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To: JohnGalt
Reading Francis 15 years ago or Fleming 10 years ago or Rockwell 5 years ago was an exciting experience because they questioned the prevailing orthodoxy of the day as few others did. But I think we're finding out that the orthodoxy isn't wrong about everything. Now I suspect that the paleos would rather be provocative than right.

At its core, Fleming is giving a pure nationalism, stripped of the cheapness of pure ethnic identity.

It would be nice if this were true, but I really doubt it. Fleming has too many emotional zigzags. He has real trouble focusing.

What I object to in both neos and paleos is the closed and cultic quality of much of their thinking. Rather than address issues of concern to the country as a whole, one throws around group passwords and codewords and makes secret signs and handshakes. There's much that's wrong with practical politics, but it does allow people a chance to focus on a few things that affect their lives and try to fix them. I appreciate Fleming's attempt at dealing with the broader cultural landscape. A conservatism that neglects cultural questions is indeed impoverished. But I suspect all that it amounts to in the end with Fleming is a few poorly written articles damning the contemporary scene in a wholesale fashion, with special pleading for the cause of the day, Serbia, Lombardy or the Confederacy. Fleming's yearnings after the wild and heroic can't be satisfied by everyday life, and are apt to so more harm than good.

I think Americans will come around to a view more centered on the nation, but I don't think we'll be very indebted to Fleming and his sort for it. It won't be because we're fighting the battle of the "true America" against the "false" -- I suspect most Americans would view Fleming's America as a false one -- but because we have to pull together to overcome common obstacles. Bush's 2000 vision of a "more modest America" was of value. It certainly looked like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, things didn't turn out as it appeared they would. Arrogant intellectuals of whatever stripe, aren't apt to bring about a more modest country, though it looks like apparently modest politicians won't do so either.

206 posted on 03/19/2003 8:26:01 PM PST by x
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To: x
Interesting indeed to contrast the civil, informed arguments of such as you with the shrill, whiney name-calling of such self-styled "neos" as the one who posted that drivel from Frum and ol' sinkspur and the usual suspects who have zero respect for the individual and a pervertedly unhealthy reverence for the almighty State. They remind me of the "doctor" whose "love" died on him, so he kept her corpse for YEARS, treated her mummified remains like they were his wife, sleeping and having relations with her. The "neos" seem to have the same perverted lust for the decaying and putrid remains of the "almighty" Nanny State.
307 posted on 03/20/2003 10:16:50 PM PST by dcwusmc ("The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself.")
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