Amerika

by Ashton Blackwell and Brett Stevens

A singularity is coming: the mainstream right and the underground right are converging, but they need to do it faster. These groups share a worldview of realism which no other parts of the political spectrum possess. Both realize that Western Civilization is hurtling towards a catastrophe at the hands of the dictatorship of public opinion, and that this same force destroyed the great civilizations of the past. As Walt Kelley wrote long ago, “We have met the enemy and he is us”: public opinion denies common-sense realism because people prefer sugar-coated and flattering illusions. Gossip about the Speakership nomination, or Malia’s college party beer pong antics, dominates the headlines to hide the grim reality that we are literally fighting for our survival as a civilization.

When the Left took over through the French Revolution back in 1789, it separated politics into two groups: those who wanted to follow the “new” ideas, and those who wanted to conserve the fundamental principles and organizing behaviors that have produced the best results throughout human history. These tested precepts assume the mantle of “tradition” and history shows us that anything but this type of truth-based order will quickly devolve and collapse. Like writing code, or designing a house, you either get it right and over-engineer something to last a thousand years under all conditions, or you have created something feeble which will fail whenever Murphy’s Law comes knocking (as it does on a regular basis, that meddler!). Conservatives pursue tradition in two ways: first, they believe in reality-based common-sense engineering; second, they aim for “transcendentals” such as “the good, the beautiful and the true,” which are perpetually unattainable goals that nonetheless improve everything in quality, including life itself.

Currently, mainstream conservatives – the grassroots and the Tea Party, the smaller “conservatism lite” Establishment right-wing, and other Republican voters – define themselves as separate from what we might call the “underground right,” comprised of movements like the alternative right, Neoreaction, and the New Right. Establishment Republicans , who have adopted progressivism to fight progressivism, barely qualify as Right-wing at all, but groups with “anti-Establishment” sensibilities, such as patriot movement groups, “Middle American Radicals,” paleoconservatives, and perhaps “conservatarians” represent a rising niche of the Right. While the alternative right and Neoreaction appear to be totally different from the mainstream right, they share the overarching vision that they should live in a land that represents them. They also share some “idealistic realism”; their state vision is transcendental, but they believe that thinking about what “should” be true, is a worse way of making decisions that looking at what is true and adopting methods that have worked with that truth over time, then slowly improving the quality of results with methods specific to each local area. Both mainstream and underground right groups ally themselves with the idea of common sense: reality-based thinking. They see this as superior to progressive ideology, a vat of untested ideas advanced by conniving political opportunists as a means of seizing control through popular opinion and the chaos created through government meddling.

While important distinctions between mainstream right and underground right exist, similarities outnumber differences. Both groups advance common sense notions that intersect in the following areas:

1. Freedom of belief. On the right, we recognize that societies are composed of individuals, and that those individuals receive their formative guidance outside of government, through their culture and religion. Individuals of higher moral character and abilities can improve the society around them by raising its standards, as we see from great people in history like George Washington, Socrates or even Ronald Reagan. Society should defend those who have higher standards, not force universal acceptance of all standards, which lowers the standard held in common. While this is inconvenient for commerce, as it means you may have to go to another store to get your gay wedding cake or birth control pills, it defends the right of people to live by their beliefs and to raise up the rest of us with higher moral standards. Moral order flows from the top down. The authors would argue that the classical liberal mandate, “don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff,” proscribes too little and has been an easy target for subversion in an effort to destroy the moral fabric of our country.
2. Freedom of association. Birds of a feather flock together, which means that collaborative groups can establish communities that succeed and inspire us to follow their example. Ideally, this happens at a national level, and obviates the problems posed by a “proposition nation” which praises as a social good, maximum social dysfunction, acrimony and competition. Dysfunction is created when the people in a community don’t want to work or live together; look at the artificially imposed state boundaries at the Middle East, or take divorce, for example. This is like a free market for ideas: people form small corporations called communities, and if their product – the lifestyle they offer – is superior, they thrive while others lag. A lack of freedom of association means that individuals are forced to live near, work with and interact with people with whom they disagree on a fundamental basis. That denies their human right to have a set of values, morals and standards to their community. Our Founding Fathers never intended equality to be more than individuals being treated fairly under the law without regard to their wealth or status. It was not designed to allow small groups to force conformity on the rest through mandatory tolerance of activities, lifestyles and individuals they find objectionable, or to privilege “oppressed” groups to pilfer and yoke “oppressor” groups. That is all tyranny, which the Founders intended to forbid in the Constitution.
3. Small government. This term means both limiting the economic and personnel size of government, and more importantly, limiting its scope to practical and not ideological goals. When its only role is defense and putting up roads, government does not grow, so it must invent a reason – a rationalization, justification or excuse – to expand its power. This almost always takes the form of “Think of the children!” style ideological agendas based on guilt and pity, explained in public as altruism but like most public altruism, in private a cynical grab for power like the French Revolution itself. In political terms, small government means taking away from government the ability to act for any smaller group than society as a whole. This means an end to any payments to citizens, any socialized services, and any act which benefits a small group through money taken from the whole of the citizenry. Those types of subsidy-based actions, which resemble socialism in effect if not theory, are the hallmark of civilizations which will spend themselves to their own doom by sacrificing their productive citizens to the endless parade of those who are less willing or able to contribute.

