Some Plain Talk About Rights

Disaster: Import an underclass, then give it with the free meal ticket the right to vote.

The right to vote is a key feature of the democratic order. This is so self-evident that one fears to state it. Now, a reason emerges to commit in favor of the sensible application of the principle. The reason is as stunning as it is threatening. This practice is now under attack by the multiculturalists and the Left. 

The right to vote is the ability to decide a group’s future. True, this right is not limited to balloting. The concept assumes that a choice is offered. When the writer was young, the police came to herd voters to the local “Council House”. There one was to vote for Our Beloved Party. Thus, the right to vote deteriorated into an obligation to legitimize oppression. There was no right to abstain or to vote “wrong”, that is for the “Class Enemy”, and against the Soviet “Camp of Peace”.

As mentioned, an attack upon the system of voting, as defined by tradition and common sense, is emerging. Those that think their region will be immune to this threat will be disappointed.

In Western Europe an idea spreads that will not stop at the water’s edge. It is to extend to aliens the right to vote on the local level. This goes beyond voting in private associations. For instance, the writer has been a member of a Swiss village gun club and voted on matters of its governance. Newly, Green – Red projects wish to give the vote to foreigners in local government. This is not a voluntary association but a component of a system that peaks as a sovereign state. 

The power conferred by this right depends on the entity’s system. Centralized France represents a pole and Switzerland illustrates the other extreme. There principled “decentralization” is the fitting term as, in official parlance, “sovereign” means “people” and not the executive. Accordingly, government is built from the bottom to the top. The central government, whose authority flows from “below”, is the executive of local organs.  

In some systems, local government is significant, especially if the parameters of daily life are drawn locally. Thus, local institutions are more than a cog in an aggregate. Whoever controls local government is not in charge of a minor agency but empowered to regulate a key gear. 

Those that propose that the right to vote in local matters be exercised without citizenship imply that the power conferred is insignificant. This empowerment in local politics insinuates that the integration of non-citizens is facilitated through their inclusion in decision-making. This contradicts a traditional approach, which is (a) controlled immigration, (b) residency, (c) integration. Naturalization admits to membership in a community. It is to follow integration - the internalization of the community’s values. 

This aspect of citizenship sheds light on a motive of those that advocate co-determination prior to earning “membership” by accepting the community’s way of life. The case begins with a subgroup of migrants that enter advanced societies. These immigrants pretend to flee persecution and so they claim refugee status as a right. Quite often, the claim, as well as the identity of the “refugee”, is fraudulent. Those that fit the pattern do not flee persecution but wish to immigrate into the system of dole ladled out by “welfare”. Beyond that motive, the lack of skills of such entrants makes eventual integration, even if wanted, unlikely. Not infrequently, such arrivals adhere to a value system that is sharply opposed to the host’s. That commitment makes the migrant to see the indigenous as his enemy. That the gullible natives, nervously twitching to avoid to be called “racists”, excuse criminal behavior, firms the contempt. 

A hidden agenda lurks behind the endeavor to give insider privileges to those that exclude themselves through their attitude. There are parties that excuse recalcitrance because they have an ambivalent appreciation of and commitment to the system of their country. It pays to smuggle into the process of decision making the “hostiles” that wish to continue to live by the rules of the system they have left. The adulteration promises safe votes from clients that will depend on the benefits paid for by their votes. 

The attempt to alter the electorate’s composition begins at the seemingly unimportant local level. Ultimately, the process is to be capped at the national level. A flanking tool is the devalued, automatically extended, citizenship that even overlooks the lacking command of the official language. Such strivings deserve that we define what a citizen is and what the precondition of the privilege of participation needs to be.

Citizenship is deserved –and not a gift- in the case of those individuals that have a stake in society. That “stake in society” has two components. One, it being an attitude, is subjective. At its core is an individual’s perception that this personal fate and the welfare of his community is intertwined. In this case, without negating individuality, there is an identification with the collective personality that complements the individual member’s. This explains why risks are accepted –as in combat- that include the possibility of death. Note: This identification implies a weakened rapport with outsiders. Major Hassan had strong bonds to Islam that resulted in a corresponding hostility to his US surroundings.  

Of no less importance, is an awareness that one’s’ personal material fortune is linked to that of society. Duties and rights are inseparable. Ultimately, a vote is to determine the group’s future. Those that have something to lose, be that property, jobs, or the pride conferred by belonging, will assess responsibly their stand. If they opt wrongly, they will pay for their error. Those that are, by whatever definition, transients, have nothing to lose, will not be held accountable, and so they will choose with their short-term gain in mind. This motive is the mother of bad decisions. This judgment pertains as much to a zoning plan, the building of a retirement home, as well as to the composition of parliament or the person of the president. The verdict of those that think they can have the benefits but escape the consequences exercise judgments that are not to be trusted.

Only total collapse can save us?

