RSS Feed MenuFrumForum interviews with Tea Party activists reveal an isolationist streak among the movement’s members.
With news emerging that a hypothetical Tea Party party would beat out the Republican Party in a three-way matchup, FrumForum sought to explore what a Tea Party party’s foreign policy platform might look like by interviewing Tea Party protestors during the Capitol Hill protests this past Tuesday.
While virtually all of the Tea Partiers interviewed by FrumForum expressed support for American troops overseas, their comments indicated that a Tea Party party foreign policy could very well be isolationist in nature.
“I think a tea party foreign policy would probably be none. A tea party foreign policy would be working on getting the U.S.A. back together… Our economy is in disarray. I don’t think this is a time to worry about foreign policy when our country is about to collapse. It’s time to take care of ourselves,” said Nate Wiggim, recently profiled in the Tea Party documentary.
“It was a foolish decision to go to Afghanistan in the first place… [while] our own country’s borders are left open,” continued Wiggim. “We have all this globalization. We don’t produce any of our own products, we always import everything. We need to focus on ourselves before we worry about any other country’s foreign issues.”
Others expressed concerns that a robust foreign policy that extended American power around the world might conflict with the Tea Party movement’s concern for rising government spending.
“When it comes to foreign policy… whatever policy is being developed needs to be fiscally responsible and isn’t going to burden the United States in debt,” said Jenny Beth Martin, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots, pointing out that while she wasn’t “necessarily opposed” to having troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was costing the government quite a lot of money to maintain a presence.
Jeffrey Johnson of Atlanta, Georgia also made a link between fiscal responsibility and the need to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan: “Under these harsh economic times, we need to pull back on our foreign spending, both from a military and financial aid standpoint… The troops should be withdrawn to reduce the financial tension on the United States. I would not have deployed troops to [either country]. We’re fighting something we can never win.”
Some of the protestors invoked Ron Paul’s non-interventionist approach in explaining their foreign policy stances. “At heart, I’m increasingly a Ron Paul guy on foreign policy. We can’t be the world’s policeman… Iraq and Afghanistan could be too much for us to handle. The people there have to stand up. It’s their country,” said John Tidwell of Bristol, Virginia.
As the tea party movement takes steps to translate their policy aspirations into political outcomes, conservatives should watch out for a new wave of Buchanan-esque isolationism. As these FF interviews indicate, support for the spreading of democracy in the world and even for free trade may wane as Tea Partiers either become more active in the GOP or start their own party.
mpolito // Dec 17, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Look, I’m not an isolationist, but for the last several decades, especially in the Bush II administration, the GOP has been very interventionist and pro-immigration, so to worry about isolationism seems bizarre. I would urge the party to support a fence, and perhaps be less gung-ho about nation-building. Other than that, an interventionist approach is ok.
COProgressive // Dec 18, 2009 at 12:16 am
“It was a foolish decision to go to Afghanistan in the first place… [while] our own country’s borders are left open,” continued Wiggim.
I wonder if Wiggim thought the same in 2002. Or if he felt the same about Iraq as well. In those days the money came pouring out for “doing something” in the Middle East.
We were all suckered by the boys at PNAC and the notion of “planting seeds of democracy” which was a euphemism for “Pax American” PNAC style into the fiasco that was Iraq and now is Afghanistan. I can understand the Tea Party’s concerns about the raise of government spending, but where were they during the expansion of government and government spending that started in 1982, where were they with each of the extensions of the National Debt limits over the last twenty years, where were they when we were sending Billions by the pallett load to Iraq and as the price of oil sky-rocketed? Why is it that they talk of building fences and walls, but nothing of port security?
The Tea Party members appears to be late coming to the party and it seems to me that the emergence of the Tea Party is due to something other than concern for our country, taxes, and government spending. I think it has more to do with the man elected to be our leader…….and the marked difference from Presidents in the past.
jakester // Dec 18, 2009 at 1:52 am
It sounds like the teaparty types may be more intelligent than the average con. At least they understand (or acknowledge) that war not only increases spending but increases the size and power of government.
