1. Name the judge who has sealed King’s FBI surveillance file until the year 2027.

A) The Honorable John Lewis Smith, Jr.

2. According to whose 1989 biography did King spend his last night on earth in an adulterous liaison?

A) Reverend Ralph Abernathy (“And the Walls Came Tumbling Down”)

3. According to whose 1989 biography did King spend his last morning on earth physically beating a woman?

A) Reverend Ralph Abernathy (“And the Walls Came Tumbling Down”)

4. Who was the U.S. Attorney General who ordered the FBI to wiretap King?

A) Robert F. Kennedy

5. Who was the Assistant Director of the FBI who wrote a letter to Sen. John P. East (R-NC) describing King’s conduct of “orgiastic and adulterous escapades, some of which indicated that King could be bestial in his sexual abuse of women.”

A) Charles D. Brennan

6. Who called King a “hypocrite preacher.”

A) President Lyndon B. Johnson

7. What U.S. newspaper reported that King had plagiarized his doctoral thesis at Boston University.

A) The Wall Street Journal

8. Whom did King plagiarize in more than 50 complete sentences in his doctoral thesis?

A) Dr. Jack Boozer

9. What institution concluded that King had plagiarized his doctoral thesis?

A) Boston University in 1991

10. Who was the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities who purposely suppressed knowledge of King’s plagiarism of his doctoral thesis?

A) Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Richard Cheney

11. What was Martin Luther King’s real name?

A) Michael King, Jr. In 1935 his father, Michael King, declared to his congregation that he wound henceforth be known as Martin Luther King and his son would be known as Martin Luther King, Jr.

12. In his first public sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1947 who did King plagiarize?

A) Harry Emerson Fosdick

13. Name the man who served as King’s personal secretary from 1955 to 1960, had joined the Young Communists League at New York City College in 1936, went to prison for draft evasion in 1944, and in 1953 was sentenced to 60 days in jail in California for “lewd vagrancy and homosexual perversion.”

A) Bayard Rustin

14. According to whom had King “privately described himself as a Marxist.”

A) His biographer, David J. Garrow

15. Who edited King’s book “Stride Toward Freedom”?

A) Communist Stanley Levison

16. Who made the following speech?

That’s exactly what we mean–
from every mountain side,
let freedom ring.
Not only from the Green Mountains
and White Mountains of Vermont
and New Hampshire;
not only from the Catskills
of New York;
but from the Ozarks
in Arkansas,
from Stone Mountain
in Georgia,
from the Blue Ridge Mountains
of Virginia–
let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States,
but for the disinherited of all the earth–from every mountainside,
LET FREEDOM RING!

A) Archibald Carey, 1952

17. Who sees nothing in common with this speech and the “I Have a Dream” speech?

A) Snopes.com and other apologists.

18. How has this apparent copying been defended?

A) It’s just “borrowing” – quite common among African-Americans who are willing to share things much more than other people.

19. What does the King Center think about “borrowing?”

A) Not much. They have tried to copyright the speeches and charge fees for their use. No free “borrowing” there.

No questions correct means you are exactly the kind of citizen your masters desire.

1-3 questions correct means you could be dangerous.

4-6 questions correct means you need electro-convulsive therapy.

7-10 questions correct means you are a hater.

11 or more questions correct means you are a terrorist. Turn yourself in now for re-education and your life will be spared.

Happy Slain Civil Rights Leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

A week before Iowa’s January 3 caucuses, the outcome of the Republican contest is hard to predict: Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney all stand a chance at winning. But something else already seems clear: Iowa has blown its special claim as the first state to vote in presidential contests.

Iowa’s first-to-vote-status dates to 1972, when a quirk in Democratic Party rules scheduled its caucuses ahead of the New Hampshire primary, which had opened the presidential nominating process since 1920. Republicans followed suit four years later. Iowa’s political establishment quickly found it enjoyed all the attention and economic activity that came with going first, and enshrined into state law a mandate that Iowa vote at least eight days before any other state.

Iowa seems to have gotten away with this leap to the front of the line in part thanks to its folksy all-American image as a heartland state home to honest, common-sense rural folks. But with every passing decade, Iowa’s electoral character grows more out of step with the reality of the United States. Iowa is an unusually homogenous — that is, white — racist farmers in an increasingly diverse and urban nation. And it’s long been a custom of presidential politics to see the candidates extol the virtues of expensive farm and ethanol subsidies with precious little economic rationale.

In response, Iowans insist their state has special virtues that make for sound presidential vetting. The state Republican Party’s website, for instance, boasts Iowa’s small size, along with the intangible virtue of its people, justifies its exalted position:

Iowans take the caucuses very seriously and respect their position as First in the Nation. Many Iowans meet candidates personally and ask them detailed questions about particular policies. Some presidential candidates have noted Iowa voters ask some of the most sophisticated and nuanced policy questions they receive while on the campaign trail.

Sounds nice, but that rationale doesn’t withstand much scrutiny. Iowa may take the caucuses seriously, but wouldn’t we expect any other state to do the same? And while Iowa voters sometimes ask great questions, so do voters elsewhere. I’ve also heard Iowa voters ask some really silly and uninformed questions. The idea geography determines political aptitude is more than a little dubious.