The fact that patriotic parties are becoming noticeable, and will likely become more important as more "natives" increasingly understand that they are being dispossessed with the approval of the elites, suggests that there will be political and other conflicts between the globalist order and the national order before the globalist order completely collapses of its own weight.  (Which is a dubious construct by itself, but that's another story.  Empire of Chaos may be the title of Prof. Handlery's biography of the New World Order.)

Whether patriots can prevail in an important way is a question, but it doesn't seem right to conclude that suicide is the only possible destiny of the globalist order (by which I refer to the association of transnational public and private authorities and their supporters).  Rather than suicide, let us hope it can be killed off or significantly neutralized by patriots before it collapses and leaves Western society a whirlpool of warring gangs.

I admire the classical liberals that set up this site and manage it, but I often question whether they have thematized the relationship between classical liberalism and patriotism sufficiently to be effective in the contemporary world, where nothing can be taken as "simply understood."  Admirable individuals like Prof. Handlery and the Belgian gentlemen who run this site may indeed be patriots first and classical liberals second, and may say to themselves, "ca va sans dire."  But it does not go "sans dire" for everyone, and the language of economic and civil rights, i.e., the language of democratic capitalism, divorced from the specificities of a commitment to national identity, including race, culture, custom, religion, shared beliefs, shared heroes, shared history, etc., has proven completely ineffective in preserving nations and their constituent communities from the blows of globalism.  The patriotic classical liberal seems to lack a language in which the national community and its constitutent communities exist and deserve protection.  Perhaps that is because of the mainly negative origin of classicial liberalism -- it is against excessive government and clerical control of economic and social life.  Possibly, classical liberals need to become traditionalists -- they are primarily for the governments, chuches, schools, neighborhoods, families, etc., thet compose their communities, and only secondarily against the improper overreach of those entities in the life of the community. 

I certainly don't mean to criticize from a position of superiority of any kind.  It is perhaps inevitable that the language of those seeking to preserve historical communities and identities would overemphasize economics because the greatest threat to such communities' survival over the last century and more has come from a revolutionary socialism that purported to be based on an economic philosophy.  Some of the greatest theorists of liberty, von Mises, Hayek, and Milton Friedman, have thus been economists.  Classicial liberals may have a tendency to believe that as long as government keeps out of the business of running economies, the people will be able to organize themselves as they see fit. That reflects the historical threat of revolutionary socialism.

The economically oriented point of view of classical liberalism has not provided any effective ammunition against population replacement, which policymakers see as enlarging both the labor pool and the consumer market.  Here in the U.S., it is a constant struggle to keep the Republican party from acquiescing in the Democrats' quest for more voters and more welfare state clients because of the attractiveness of cheap labor.  When classical liberalism is perverted into an idolatry of the market, in which the people exist for the market, rather than the market for the people, you get just such a situation, where a large faction of would-be patriots are effectively willing to destroy the nation through excess immigration in order to feed the perceived demands of the marketplace for labor and consumers (both tax subsidized).

In my humble opinion, classicial liberals need to remember that civil and economic freedoms are good because, and to the extent, they are good for the people, not vice versa.  And the people has to mean an identified people, not an abstract people.  Thus an economic policy has to be regarded not in light of whether it satisfies an ideology, but in light of whether it helps the nation for which the policymaker is responsible.  Here in the U.S., huge fortunes have been made in exporting manufacturing to poorer countries.  A patriotic governing class would not have pursued such a design. As scientists, classical liberals may theorize about optimizing production and efficiency globally, but as citizens and human beings, they need to put the prosperity of real communities ahead of ideology.  They should regard it as normal for communities to exist and to want to survive, and for economic and social policy to be determined for the benefit of those communities, not for the benefit of other communities, opportunistic elites, and ideologues.

I apologize for dropping in and spouting off, but I will leave this up in case it is of any interest.  Ever since the website changed format, it has loaded more slowly and been harder to read, so I have not visited much for quite a while, which I am sorry for.  Best wishes to my old correspondents. 

Treason + idiocy.

The left willfully undermines every Western nation to gain advantage over nationalist-patriotic-productive citizens.  They never conceive of their allies' contempt for them or of their determination to turn on them when the leftist strategy bears full fruit.  Control and good-natured gratitude for all time are assumed. 

The end result is that the left will be devoured by the third worlders like everyone else; the immediate result is that cultural and political cohesion are jettisoned and even non-leftists enthusiastically defend the gangrenous process described by Mr. Handlery.

Reason will not stop this process. Only economic collapse forcing the abandonment of insane welfare schemes for "refugees" will.  Only collapse will clarify the interests -- and cultural norms -- of all parties and open eyes.  Doubt me if you will but even at this late, late hour, the European and U.S. electorates mount ineffectual resistance to immigration, slobber over the flaccid, delusional majority parties of the last half of the 20th century and beyond, and starve the salvationalist parties for oxygen.

The West is worse than suicidal.  It is pathetic.