Captainchaos // Dec 18, 2009 at 4:43 am
As an admirer of Leo Strauss I am well aware of his injunction to be wary of speaking truths that perhaps best remain in the esoteric realm, but it is too late in the day, and the West is too far gone down the path to oblivion to be less than fully frank at this time. Strauss was a man of two cities, of two connectivities, his intellect in Athens, but his heart always in Jerusalem. He bid the worthy to ever have their minds fixed on the eternal truths, one of which is the inescapability of death; and that one should face the latter with courage if not hope. It is courage that will be required of us to speak to each other the difficult, but necessary truths needed now. And the truth was, Strauss had a deep, abiding love and loyalty for his own people – the Jewish people. He once remarked that that was without exaggeration the fulcrum of his life. For he knew, as all people really do know, that the life one wishes to have for himself, a life excellent, is not separable from that of his own people.
The accusation of anti-Semitism is common to my hear these days, but what, just what, at its most fundamental level does that really mean? Self-evidently, that a man would deny the Jewish people the necessary conditions to secure their genetic continuity – their very being transmitted through time. So, just what does it mean then to be anti-White? Apply the same standard and you will have your answer. The continued existence of our people is not less legitimate and no less precious to us than the Jewish peoplehood is to Jews. In short: our right to life is a right absolute. There can never, and will never, be any compromise on that point.
Men of good will shall not deny us that.
Captainchaos // Dec 18, 2009 at 5:39 am
More difficult truths:
1.) The disparities we observe in civilizational achievements of the various peoples of the earth are rooted very real genetic differences that occurred as a result of differential selective pressures due to geographic separation. No intellectually serious and mature man can deny that. Policy must be formulated on that basis.
2.) Ethnocentrism is a universal evolved trait. On a finite sphere, this earth, groups compete for finite resources in what is ultimately a zero sum game. Accordingly, all peoples have an evolved affinity for their own as there is even a larger storehouse of their own unique genes and gene frequencies in their own ethny even than in their own children.
3.) Western Civilization will not survive the passing of European Man. To preserve the civilization the blood must also be preserved. And the soil, exclusive territory being the indispensable guarantor of genetic continuity.
4.) It is no longer helpful to speak of ‘culture’ as a proxy for race. What, really, should take priority in the order of priority for preservation, culture or race? A child’s finger painting is an example it’s ‘culture’, yet of course preserving the child takes priority.
5.) We must be wary of miscegenation. For, if someone you love were so genetically altered that they were no longer themselves they would have effectively ceased to exist – and no less a people. Miscegenation IS genocide. What is in effect promotion of miscegenation in mass media is not helpful, not in the least.
6.) ‘Respectable’ conservatives who advocate “assimilation” of genetically alien peoples, implying inter-marriage, are traitors to their people. There is really no way around that.
7.) The 1924 Immigration Act was expressly designed to secure the existence of the traditional American nation, for the “posterity” the Founding Fathers spoke of, I mean Northwestern Europeans. Various ethnic lobbies worked mightily to overturn that and did so via the 1965 Immigration Act. The founding stock of this nation, of which I am a part (I am of English-Scottish-Dutch-German descent), never consented to have their nation taken from them, and are therefore not bound to abide it.
MI-GOPer // Dec 18, 2009 at 9:22 am
Isolationism, KnowNothings, Nativists… America has witnessed it all before. It really isn’t news since those impulses have always been part of the American fabric –on the Left and Right, Republican and Democrat, blantant and subrosa. For instance, MrBunnyEars aka Ross Perot, was a famously silly isolationist of recent report.
I dare say Tim that interviewing a few Tea Party types at a DC rally doesn’t quite rise to the expectation most of us have for the Frum Forum. Just like interviewing less than 25% of the RNC members constituted a “poll” valid in determining if the Litmus Test proposal had any legs.
