The Douthat vs. Serwer Debate

June 18, 2019 Hunter Wallace Alt-Punditry, Discourse Poisoning, History, Narrative Terrorism, Race Realism, Race Relations, Racism, Segregation, Slavery, White Supremacy 9

Woke up this morning.

Scanned through the news.

I’ve got some catching up to do: Ross Douthat of The New York Times is debating Adam Serwer of The Atlantic on liberal democracy:

If you consider where we are at today to be “progress” as opposed to an advanced stage of cultural degeneration, then I suppose you will have a positive take on liberal democracy.

If I am reading this correctly, Douthat is basically right that Lincoln and the Union used violence to impose their abolitionist vision on the country and that the postbellum era represents a refounding of the United States rather than a continuation of the Republic of the Founding Fathers.

Oh …

Garrison only denounced the Constitution as “a devil’s pact” and a “covenant with death” and “agreement with hell” because it was negotiated with the South. He didn’t reject the idea of “constitutionalism” per se only the actual one that was created by the Founders.

Yes, they came up with the awful system of a consolidated empire that we have now which was violently imposed on the South during Reconstruction at the point of a bayonet. The Confederacy was only the first victim. Iran is the latest target of the American Empire:

“I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.”

Robert E. Lee to Lord Acton, December 15, 1866

Lincoln misrepresented Jefferson who went to his grave as a White separatist who believed blacks should be colonized in Africa. He also assassinated by John Wilkes Booth for being a tyrant.

In both cases, the Reconstruction Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts were examples of the North imposing its will on the South, which is why the Constitution of the Founding Fathers should only be of interest to historians. We no longer live under that constitutional order.

Robert Barnwell Rhett was right:

“They published a special broadside as “A Farewell to the Subcribers of the Charleston Mercury.” Though the son signed the statement, in fact his father wrote it for him, and it echoed all of the elder Rhett’s ideas and spirit.

The South now lived under a despotism of consolidation, the states and their sovereignty abused by Washington. With universal male suffrage it would only get worse. “Swelling the multitude of voters” would not make liberty but be its downfall, while the military Reconstruction now in place attempting “to put the half-savage negro over the civilized Caucasian, may not be forgotten or forgiven.” History would remember it as an act of abject hatred and bigotry. The South, a more tolerant and congenial region, did not like change and revered the past, while the North, “fond of novelties, misnamed “progress,” was the slave of its own dogmatism.

“There is no ground for forgetfulness – no possibility of forgiveness, with these black, moving memorials of our wrongs, polluting our sight, crossing us in all walks of life, and vaunting their consequence as the tools of our tyrants,” the newspaper’s “Farewell” concluded as it condemned “a despotism of vagrant white men, and ignorant, filthy negroes.” Even Kentucky was now feeling the heel of Reconstruction, her sympathy with the other Southern states greater than ever before, and a spirit of resistance was growing throughout the old Confederacy, refueling “the hatred and regional unity that will one day regain Southern freedom and power in national counsels.” The Union was destined to fall apart from its own corruption one day, and then “the people of the Southern states will be a free and great people.”

“Grant won the election, of course, which convinced Rhett now more than ever that, “the blessings of Free Government can only be obtained by the Southern people ruling themselves.” All of the governmental offices in the South were filled with corrupt Republican partisans, he believed … He wanted to see in the region a Southern party condemning the old Constitution, with its now perverting amendments proscribing former Confederates from holding office while giving the right to vote to the blacks, and instead organizing Southern power for a day of deliverance. They should stop submitting voluntarily to Reconstruction laws…

The South would rise again, not just to achieve its own independence but to save free government and political liberty for the world. They had but to will it to see it accomplished. For this reason among others he would never be one of the thousands taking an oath of allegiance and seeking the return of his full civil liberties.”

“There never had been and never would be a people of the United States, but rather two distinct peoples, Northern and Southern. Democracy existed only in the states themselves and not in the national government. The Union had no sovereignty, republican free government was dead in America, and despotism reigned.

When the South fell, so did that free government that he always capitalized …

All his life Robert Barnwell Rhett had seen a “yonder star” that others would not see, and his dream had died. Yet to the end he expected that those who followed him would one day see his vision anew and take up his cause to make it a reality. The South would rise again, and it would be free and independent and dedicated to principles that would vindicate him and his struggle.”

As Rhett and Lee explained above, the Reconstruction Amendments overthrew the Constitution, destroyed Free Government in the United States and created a consolidated despotism in Washington. After conquering the Confederacy, that despotism turned its attention to foreign countries and now its empire stretches across the entire world. It is what made this fat loser and CENTCOM possible.

Of course, Europe’s turn with “liberal democracy” imposed by Washington at the point of a bayonet came in the early 20th century.

