Posted on 08/03/2002 10:10:09 AM PDT by Richard Poe
NO SOONER had I arrived home from my five-week sojourn in Greece this Thursday, than I learned that some people had been talking about me. In an article called "The Virtue of Xenophobia," posted on TheTexasMercury.com, Jimmy Cantrell suggests, that, far from being a neoconservative – as my detractors often call me – I am actually closer to being a paleoconservative.
"A paleo-what?" some readers may respond.
Yes, I know. All those "neos" and "paleos" used to confuse me too. But I am finally beginning to understand what they mean. And I think Cantrell is right.
Many issues divide neocons from paleocons, but race seems to be the crucial one. Neocons believe that America will always be America, with or without white people. Some neocons even preach that the sooner American whites intermarry with non-whites to produce a new race of amorphous cosmopolites with café-au-lait complexions, the better off everyone will be.
Not so, say the paleocons. Anglo-Saxon civility will not survive the disappearance of Anglo-Saxon people. If white folks lose their demographic and political dominance here, America will likely degenerate into a hellhole of Zimbabwe-style violence, they warn.
I have long been mistaken for a neocon, partly because I wrote Black Spark, White Fire, a book which suggests that the blending of many races and cultures in the ancient Mediterranean helped stimulate high civilizations in Egypt, Greece and the Levant.
Some perceived my book as a promotion of the neocons’ café-au-lait utopia, since it celebrated a time when swarthy Mediterraneans built mighty kingdoms, while purebred Aryans languished in savagery.
Even worse (in the eyes of some critics), Black Spark seemed to emanate from ethnic self-interest. Being half Russian-Jewish and half Mexican by descent, I melt easily into Mediterranean crowds – as I was recently reminded in Greece, where waiters, cabdrivers and store clerks invariably addressed me in the Hellenic tongue. One could argue that Black Spark was merely a chauvinistic celebration of my own kind, a song of praise for Mediterranean "diversity" over Aryan "purity," somewhat in the spirit of Giuseppe Sergi’s 1901 treatise, The Mediterranean Race.
All of that is possible, at least on some half-conscious level. But Black Spark made a larger point.
Contrary to popular belief, my book was no exercise in dead-white-male-bashing. In praising the Egyptian and Phoenician seafarers who "discovered" Europe (and who possibly gave the continent its name), I defended exploration as a noble enterprise – no small heresy in an age when schoolchildren are taught to despise Columbus as a slaver, mass murderer and infectious disease vector.
The honest reader, moved by my book to applaud Egyptian and Phoenician explorers, could hardly condemn later adventurers for similar feats in the New World.
Some conservatives got the point. Steve Sailer – whose Human Biodiversity Institute outrages liberals with its Darwinian analysis of racial differences – gave unexpected praise to Black Spark in a recent UPI article, calling it a "sophisticated Afrocentric book" by "a white conservative political pundit."
Sailer quoted me on the subject of whether or not the Carthaginian general Hannibal looked more like Denzel Washington or Vin Diesel. It was great fun. But whatever color Hannibal may have been, I don’t think I would have wanted to live in his Carthage. They used to sacrifice babies there, for one thing.
I approach the question of race much as I approach ecology. We don’t really know whether clear-cutting every major forest on the planet will fatally deplete the earth’s oxygen supply. Maybe it won’t. But why run such a dangerous experiment?
Likewise, it is possible that the neocons are right. Maybe America will survive the extinction of its Anglo-Saxon creators. But who, in his right mind, wants to put this theory to the test?
When I was editor of FrontPageMagazine.com, I ignited a minor scandal in November 2000 by publishing "The End of Paleoconservatism" by James Lubinskas. He predicted that paleoconservatism would fade as a movement, but that its ideas would spread.
And they are spreading. In the unimpeachably neocon NationalReviewOnline.com, columnist John Derbyshire recently opined that, "Only Anglo- Saxon countries can do democracy… Other cultures can fake it for a few decades, as France, Germany, and Japan are currently doing, but their hearts aren't really in it and they will swoon gratefully into the arms of a fascist dictator when one comes along."
Perhaps Derbyshire is exaggerating for comic effect. Even so, his point cannot be refuted from history. Only a fool would ignore Derbyshire’s warning. Only a scoundrel would try to silence him by screaming "racist."
_________________________________
Richard Poe is a New York Times bestselling author and cyberjournalist. His latest book is The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
St. Augustine was from Northern Africa, what is now Libya. Although not Arabic--like the peoples there now, 4th Century Libyans were likely a mixture of Cartheginian and Roman... i.e. your swarthy meditarianian type. One can't really call him white, or black for that matter.
The earliest images of Augustine, as more or less reliable as they are (none date from his lifetime) back of my contention the St. was an olive skinned meditarianian.
I find the peleocon contention that skin color makes culture rather offensive. I think all kinds of people can learn--once steeped in Western culture--the basics of democratic thought, and their backgrounds can add, not subtract to our culture. There will always be various skin colors--and we should lighten up about it all!
So far, the only 'cons I've heard make this contention are neocons. I have yet to hear a self-described paleocon contend that "skin color makes culture" though I admit that I don't follow every volley the intramural conservative conflict.
Me? I think I'd pass on both of the age-defined conservative labels (paleo- and neo-) and, like LaBelleDameSansMerci, just call myself an Extreme Reactionary. (at least until someone comes up with a term that combines a Habsburg Catholic sensibility with a Puritan theological bent).
St. Augustine was...your swarthy meditarianian type. One can't really call him white, or black for that matter.
Indisputably true. How about "white(ish)?" (not that it maters)
I also think that VDare did the movement a disservice with the ad hominem attacks on Jonah Goldberg. I had lunch with him after the YAF conference last summer. He actually agreed that the importation of large number of people from foreign cultures and polities undermined our common culture and was driving the American polity to the left.
Then Paul Gottfried (a nice enough person with which to correspond by e-mail) started a series hitting Jonah on immigration. This had the effect of angering Jonah and making sure that he would not change positions.
Dear rmlew:
Actually, I was referring to the online version. The exact phrase in my article that aroused this unexpected controversy was, "In the unimpeachably neocon NationalReviewOnline.com..."
Also, please note that I did not mean this as a put-down of NRO. While I am attempting, in this column, to identify some of the ways in which I may disagree with neocons, I do not look upon them as the enemy, and I do not use the word "neocon" as a pejorative.
I offered the above links to Vdare.com not to take sides in their feud with NRO, but simply to illustrate that when I characterized NRO as "neocon," I was doing so accurately. Frankly, I was a bit surprised that I even had to defend such an unremarkable assertion.
And, by the way, I wasn't kidding, in my article, when I said, "...it is possible that the neocons are right." My mind is not closed to any of their arguments. I am raising questions here, not pronouncing dogma.
At one time, that was considered a liberal, even Marxist, position, because of its focus on environmental conditions. That position implies a certain malleability in human nature.
Even better question: who originally steeped Westerners in Western culture?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.