Here’s where the experience of 2012 should be most damning for Iowa’s privileged place. The mythology of the caucuses is based on close personal contact between voters and candidates. In theory, the candidates traverse the state’s plains and cornfields to let voters size them up at close range, to test them and take their measure in coffee shops and meeting halls where people live plain and simple — and political spin just doesn’t fly.

But the candidates who have spent the most time and effort on the state, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum who has famously visited each of the state’s 99 counties, the poor man, are reaping precious few rewards in the polls. The caucus frontrunners, by contrast, haven’t really played by Iowa’s rules. Mitt Romney spent most of 2011 avoiding the state. Newt Gingrich campaigned there sporadically until his surge, and even then has showed his respect by leaving at critical moments. Then there’s Ron Paul, who may win the caucuses with a small plurality while peddling a foreign policy message totally unacceptable to most of the state’s Republicans.

So why have these candidates risen to the top? Because the entire Iowa campaign has tracked the national one. Iowa’s procession of frontrunners — Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Gingrich, Paul — has roughly mirrored the boom-and-bust pattern found in national polls. It seems unlikely these fluctuations have been driven by the “sophisticated and nuanced policy questions” of Iowans. More likely, they reflect the drama of the televised debates and national media events like Herman Cain’s string of female accusers. Cain, by the way, leapt to first place in the state at a time when he was paying it no visits at all. What’s the point in having Iowa go first if its voters are simply reacting to the same debate zingers as the rest of the country?

And by the way, remember the Ames straw poll in August? That contest was supposed to tell us important things about the candidates’ true strength and appeal in the state, and to winnow the field in ways that would make it stronger. But the straw poll’s victor, Michele Bachmann, promptly tanked, and the candidate whose third-place finish drove him from the field — Tim Pawlenty — looks in hindsight like the credible Mitt Romney alternative for whom the party has spent the past six months searching. It’s been six months in which Iowa has played along with the hyping of one candidate after another.

Iowa is a lovely state packed with wonderful, thoughtful and good people but is this really the picture of an unusually discerning and responsible electorate? And if not, why in the world should Iowa continue to get the first say?

http://hispanic.cc/in_diverse_&_urban_nation,_time_to_kick_iowa_white,_racist_farmers_to_curb.htm

What is racial colorblindness?

Racial issues are often uncomfortable to discuss and rife with stress and controversy. Many ideas have been advanced to address this sore spot in the American psyche. Currently, the most pervasive approach is known as colorblindness. Colorblindness is the racial ideology that posits the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity.

At its face value, colorblindness seems like a good thing — really taking MLK seriously on his call to judge people on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It focuses on commonalities between people, such as their shared humanity.
Related Articles

Searching for Whitopia: The Unfortunate Misdirection of a Journey Into Whiteness
”I don’t think we’re supposed to be talking about this…”
Learning (Not) to Talk About Race

However, colorblindness alone is not sufficient to heal racial wounds on a national or personal level. It is only a half-measure that in the end operates as a form of racism.
Problems with the colorblind approach

Racism? Strong words, yes, but let’s look the issue straight in its partially unseeing eye. In a colorblind society, Whites, who are unlikely to experience disadvantages due to race, can effectively ignore racism in American life, justify the current social order, and feel more comfortable with their relatively privileged standing in society (Fryberg, 2010). Most minorities, however, who regularly encounter difficulties due to race, experience colorblind ideologies quite differently. Colorblindness creates a society that denies their negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives.

Let’s break it down into simple terms: Color-Blind = “People of color — we don’t see you (at least not that bad ‘colored’ part).” As a person of color, I like who I am, and I don’t want any aspect of that to be unseen or invisible. The need for colorblindness implies there is something shameful about the way God made me and the culture I was born into that we shouldn’t talk about. Thus, colorblindness has helped make race into a taboo topic that polite people cannot openly discuss. And if you can’t talk about it, you can’t understand it, much less fix the racial problems that plague our society.

Colorblindness is not the answer

Whites tend to view colorblindness as helpful to people of color by asserting that race does not matter (Tarca, 2005). But in America, most underrepresented minorities will explain that race does matter, as it affects opportunities, perceptions, income, and so much more. When race-related problems arise, colorblindness tends to individualize conflicts and shortcomings, rather than examining the larger picture with cultural differences, stereotypes, and values placed into context. Instead of resulting from an enlightened (albeit well-meaning) position, colorblindness comes from a lack of awareness of racial privilege conferred by Whiteness (Tarca, 2005). White people can guiltlessly subscribe to colorblindness because they are largely unaware of how race affects people of color and American society as a whole.

Colorblindness in a psychotherapeutic relationship

How might colorblindness cause harm? Here’s an example close to home for those of you who are psychologically-minded. In the not-so-distant past, in psychotherapy a client’s racial and ethnic remarks were viewed as a defensive shift away from important issues, and the therapist tended to interpret this as resistance (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991). However, such an approach hinders the exploration of conflicts related to race, ethnicity, and culture. The therapist doesn’t see the whole picture, and the client is left frustrated.