Yes, that’s how Mississippi joined the Union. Government of the people, by the people, for the people meant 10 percent of the people of the states taking an oath of allegiance to his royal highness Abraham Africanus the First.

I present to you the Lincoln Catechism:

Lesson The First

I. What is the Constitution?
A compact with hell – now obsolete.

II. By whom hath the Constitution been made obsolete?
By Abraham Africanus the First.

III. To what end?
That his days may be long in office – and that he may make himself and his people the equal of the negroes.

IV. What is a president?
A general agent for negroes.

VI. What is an army?
A provost guard, to arrest white men, and set negroes free.

X. What is meant by the word Liberty?
Incarceration in a vermin-infested Bastille.

XV. What is the meaning of the word “patriot?”
A man who loves his country less, and the negro more.

XIX. What is the meaning of the word “law?”
The will of the president.

XXII. Have the people any rights?
None but such as the president gives.

Lesson The Second

IX. What is the meaning of the declaration that, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed?”
That a man’s house may be searched, and when he be stripped of his arms, whenever and wherever a provost marshal shall dare attempt it.

XVII. What is the meaning of the declaration that, “the United States shall guarantee to every state a Republican form of government?”
That Congress shall assist the President in destroying the Republican form of government in the states, and substituting a military government wherever he pleases – witness Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware.

Lesson The Third

II. What are the Ten Commandments?
Thou shalt have no other God but the negro.
Thou shalt make an image of a negro, and place it on the Capitol as the type of the new American man.
Thou shalt swear that the negro shall be the equal of the white man.
Thou shalt fight thy battles on the Sabbath day, and thy generals, and thy captains, and thy privates, and thy servants, shall do all manner of murders, and thefts as on the other six days.
Thou shalt not honor or obey thy father nor thy mother if they are Copperheads; but thou shall serve, honor, and obey Abraham Lincoln.
Thou shalt commit murder – of slaveholders.
Thou mayest commit adultery – with the contrabands.
Thou shalt steal – everything that belongeth to a slaveholder.
Thou shalt bear false witness – against all slaveholders.
Thou shalt covet the slaveholders man-servant and his maid-servant, and shalt steal his ox and his ass, and everything that belongeth to him.
For on these commandments hang all the law and honor of loyal leaguers.

X. Have the loyal leaguers a prayer?
They have.

XI. Repeat it.
Father Abraham, who art in Washington, of glorious memory – since the date of thy proclamation to free negroes.
Thy kingdom come, and overthrow the republic; they will be done, and the laws perish.
Give us this day our daily supply of greenbacks.
Forgive us our plunders, but destroy the Copperheads.
Lead us into fat pastures; but deliver us from the eye of detectives; and make us the equal of the negro; for such shall be our kingdom, and the glory of thy administration.

Lesson The Sixth

II. What are States?
Colonies of the federal government.

VII. What is a Governor?
A general agent for the president.

VIII. What is a negro?
A white man with black skin.

IX. What is a white man?
A negro with white skin.

Lesson The Eighth

XXVI. What will become of all who believe in the Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is?
They shall be damned

XXVII. What shall be the reward of all such as believe the Union was a covenant with death, and the Constitution a compact with Hell?
They shall be received into a negro paradise.

Lesson The Ninth

I. Is the United States a consolidated government?
Yes, it is.

II. Who consolidated it?
Abraham Lincoln.

III. Does consolidation mean to annihilate the States?
Yes – to a great extent.

XII. Does the Republican Party intend to change the name of the United States?
It does.

XIII. What do they intend to call it?
New Africa.

XVII. What do the Republicans mean by the word people?
Abolitionists, mesmerisers, spiritual mediums, free-lovers and negroes.

Jefferson Davis received a hero’s welcome in Canada. As for the French, even the ones who had supported the Union later regretted it and wished France had intervened on behalf of the Confederacy.

What is there to stop the radicalized Left from resorting to violence in an “extra-constitutional event” that overthrows the Constitution to impose their vision of wokeness on the South all over again? As we can see in these tweets from Greg Sargent, nothing at all.

The argument here is that the goals of the abolitionist were laudable and the violent war that destroyed the South and killed 1 out of every 5 White men of military age here and which led to 75 years of crushing poverty was a good thing. It was also a good thing to set aside the Constitution to accomplish the goal of consolidating all power in Washington. Now, what is wrong with the woke crowd doing something like that all over again to achieve their vision of social justice?

Here is the original article from Douthat:

“Fair warning: This will be an entire column about a single paragraph.

The paragraph’s author is Adam Serwer, a writer for The Atlantic, weighing in on the complicated, sometimes baffling debate on the right about the relationship between religious conservatives and libertarianism … or maybe the relationship between religious conservatives and Donald Trump … or maybe the relationship between religious conservatives and the liberal democratic order. …”

I don’t understand why religious conservatives would support liberal democracy seeing as how their decline and marginalization which began around 1700 precisely coincides with the rise of liberalism.