Rasmussen poll was hedged with 2 important points> 1) respondents were asked to assume the Tea Party Movement had become a viable 3rd Party and 2) polling results likely are substantially higher than actual experience would merit.
I know you guys can do better in framing the discussion about how we rebuild the conservative movement and the GOP… maybe a new article bashing former Governor Palin is ripe for the picking again? Maybe one claiming that the radical right inside the RNC has now printed the JimmieBob Bopp Litmus Test proposal –on real paper this time, too– and they might be ready to decide whether or not to circulate it in the mail to RNC members? Maybe you might want to poll aliens from the next galaxy to see what they think about TheKnowNothingWall from outer space??
Come on, get serious.
COProgressive // Dec 18, 2009 at 12:16 pm
“The disparities we observe in civilizational achievements of the various peoples of the earth are rooted very real genetic differences that occurred as a result of differential selective pressures due to geographic separation. No intellectually serious and mature man can deny that. Policy must be formulated on that basis.”
You sure talk purtty for a …………. RACIST!
24AheadDotCom // Dec 18, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Considering that millions of Americans are unemployed and during the same time period as the stimulus we gave out *more* work permits than any jobs that were “saved or created”, perhaps being a bit “isolationist” (gasp!) would be in order.
The problem with the partiers is that they’ve paid almost no attention to imm. matters and none that I’ve seen have been overly concerned with the millions of unemployed. That would have been very smart since that’s the area where the Beltway establishment is weakest, but the partiers aren’t exactly known for smart. And, they aren’t known for caring about others either: none of them that I’ve seen seem to realize that there are other people besides themselves in the U.S.; their concerns are only with themselves. Which isn’t surprising since most of them seem to be on the libertarian side of things, including a Randroid component.
And, considering that their string-pullers include the Kochtopus and Dick Armey, don’t expect them to change.
See my extensive tea parties coverage for much, much more.
DFL // Dec 18, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Neo-conservatives tend towards hysteria, and often simplistic slander, when conservatives who are different from them endorse a more pragmatic, less Wilsonian foreign policy. Many conservatives do not think the use of military power in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans is wise. Many conservatives do not understand why American troops remain in peaceful Germany, Japan and South Korea. Many conservatives, although they support a strong navy, wonder why the navy must be so ubiquitous when the fleets of potential enemies like China or Russia are comparatively small . Many conservatives, eighteen years after the fall of the USSR, wonder why military expenditures are so high, especially now that America is sprinting down the path of fiscal insolvency.
teabag // Dec 18, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Most teabaggers have never been outside their county much less State or Country. They are a bit like Palin “Africa is a country” but much more ignorant. Main driving force behind the teabaggers. teh black guy in the white-house. Trucknutz also.
Toddtheconservative // Dec 18, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Happy a great New Year folks !
http://americaspeaksink.com/2009/12/obama-santa-or-the-grinch/
Brutus1776 // Dec 18, 2009 at 3:35 pm
Cpt. Chaos. Pray do tell how you are attributing these statements with Leo Strauss? You started off so promising, including the line “which is the inescapability of death; and that one should face the latter with courage if not hope” which I assume you are referring to his statement during a colleague’s funeral where he says of his late friend, “he faced death as a philosopher: without fear, and without hope.”
However,
You loose me during your ‘dangerous truths’ monologue. Particularly the paragraph:
“The disparities we observe in civilizational achievements of the various peoples of the earth are rooted very real genetic differences that occurred as a result of differential selective pressures due to geographic separation. No intellectually serious and mature man can deny that. Policy must be formulated on that basis.”
I hope you don’t mind if I might ask where you may be drawing such conclusions from, and how they pertain to Dr. Strauss. Especially all of this talk on “evolution” and “evolved traits”. I am not quite sure that Strauss would have employed ‘evolution’ to his side, considering evolution’s tendencies toward promoting nihilism (only Dr Arnhart, who could by a far stretch be considered a “straussian” per se, advocates that evolution and natural right can be intertwined).