A colorblind approach effectively does the same thing. Blind means not being able to see things. I don’t want to be blind. I want to see things clearly, even if they make me uncomfortable. As a therapist I need to be able to hear and “see” everything my client is communicating on many different levels. I can’t afford to be blind to anything. Would you want to see a surgeon who operated blindfolded? Of course not. Likewise, a therapist should not be blinded either, especially to something as critical as a person’s culture or racial identity. By encouraging the exploration of racial and cultural concepts, the therapist can provide a more authentic opportunity to understand and resolve the client’s problems (Comas-Diaz & Jacobsen, 1991).

Nonetheless, I have encountered many fellow therapists who ascribe to a colorblind philosophy. They ignore race or pretend its personal, social, and historical effects don’t exist. This approach ignores the incredibly salient experience of being stigmatized by society and represents an empathetic failure on the part of the therapist. Colorblindness does not foster equality or respect; it merely relieves the therapist of his or her obligation to address important racial differences and difficulties.
Multiculturalism is better than blindness

Research has shown that hearing colorblind messages predict negative outcomes among Whites, such as greater racial bias and negative affect; likewise colorblind messages cause stress in ethnic minorities, resulting in decreased cognitive performance (Holoien et al., 2011). Given how much is at stake, we can no longer afford to be blind. It’s time for change and growth. It’s time to see.

The alternative to colorblindness is multiculturalism, an ideology that acknowledges, highlights, and celebrates ethnoracial differences. It recognizes that each tradition has something valuable to offer. It is not afraid to see how others have suffered as a result of racial conflict or differences.

So, how do we become multicultural? The following suggestions would make a good start (McCabe, 2011):

Recognizing and valuing differences,
Teaching and learning about differences, and
Fostering personal friendships and organizational alliances

Moving from colorblindness to multiculturalism is a process of change, and change is never easy, but we can’t afford to stay the same.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/colorblind/201112/colorblind-ideology-is-form-racism

-Henry Francis Lyte

The former Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair, recently stated that massive Third World immigration is “a very positive thing, and there’s no way for a country like Britain to succeed in the future unless it is open to people of different colors, faiths, and cultures.”

Now if Blair’s opinion was the opinion of one isolated lunatic, we could ignore it. But Blair’s opinion on the subject of diversity is the opinion of the ruling elites in every single European nation, so it behooves us to examine Blair’s opinion in the light of reality.

The first point Blair makes is that the influx of colored people with different cultures and different religions from white Britons is a “positive thing.” Why is it a positive thing? Liberals such as Blair never give us a direct answer to that question. It is supposed to be one of those self-evident truths that cannot be questioned. But if we listen to what the liberals in every European country say about the traditional culture of their ancestors we can ascertain the liberals’ answer to the question, “Why is the destruction of white, Christian Europe by colored barbarians a good thing?”

The liberal answer, which is implicit in their hate-filled rhetoric and their hate-filled immigration policies, is that the traditional culture of the European people must be destroyed because it, and the people who created it, were evil. Because the liberals are lunatics their condemnation of the antique Europeans is illogical and inconsistent. On the one hand the antique Europeans are criticized for being insufficiently Christian: “They were racist when they should have been egalitarian and they fought wars with each other when they should have made peace.” But then on the other hand, the antique Europeans are criticized for being too Christian: “They held to their belief that their God was not just a manifestation of the good in man; He was, they claimed, the one true God; all other religions were false; only their faith was true. This was terribly narrow-minded, hate-filled, and prejudiced. And we shouldn’t forget that the Europeans of old polluted the world with their repressive attitudes toward sex and marriage.”

The most negative aspect of the older European culture, according to the liberals, was its unscientific nature. At the center of the Christian Europe was a belief in a fairy tale God who impeded the upward and onward march to a future of science, diversity and sexual pleasure. Such great liberals as Darwin, Freud, Marx, Voltaire, and Rousseau taught us that man was a glorified animal that could only be happy so long as he believed in gods who were merely manifestations of the natural world. The pagan faiths of Voodoo, Islam, Hinduism, and so on, are all acceptable to the liberals because they are not transcendent faiths. Only the antique faith of the Europeans, which proclaimed that Gandhi, Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed, and the generic black man were not co-equal with Christ the Messiah, is a proscribed faith. And the edict against the Christian faith includes, of necessity, the white race because the whites are the Christ-bearing people. So when liberals such as Tony Blair tell us that the destruction of the white race is a positive thing, what they are saying is exactly what Julian the Apostate was saying at the beginning of the Christian Era of Europe: “The Christian God is a false God, and His followers have polluted the world.” Julian sought a future that was a regression to paganism just as the modern Tony Blairs want a future that is a regression to Babylon.

The conservative branch of Liberaldom has tried to “save” Christianity by making it a propositional religion. But our God is an incarnate God; He needs a people to say “Come, Lord Jesus, into our hearts and to our hearth fires.” The incarnate God is not a propositional God who can be passed from one people to the next by sprinkling magical philosophical pixie dust on the new devotees. The “race has nothing to do with Christianity” conservatives are in a state of denial. Having nothing but a propositional faith themselves, they cannot see that a genuine faith must be rooted in the hearts of a people connected to the heart of God. The seeds of European Christianity can be planted in other nations, but if they are not nurtured by Europeans they will never bring forth Christian fruits. The Christ-bearing race must return to Christ; salvation will not come from the colored tribes.

