On this solemn day, when we honor both the veterans and their fallen comrades who risked their lives to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe 65 years ago, I recall what is arguably the greatest speech ever given in honor of this noble campaign.  On June 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan eloquently praised, at Pointe Du Hoc in Normandy, the bravery and sacrifice of the Allied armies who participated in the great D-Day campaign that eventually brought down the Third Reich.
The fact that Reagan praised the “unsurpassed courage” of Canadian soldiers “who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast” (a reference to the massive loss of Canadian life at Dieppe in 1942) particularly resonates with Canadians who often feel that their contribution to World War 2 has been ignored.  The president was unstinting in his celebration of the courageous Canadians who stormed Juno Beach on June 6, 1944:  “They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.”  Indeed the Canadian troops gained more ground that day than the other Allied armies.  I must admit to feeling a great burst of pride over this ennobling rhetoric, since my father was a Spitfire pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the entire D-Day campaign, dueling with the Luftwaffe and flying escort for British and American bombers.  All Canadian veterans—my late father included—heartily appreciated Reagan’s praise. 

The words which Reagan spoke that day to an audience of American Ranger veterans were worthy of a Churchill: 

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge—and pray God we have not lost it—that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

Yet Reagan also wisely and soberly reminded his audience that the victory over Hitler, while wholly justified, had some bitter consequences for millions who had thrown off one bloody dictatorship only to suffer the grinding terror of another.  One price of this victory was the expansion of Soviet tyranny into central and eastern Europe: 

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. The Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

Nevertheless, this tragic outcome in the East did not deter Reagan from celebrating the overall justice of the cause, nor did he fail to praise the magnificent and decisive contribution which the Russian people had made (at a cost of 20 million dead) in fighting Hitler’s war machine. 

This 65th anniversary of D-Day may well be the last in which the remaining few veterans of that battle can participate, as the merciless passage of time eventually takes these courageous souls to rest with their fallen comrades.  Very soon we will be deprived of these living witnesses to battle and liberation; no film footage or declassified document can ever replace these flesh and blood men of courage and nobility.  In an age when diabolical revisionism is already at work questioning the basic facts of this war and the Holocaust, we must appreciate these precious few all the more.  Let us hope that the present generation can hold on to this glorious historical memory, one that may soon no longer enjoy the living testament of battles fought and won, of nations liberated and restored. 

It is commendable that the Southern Avenger has excoriated leftist politicos who have recently vented their outrage over President Obama’s decision to honor the Confederate war dead at Arlington on Memorial Day.  One can decry the evil of slavery and mourn the tragic loss of life that both sides suffered during the bloodiest conflict that ever took place on America’s soil.  Only those who suffer from terminal political correctness could ever spy a moral contradiction here.

I cringe, however, at Mr. Hunter’s attempts to engage in a little “tit for tat” by using a few leftist arguments of his own in order to take the image of the Great Emancipator down a few notches.  (For the record, I don’t believe that the Avenger intends to be a leftist, but his argumentation sounds leftist.)  To be sure, it is understandably tempting to take rhetorical vengeance on those who are determined to simplistically conflate the Confederacy with Nazi Germany (and thus condemn Obama’s decision to honor the Southern dead on that basis).  It simply boggles the mind that Robert E. Lee, a brilliant general and virtuous gentleman, could ever be associated with thuggish psychopaths like Himmler and Goering.  Yet Mr. Hunter’s attempt to associate Lincoln’s legacy with “fascism” and “ethnic cleansing” is reminiscent of post-WW 2 leftists who gleefully attacked America’s most revered leaders—Lincoln included—for fostering an “authoritarian fascist personality” that presumably characterized the great mass of Protestant Americans.  (Anybody who doubts this should read Richard Hofstadter’s polemics against Lincoln and his “Anglo-Saxon” prejudices; Hofstadter was heavily influenced by Theodor Adorno’s paranoid sociological reflections on the American mind.)