I must say, your comments, and your Leo Strauss, are a bit frieghtening to say the least. You seem to be drawing a Shadia Drury-inspired characiture of Leo Strauss, but not a legitimate Leo Strauss as he understood himself.
As for the Tea Partiers, it is important to note that their “Party” has NO IDEAS when it come to foreign policy. I agree with some of their domestic points, but they are no better than our liberal bretheren at resisting Modernity’s influence. Liberals want a big government to take away “the agony of living and the pain of thinking” so we can all live by ourselves, silopsistically. Libertarians want NO GOVERNMENT so that we may live, alone, silopsistically. I’ll be willing to bet not many of these people were part of the mere 7% of Americans against the Afghan war in 2001-2002, and the fact that they are turning from the mission is disheartening (http://thelobbyist.net/lobby/archives/2386).
They seem to forget Edmund Burke’s old line, that “the only thing that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.”
jakester // Dec 18, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Just because the teapartiers aren’t intellectual heavyweight or have a coherent platform, doen’t mean that others should ignore or denigrate their grievances. I can sympathize with a lot of their issues, though they themselves seem self pitying and juvenile
For example most people are sick of illegals and want them out, want the deficit reduced not increased, want less government but not some simple 1776 ideal, don’t give a fig about the sensibilities of Muslims etc who complain about profiling or their poor image (they earned), want less people leaching off the government not more handouts and giveaways, while not isolationists are very wary of more foreign commitments that lack any popular will or realistic goals, etc etc
I don’t care about what your flavor of politics or conservatism is, it’s time we start uniting people which means that even teabaggers have legitimate gripes.
Captainchaos // Dec 18, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Brutus,
“You loose me during your ‘dangerous truths’ monologue. Particularly the paragraph:”
Recall Thrasymachus and his remarks on the fact that a given society’s elites rule the people as so much sheep to be sheered, that is for their self-interest. Recall why Socrates was made to drink the hemlock, because his ideas threatened the constructs that keep the herd in order for the benefit of the powerful.
“I hope you don’t mind if I might ask where you may be drawing such conclusions from, and how they pertain to Dr. Strauss.”
We can comport ourselves in the spirit of Strauss, with intellectual courage. It pertains in said fashion.
“I am not quite sure that Strauss would have employed ‘evolution’ to his side, considering evolution’s tendencies toward promoting nihilism”
I do and did not say a thoroughgoing materialism is beneficial for the masses. But can those that will face the truth deny that Man is of Nature and Nature is Darwinian? Hardly, we must face it.
“I must say, your comments, and your Leo Strauss, are a bit frieghtening to say the least. You seem to be drawing a Shadia Drury-inspired characiture of Leo Strauss, but not a legitimate Leo Strauss as he understood himself.”
That Strauss did indeed subscribe to a esoteric/exoteric bifurcation of political and philosophical speech and writing as prescriptive is I think beyond argument.
Captainchaos // Dec 18, 2009 at 5:44 pm
“As for the Tea Partiers, it is important to note that their “Party” has NO IDEAS when it come to foreign policy.”
The Tea Partiers are clearly an example of what one evolutionary psychologist refered to as an example of “implicit whiteness”. It is populism, it is nativism; not a volkish nationalism. They have no ideas, I guess in the sense of something approaching a philosophical system to guide them, because the task of imagining a system that will replace liberalism has largely not been attempted. They must become awake to themselves, to their European being, in order to bring their blind and nascent movement to fruition – to secure the existence in perpetuity of European Man. Friends to our people will aid us in that process, otherwise they are no friends of ours.
“They seem to forget Edmund Burke’s old line, that “the only thing that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.””
A man who will stand by his people, and in times of extremis loyal unto death, is not a good man by my lights.
