06/05/2013
Re: An Optimistic Twenty-Something Reader in Illinois Wonders If John Derbyshire’s Fatalism Is Justified. June 7, 2012
From: A Young Illinois Reader [Send Him Mail]
I started regularly reading VDARE.com about a year ago, and in my first letter to you I raised some objections to John Derbyshire’s view that the demographic transformation of America was irreversible. (That I started reading VDARE.com soon after L'Affaire Derb is not coincidental.
Looking over what I wrote, I have to admit that I was indeed too optimistic:
I'd like to hope that beneath the they'll-all-assimilate-and-vote-Republican-in-no-time talk, the folks in the House of Representatives, RNC, Romney campaign, etc. know what the score is and what it means for the future of the right.
Well, the 2012 election has come and gone, and the GOP remains largely clueless. Romney, a decent guy for whom I voted, was persuaded to run a straightforward campaign of capital vs. labor, and — surprise! — labor gets more votes when the issues are framed that way. And in the wake of this loss, the Republicans have interpreted the outcome in an innumerate and self-destructive way, as Steve Sailer has just shown.
I don’t know whether the party has simply sold out to business interests or come to embrace the Cultural Marxist zeitgeist. Probably both: Kool Aid goes down more easily when it tastes like money.
I also feel obliged to walk back somewhat my hopes for the Asian-American vote. Broadly speaking, socioeconomic convergence does not trump tribal differences in ethnicity, religion, and culture. It is as understandable as it is regrettable that successful Asians would vote for the party of America-as-hotel rather than the party that implicitly represents the traditional nation. Put differently, why would we expect upscale, metropolitan Asians to have any more national solidarity than their liberal SWPL neighbors?
And yet, despite these setbacks, I am more convinced than ever that the future of the right belongs to the dissidents. Indeed, I think the Dissident Right is where today’s Conservatism Inc. was in the postwar decades. The founders of the modern conservative movement were anti-establishment voices who offered an authentic response to the great domestic and foreign policy challenges of their day. The present stagnation of mainstream conservatism is a result of its political success, which in turn is a result of the genuine leadership of men like Goldwater and Reagan.
Today it’s the Dissident Right standing up to bipartisan orthodoxy and providing an alternative perspective on the defining issue of our day: the National Question. At some point, ordinary conservatives will no longer accept an Establishment that arbitrarily transfers income from labor to capital in defiance of national market principles, remains willfully ignorant of human nature, volunteers to play the villain in the left’s Who-Whom morality play, and submits contemptibly to national dissolution. It won’t stand, because it can’t stand.
The question, then, is whether the Dissident Right will come into its inheritance in time to ensure that America’s posterity will come into theirs.
See previous letters from the same reader.
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