I like to think that what I write in this blog might have the effect of influencing a person or two of liberal, or mainstream conservative, persuasion by helping them to see some of the non-politically-correct truth of what is happening to their country. Yet I recognize that in reality most of my readers are already sympathetic to my perspective. Consequently, much of my writing reads like part of a conversation among like-minded people. That has its own legitimate function, of course. We traditional patriots (if I may be so daring as to apply such an epithet to such a shadowy group and further to include myself in such honorable company) need the encouragement, the intellectual stimulation, even the entertainment that largely anonymous Internet formats currently provide better than any other. And if we keep striking flint to steel we may eventually get fire. So be it. For now.
Yet my mind returns again and again to the question of what I can do to contribute to the cause of my people, or, if that sounds grandiose, to at least be part of a functioning movement. The traditionalist conservative, or ethno-conservative, or nationalist, movement has as yet no real power in our society. In America we have scarcely even begun to define ourselves as a people in any other than universalist, liberal terms. The most “conservative” among us are unable to explain why it would be wrong to reduce whites to 1% of the population, though even the most liberal of us must see that there would be something wrong with this. There seems to be no base on which to stand to fight. I myself work for a liberal bureaucratic institution and would quickly become persona non grata were my views to become known to my co-workers. (I do anticipate taking that risk when the time is right, but that does not seem to be now.) Perhaps it might be better to enter a more “conservative” field, where this would be less of a problem. But lo, I look all around and there is nothing but liberal bureaucracy in every area of society, even in the military, even in the churches – and it’s getting worse all the time. What to do? Sometimes I fantasize about getting together with some friends and forming an Amish type of community separate from the larger society. But that hardly seems practical either.
Oh, sure, I send money to a few causes, call my elected representatives once in a while, write letters, things like that. And these are worthwhile, even essential, things to do. But there is no power in them. The powers that be allow the expression of opinion. Almost on a daily basis letters to the editor appear in the local paper expressing solid, middle-American values. But this opinion is carefully filtered out from the actual decision-making bodies, leaving only lifeless printed words that are remembered by none.
And after all, expressing opinion is nothing in itself. For in truth – as some have said – what is going on is not an argument but a fight. A war, which requires the use of force. I am not talking, of course, literally about battalions of troops shooting each other, but I am talking about pressure, coercion, compulsion, strategy, propaganda, and even (as Mohammed knew well) deceit.
We have very little force at our command except for a few fine, brave thinkers. And, on the other hand, all that remains of the spirit of our nation in the hearts of the people.
Now, our society is so rotten, so corrupt and weak in so many ways, that there ought to be numerous weaknesses that we traditionalists can exploit. The very passivity, lack of clear thinking, lack of loyalty, and venality that lead our politicians and businessmen to roll over and surrender to invaders who are largely inferior in ability to their hosts (or victims) and without exception dependent on the largesse of those hosts, ought to be exploitable by those of us who are tired of living under the conditions they set.
Yet for me, a clear path for action has yet to emerge.
One small thought I’d like to throw out today concerns the possibility of protests. Conservatives, of course, don’t much like protesting. Left-wing theatrics, George Bush paper-mache dolls on stilts, stupid chanted slogans, are embarrassing to us. Mob activity is repugnant, the antithesis of the type of politics practiced by a free people.
And yet…we have reached the point where things so outrageous and abominable as to have been inconceivable only a few years ago are being presented to us as normal and beyond question. (Read any issue of the New York Times for examples. Or, on second thought, don’t.) In some cases, I believe the supporters of these causes and activities have become careless, assuming they have already won a struggle that is still far from decided. Why not figure out some areas where selective protest might catch its targets off guard?
For instance, Gay Pride parades. These have become elevated to mainstream events in recent years. I witnessed one in Columbus, Ohio, a few years ago. At first glance, they look like a normal sort of summer festival – floats, music, a big turnout, neighbors on their porches watching the show while enjoying drinks from coolers. Then you look more closely and you see the aged transvestites, the flashes of nudity, the free packets of sexual lubricant tossed from a float, and you begin to feel ill. Then you see the small children who are being exposed to the filth and start to feel that a crime is taking place.
Then you see that Chase Bank (or some such pillar of the community) is a sponsor of the event.