In citing with approval Lerone Bennett’s argument that Lincoln’s policy of colonization was comparable to the “ethnic cleansing” that occurred in the Balkans in the 1990s, the Avenger is guilty of fostering absurdities worthy of the Frankfurt School.  Lincoln supported colonization—or the removal of emancipated slaves to distant shores in Africa and Central America where they could forge republics of their own—for two important reasons.  First, he was genuinely worried that these poor souls would not be welcome across the United States even in a post-emancipation era.  The lingering racism of northerner and southerner alike would make the lives of ex-slaves very inhospitable indeed.  In his debate of October 16, 1854 with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln (in what is now known as his Peoria speech) expressed uncertainty over what the fate of newly freed blacks may be.  He doubted that emancipation would herald a new era of racial tolerance anywhere across the nation.  (Sadly, the Reconstruction period and Jim Crow proved him right.)  Second, colonization was justified only if it benefitted both blacks and whites.  In his eulogy on behalf of his mentor (and founder of the Colonization League) Henry Clay in 1852, Lincoln hoped that it would be a “glorious consummation” if ex-slaves could be restored to their ancestral lands with “bright prospects for the future” without having suffered in the process of colonization.  Nevertheless, as he indicated to Senator Douglas two years later, he would never support a version of colonization that would condemn newly freed blacks to suffering and death.  In short, colonization had to be a good thing for both races, or else it would not be justified.  Based on this twofold rationale, Lincoln was no different from black nationalists in the 19th or 20th centuries who also believed that colonization would be preferable to living under bitter prejudice, as long as it was truly voluntary and mutually beneficial.  Given Lincoln’s reasoning, it is outrageous to compare colonization to the forced deportation and planned mass murder that characterized the Holocaust and other genocides of the 20th century.  To say the least, Adolf Eichmann did not lose any sleep over the well-being of European Jews when he planned the logistics of the Final Solution!

The Avenger’s attempt to associate all kinds of statist policies with “fascism” also sounds reminiscent of leftists who suspect all forms of centralized power as a more subtle version of Mussolini and Franco.  (For the record, Hitler’s Nazism is not the same as fascism, since the latter is not necessarily committed to ideologies of racial superiority.)  Is it strictly true that support for a strong federal government makes one a fascist?  Mr. Hunter thinks so:

In declaring secession illegal, and the U.S. a consolidated state, Abraham Lincoln enacted the first income tax, the first draft, supported internal improvements and nationalizing banks. Such centralizing, socialistic and militaristic restructuring of America was certainly more comparable to the fascism that defined Hitler’s Germany than the agrarian-based economies and loose-knit state militias that defined the Confederate States of America.

Now, if the establishment of the income tax, nationalization of banks, and the creation of a national railway system (internal improvements) all make a nation-state fascist, then my Canadian fatherland has been a fascist state since its inception in 1867.  If one follows this “logic”, then Bismarck was clearly the first fascist in Germany’s history (of course, many leftists and neoconservatives enjoy making this sort of claim, in order to “prove” how predisposed Germans are towards fascism).  If we push this logic to an even more absurd conclusion, then we must conclude that Sweden, Switzerland, and Australia have also been fascist for most of their history.  The fact that one can have a strong federal government committed to statist improvement of a population’s well-being may be open to criticism for a variety of reasons, particularly the overall cost of such welfarism to the economy, but to associate any of this with Hitler’s Nazis or European fascism is patent nonsense.  It may surprise leftists, libertarians and neoconservatives alike, who often make identical claims about this interventionist state, but one can criticize statism without conjuring up images of jingoistic parades and jackbooted thugs in the process.  It may also surprise these ideologues that a strong welfare state does not necessarily curb the individual freedoms that are inevitably lost under fascist regimes.  The Britain of the 1960s and 1970s, which experienced the greatest expansion of welfarism in its history, had considerably greater freedom of speech than the UK today, with its enactment of hate speech laws after reducing the power and scope of the welfare state in the 1980s.  The post-Cold War state, with its reduced provisions for social security, is far more intolerant than the social democratic state that preceded it. 