Freedom of belief, freedom of association, and the principle of small government have been gradually encroached upon, and the right leaning coalition subsequently alienated. Yet, the American spirit of resistance is stirring. The rise of Donald Trump, whatever one may think of him, may show the future of conservatism: resistance to liberal social engineering, starting by attacking the liberal policy of multiculturalism for what it is – a social engineering program to replace normal Americans, who tend to be conservative, with third world populations which tend to vote liberal as they did in their home countries. The dividing line between mainstream conservatives, who will not mention race at all, and underground conservatives, who see diversity as creating internal division and distrust, is slowly eroding. Conservatives are seeing the liberal Plan for the first time: Politicians cultivate votes by giving away free things to citizens; the media drums up stories around unjust victimhood and horrors of poverty. The voters, prone to manipulation, fear voting against these things lest they be viewed as unsympathetic. These programs grow and can never be repealed because to do so is “political suicide,” or at least, so all the newspapers say. Elites form out of those in media, government and industry who realize they can help each other by reinforcing “The Narrative” which states that popular programs lead toward progress and anything else is primitive, selfish, cruel and ineffectual. This converts society into an echo chamber where people repeat the same views as fact and, by dint of a lack of opposing voices, confirm that bias and intensify adoption of the failed policies. With no way to change direction, society collapses, and this is what all conservatives hope to avoid.

So how does the space probe of the new right interlock with the docking collar of mainstream conservatism? The alliance begins in their common sentiment of anger at being dispossessed and their ideals and dignity made the subject of mockery, and graduates to their philosophical agreements. They two groups share an outlook in common sense, and both recognize that we are no longer in the age of “politics as usual,” but fighting for our very existence against the cancerous spread of liberalism. Both groups feel, and to a large extent, are, disenfranchised. This sense of disenfranchisement can be galvanized from despair to a renewing movement, as is plainly evident with The Make America Great Again campaign.

The underground right is the missing intellectual vanguard of grassroots America – and grassroots America is the missing power base of the underground right. The majority of grassroots America understands implicitly the dangers facing the country through immigration and out of control, criminal urban populations. The underground right doesn’t have to continue to be marginal if it can dialogue with people who are frustrated by their lack of representation, and the loss of their culture and way of life. Salt of the earth, normal American conservatives, that is those in flyover country or in the South who are cynical towards government, are looking for radical political integrity. The underground right, though merely agents of traditionalism, register in today’s political milieu as radical political truth-tellers, based on their frank acknowledgment of what is and is not sustainable. The goal of conservatism is to conserve civilization—and as its parapets crumble in the West, it is in grave need of our common defense.

Tags: conservatarian, conservatism, far-right, libertarian, mainstream right, neoreaction, republicans, right-wing, tea party