Blair’s second point, echoed by all European liberals, is that in order to “succeed in the future” white people need to open up their nations “to people of different colors, faiths and cultures.” If we needed any more proof of the liberals’ insanity, that statement would provide it. Are white people succeeding in the new diverse nations that have come into being? Spiritually? Heavens, no! Are they succeeding financially? Don’t be ridiculous; they are becoming the lower rungs on a Third World ladder. So what kind of “success” are Blair and his fellow liberals talking about? They must mean a successful shift from the Christian faith to a faith in the colored races of the world, particularly the black race. What kind of success is that? It is the same kind of success achieved by the swine in the Gospels. But the liberal must, like Jonah, hide from God no matter what the cost. And never let a “conservative” tell you that European suicide is really Christian charity. The colored races might make short term economic gains as a result of pillaging the West, but in the long term there will be nothing to pillage when there are no whites to build economies containing something worth pillaging. But the real cost will be in souls. There will be no colored conversions to the light, because the light that shone from Europe will have become the darkness of Babylon. Such a future of “success” is not a consummation devoutly to be wished for. It is an abomination to be resisted with all one’s heart and soul.

The clerics and their liberal brethren tell us that resistance to the colored barbarians is wrong. The conservative, statistical men tell us that resistance is futile because the demographic charts show that the European nations will be colored nations by 2050. And the nationalist leaders tell us that our only hope is to eschew violence and win elections by “getting the message out.”

We should take note of the grim demographic figures in order to get an idea of what we are up against, just as the British soldiers took note of the number of Zulus arrayed against them at Rorke’s Drift. And certainly if a pro-white candidate ever appears we should vote for him. But ultimately the battle for Christian Europe will not be decided by the number of colored barbarians who occupy the European nations. Nor will the battle be decided by elections. The battle will be decided by the Europeans’ fidelity to their God. We don’t know what miracles of grace might occur if the Europeans renew their covenant with God. We do know that miracles occurred in the past when white and Christian were synonymous, so why shouldn’t similar miracles occur in the future if the Europeans pick up the discarded mantle of their Christ-bearing ancestors?

Of course, we can’t simply make an intellectual commitment to “old-fashioned” values in order to save the secular, democratic West or a faltering economy. We must truly love His Europe, which has nothing to do with democracy or capitalism, and refuse to let it die, because we came to know Him at the European hearth fire.

The colored barbarians rape, murder, and pillage because white people do not believe themselves to be a people; they believe they are walking propositions without a past or future. They exist to the extent that they can serve the non-propositional people of color. When black “youths” rampage through the Mall of America in Minnesota, attacking white people, they are not, by liberal logic, doing any harm, because they are only attacking propositional people who do not have a genuine existence. We are facing the Descartian theory carried out to its logical conclusion. The white thinks he is an abstraction without any blood connection to a particular race or God, so he acts out the part. He is a man cut off from everything that makes life worth living, a loving attachment to a particular people and a particular God.

John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian philosopher, worried at one point in his life that he was becoming mad through an excess of rationality. He tried listening to music in order to subdue the rationalist monster inside him, but he couldn’t bear it because he kept thinking about the finite nature of musical compositions. Mill then turned to the reading of fairy tales. Judging from what he wrote, it doesn’t appear he ever successfully conquered the rationalist demon, but he was on the right track when he started reading fairy tales, because the sickness of the modern European is the result of his inability to see life feelingly as the heroes of the fairy tales do. The third dumb brothers of fairy tale fame do not wait for a consensus against dragons before they venture forth to slay the dragon devouring their people. Nor do they allow Descartian philosophers to tell them that they and their loved ones are not worth fighting for because they don’t really exist at all. The fairy tale hero is a simple soul who loves his people and hates those who attack and menace his people. If a mere handful of modern Europeans were to become like unto the fairy tale heroes of old Europe, the tidal wave of colored barbarians would be turned away from European shores. And the multitudinous herds of colored barbarians that are raping, murdering, and pillaging within the European walls would be driven back to the black holes from whence they came.

My favorite comedians are Laurel and Hardy. They are both, in their best movies, third dumb brothers. In March of the Wooden Soldiers they reach their zenith. At a critical juncture in the film, the very existence of Toyland, which is Europe, is threatened by the evil liberal, Barnaby. Motivated by sheer hate, Barnaby leads an army of negroized bogeymen against Toyland. When hope seems nearly gone Laurel and Hardy set in motion 100 six-foot wooden soldiers, who miraculously become flesh and blood soldiers that drive the bogeymen back beyond the walls of Toyland and into a river of crocodiles. How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable would our existence seem if we did not believe that the European fairy tale is true. If Christ be not risen, it would be better to become propositional people and fade away into the Babylonian night. But Christ is risen, and He enjoins us to rise from our lethargy and defend and champion His fairy kingdom, which is ours to defend, against the liberals and their armies of colored bogeymen.

http://cambriawillnotyield.blogspot.com/search/label/Third%20Dumb%20Brother

PETER BRIMELOW WRITES: For immigration patriots, the December 10 Iowa GOP Presidential candidates would have been a bore—except for the fact that America’s time is running out.