Could a group of citizens not organize themselves to follow these events and, without actual violence, disrupt them? Even if the event could not actually be stopped, it would surely put a crimp on their fun, would it not? One would, of course, have to attune the signs, slogans, and actions to the values of real, average citizens. None of this “God Hates Fags” stuff which one suspects is actually planted by the opposition to convince the public that only foaming-at-the-mouth “haters” oppose these events.
Would this not possibly embarrass Chase Bank just a bit? Are the homosexualists really that powerful and do they really enjoy that much support? Or is their “pride” more like an inflated soap bubble that could be easily pricked? And, if the government or police go too far in supporting them, won’t this undermine them in the eyes of much of their constituency? Yeah, we know about free speech and all, but are you actually arresting people who don’t want this in their neighborhood?
Then there are the atrocities carried out by Muslims on U.S. soil and the craven and dead response of the media and other authorities, up to and including the current President of the United States. The demonic fiend and enemy alien who probably planned the mass slaughter of Americans in Washington and New York is going to be given a civilian trial in New York with our best lawyers arguing that evidence against him gained by “torture” cannot be admitted? Given a platform to terrorize Americans and rally the Muslim enemy through grandiose speeches given while sporting the bin Laden lookalike stinking beard and turban we’ve allowed him to assume as his “human right”? The type of non-human being who makes me realize that even my deep opposition to lynching and torture has exceptions?
Why not have a large and continually replenished group of dignified (but obtrusive) protesters with signs saying “Death to Jihadist Murderers”? Why not set up some of the same outside Fort Hood or wherever the “fair trial” of that creature is supposed to take place? There would need to be enough present for a long enough time that even if the media chose to ignore them they would be seen by thousands of people in person. Again, if such protesters are arrested or forced to move, what will that do to the credibility of the authorities?
Well, I probably should apologize for raising the grand question of What To Do and then offering just another limited, conventional sort of action, of the sort which is indeed being conducted from time to time. But my point is that we need to examine the structure of our liberal society as a whole and identify the weaknesses that might be exploited to undermine it – and the areas (for instance, at present, the Internet) that can still serve as bases for strategic actions.
Since hostile readers will have little to say on this question, I invite my friendly readers to share their insights on this question.
The Heritage American 
I invite my friendly readers to share their insights on this question.
We ought to do not one but many things. We ought to harass persistently on all fronts. We ought to wear them down.
Neither the current liberal establishment nor the current “conservative” movement had much power as recently as 1963. If they achieved power by wearing down the old New Deal/Dixiecrat establishment, on the one hand, and the old Rockefeller Republican establishment, on the other, is there a reason we cannot now wear them down, in turn?
I feel reasonably confident that we can. Our foes are not eternal. For once I even think that, though few of us yet realize it, we shall have the wind at our backs, which we have not really had since about 1963. You are right to write of “passivity, lack of clear thinking, lack of loyalty, and venality.” These are advatages to us, persistent advantages our corrupt foes no longer have effective means to foreclose. We can exploit them.
If you do not think that an ethno-nationalist can, say, win election to Congress, maybe you are right, for now; but, though it be trite to say it, I know how to ensure that an ethno-nationalist does not win: let him not run.
And if we keep striking flint to steel we may eventually get fire. So be it. For now.
That’s right. How many forgotten, failed conservative politicians preceded the rise of Ronald Reagan, and thereby paved his way? And, anyway, to the extent to which we work subversively within existing channels of power, like the Republican party, are we so sure that we cannot win? If you campaign for “God, guns and Skynyrd’s America,” if you pick your battles and don’t try to counterreform the entire nation all at once, then who is to say that you cannot win? I’ll not say it. Let the voters decide.
Some readers will dismiss such sentiments as mere cheerleading, but I such dismissal to be counsel of despair, and ill timed counsel, at that. The wind is at our backs, now. It’s time for us to start harassing the enemy.
I am afraid that I concur in your conservative distaste for street protests but, on the other hand, matters have reached such a pitch that, if you organized a street protest, I might well show up.
But there is no power in them.
It will take us fifteen to thirty years to build power. The Marxist Gramsci called it the Long March through the Institutions. Like the Roman, who learned from his terrifying foe Hannibal how to fight, we have learned something from Gramsci and his ilk. It is well to remember that the consequent empire of the Roman outlasted Hannibal six hundred years.
