat remark. Got a little too carried away.

Good piece.

The following statement by Christopher Roach is a fascinating example of the acceptance of a category of discourse otherwise called a straw man.

“White nationalism, as opposed to historic American patriotism, however, is often uncharitable, ahistorical, and unnecessary. It conceives of blacks as the enemy.  It seeks to recreate America on the basis of a single unifying abstract principle, just as mass immigration seeks to recreate the historical America on the basis of an ahistorical universalist principle that prevents any recognition of our historical biracial, unicultural heritage.”

The uncritical acceptance of the nebulous term, white nationalism, for deconstruction purposes is simply a way to seek to discredit an amorphous movement that might be characterized more exactly as a growth in white awareness as opposed to American awareness. That’s pretty much a minimalist summary of what is going on. As I recall, it was Professor Paul Gottfried a few days ago who postulated the term “white nationalism” as a category of discourse that eliminated any discussion about the extraordinary variety of responses to the new wave of multiculturalism sweeping like a tsunami over the American landscape.

The new white awareness is not necessarily based on anti-black or anti-Jewish sentiment. It can be defensive (anti-defamation) or aggressive (anti-black, anti-bronze). It can even be what it should be, that is, about the diverse white American peoples, their flaws, their goals, their diversities, their histories, and their cultures. It doesn’t even have to be about nationalism, globalism, Europe, or Christianity.

To sum up this richly-textured variety of responses into labels about charity, historicism, and necessity, and claims of a uniform hostility toward black Americans is a remarkably shallow analysis. And there is no such thing as an “ahistorical universalist principle” involved in all this new white consciousness. If there were, it would be named and I note that it is not.

And by the way, American has never had a unicultural heritage...there have always been challenges to the hegemony of the classist whites who derided their cousins as rednecks and hillbillies (even at the ahistorical TakiMag), and who willingly sacrificed white lives for others’ freedoms. In that sense, the paleos look like the neocons who indulge similar hatreds toward the lower incomed and lesser educated diverse white American peoples.

Stanley, I’ll concede self-identified white nationalists exist on a continuum and that any statement by me or anyone risks over-generalization. I’ll also concede that a great number have something interesting to say. 

That said, based on my reading of them over the years, most seem to embrace an essentialist and racially determinist principle that seems exagerrated to me, most deny any oligation or possibility of rapporachment between whites and blacks (with the exception of Lawrence Auster and his ilk based on some self-conscious majority rights feeling by whites), the appreciation of those universalist or at least welcoming and less ethnonationalsit ties in our national consciousness going back to our Founding are often downplayed or ignored, and many WNs have no sense of “white man’s burden” as the proper domestic response to our minority citizens’ faults and failings, whereas, as a Christian who recognizes blacks as my countrymen, I do, even as I recognize our differences . . . indeed, because I recognize those differences.  I believe we should not be afraid to punish antisocial behavior, but we shouldn’t let a lack of economic or behavioral parity be seen as a major indictment.  I’m from the Steve Sailer “citizenist” view of things.

Liberalism is prejudice.  Liberalism is deep seated prejudice.  Liberalism is prejudice that has become hate.