It’s clear that the candidates do fear the power of the immigration issue in a negative sense. Newt Gingrich feels compelled to maintain that his amnesty is not an amnesty and all the candidates claim to be in favor of securing the border.

But it’s equally clear that they are afraid to touch it at all. Mitt Romney, flinching, did not name amnesty as one of his key differences with Gingrich and not one candidate mentioned the idea of an anti-unemployment legal immigration moratorium—let alone such basic immigration patriot concepts as eliminating the illegal alien stock with attrition through enforcement and with strategic deportation.

There’s a long, long way to go.

One thing the candidates did seem to agree on was the importance of Israel. Ironically, I found this news story while the GOP debate was in progress:

“On Sunday [December 11] the cabinet is expected to vote on a new proposal by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tackle the issue of illegal immigration into Israel through the country’s borders…

“The plan calls for completing the fence along the Egyptian border within a year, expanding the Negev-based Saharonim detention facility in order to increase capacity from 2,000 to 5,000 and building an adjacent facility, with a capacity of 10,000, that was approved by the Knesset last year…The plan includes a 2-percent across-the-board cut to all ministry budgets to pay for the NIS 630 million program…

“The new plan calls for significantly increasing the fines levied on employers of illegal immigrants…

“In announcing the plan this week, Netanyahu called the rise of illegal border crossings ‘a threat to the economy, to security and to the delicate demographic balance on which the State of Israelis based.’

“Speaking to Army Radio yesterday, [Interior Minister Eli] Yishai declared that none of these immigrants would remain in Israel. ‘Even if it’s unpopular I will act to repatriate every infiltrator,’ the interior minister said.”

Israeli government to vote on PM’s plan to stem illegal immigration, by Daba Weiler-Polak, Haaretz, December 9, 2011

VDARE.com’s question: OK Republicans, If Israel is so great, why not follow its example?

http://www.vdare.com/splash

At some point, the lesson has been learned by this closed culture and controls how they respond as a community. Then one monkey forgets and steps onto the ladder. But the firehose doesn’t have time to react. The other four monkeys grab the offender and beat him senseless. They’ve learned that in this society, you don’t climb the ladder.

Now the process of attrition and replacement in the society begins. One of the original monkeys is removed and a new monkey is added to the group. He spies the bananas and leaps onto the ladder, only to be dragged down and beaten by the rest of the group. After several attempts, the new monkey learns.

Another original monkey is replaced with a new monkey. And the same process follows. Then another and another and another. Soon we have a group of five monkeys who’ve never been soaked by the firehose, but won’t climb the ladder. This learned behavior was socialized into the group over time.

It no longer matters how many generations of monkeys follow. The new behavior is that a monkey climbing the ladder will be dragged off and beaten. None of the monkeys in the cage has ever been knocked off the ladder with a firehose. None have been soaked down. They don’t know what the consequence is because it’s been replaced by group behavior. They can’t remember being soaked. They don’t know why they do what they do. The accepted norm for this closed community is to beat anyone who tries to climb the ladder.

So let’s banish pessimism and defeatism from our ranks. We can either be a part of the problem, depressing and demoralizing our fellow travelers, or part of the solution, working to fight the Left egalitarians.

Let’s choose to be part of the solution.

[Peter Brimelow writes: Needless to say, by no means all VDARE.com readers are Confederate sympathizers, or think that partition of the U.S. along demographic lines is desirable or inevitable—although this dark expectation is more widespread among Americans than you’d expect from MSM reporting.

It’s crucial to note, however, that this article by "Generation 5" is ultimately not about any specific political situation, but an analysis of the different personality types involved in creating any political change—making the key point that all of them necessary. Personally, I guess I’m a “Rhetorical Radical”—I am temperamentally inclined to what I’ve called the “Thick End of the Wedge Theory”. I gather that “Generation 5” doesn’t think that Rhetorical Radicals get much credit. Probably that means I won't get invited to the signing of the Immigration Moratorium & American Jobs Protection Act. Hey ho—I'm sure I'll be able to ask my old friend David Frum how it went!]

This year I have read a book that has changed some of my thinking on politics: The Road to Disunion, Vol. II: Secessionists Triumphant imageby William W. Freehling. This book is particularly valuable because it attempts to showcase the real-time experience and success of an explicitly ethnonationalist and conservative revolution on American soil.

For most of the 1850s, the secessionists were a largely marginalized group. Most of the South was enjoying extreme economic success due to King Cotton, and the hardcore secessionists, mostly concentrated in South Carolina, were often seen as an embarrassment, extremists who made mountains out of molehills and got in the way of making money.

Though secessionists were the first to warn their fellow Southerners of the logical implications of abolitionist rhetoric, their concerns were seen as irrelevant because both of the national parties, the Whigs and Democrats, had Southern members who were able to reach acceptable compromises with their Northern brethren.