About poll, tea party, democrats, maine republican, recent | Find me About // Dec 18, 2009 at 8:13 pm
[...] With news emerging that a hypothetical Tea Party party would beat out the Republican Party in a three-way matchup, FrumForum sought to explore what a Tea Party party’s foreign policy platform might look like by interviewing Tea Party protestors during …Read Original Story: This Party Stops at <p></p>the Border – FrumForum [...]
JimBob // Dec 18, 2009 at 9:58 pm
If you don’t think we should be fighting endless war in the Middle East Frum Forum considers it isolationism. I suggest the Frummers read Ronald Reagan’s memoirs, because he thought the United States should policy in the Middle East should be neutral. Neutrality.
Captainchaos // Dec 18, 2009 at 10:49 pm
“If you don’t think we should be fighting endless war in the Middle East Frum Forum considers it isolationism.”
The prospect of “democratizing” (i.e., transforming them into industrial and post-industrial consumer oriented liberal democracies) Middle Eastern and Central Asian populations is sheer chimera. They simply do not possess the human potential for it without the constant micro-management of European Man, in which case it would not really be “democracy” at all. Why so? Well, according to the psychometric data and analysis we have those populations have average group IQs in the low to mid 80s – with an average group IQ of around 90 being the minimum necessary to sustain a modern society.
See here for the comprehensive and definitive analysis of Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations
The implication should be clear, it is far from the clash of titans, the Clash of Civilizations it was sold as being. What we are facing abroad is largely a low IQ rabble, hardly anything near the German Wehrmacht that took France in six weeks and nearly brought the mighty Soviet Union to its knees; so, any comparisons to WWII must be strictly rhetorical, if not delusional. What we should be pursuing is a policy of containment. And when I mean containment, I really mean it. I mean the total extirpation of their nuclear capacities. I mean the total repatriation of ALL Muslims in Western lands – every last one of them. Also, the point must be made, with the willingness to carry out the threat, that if we wanted their oil for ourselves, cutting them completely out of the loop, we could achieve it. How many troops would it take to guard exclusively oil wells and pipelines and shipping routes without genuflecting in the least towards the internal affairs of those peoples? Many less than are committed now. Further, European Man controls most of the worlds arable land, at least for the time being, assuming our traitorous elites yield, or can be made to yield, in facilitating his dispossesion. We have every ability to starve out Middle Eastern and Central Asian populations on a mass scale (this tack was taken against Germany near the end of and after the cessation of formal combat in WWI – against our own blood).
The war on Islamic terrorism against the West would be won right there, and with fewer casualties to our own people (I mean those that are part of our European family of peoples) than the current “strategy” is yielding.
Quote of the Day | Political Byline // Dec 19, 2009 at 1:48 am
[...] the tea party movement takes steps to translate their policy aspirations into political outcomes, conservatives should [...]
grackle // Dec 19, 2009 at 2:03 am
I think an explanation of why the Tea Party emphasizes domestic economic policy over foreign policy is fairly simple: Domestic economic policy is the cause of the very birth of the Tea Party. It was never about the WoT, never about North Korea or other thorny foreign problems and never about the quasi-religious social agenda of the Social Conservatives(although it may gravitate toward them). It was always about the economy.
My foreign policy viewpoint is essentially Neoconservative so the isolationist tendency is troubling. However, it is difficult for me to vigorously oppose a political movement that is concerned about the very real problem of spending gone amuck.
What I really fear is that the Tea Party, by becoming a third party, will paradoxically insure the very thing to which they are most opposed: The election of Democrats and thus more spending and more government intervention in our daily life.
