Pedro Gonzalez introduced me to Samuel Francis, and from there I read his fantastic book Beautiful Losers.
Francis predicted what I have been witnessing for the last
eight years, and what President Donald Trump busted up: “Conservatism” has been
corrupted into a libertarian lightweight controlled opposition, abandoning the
fundamentals of our nation’s identity, integrity, and idiosyncrasy.
Samuel Francis predicated the rise of “Middle American
Radicals” and the populist, America-First pushback against managerial elites
and globalist implications. Ron Paul fretted as far back as 2007 about the
rising soft fascism in this country, in which conformity would be the rule, and
non-government organizations would impose speech codes and other repressive
measures against those who did not conform to the will and wishes of the elite.
But Francis called out the corporate dominance long before that.
Francis’ most salient observations arise from his essay Beautiful
Losers in the same-named book that he published in 1993. He called out the
frequent failure of the Conservative movement to win the culture war. He
pointed out how Conservatives had incorporated the Gestalt of Liberalism,
in which individual liberty is the only salient feature, while culture and
constitutional concerns were brushed aside. Francis correctly exposed the
“neoconservatives” as the neo-liberals that they really were. Sure, they did
not like the rising crime rates and plummeting test sores in the inner cities.
Yet they still held onto the multicultural, affirmative-action dogma which
created those problems in the first place.
To his incredible credit, Francis called out the tacit
alliance of liberals and conservatives to focus on fighting communism and
promote individual liberty, which in turn turned into a betrayal of true constitutionalism,
Judeo-Christian conservatism, and America-First nationalism.
William F. Buckley articulated conservatism thus:
“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history,
yelling ‘Stop!’, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much
patience with those who so urge it.”
Samuel Francis pointed out who the Left and other liberal
interests had conveniently found ways to get around the Conservative Crank
shouting “Stop!”, all while praising Mr. Stop Sign’s political convictions.
Even though conservatives opposed abortion, homosexual marriage, gun control,
economic restrictionism, socialism, and Marxist groupthink in the colleges, all
the major institutions in our culture, community, and country have given into
these forces.
Yes, conservatives need to yell “Stop!” but they also have
to actually stop the nefarious elements causing harm when they don’t stop. And
Francis called them out on it.
Hence, the mess we find ourselves in today, a mess which
President Trump, with his Francis-Buchanan populist instincts began taking the
first steps to clean up.
Samuel Francis’ thinking is making a comeback and for good
reason.
He also needs to make a comeback to remind us why he
disappeared, and why it made sense at the time that he went away.
Samuel Francis predicted the populist backlash to the
managerial elites ruining our country.
He was absolutely correct to call out America’s growing
investment and involvement in foreign wars. He was critical of the First War in
Iraq, and his criticism would have aptly applied to George W. Bush’s second
invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he lived to see, but not end.
He was also right to question the cult-like adherence that
had cropped up around Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement as a
political hegemony. Civil rights has really turned into “civic privilege”
handed out by government entities, and in too man cases undermines true natural
rights.
But Samuel Francis would later write:
“What we as whites must do is reassert our identity and our
solidarity, and we must do so in explicitly racial terms through the
articulation of a racial consciousness as whites.”
I find this statement patently offensive. More importantly,
though, it’s abject falsehood.
What is a “white racial consciousness”? Such a thing does
not exist. Did the guy not study the Civil War? The United States was 90% white
in 1861, and the country descended into a fractious, fearsome civil war, one
which cost more American lives than all other American military involvements
combined! White nationalists, or white racialists will argue: “That’s what
happens when you have people of a different race in your country! It causes
nothing but trouble!” However, most of these armchair (or should I say
“Booster-Seat”) historians forget that blacks were voting citizens in some of
the colonies and the states. They supported the ratification of the United
States Constitution, as well.
Getting rid of all the black, Hispanic, and Asian people is
not going to solve any problems. Human nature and its propensity to faction is
deeply-rooted enough, that no matter how homogenous one makes a community,
there can be still emerge bases for strife and conflict. The problem is not
other people and their skin color.
I cannot offer a systematic explanation, but I will hazard
one educated guess as to why there are these conflicting advocacies among
nationalists and populists: the focus on Tradition as the catch-all answer to
everything, rather than looking for truth to synthesize all the data before
them on the historical record.
Human thought tends to aggregate a set of propositions under
one label, then wants to answer all the other policy, personnel, and
fundamental questions under the same label. If you see yourself as a
nationalist and a populist, then you have to support welfare for American
citizens only, for example. Yet government subsidy of any kind harms the very
people it claims to help (read Charles Murray’s On Losing Ground for
more information).
Some nationalist-populist types are pushing for minimum wage
increases, government-run healthcare (Medicaid expansions or even single-payer
programs) because they want the government to “serve the people.” However,
making the people dependent on the government only serves … the government, or
the people who are running the government. The lack of thinking on these
matters is really disturbing!
This same kind of sloppy thinking induces nationalists and
populists to look at old traditions, the “Southern Way of Life” and decide:
“Why can’t we go back to the way things used to be? Why can’t we go back to
being a majority white country?”
Francis seemed to think that going back to a time when the
nation was “majority white” would be better for the country, since there were
fewer problems. He confuses skin color for culture, and he misplaces physical
identity for the common cohesion needed to hold a country together. This kind
of thinking is sloppy, mistaken, and just plain wrong.
Sam Francis was right about the abandonment of the real
culture war, and he deftly explained why the Right is getting it wrong. But the
answer is not “White Power” or “White Nationalism.” We need to focus on and
restore the United States of America’s fundamental, credal heritage: our
Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, the Judeo-Christian heritage, and our unique
Constitutional Republicanism. These American verities are not “white values,”
and an American Renaissance is not an invitation to go backwards, but rather to
move forwards and restore that the credal promises of America can incorporate
anyone who is willing to submit and accept them.
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