We are going to turn their captured artillery against them. It is going to be a long, long fight.
I think that our side has more stamina than theirs. I am willing to take fifteen to thirty years to prove it. I can afford to take the long view. Can’t you?
Our liberal foes cannot.
So we capture the sheriff’s office, then the local county Republican party chairmanship, then the school board. We persistently try to intimidate Congress into voting down legislation like that June 2007 immigration amnesty which blessedly did not pass. We win a state legislative seat or two, then gradually build our numbers on Capitol Hill. It can be done. It has been done before. The truth stands on our side. Gramscian harassment, turned against the Gramscians, who were false, is likely to prosper.
The most “conservative” among us are unable to explain why it would be wrong to reduce whites to 1% of the population, though even the most liberal of us must see that there would be something wrong with this.
So, the popular support for our position is latent, inchoate, hobbled by the prevailing structure of taboos. Again a Gramscian strategy is indicated, because the popular support is real and growing.
Howard
I have been asking myself the same question: what exactly do we do about this problem?
I asked myself first what is the goal I want to see achieved? The goal is a nation for my people and my people alone. We can’t share a nation with other people without this same problem eventually arising one way or another, and so every proposed solution short of separation is actually a non-solution.
So, how do we achieve this goal of a separate nation for our people? First, can we achieve it through peaceful political action within the framework of this existing nation’s laws and government? I think the time when that strategy could work has passed. The reason is that what we desire would require constitutional amendments. The bar is set very high for amending the Constitution, and with the population percentage of whites at only 65% and falling (and a significant proportion of those whites are progressives who would die before they’d help us), I think the possibilities of peaceful, within-the-system action getting us our own nation are very small.
What that seems to leave is revolution. Anything short of that simply is a delaying action, in my opinion. As long as we share a nation with non-whites who reproduce faster than us and are allowed to vote, we are destined by the simple laws of mathematics to become a minority.
But a revolution is a huge step, especially for mostly-comfortable middle-class people who for the most part have never been in so much as a fistfight in their lives. We have families to support and jobs we need to keep. Revolutions, I believe, usually build on the desperation and anger of a significant group of hungry, furious people. And we’re just not that hungry or that furious yet. We’re worried; we suffer minor inconveniences sometimes; we resent the privileged, unqualified minorities getting jobs through Affirmative Action; but other than things that mostly bother us on principle or that bode ill for the future, there’s no real desperation yet. So an actual revolution seems beyond the realm of possibility.
But I too feel the desire to join something where I can be with others of my people and talk and build comradeship and ties and knock around ideas and listen to speeches by the leaders among us. The problem is that the members of any organization that sprang up that was explicitly devoted to white nationalist interests would be under attack by the progressives in every manner they could devise, including especially economic attacks like getting people fired.
So it seems to me that while we are in this phase where the hunger and anger are slowly building, we need to be developing the themes of who we are, what we stand for, and what we want as clearly as possible so that we can present a reasonable, disciplined yet passionate appeal to all of the white people who sense that things are going badly but don’t yet have a framework or set of principals that they can examine and get behind. We need a set of clear and simple principals that state our moral case for separation and ethnic identity. People have to be able to feel good about joining us.
And as for meetings, it seems like at this phase it needs to be small gatherings in people’s living rooms, away from the prying eyes of progressive enemies, where people who are invited individually can meet with a small group of like-minded people they can trust and knock around ideas and build ties.
At some time in the future the moment will be right for a bringing-together of these numerous, anonymous “cells” for whatever sorts of action – demonstrations or revolution – are necessary. But right now it needs to be about clarifying and refining our purpose and our message and our principals, and building ties in small groups.
We need to start a quiet movement of “tea parties” or “colloquiems” or “salons” or some other term that expresses the idea of sensible, decent middle-class white people (it will and I believe, should, mostly be men) who are quietly forming bonds and building purpose.
After all, isn’t that how the American Revolution occurred? Wasn’t it at first just small groups of men meeting to discuss the pressing issues of the day?
Mark:
I have read your comment in detail, with interest. The question with which you finish is an important one.
After all, isn’t that how the American Revolution occurred?
Respectfully, I believe that the answer is no. I believe rather that that is how the French Revolution occurred.