The oft-quoted Orwell deserves the last word about the f-word:  “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.”  Precisely. 

The recent contributions by Professors Gutzman and Kopff on the proper meaning of conservatism naturally raise another related question:  what is the proper meaning of liberalism?  I have always been critical of the attempts of Louis Hartz, Michael Zuckert, Thomas Pangle, and many other prominent American political theorists to describe the great social contract theorists and the Founders as “liberal.”  (For reasons that will hopefully become clear, I sympathize with Professor Kopff’s critique of Professor Gutzman’s overreliance on Hartz.)  What exactly does the “liberalism” of Spinoza, Locke, and Jefferson have to do with the 20th century version associated with the Roosevelts, John Dewey, or Barack Obama?  Since all these figures pay lip service to liberty and equality, is it fair to draw a straight line between Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration and Obama’s The Audacity of Hope?  Is the older liberalism simply the right-wing version of this hallowed tradition, as Louis Hartz’s supporters have argued for over 50 years?

If “liberal” means the pluralistic tolerance of all beliefs in the marketplace of ideas, then the number of liberals in the social contract or founding traditions was exactly zero.  Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke were prepared to be tolerant, yes, as long as the citizenry of their desired regimes (absolute monarchy for Hobbes, limited republicanism for Spinoza and Locke) remained overwhelmingly Protestant in creed.  Universal suffrage was firmly rejected even by the most democratically minded of this tradition; Spinoza, whom Lewis Feuer once dubbed the prophet of “liberalism,” did not believe that women by nature possess with men the equal right to rule.  As Willmoore Kendall argued long ago, Locke’s alleged philosophy of individualism was a mirage when one considers his support for majority Protestant rule in his native England.  The Founders were no more pluralistic in their beliefs, since they usually assumed that “We, the People” would remain broadly Christian in their attitudes to church-state separation, limited government, and the leavening force of biblical morality.  Moreover, Hamilton was decidedly opposed to unlimited freedom for the press, and even that great libertarian Jefferson had an inconsistent record with respect to the toleration of illiberal practices like loyalty oaths and unlawful search and seizure. 

None of the above is meant to be a critique of the great contractarians and Founders for their illiberal beliefs and policies, since they never claimed to be liberals anyway.  There has never been a perfectly “open regime” in history, nor is it likely that today’s “liberals” who favor hate speech laws are about to usher one into the present age.  The point to which I am leading is that what we now call “liberalism” is of recent historical vintage.  Since America’s rise to superpower dominance in the post-WW 2 era, it has become more and more fashionable to downplay the historically and religiously specific roots of American republicanism in order to market an abstract universalism that promotes the “eternal” ideals of liberty and equality.  It just wouldn’t do to teach the world that Abraham Lincoln was a Protestant leader of a Protestant people; instead, the Great Emancipator must be reinvented as the founding father of Americanism, the new global creed which owes nothing to a Christian tradition of faith.  Otherwise, why would Hindus, Moslems, or Sikhs embrace America’s ideals as their own?  The neoconservative Natan Sharansky has followed this ideological rationale by teaching that Lockean democracy is compatible with any traditional faith or identity.  (If anything represents the right-wing version of today’s liberalism, it is neoconservatism!)  Along these lines, Obama happily affirmed in Turkey earlier this year that America was no longer a uniquely Christian nation.  In other words, the republic is now a fully fledged cosmopolitan regime ready to move beyond its parochial past as it preaches republican values to all those millions of proto-Jeffersonians in Afghanistan and the Sudan clamoring for democracy. 

One of Canada’s former Prime Ministers, Jean Chrétien, once observed without irony that the great thing about being a liberal is that you can always change your mind.  He should have added that it is a great thing, at least for today’s liberals, to adulterate the very meaning of history and political philosophy. 