“This is powerful stuff — the last line, in particular — whose power lies in two arguments, two lines of thinking, that it eloquently distills. The first argument is a broad historical defense of the American experiment, resonant with patriots of all persuasions, which emphasizes the scope that our system gives for the slow, hard work of moral improvement, political empowerment and the correction of even the most grievous sins and errors. …”

The idea that there is an “American Creed” was created by the Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal in his 1944 book An American Dilemma.

“But because I am inside conservative Catholicism I can see very well where the (narrow) interest in ideas like “integralism” and the (much larger) sympathy for populist rebellions is coming from. And because I would prefer that political liberalism turn away from the trajectory that is inspiring both integralism and Trumpism, I want liberals — liberals like Serwer, perhaps liberals like you, reader — to embrace a historical perspective that is wider and more complicated than a partisan story about privileged white Christians whining because they’ve never lost anything before.”

Yeah, ok, Ross.

Just ignore the fact that The Atlantic is a Jewish magazine. Ignore the Jewish elephant in the room and pretend that Jewish radicalism inciting minorities against the declining White Christian majority is going to “turn away from the trajectory” it has taken every other time in world history.

About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

8 Comments

  2. “Progress,” in liberal eyes, always leads to the same thing: More power for those at the top. Greatly centralized power was the result of the Civil War. The Tenth Amendment was made substantially meaningless afterwards, and secession became a pipe dream. The leviathan we now have was initially formed by the “aristocrats” at the time of the Constitution to negate the levelling of elite power done by the Articles of Confederation, given more life by Lincoln, and then fully raised up by Wilson and FDR. We have become a perpetual war state over the time since Lincoln, as well. We need a devolution of top-down power.

    The good that gov’t can do, like safety nets, needs to be made as streamlined as possible so that involvement in, and control over, our lives is minimized. I would like to see the Federal gov’t become toothless to enforce most of its diktats, and instead devolve into a decentralized services provider. Let Uncle hand out the checks, but reduce the bureaucracy through making most payments and services through the states. Costs and regulations will (hopefully) come way down. We would have more say over how we live, and the DC set will still get to pretend that they’re completely in charge.

  4. “In both cases, the Reconstruction Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts were examples of the North imposing its will on the South, which is why the Constitution of the Founding Fathers should only be of interest to historians. We no longer live under that constitutional order.”

    The Yankees replaced the rule of law with the rule of Massachusetts, and the authority of the Constitution with the authority of New York.

    All power in the “Union” was concentrated in Boston, New York and Chicago. Washington D.C. becoming merely the storefront operation for the Dictatorship of Massachusetts.

    “the states and their sovereignty abused by Washington.”

    This abuse never seems to fall on the sixteen states that make up Yankeedom. In fact, the general government seems to legislate endlessly on their behalf, at the expense of the South and West. The agriculture subsidies for corn, soybeans and ethanol in the Yankee Cornbelt being the most obvious example.

    Jewish rule was a symptom, and is now a consequence of, Yankee rule. Yankees being SJWs and oligarchs who coincidentally and overwhelmingly live in the North.

  5. 1. Expecting the left to be self-restrained — “to embrace a historical perspective that is wider and more complicated” — is, borrowing from Eric Voegelin, to deal with alternative realities rather than real alternatives.

    2. By the time he died, as I recall, the great lover of the constitution, Joe Sobran, had come to realize that no matter how noble and wise the work of the Founding Fathers that the constitution that they drafted was dead. We have to live and act in the realization that we live in a post-constitutional regime. Until we do, our political actions will only be accidentally effective to the achievement of our goals.

  6. This was some good autism.

    This helped me a bit to sympathize again with my wealthy lowland brothers, whose appetites and avarice for wealth made them recalcitrant on the issue of slavery, to the point of trying to use states rights to justify an economic system that by the 1860’s was already outdated. Slavery wasn’t the hill to die on.

    My hill billy ancestors never had slaves, could never afford them if we did. The South should have freed them themselves, then fired on fort sumter anyhow. Then maybe states like Kentucky would have come on board.

    Instead, poor men fought and died, for rich mens pride. Thats the legacy of the civil war.

    Reconstruction though was a whole different story.

    @hunter, would you consider doing a deeper dive into how Kentucky and the other border states that stayed neutral in the war got shafted anyhow? You have alluded to it a couple times, but the topic would seem to be instructive for cuckseratives who think they will be spared if they stand aside while Identitarians and Nationalists take it in the face from ZOG.

    Could be a great post. Just a thought.

    Anywho, gg great article.

  7. The logical endpoint of the American Experiment is the extermination of all white people on the North American continent.

    How long until Leftists start necklacing folks who aren’t sufficiently woke on LGBTQXYZ issues or pedophilia or whatever other crazy stuff they come up with?

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