Our revolution was led by the existing American elite, who wished to preserve as much of the existing structure of colonial society as they could, who fundamentally were interested in escaping their political dependency on London, not in remaking the country. Our revolution did not seek to alter the demographic composition of the nation, nor its culture, nor even its legal and political principles. It was the mildest of revolutions.
Even so, fourscore and seven years on, it took a bloody Civil War finally to settle it.
What you seek is a radical revolution, in the true, original sense of the word “radical.” In all of history, I cannot think of a single radical revolution which directly had a happy result.
They sound good, but they don’t work.
To hope to succeed happily, a nonradical revolution must enjoy support from some of the already existing concentrations of power within the existing society. I am all for the tea parties, but they are political rather than revolutionary instruments.
You don’t have to play by your enemy’s rules. You can play dirty, if that’s what it takes. But you simply must play for power where the power already is.
The proof of this lies not in theory but in actual, historical experience.
It is instructive that the men who have claimed power in post-Communist Russia, Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, are both men who, prior to the downfall of Soviet communism, had risen high within the Soviet communist party. The patriotic tank-company captain who, at the critical moment in the siege of the Russian parliament, turned his tanks over to Yeltsin was in a position to do so only because, through years of reliable service under the Soviet communist system, he had risen to, and been entrusted with, the command of a tank company. None of these men were tea-party activists. They were serious, practical men whose acts, in the end, made all the difference.
We badly need people like you, who actually understand that which our nation faces, which is why one hopes that you will channel your energy into slow, steady, productive channels, building real power against a future day of action. We need you to be governor of your state on the day the revolution comes, but to do that, you must patiently work within the existing system now. Only then will you really stand in a position to help the revolution along.
Short cuts are not possible.
Even the much (and largely rightly, but paradoxically also usually mistakenly) reviled Adolf Hitler understood this principle. He never overthrew Germany’s constitution until he had first made himself the master of Germany’s state.
You don’t have to follow the rules, you don’t have to play fair, but work within the system, you must, if you really want to help. I hope that you will, because your spirit is right.
Howard
Howard,
Your points are well-taken and thought-provoking.
My intention in mentioning the American Revolution was only to point out that revolutions begin with small, dissatisfied groups meeting privately and writing under pseudonyms, because it is dangerous to be publicly known to be in favor of overthrowing the current power structure. But I think your point that our goal should be a nonradical revolution sounds valid, if it is at all possible to do so.
Working from power positions within the existing framework is certainly important and I have made that point in other forums where some have suggested white men stop joining the armed forces as a sort of protest. The last thing we want to stop joining is the armed forces, in my opinion.
At the same time I think there is a distinction to be made between the revolution in Russia where Yeltsin climbed on the tank, and our situation. In the Russian situation, mostly anyone could switch allegiances and be accepted. The tank commander could switch to Yeltsin’s side and fit right in. And so they could gain control of the whole society by getting the agreement of power holders who would be willing to change sides because they’d know they could seamlessly fit in with the new side.
But in our case, where our people are shrinking as a proportion of the population, and our “enemies” (or opponents) are of other ethnic groups, they will never come over to our side and we wouldn’t want them to. And I don’t see them letting us separate peacefully. When we’re looking for historical analogies, we’re going to have to look for situations where two or more different identity groups of different ethnicities were competing for control of a country. That means that analogies from European history might not often apply. The situation in South Africa might be one of the closest analogies.
I agree that it is invaluable having our people in power positions. But when I try to think through how we might get to where we need to be, I have difficulty seeing how it can happen peacefully. Perhaps we can win some sort of de facto separation where we are still part of the U.S. but in practical terms are left alone in our territories in the way that some areas in other countries are ungovernable by the central government.
Ultimately, I don’t see how we achieve what we want by working entirely within the existing system, since the existing system is going to be stacked against us demographically. Unless we start engaging in massive voter fraud, corruption, intimidation and assassination of government officials, and so on, which would do great damage to us by denying us the moral high ground in our own eyes.
Regardless of the particular path our movement ends up taking, there are certain things that are givens: we will need to have a clear, positive, moral ideology that we can explain to people we hope to convert; we need to form some organization that can serve a central rallying and organizing role; and we need to work ourselves into as much wealth and power as we can so we have the connections and resources necessary.