Recommended Reading:  Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard, Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry:  The Deception behind Indigenous Cultural Preservation (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008)

This informative study of the dysfunctional aboriginal leadership in Canada is interesting because it was co-authored by two Marxist scholars, who are getting plenty of flak from their more identitarian leftist comrades (though they have received praise from some rightists like Canadian political scientist Tom Flanagan).  As Paul Gottfried showed in his The Strange Death of Marxism (2005), it is about as rare as hen’s teeth to find a leftist today who is willing to critique the post-Marxist Left for romanticizing the victims of colonial oppression while demonizing as “imperialist” and “genocidal” all that is modern and western in origin. 

The practical upshot of all this is that Canadian taxpayers pay billions of dollars to the reserve system every year, which tragically perpetuates the marginalization of aboriginal peoples.  (Unlike the US reservations, the federal government in Canada still officially manages the affairs of aboriginal peoples on reserves.)  The aboriginal “industry” is indeed a profitable one, at least for a very few.  Widdowson and Howard, who are both trained social scientists, are fearless in using historical materialist methodology to skewer the politically correct ideologies that protect the oligarchic ruling class in control of the “First Nations” (the official term for aboriginal peoples in Canada) and its bureaucratic allies in the federal government.  One example of mystification which these scholars target with relish is the damaging myth that aboriginal peoples ought to repudiate “western” notions of science and democratic governance while maintaining a “traditional” way of life that places power into the hands of a few tribal elders.  If only there were more leftists like them!  Only Eugene Genovese and the late Christopher Lasch come to mind as equally comparable in honesty and insight.

Much as I enjoy reading the thoughtful reflections of Messrs. Gordon and Spencer on Andrew Bacevich’s recent study of the role of oil in American foreign policy, I must admit to a general sympathy with Bacevich’s analysis.  The American control of oil has tended to require a strong military presence in the Middle East at least since 1973, despite David Gordon’s objection to Bacevich’s emphasis on this matter of empire (which I quote as follows): 

Bacevich may deplore ‘conspicuous consumption,’ but his Veblenesque theory does not account for our bellicose foreign policy. If the American economy requires oil, there is no need to use military measures to secure it. Countries with oil have every incentive to trade with us. Hostile countries are no exception.

It seems a bit far-reaching to assume that all countries with oil, friendly or hostile, have an incentive to trade their black gold with America, or at least on terms that American consumers as well as elites could tolerate for long.  The worst possible terms, from an American perspective, would be the unity of Arab nations coupled with total control of the oil supply.  (This unity was nearly attained during the Yom Kippur War of 1973.)  As political scientist Chris Vasillopulos puts it:

If the Arabs could unite sufficiently to use oil as a political weapon, they would be able to shape the Middle East according to their own values and interests. Whether this outcome would follow the model of Islamic republics or secular democracies is not the critical issue for realists. Arab unity and its capacity to politicize oil is [sic] the American nightmare. This is the real weapon of mass destruction in the Middle East. Few observers have understood this reason for America’s support of Israel. This vision of politicized oil has seemed blurred, even to the usually clear-eyed, due to a divergence between Israel and the US regarding the way to prevent Arab unity. Generally speaking, the US has favored political and geographical stability in the region. The first Gulf War was fought to prevent Iraq from becoming a regional hegemon with regard to oil. From this viewpoint, the Bush-Cheney neoconservative invasion of Iraq was a mistake because it destabilized the region. Although realists are sincere in their desire for stability in the Middle East, they do not want stability to result in Arab unity regarding oil policy. To prevent the politicization of oil, these policy makers will risk instability. Hence, they support Israeli aggression and the resistance it provokes to the degree this keeps the Middle East in turmoil.  (Today’s Zaman, January 17, 2009). 

I would only add that there is plenty of evidence that postwar elites in the United States have usually preferred to deal with oil-producing nations whose leaders are at a political disadvantage.  In the case of the Middle East, the local autocrats need the protection of the American military against the forces of Arab unity, whether these are democratic or fundamentalist Islamic in nature.  From an American “realist” perspective, the instability that results from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is partly a bonus, since it stokes the fires of Islamic terrorism throughout the region.  As long as the royals in Saudi Arabia fear the rise of a pan-Arab unity based on radical Islam (which, sad to say, is somewhat more likely than a unity based on liberal democratic aspirations), they are reluctantly willing to support a strong American military presence in the Middle East.  The status quo of staying in power, albeit with the support of American weaponry, seems a tad preferable to decapitation at the hands of vindictive fundamentalist cadres. 