Captainchaos // Dec 19, 2009 at 7:38 am
Of course if my suggested Roman-on-Carthaginian methods off fighting the war on terror are a bit too extreme for the civilized there is always the possibility of buying oil from the Russians, forming an alliance with same as a fellow White nation, thereby steering Russia away from the path of enabling Irans nuclear developement. An arrangement to which the Putin clique would most certainly be receptive. I know, there is that fly in the ointment of the shabby way in which bad old Putin treated the “oligarchs” in preventing the Russian people from being raped (yup, by the usual suspects) for the second time in a century. Sometimes, I’m afraid, compromises are necessary, however hard they may be to swallow. And there may be more compromises ahead, as those of European descent truly do hold all the cards in that all the Others need us but we don’t need them.
sinz54 // Dec 19, 2009 at 9:48 am
Captainchaos: The prospect of “democratizing” (i.e., transforming them into industrial and post-industrial consumer oriented liberal democracies) Middle Eastern and Central Asian populations is sheer chimera. They simply do not possess the human potential for it without the constant micro-management of European Man
The Chinese had built themselves a high civilization 5,000 years ago, back when Europeans were still savages.
But cultures progress and/or backslide at different rates, and cultures have different characteristics, based on history and geography and sheer luck. Interfering with the normal development of an alien culture, as Bush kept trying to do in Afghanistan and Iraq, was stupid. I agree with you about that. So would Star Trek fans.
Bush’s assertion that everybody wants freedom was unsupported by any real scientific evidence. Bush never defined just what he meant by “freedom,” but he sort of implied Western-style civil liberties. Bush’s idea that all peoples on earth have an instinctive desire for an American-style Bill of Rights is, I believe, a fantasy. (Go ahead, Bush, show us where in the human DNA genome this desire exists.) Rather, humans have to learn the hard way what can go wrong in the long term without such rights. But we can’t force that lesson down their throats.
Captainchaos // Dec 19, 2009 at 5:36 pm
“The Chinese had built themselves a high civilization 5,000 years ago, back when Europeans were still savages.”
East Asians have an average group IQ of around 105, but quite obviously lack the spark of creativity Europeans are noted for. Richard Lynn believes the latter is the case because East Asians on average are lower on the trait of openness to new experience. The old ‘rise and fall of civilizations’ argument is misleading in that there is a much higher level of complexity involved in, say, creating the Internet and putting a man on the moon versus building pyramids or a great wall. Also, the argument is obviated with the advent of intelligence testing which has been shown to have a strong correlation with achievement. With representative sampling for testing we can know just what the intellectual quality of a given population is. One of the most useful test for this purpose is the Raven’s Progressive Matricies, a test with no linguistic content and therefore with no cultural bias.
I’m afraid that really is ballgame, egalitarians and Frankfurt School anti-White misanthropes who contend all that is good in us is but mental illness and sexual repression the product of which is proto-fascists and fascists, just haven’t gotten the word yet. Of course I’m sure the theoreticians behind the Frankfurt School knew their efforts were a lie to begin with, any actual empirical research that was attempted to back up their claims is so transparently crude and biased as to expose them instantly. What motivates them is hatred, paranoia (I’m aware of one study that shows infants of their group have a much higher level of anxiety when exposed to a strangers than do European infants – so we can assume it is innate) and supremacism.
Captainchaos // Dec 20, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I trust that the ’shadow monologue’ I here attempted has been ‘heard’ by those it was intended for. The smartest bet one can place in this game is on European Man not going idly to the grave, although I certainly do not expect any active aid, and most probably at least mild opposition for that matter, from those that I hope ‘heard’ me. To flesh the point out: it is not for nothing that, just as Blacks dominate the ranks of the NBA, so too do Whites dominate the elite of our military units. So, elite White soldiers are the excellent soldier par excellence (yes, per the expression of their unique genetic constitution). If at the last they must be counted upon to defend the existence of their people, and whilst doing so consciously for expressly that end, they can be expected to win even though greatly outnumbered, which will be the case if the demographic situation goes down hill further, which we can expect it to do. We offer our people all the social goods that flow from the affirmation of their peoplehood with the full aid of the modern technocratic state; and we offer them life and not death. It really is no contest. You know what the smart bet is.