My vision is of a massive movement of white men, determined, self-disciplined, clear in their purpose and their moral justification, who stand up and say “no more” to the non-whites. Who say “we are separating from you and you’re not going to stop us. We won’t use any more violence than we have to, and we won’t hurt you if you don’t try to stop us, but we’re through with you.”
Howard and Mark, thank you for your extensive and thoughtful comments, which deserve to be posted as separate columns. I will respond at more length in a day or two. Howard rightly counsels patience and working within the system to the extent possible. Mark points out the difficulty in working within the system in the face of changing demographics. I personally remain interested in the formation of local groups not dependent on the Internet (and I worry that this vital resource may become more hostile to our work at some point), though the “clear, positive, moral ideology” may need to be worked out and tested first.
Mark:
Your last comment has brought a fairly heavy burden of thought. The comment is not to be lightly responded to. Having slept on it, I am still not entirely sure how to reply, except to say that I am persuaded that you are largely right.
So, let me just offer one or two remarks in partial response. You can make of them what you will.
Ultimately, I don’t see how we achieve what we want by working entirely within the existing system, since the existing system is going to be stacked against us demographically.
Like you, I don’t see how we achieve what we want by working entirely within the existing system, either. However, as a classic Burkean conservative I fully expect significant factors to develop out of my sight. I do not expect to see the whole picture, so to speak.
A civilization, even when broken, is far too complex a thing to be repaired according to a deliberate plan prepared by any concert of human minds. One does rather what one can, by his lights, to improve the civilization we have inherited, ere we pass it on to our children. The rest lies in God’s hands.
Like you, I can foresee no practical means exactly to solve the ethnic problems which confront us; but I can rather easily foresee measures—indeed, entirely practical, realistic measures—which if implemented would greatly help. We halt immigration, or mostly halt it if a complete halt should prove politically impracticable. We ban Islam within our borders, or at least make the practice of Islam sufficiently irksome that most Muslims tend either to lapse or to emigrate. We subsidize the voluntary emigration of troublesome classes of recent immigrants. If possible, we eliminate laws against petty, private racial discrimination, especially laws enforced against individuals and small businesses. We restigmatize miscegenation, though with a generous allowance for existing mixed marriages and their children. We modify the tax code to encourage prosperous heritage Americans to have more children. As I have written of at some length elsewhere, we end means-tested federal “welfare.”
If we could only do some, most or all of these things, it could buy us another two generations to solve the basic problem you identify. That’s a long time. A lot can happen in two generations. Especially, a lot of unforeseen things can happen in two generations. Calvin Coolidge was right to observe that “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” These are words to live by.
I do not see any of the measures listed as being politically unrealistic. (Many conservatives seem to thing the welfare measure politically unrealistic, but you must read carefully what I wrote. The measure does not necessarily end, say, food stamps—though personally I do think that food stamps ought to be ended—but it does at least put food stamps on the same footing as Social Security and in-state tuition: if available, then equally available to the rich as to the poor. The rich after all are the ones who pay for the food stamps: why shouldn’t they get them if they want them? If you do not think that such a measure could be popular then you and I are not acquainted with the same populace.)
If we could only accomplish something like the program listed, we should leave the next generation in an incomparably stronger position to re-evaluate the National Question and to decide on a coherent program of action as from that point forward. My view is that the kind of program listed heaps the plate before our own generation high enough, as it were. We should not now seek to do much more.
I am not against racial separation in principle, but like you I cannot see how to get there from here. What I can see is—well—how to climb to a high vantage point from which our children should be able to see how to get there, if there then is still somewhere it makes sense for them to get.
Ultimately, I don’t see how we achieve what we want by working entirely within the existing system, since the existing system is going to be stacked against us demographically. Unless we start engaging in massive voter fraud, corruption, intimidation and assassination of government officials, and so on, which would do great damage to us by denying us the moral high ground in our own eyes.
This is another valid point, which I would subscribe.
A Burkean thought or two occur to me regarding your usage of the word ideology, but these particular thoughts do not flow smoothly from the above, so let me save them for a later time. Otherwise, this comment of mine is not headed anywhere in particular, so let me end it here, except to invite Stephen—if he should follow through on his threat to headline this conversation—to save at least me embarrassment by redacting the conversation for spelling, grammar, inadvertently omitted words and the like (a blog’s electronic comment-submitting widget is not conducive to careful editing by the submitter).