Of course, this scenario is a vicious circle.  The greater the involvement of US soldiers in this region, the greater the likelihood of Islamic terrorism.  Yet the recurrent benefit, at least to the American consumer, is relatively easy access to affordable oil and the indefinite postponement of that nightmarish prospect:  losing control of all that black gold to jihadists who seek to impose a different kind of stability on the Middle East. 

(Please note that I am not offering a moral defense of this foreign policy based on control of Middle Eastern oil; I am only adhering to the “Dragnet” approach to brute empirical fact.) 

It was announced today that Russia has expelled two Canadian diplomats who work for NATO in retaliation for NATO’s expulsion of two Russian envoys accused of spying at the organization’s HQ in Brussels.  While accusations fly back and forth over the rationale behind these dramatic decisions, NATO is going ahead with military exercises in the increasingly unstable ex-Soviet satellite, Georgia.  Russia’s ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin likely sums up his nation’s position on NATO when he caustically describes this organization as one which is “becoming more and more unpredictable…The alliance can’t seem to behave itself in a respectable, stable, and decent way.” 

How distant seem those heady post-Cold War days when James Baker floated the idea in discussions with Premier Gorbachev that NATO would not increase its membership and influence by including under its umbrella the former states of the Warsaw Pact.  How nearer still seem the rumbling noises of events that foreshadowed World War One.  As I read about the deteriorating relations between NATO and Russia today, I am eerily reminded of the Agadir crisis of 1911, a prelude to the tragedy which commenced in August 1914.  On July 1, 1911, the Germans sent a gunboat to Agadir (Morocco) and almost went to war with France over this act. 

In his magisterial history of WW One, The World Crisis, Churchill described the furious exchange of diplomatic telegrams that flew between Berlin, Paris, and London over Agadir in terms sufficiently chilling to remind us today of how provocative events can spiral out of control, despite the best diplomatic efforts:

They sound so very cautious and correct, these deadly words.  Soft, quiet voices purring, courteous, grave, exactly measured phrases in large peaceful rooms.  But with less warning cannons had opened fire and nations had been struck down by this same Germany.  So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their desks absorbed in thought.  It is nothing.  It is less than nothing.  It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the 20th century….No one would do such things.  Civilization has climbed above such perils.  The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal Principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible.  Are you quite sure?  It would be a pity to be wrong.  Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all. 

To put this all into perspective, the Agadir conflict was over a French colony in North Africa, not a struggle over a state bordering France.  The Georgia intervention, of course, is entirely more serious as it revives Russia’s traditional fears about control of its borders.  With the benefit of hindsight, Churchill knew the direction where Agadir was taking the world.  While we do not know where the abysmal relation between NATO and Russia will lead exactly, we should be worried all the more that European diplomats of the early 20th century with perhaps greater ability and skill than their counterparts today could not prevent the ghastly transformation of their world into a slaughterhouse lasting four bloody years. 

In a recent critique of my screed on paleo-profanity, I stand accused of worshipping National Review as a “false idol” and even sanctioning the “mindless identity politics” of that famous periodical.  The reason?  I allegedly held up NR as a “template” from which paleos can learn simply because I expressed admiration for the fact that James Burnham as far back as the 1950s insisted on professional standards of writing in the pages of NR.  Apparently for Dylan Hales, this mild endorsement of NR’s early editorial practices smacks of the most sinister idolatry in which a paleo can indulge.