Similarly, contemporary ethnonationalists have been warning of the demographic collapse of the United States for thirty years or more, and of the noxious result for white America when our ideology of punitive equality is extended to a black and brown majority. But most Americans, like most ante-bellum Southerners, have ignored our warning. The typical person simply does not think about much beyond the next year or so.

In most times and places, not thinking is an “adaptive strategy”—but overused strategies are subject to sudden realignments. Like ecological die-offs, political revolutions are never seen in advance by those who are its victims.

The Southern secessionists can be divided, in my view, into four main groups:

1. Rhetorical Radicals—the hard core;

2. the Reformed Radicals;

3. the Revolutionary Insiders; and finally

4. the Opportunists.

Rhetorical Radicals—The hard core

The hard core of secessionists arose from the unique culture of South Carolina. As early America’s most aristocratic state, South Carolina despised the system of party politics. Its legislature only allowed men of significant property to hold office, and it was the only state where the legislature took the prerogative of selecting the governor and the recipient of the state’s electoral votes for president.

Politicians in South Carolina were typically chosen by the state’s elites based mostly on a person’s character and family, and a key trait desired was a general disinterest in politics. Competitive races were rare outside of the upcountry, and the state usually declined to send representatives to national party conventions.

This aristocratic mindset was wounded by the realities of market forces in the mid-1800s. South Carolina’s soil was depleted, and the profitability of its operations declined as the capital costs of slaves went up due to demand from Deep South cotton planters. Thus South Carolina became the perfect incubator for a conservative revolution: a deeply conservative elite with wounded pride.

The nullification crisis exemplified this mindset. South Carolinians were barely able to come to grips with a popularly-elected president, Andrew Jackson, who was willing to make compromises on principles to some extent to achieve political ends. The nullification crisis further humiliated and radicalized South Carolina, by bringing into focus the state’s relative weakness despite its aristocratic contempt for the rest of the country.

Out of the nullification crisis rose the hardcore secessionists, most notably Robert Barnwell Rhett. Rhett’s rhetoric was constant during this period, demanding secession at each Northern flouting of Southern honor. He was a rhetorical radical in every sense of the word. A typical quote from Rhett:

“Let it be that I am a Traitor. The word has no terrors for me…I have been born of traitors, but, thank God, they have been Traitors in the great cause of liberty, fighting against tyranny and oppression. Such treason will ever be mine whilst true to my lineage. No, No, my friends! Smaller States before us struggled successfully, for their independence, and freedom against far greater odds; and if it must be, we can make one long, last, desperate struggle, for our rights and honor, ere the black pall of tyranny is stretched over the bier of our dead liberties. To meet death a little sooner or a little later, can be of consequence to very few of us. “

Robert Barnwell Rhett: Father of Secession, by Laura A. White (1931) p.109

Rhett played a critical role in preserving a hard core of secessionist radicals. He published a newspaper, delivered speeches, and led early attempts to pull off secession around 1850. Had he succeeded, the South would have likely won its independence, as the relative strength of the two sections was more balanced at that early date.

While Rhett would ultimately have little influence over the course of events in the secession crisis, his contribution cannot be ignored.

Reformed Radicals

The second group of secessionists was the reformed radicals.

The archetype of this group was William Yancey. Yancey has an interesting story as a son of prominent South Carolinians who moved to Alabama early in life. This was a common pattern of sons of South Carolina leading the secession movement in other Deep South states. However, like many sons of South Carolina, he had to adapt to the national party system to have any political influence in his adopted state. Thus he combined early the traits of South Carolina radicalism with a practical attitude towards the democratic politics that South Carolina aristocrats found so distasteful.

Yancey began his political career as a hard core rhetorical radical. He left the 1848 Democratic National Convention, along with one other delegate, in protest at its refusal to adopt a platform plank asserting that neither Congress nor the president had the authority to ban slavery in any territory. In 1858 he attempted to bypass the two-party system—up until about then, Whigs and Democrats—stating, “No national party can save us,” and helping to organize a quasi-Third Party, the League of United Southerners.

Sometime in the mid to late 1850’s, Yancey, ever mercurial, began to see his uncompromising extremism as a liability. Freehling describes his change:

“When Yancey returned to the [Democratic Party] seven years later, he embraced [a] strategy for pushing Lower South Democrats in South Carolina’s direction. He would become Alabama Democrats’ partisan. He would press his extremist views no further than the outer edge of their moderate views. He would then cajole, flatter, and prod moderates toward demanding that Northern Democrats accept this watered-down extremism. His tempered ultimatums would test whether National Democrats would provide reasonable slaveholder security. Sooner or later, Northern Democrats would probably flunk the tests. Then enraged Lower South testers would follow Yancey out of [the party] and later out of the Union.”

Two quotes from Yancey highlighted by Freehling on his change of tactics:

“I now endeavor to be entirely conciliatory. While this detracts from the brilliancy and the spice . . . it gains the ears of the opposition and opens the way to their hearts.”

“Can we have any hope of doing justice to ourselves in the Union? I have no such hope, but I am determined to act with those who have such hope, as long, and only as long, as it may be reasonably indulged. Not so much with the expectation that the South will obtain justice in the Union, as with the hope that by thus acting within a reasonable time we will unify our people in going out of the Union.”