PCR // Dec 20, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Captainchaos:
I’m glad you recognize you’ve been conducting a “shadow monologue”. Frankly, I’m shocked that no one’s taken you to task yet – perhaps all the liberals and conservatives are too busy calling each other racists to know what to do when a real one shows up. Perhaps they just don’t want to feed a troll. In any case, I’ll take you on.
You came first to this site with a tangential-at-best post regarding innate differences in intelligence and ability between people of different races. You were, of course, polite and well-spoken in defense of your White America, and careful to distance yourself from the charges of anti-Semitism which you knew would follow. You established your philosophical bona fides regarding Strauss, and Drury, and even a bit of Burke for good measure. Clearly you are a man of reading and intelligence. I wonder, then, how you were led so far astray to have missed so completely the point of the American experiment.
The American is not a believer in the “blood”. He is unconcerned with “European (or African, or Asian, or what-have-you) Man”. The American abhors “volkish nationalism”. Do you know why? Because all throughout history, from the conquest of Canaan to the gas chambers of Auschwitz to the machetes of Rwanda, racial identity has brought nothing but misery and death wherever it has gone. Without even dealing with the tricky subject of who qualifies as “white” (and yes, “miscegenation” does make that a rather tough question, doesn’t it), I ask you, what makes an American? Is it his ancestral stock? The color of his skin? Or is it his allegiance, the land he calls home?
The American is tied to the soil, all right, but not the soil of a narrow swath of northwestern Europe. The American is tied to the soil of a new continent, with a polity that sees individuals as fundamental units with rights and responsibilities, not mere heads to be counted in a racial amalgamation stretching back to time immemorial. I am a white man with ancestors from Ireland, Italy, England, and France. And I have no use for hyphenated Americans, be they Mexican- or African- or Chinese- or Arab- or even European-.
The kicker is that you may very well be right about fundamental differences, in aggregate, between races. I submit that it doesn’t matter. When a person is born or moves to this country, his previous identity is severed. Yes, he may keep his culture or traditions, but his primary allegiance is to a new nation, a nation whose genius is its ability to take the best of cultures from around the globe and weave them into a national fabric richer than any of its constituent parts. The men and ideas who founded this nation were products of the European Enlightenment, and your ancestors and mine labored long and hard to fashion a civilization out of whole cloth. But it is a small America indeed which would conspire to keep the fruits of freedom among a particular race because of historical happenstance. My America is bigger than that. My America is the America which says that in the eyes of God and the law “all men are created equal”.
It would, of course, be foolish to suggest that the country I have just described really exists, now or at any time in the past. Many of the Founders owned other men themselves, men who were not freed until a bloody paroxysm of civil war. There are still people alive who remember a time when a woman’s opinion was politically insignificant. And until the immigration reforms of the last century, to which you refer derisively, most people around the world were given no opportunity to partake in and contribute to American bounty.
So what?
The failure of America to live up to its ideals is not an indictment of the ideals themselves, but merely a spur to us now, a reminder that we the people, no less than the pioneers of previous eras, have not yet finished the work before us. Your presence here is proof of that. You come to this site offering racial kampf and misery and inequality and war. I reject that. Race is history, not destiny, and nowhere is this more true than in the United States of America. I weep for you, CaptainChaos, because a world filled with unthinking ignorance has lost your bright mind to a venomous racism of a kind thankfully not often seen anymore. And as long as you espouse it, you are contemptible. Beneath contempt – pitiable. So when you slither back to Stormfront, keep this is mind: so long as you value European Man over American Man, in all his colors and ancestries, you have betrayed America. You are a more insidious threat that any Mexican sneaking over a fence, because you work from inside, poisoning the ideal to which we aspire – a nation built on ideas, not people; a nation of laws, not men. Count yourself a proud member of the White Race, but while you are pledging allegiance to your skin instead of your home, do not dare defile the name by calling yourself an American.