Howard
[…] Revolution and Separation Last week, I departed from my usual culture-centered article to ask the question, hardly a new one in my […]
A belated reply to ____ : I didn’t take Mark to be calling for the categorical exclusion of women from any movement, but I will give my view on this.
It would certainly be impossible for a movement such as we envision to be conducted without heavy participation from both men and women, and some issues are probably handled better by women.
I would oppose the idea of arbitrarily excluding women from any activity, apart from militia and the like. (Women should certainly be prepared to defend themselves, as was your amazing ancestress, but they should not be actively encouraged to try to become warriors.) I do think as a factual matter that more men than women are interested in the political side of our movement, and find nothing wrong with this.
I am, however, in sympathy with the sentiment Mark expresses, in that the idea of an all-male organization of patriots (or a larger organization with male and female branches) does appeal to me. I think it could channel masculine fighting energy and build the morale of men, both of which are stunted in our society today. It would be a bit like a grownup Boy Scouts or the military. That said, this, for me, is only a sort of personal wish and not an actual plan in my mind because a) the numbers are too small to divide the sexes; and b) men and women, even many traditionalists, are not divided into clearly separated domestic and outside roles in a way that would make such a separation logical.
[…] A Type of Protest I’d Like to See Now, our society is so rotten, so corrupt and weak in so many ways, that there ought to be numerous weaknesses that we traditionalists can exploit. The very passivity, lack of clear thinking, lack of loyalty, and venality that lead our politicians and businessmen to roll over and surrender to invaders who are largely inferior in ability to their hosts (or victims) and without exception dependent on the largesse of those hosts, ought to be exploitable by those of us who are tired of living under the conditions they set. […]
___ , I’m not aware that this is a problem in the blogs I link to, but obviously you have had bad experiences. Certainly this kind of demeaning behavior towards women should not be tolerated. (Which is not the same thing as making the case for traditional sex roles.) The anonymous quality of the Internet brings many problems, one of which is a lack of civility. I hope we traditionalists/ethno-conservatives will hold ourselves to higher standards.
Really? Who are these jerks? I’d expect something like that to come from the sex-crazed leftists, not traditional men.
As Mark Richardson over at Oz Conservative has written, it is feminism through sexual “liberation” that has caused modern men to see women as just quarry to be hunted and exploited rather than as wives to be cherished and loved or mothers, daughters and sisters to be honored and protected.
As for women’s participating here and elsewhere on the Right, sure why not? I’d be surprised if anyone would say otherwise. Just don’t be surprised if few other women follow: politics just don’t seem to be something which most women find interesting. And that’s fine too.
[…] Thanksgiving of possible strategies and directions for an ethno-conservative movement (see “A Type of Protest I’d Like to See” and “Non-Radical Revolution and […]
Mary:
Your comments move me. The so-called Game to which you refer appeals in more or less the same way Nazism once appealed: it wields a crude ideology vigorously as a heavy, blunt weapon to shatter liberal orthodoxy. The so-called Game earns attention in a vacuum, because its proponents begin by openly recognizing a crude version of certain real, brutal facts of the masculine and feminine natures which political correctness demands that we altogether ignore. Maybe the so-called Game is getting some men illicit sex; probably it is inflating more men with hopes of illicit sex. In either case, rational discussion with such men grows impossible, does it not, and the more so because indeed they slightly, partially have a point. That they are rather more wrong than right does not interest them.
And anyway, how do you reason with an insouciant jerk who thinks that reasoning with you is going to stop him from getting laid? You cannot. (As you will recall, liberal, middle-aged men in positions of institutional power during the 1970s thought that their feminist attitudes would get them laid. You couldn’t reason with them, either.)
But now you leave me with a dilemma. The fact is that I do believe strongly in traditional sex roles, and I judge it to be of critical importance to boost the numbers of authentic Western children born in the coming generation, and I do not know where to get Western children but from Western women. The age of 19 seems to me a fine time for a woman to marry, if the right man is available and she will choose him. I have positive, not negative feelings when I meet a white family with five, six, seven or eight children; yet it is plain to me that the mother of eight has devoted her life to child-rearing.