To set the record straight, I was not endorsing NR in toto, nor did I mention “identity politics” even in passing.  My point was (hopefully) clear:  that nothing whatsoever can be gained from the usage of profane language in defense of the Alternative Right.  Rather than calling upon all paleos to bow down to NR, I believe that the avoidance of profanity would only help the image of an Alternative Right which, to say the least, is always vulnerable to parody and ridicule in the best of times.  It is beyond my comprehension that professionalism in journalism amounts, in the words of Hales, to “playing by rules that don’t work, in order to live up to a standard that was never high in the first place.”  Why does the right-wing version of Gonzo prose, then, stand as an alternative recipe for success? 

Incidentally, I make no apology for my belief that the early version of National Review was admirable in many respects.  My favorite contributor from that time, Willmoore Kendall, was a colorful character and strong personality who often stood apart from his fellow contributors (he was a Rousseauian majority rule democrat, after all).  He also prided himself on articulating the kind of conservative rhetoric which resonated with the American people.  In no case, however, did he indulge in profane discourse as the means to communicate to his readers (his private conversations were a different matter).  When Kendall fell out with WFB in the early 1960s over matters both political and personal, that event stands in retrospect as the first sign of NR becoming a more establishmentarian magazine.  They did not fall out, however, over the importance of maintaining professionalism in journalism. 

Perhaps this debate over paleo-profanity is useful in one respect, for it poses the perennial question:  what exactly is the Alternative Right conserving?  The Old Right consisted of gentlemen who took pride in their ability to write with eloquence and passion.  (I am assuming that my favorable use of the term “gentlemen” will not be dismissed as a heretical example of worshipping graven images.)  I am amused at Mr. Hales’ observation that the followers of Ron Paul are more “Kirkian” than the neoconservatives who make misuse of his legacy.  That may be so, but can anyone imagine Russell Kirk using the colorful terminology of Skid Row to press his message on the moral rectitude of High Toryism?  Can anyone honestly believe that a thoughtful and decent gentleman like Ron Paul would ever write prose intended to titillate the masses, rather than edify the most thoughtful readers who still care about their country?  If the Alternative Right wants to pander to the more loutish elements of mass society, then it will not be a true conservative movement.  Instead, it will only stand as a vulgar populism which the venerable conservatives of the past justifiably despised.  Fortunately, this is not a choice which most members of the Alternative Right have made. 

The Canadian political scene is just not used to this level of controversy and excitement, particularly when all the rumpus is caused by outright ignorance in the cradle of empire.  Within the space of a week, two top American officials have repeated the long discredited falsehood that some of the 9-11 terrorists entered the United States from Canada.  Early this week,  the Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano reiterated this fiction while explaining to a Canadian reporter why the Canada-US border poses as high a risk as the Mexico-US border.  (Apparently the threat of drug-related violence and illegal immigration spilling over the southern border is on par with the danger of moving lumber and wheat across the northern border.)  At the end of the week, Napolitano’s fellow Arizonan John McCain also claimed that some of the 9-11 attackers originated in Canada.  Satirists might be forgiven if they concluded that this pattern of ignoring basic facts is a propagandistic rehearsal for a planned American invasion intended to neutralize those dangerous Canuckistani radicals while generating jobs and profits for the arms industry during a severe recession—a theme comically explored in the 1995 movie Canadian Bacon. 

In any case, the Bush administration long ago concluded in its post-911 deliberations that none of the hijackers came out of Canada.  Yet this falsehood persists.  While I understand that Americans are legitimately nervous about their national security, it is high time that the leadership class of the republic put to rest a fiction which threatens to harm the relationship between two nations with the greatest record of friendship and mutual support in modern history. 

There has been of late some usage of colorful prose on this site.  At the risk of sounding like an unreconstructed puritan, I fail to see the rationale or wisdom behind these sophomoric indulgences in locker room profanity, which reflect all too accurately the rock-bottom standards of cyber-journalism and popular culture (if that term is not an oxymoron) in our zeitgeist.  If the Alternative Right is ever to attain some measure of influence in our rabidly ideological times, all our contributors should strive to maintain the highest standards of journalistic excellence.  I assume, after all, that we do not want to produce a crude paleo-mimesis of our ideological foes in the talk radio wasteland.