Yancey was directly responsible for fracturing the Democratic Party in 1860, leading directly to Lincoln’s election and the secession crisis.

A bit of background: for years, under the leadership of Stephen Douglas, Northern and Southern frontiersmen were united in the Democratic Party as the populist party of farmers and laborers—the Whigs representing the interests of elitists and industrialists. The Democrats overcame their differences on slavery by endorsing the concept of “popular sovereignty.”

But after radicals in Missouri made a joke of Kansas’s preference to remain a free state—thousands of Missourians crossed the border to become “one day Kansans” to vote for a pro-slavery constitutional convention—tensions were very tight between the Northern and Southern wings of the party. Then the Dred Scott decision came down, holding that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any territory, and by extension neither did territorial legislatures acting under the authority of Congress; the decision declared that only a future sovereign state could ban slavery.

This jarring change in the political climate backed Douglas into a corner. In an 1858 debate with him, Abraham Lincoln correctly pointed out the contradiction between Douglas’ popular sovereignty stance and the court ruling.

Douglas responded with a clever but fatal improvisation that would forever be known as the “Freeport Doctrine.” He made the point that slavery might technically be legal in a territory, but if the territorial legislature and government officials refused to enact or enforce any enabling law, slavery would be effectively nullified. While a slave-owner could bring slaves into any territory, Douglas’ policy would make it impractical if there were any significant pockets of the emergent state hostile to enforcing slaveholders’ property rights.

This modified, more radical stance by Douglas gave Yancey his opportunity. Now a unified Northern section against Southern slavery was no mere abstraction, but rather a real possibility, as it was expected by many that Douglas would be the 1860 Democratic nominee. Thus radicals like Yancey no longer sounded crazy, but rather eminently practical. Yancey was careful to keep his cool, looking for the most moderate but lethal position he could stake out to set his trap for the party.

Jefferson Davis, one of the most respected and staunch Unionists in the South, a moderates’ moderate of sorts at the time, gave Yancey a gift. Davis was feeling political heat from Mississippi’s more radical junior senator, Albert Gallatin Brown, over his too-chummy relationship with the Douglas, now persona non grata to Southerners. Davis desperately needed to distance himself from Douglas—but like a true moderate, wanted to only do the minimum to keep himself in the good graces of the national party.

While radicals like Mississippi’s Brown called for explicit congressional slave codes protecting against the possibility of a Freeport-type nullification in the territories as a condition of Southern support, Davis pointed out that no Freeport-type nullification was actually taking place anywhere. Davis’ proposed that Southerners merely demand the Democratic Party have a platform plank calling for Congressional protection of slavery in territories only at some future date, and only if necessary—if Southern rights could not be protected through the (generally Southern-dominated) federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court.

In a brilliant leap, Yancey saw his opportunity. He would take the doctrine of Jefferson Davis, refine it into the most extreme and unpalatable form he could while still staying true to its essential content, and rally Southerners to place demands on their Northern colleagues at the national convention in Charleston that year.

Yancey correctly foresaw the arrogance of Douglas and his allies, who refused these Southern demands for the platform. This resulted in a three-way split of the party and the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Thus we see that Yancey performed the necessary and (in my opinion) the most indispensable role in the revolution of 1860.

Revolutionary Insiders

In September of 1860, as Lincoln’s likely election became more and more obvious to informed observers, a small key group of South Carolinians formed a group called the 1860 Association. Significantly, these men did not have long pedigrees of secessionist agitation, but were rather successful aristocratic merchants in Charleston.

Within a space of about sixty days, the association came together to produce a series of propaganda pamphlets written by a member of the Association, John Townsend. In all, they printed 200,000, mostly of his most important work The South Alone Should Govern the South, in addition to smaller quantities of James D. B. DeBow’s important work justifying secession to non-slaveholders, The Interest in Slavery of the Southern Non-Slaveholder. They distributed these throughout the Cotton States to gin up support for the principle of secession if Lincoln were elected.

Given that the Cotton States had only 392,000 or so voters in the 1860 election, these 200,000 copies achieved a saturation level of distribution in an era when printed matter was often passed around from person to person as a form of peer-to-peer entertainment and news distribution. Freehling describes it colorfully:

“This little miracle of lightning-fast editing, printing, and distribution showed that the best southern merchants could deploy the capitalist virtues as agilely as a Yankee.”

Other revolutionary insiders included Governor Gist of South Carolina (who, I’m not kidding, named a son “States Right Gist”) and Chief Justice Oran Milo Roberts of Texas, who used a constitutional loophole to outmaneuver Unionist Governor Sam Houston while distributing 60,000 copies of his speech supporting secession to barely 50,000 1860 Texas voters.

Many additional people played critical roles as the politics moved from the abstract strategy of Yancey to the tactical maneuvers leading up to secession.

One of the things that strikes me about these revolutionary insiders is that they were men of action. While they privately supported secession, they were so eminently practical in their approach to life that they did not waste time before the time was ripe, but instead focused on their business, political, or law careers until history called them onto the stage.

While these men were not as indispensable as Rhett or Yancey, their contribution cannot be ignored, and their talents were absolutely necessary for success.