Does it make me worse in your eyes that I suspect, for instance, that the women’s franchise were a rash experiment? Does it make me better that I recognize that, over the past forty years, American women have proven that they are much more capable than men once thought of filling most masculine roles—policing, for instance? Then again, does it make me worse that I still don’t think that our police forces ought to recruit women?
Surely you know someone whose daughter has finished medical school. What an accomplishment! Yet the facts of life remain facts. The daughter in question is likely to have one child where here male colleague’s wife has seven. Does this not matter?
Do you see where I am going with this? The last, last, last thing in the world I want to be is your enemy because, without the earnest friendship of women like you, our side is lost. I will go a long way to compromise to avoid turning women like you away. Certainly I am no “Game” advocate. I don’t have to have it all my own way, but the fact is that I do tend to like to see marriage with the bride at 19. My attitudes are most unreformed in this sense.
Being typically male, I tend to have to have things spelled out for me, unfortunately; I am not very good at reading between the lines so to speak. As is probably plain to you, you have my undivided, most interested intellectual attention at the moment; so I should read such reply as you chose to give with greatest interest, hoping to learn something from it.
After reading your words above, incidentally, I have asked my wife about them. She gave me a queer look but didn’t say much. Evidently I am out of my depth here.
Howard
___ raises an extraordinarily important issue. I agree that if traditionalists are driving away women then that has very worrisome implications for our side.
(I must add that I do not think Bartholomew meant, in his remarks, to place himself or men in the position of arbiter of blog or movement participation.)
Howard, thank you for your extended comment, which says so much so well.
So ___ is talking about “Game.” I’m not aware that “Game” has affected traditionalist blogs to the extent you describe, though certainly it has been widely discussed on several. But I can imagine that what might seem to men to be a kind of interesting discussion of “how to succeed with women” – which without doubt is an interesting topic for ALL men, being, as they are, well, men – can become very offensive when women are present. We need to do better than that.
The Game discourse seems to me very dangerous; I think someone said that the Devil works not by lying but by telling partial truths, and Game is a perfect example of this. Howard’s characterization of it seems apt to me. I was disappointed to find John Derbyshire promoting a certain libertine blogger who, no doubt, is a talented writer and equipped with certain insights, but is also (whether his persona is real or fictitious) a moral monster. Mr. Derbyshire should be intelligent enough not to fall for it.
“Game” should certainly be denounced and refuted by all traditionalists and conservatives.
It seems to me the “Game” issue is rather distinct from the advocacy of a traditional family with the woman as housewife and the man as working outside, as argued for in Oz Conservative and The Thinking Housewife. In that area, I am not as traditionalist as some. In my view, we certainly need to find our way back to younger marriages understood as lifetime unions, and to women having most of their children before 30. This indeed probably means more women taking the traditional course but I don’t think it can or should mean somehow driving women out of the many fields of work they now happily occupy. For instance, in China today most couples both work and the grandparents do a lot of childcare. Maybe that is a viable alternative; but note that it still depends on the stability of marriage.
This pertains to my own life: my wife and I both have careers and my wife finds the intellectual stimulation and opportunity for public accomplishments which her work provides to be indispensable. She might well agree with your comments. On the other hand, we have no children, so we are well aware that we paid for the freedom of our 20s and 30s with deep losses that can never be fully redeemed, and I certainly do not want to see the next generation do as we did. Some sacrifices have to be made, by men and women alike.
I would be very loath to accuse anyone of seeing women as “breeding stock” just because they promote traditional roles; this would seem to mean painting the society of our forbears as a deeply degraded one. I do suspect Muslim societies have this view of women but I am sure even the most “sexist” of Western societies accord women with considerable honor and respect. (I didn’t have the impression Mr. Richardson was a proponent of Game at all; though I have forgotten exactly what he said about it. Certainly he presses hard for the role of woman as housewife.)
I welcome additional comments to help wrap up this thread, although I think I will put any further lengthy replies of my own in a separate posting. Many thanks, all.
Yes, undoubtly. But are there anything more important for you (women)?
(I’d like to add that I haven’t the faintest idea of what “Game” is.)
Well… The members of the Quiverfull movement seems to be doing fine.