I can already hear the objection:  “But will we not lose many of our readers if we refrain from using this provocative language”?  To that I respond:  we do not need (and should not desire) readers whose attention spans slavishly enjoy such Gonzo prose.  Charles Murray, a favorite author of many contributors to this site, has persuasively argued that there is an undeniable correlation between the decline of civility and the decline of intelligence in our time.  One does not have to study the numerous graphs and stats of The Bell Curve in depth to accept this as fact; on a purely anecdotal basis, the most ill-mannered individuals whom I have had the displeasure of meeting in academe have also been some of the most intellectually defective (although I am not denying that one can be well-mannered yet intellectually unimpressive at the same time).  If an individual lacks elementary self-awareness with respect to his personal etiquette, it is quite likely that he also lacks the self-discipline to undertake distinguished scholarship (although the very rude and irascible Karl Marx was an interesting exception to this rule). 

How quaint in retrospect seem the early days of National Review, when that always well-mannered James Burnham strove to professionalize the magazine by eliminating “undergraduate touches, expressions like grrrr, and other slapstick.”  (I quote from Jeffrey Hart’s The Making of the Conservative Mind:  National Review And Its Times.)  Apparently, Burnham did not have to worry about the employment of language which was best confined to the denizens of Skid Row in the 1950s.  Can the Alternative Right today at least try to emulate the glory days of National Review, when professionalism in journalism was the norm?

Dixi et salvavi animam meam. 

When Christianity is served by human fear, by mediocrity, by temporal interests—yes, then, it makes a rather different appearance, then it really may seem as if Christianity (which with that sort of service had gradually become spavined, knock-kneed, and lame in the shoulder, a pitiful ‘critter’) might be exceedingly glad to be protected by the State and thus brought to honor.    -Soren Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Christendom (1854-55)

Whenever I read recent spirited polemics (here and here) on the willingness of many Christians to embrace political correctness in the republic, I am reminded of the reflections of a master polemicist who spent the last two years of his life decrying the shrunken status of the one true faith in his native Denmark.  Soren Kierkegaard, one of my favorite Christian authors, unleashed a series of brilliant volleys upon the state-established church in Denmark, now known as his Attack Upon Christendom.  What Kierkegaard dubbed “Christendom” was a pseudo-Christianity which eagerly desired the patronage of the state.  In the process of surrendering its own integrity and autonomy, Christendom blasphemously claimed to represent Christ on earth while it embraced any political power and fashion which suited its interests.  This false version of Christianity would indeed become a “pitiful critter”, grasping for ever more favors from the state, the old enemy of the Christian sect.  Worst of all, this slavishness was a choice which the church made; the state had not forced this appetite for temporal largesse upon believers. 

Not only was this surrender to Caesar in complete opposition to the morality of the Gospels:  it was also the height of irrationality on the part of the church.  For the day would come, Kierkegaard predicted, when a ruler who had won the political favor of the church may turn on it with contempt.  This ruler may no longer be inclined to reciprocate the affection of such capricious factions.  Perhaps Kierkegaard would have been unsurprised that the current fawning of many Christians over Obama has not discouraged the president from recently declaring in Turkey that America is no longer a Christian nation.  Why should a ruler respect believers who give up their beliefs so readily?

Kierkegaard imagined the following thoughts occurring to a future ruler who had grown tired of this worldly church:

Who is at fault for it? Who but these rascally priests that have transformed Christianity into the very opposite of what it was in the New Testament, and thereby put the idea into my head that I could patronize Christianity!  Fool that I am! For what is it I have patronized?  Verily not Christianity, which for all its lowliness is more lofty than I am, but it is a lot of rascals who precisely for this cause are the least deserving of my protection.

While it may be a very long time before an elected official with this degree of honesty denounces the capitulation of today’s churches to political correctness,  let us hope that it is not so long before Christians take Kierkegaard’s spirited advice and grant no more favors to Caesar.