In contrast, Rhett spent most of the secession crisis on the sidelines, nursing grievances that he was not properly acknowledged as a prophet.

The Opportunists

The opportunists, the last group, were latecomers to the party who endorsed secession only when the other three groups had made it an accomplished fact. Jefferson Davis is the most prominent example of this, but also Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy.

Stephens, Freehling points out, actually made a very practical and perhaps workable proposal to end the crisis to the Georgia legislature, and without Georgia’s participation, South Carolina would have been geographically isolated from the rest of the Lower South. However, Stephens’ personality was such that he retreated to his study and did not engage or campaign for his proposal. He was unwilling to do the work that the Revolutionary Insiders did to bring about secession.

The psychology of the southern Unionists might explain their lack of energy and commitment. Whereas secessionists believed they were fighting for a cause they knew was right, the best motivation the southern Unionists had was that the plans of the secessionists were impractical.

If we can use the language of positive morality to advance our cause, we will have the wind at our backs when fighting the moderates whose sole motivating spirit is that of calculating delay and obstructionism.

To make an analogy, the abolitionists provided the raw fuel to provoke Southern secession. The Rhetorical Radicals like Rhett labored endlessly to cure and dry the wood and provide kindling for the fire, though always intensely discouraged that their efforts never resulted in spontaneous combustion. The Reformed Radicals of Yancey’s stripe, mostly in Alabama and Mississippi, provided the spark. The Revolutionary Insiders fanned the flames, and the Opportunists availed themselves of the warmth of the fire and pushed those who created it aside.

Often we have debates about what roles we should play to effect positive change on our society. We have our own Rhetorical Radicals and Reformed Radicals. I consider myself one of the latter group. But it’s important for us to remember that all of these groups have a role to play. We need to avoid either/or thinking about how to advance our ideas.

All types of contributions are needed—from screaming Jeremiahs to sly handlers to radicalized reticent moderates. Our goal is simple: to move the “Overton Window” to a point where our ideas are considered mainstream.

As a Reformed Radical, I happen to think the best leverage is achieved by pushing hard on the right edge of that window. But Rhetorical Radicals have a role to play as well in building a core constituency. The Left is known for not shooting each other, to the point that Obama can befriend former terrorists. The Right needs similar discipline.

We should also learn from this historical lesson not to be discouraged. From the point of view of Rhett in the late 1850s, things looked bleak. There was Bleeding Kansas, and the John Brown raid and the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and yet many mainstream southern politicians remained compromisers to the bitter end—when Lincoln’s election was an accomplished fact.

However, silent but watching from the inside, were the Revolutionary Insiders, who privately agreed with the rhetorical radicals’ rhetoric but kept their powder dry until the moment was ripe. Then everything changed in an instant.

As conservative revolutionaries, we cannot let ourselves be discouraged by mere appearances, for the non-linear and chaotic nature of politics makes linear extrapolation of the present a folly.

There are likely people now in government who sympathize with and read our literature. We must remain faithful promoting our message with faith that when the crisis comes, like the South, our people will rise to the occasion.

This is also why the Left fears us so, trying to ruin anyone professionally and personally with utmost zeal lest the genie of truth be released from the bottle. They know the power of our message—that it undermines the very foundations of their worldview—even if we do not.

One notable aside from The Road to Disunion: Freehling notes a shift in the rhetoric ultimately used by the Southern secessionists to achieve their ends. While secessionists usually used rhetoric about the self-interest of the South and states’ rights, at the moment of revolution a change happened. Secessionists began using the rhetoric of 1776—that Southerners didn’t merely have a legal argument for secession, but rather held an absolute right to replace any government.

When we observe the success of 1776 rhetoric in motivating the Tea Party—its very name a 1776 reference—we must recognize that this is a very powerful meme in American history that can be exploited by counter-revolutionaries.

The Left has certainly exploited it. Look at how much damage has been done by transmogrifying the Declaration of Independence from political propaganda to foundational canon law!

Again, this highlights the importance of a feeling of moral righteousness in advancing any revolution. It means we need to engage with our audience beyond simple appeals to self-interest and survival.

The Confederacy, we must acknowledge, was a radical ethnonationalist state, though much has been done to obscure that fact among neo-Confederates. As agitators for a future white ethnostate, we ignore their history and accomplishments to our own hurt. Far too often, American Rightists have idealized European nationalist movements when the one most likely to provide a useful template for rhetoric and tactics is that of our Southern forefathers. They accomplished what we seek: an explicitly ethnonationalist state on American soil—a conservative revolution against modernity that almost succeeded.

They also put to rest the notion that a Christian civilization is inherently incapable of advancing its ethnic interests. The fiscal health of the federal government and the relative strength of the Heartland portions of the country make any future secession effort more likely to be successful.

So let’s banish pessimism and defeatism from our ranks. We can either be a part of the problem, depressing and demoralizing our fellow travelers, or part of the solution, working to fight the Left egalitarians.

Let’s choose to be part of the solution.

http://www.vdare.com/articles/learning-from-the-politics-of-secession

This sort of anti-White discrimination will continue until we organize enthopolitically and demand that our group interests be protected.