American Renaissance magazine
Vol 7, No. 9	September 1996

 

CONTENTS

The Ways of Our People (Part I)
Pocahontas: Destroyer of Nations
Don’t Tread on Me (Magazine Review)
O Tempora, O Mores!
Letters from Readers

COVER STORY

The Ways of Our People, Part I

What are we fighting to preserve? And why is it threatened?

by Jared Taylor

A frequent criticism of American Renaissance is that it seldom has much to say about us — about the white majority in whose name it claims to speak. Many articles and much of the news section are about the other racial groups now living in the United States. As a friendly critic once put it, AR takes an absorbing interest in non-whites — describing their behavior and propensities in great detail — while ignoring the character and accomplishments of our own group.

This is true. AR writes at length about non-whites in order to clarify and underscore something that many whites feel but seldom put into words: That multi-racialism is failing because of fundamental group incompatibilities; that the present multi-racial experiment poses a grave threat to our people and culture. But what about our people and culture? Why do they matter?

When readers complain that AR says too much about “them” and not enough about “us,” they are asking for answers to a series of questions that AR has never raised: How are the white man and his civilization unique? Why do they deserve our loyalty? Why have so many whites lost all racial consciousness?

There is a reason why AR has never raised these questions: They should never have to be raised. No healthy people ever doubts its own legitimacy — or even its superiority. According to the French proverb, every nation thinks itself better than its neighbors, and every nation is right. Not even the most primitive tribe of New Guinea is likely ever to take an inventory of its characteristics to determine whether or not it should step aside so other people can take its place. No matter how squalid or degenerate they may appear to others they are, in their own minds, the finest people on earth.

All non-whites act this way. Neither the Japanese nor the Mexicans nor the Malays nor the Israelis tolerate alien incursion, displacement, or “multiculturalism.” They fight them instinctively, without having to explain to each other why they must fight them and why they should survive as a people. Only whites pretend that pluralism and displacement are good things and that the measures necessary to ensure group survival may be immoral.

This article is a reluctant investigation of some of these questions. It is a survey of some of those characteristics — some good, some bad — that distinguish whites from other races, but it is also an attempt to understand why whites, all around the world, seem to have lost their racial consciousness and will to survive as a group. This matter of the reasons for capitulation is the most troubling of all, but its explanation may lie in a better understanding of the distinctive traits of whites. In describing the ways of our people we may find that the very things that set us apart from others are the very things that paralyze us. What we ordinarily think of as our virtues have become, through degeneration, our greatest weaknesses.

After all, our enemies are not Africans or Latin Americans or Asians. Other races are happy to take whatever we are foolish enough to give them, but how could we expect them to refuse? It is we who have brought dispossession upon ourselves, so we must look to our own natures if we are to understand why we have done so.

Who Are We?

There is a common thread to the modern characteristics of European man, and he carries these characteristics wherever he migrates. This common thread is an abiding sense of reciprocity, a conviction that others have rights that must be respected. This conviction, which can be described as a kind of public morality, is at the heart of the institutions that are common to most white societies and absent from virtually every non-white one: democracy, free speech, and the rule of law. These appeared over time and took root more firmly in some white nations than in others.

In like manner, European societies have given rise to a broad range of non-political traditions also based on concern for others. These have established the unique texture of life among whites, but now virtually all of these traditions have changed in ways that make them threats to our survival.

Given the self-centered nature of man, democracy is an unlikely development. It is based on the assumption that, within the body of electors, all opinions are equal. This is remarkable, even excessive respect for others. History records few examples of people with power who willingly gave it up just because a majority of voters asked them to. This requires the powerful to subordinate their ambition to the opinions of strangers and, for the most part, only whites can manage this. A few Asian nations have developed a tenuous tradition of democracy, but only among whites is it taken for granted.

The same can be said for the rule of law. The idea that power is not self-justifying requires an understanding that others have legitimate rights. In virtually every non-white society, the power-holding clique enforces laws in a corrupt way that serves its own interests. Everyone accepts this. Although whites sometimes try to evade the law and some succeed, white societies are built on the assumption that justice is blind and that everyone is equal before the law.

One of our peculiar government rituals requires that American politicians disclose their incomes and net worths. Africans and other third-worlders are astonished at how small they are. Many non-whites take it for granted that political power is a license to steal.

Another almost uniquely European characteristic founded on recognition of the rights of others is legal protection against censorship. The temptation to suppress the speech of others is always strong; most non-white regimes give in to it without a second thought. Though we will return to this question, the rise of anti-“hate” laws in Europe and Canada that prohibit speech thought to damage protected minorities, is a significant step backwards in the evolution of European principles. It is a good example of the disease that now afflicts us: the perversion of good qualities into their opposites. Guarantees of free speech, enacted out of respect for human rights, are being abridged — but in the name of even greater respect for human rights.

Another white expression of concern for others is the elimination of hereditary class distinctions and the provision of public education. Westerners take for granted the ideal that citizens should rise or fall according to their abilities rather than according to status at birth. This is still an infant concept in many non-white societies.

Respect for others suffuses the other qualities we think of as typifying Western man. Ideals of sportsmanship, for example, are meant to curb expressions of triumphalism and protect the loser from humiliation. They are also meant to instill in competitors a respect for fair play that is more powerful than the desire to win. In its most extreme form, fair play requires that a player refuse to believe he was cheated.

In his younger days Teddy Roosevelt pursued “the strenuous life.” Historians write of the time he was in a boxing match when the gong sounded the end of the round. Just as Roosevelt dropped his guard his opponent let fly and hit him square in the face.

Blood gushed from Roosevelt’s nose. A growl of disapproval rose from the crowd. Roosevelt went to the edge of the ring and shouted: “He didn’t hear the bell. He didn’t hear the bell.”

The history of the penalty kick in British soccer reflects the same tradition. The kick was granted on the assumption that a player who was fouled within scoring distance must have been deliberately fouled. When soccer became a professional sport, many former British amateurs would not take the penalty kick. They refused to believe that anyone in their sport could commit a deliberate foul.

Rooting for the underdog is another European sporting tradition. This, too, shows Western man’s concern for the other person’s point of view. Some competitors may be no-hopers, but we cheer their efforts and hope for the unexpected upset.

The swaggering, “trash talk,” corner cutting, and absence of gentlemanly play that characterize sports today are largely the importation of non-white behavior into a previously white arena. Sadly, many whites have been infected and act just as loutishly.

One of the most dramatic ways, though, in which whites differ from all other peoples is in their treatment of women. For American Indians and Africans, women were beasts of burden. Muslims kept women out of sight, and Confucianists reserved for them a distinctly servile role. A recent Prime Minister of Japan, Kakuei Tanaka, urged a new son-in-law to slap the prime minister’s daughter around occasionally. It was the best way to keep her in line, he explained, giving some substance to the view that in Japan the status of a woman is somewhere between that of a man and a bird.

Only in the West was the objectively weaker sex elevated and protected through an elaborate code of chivalry. Only white men traditionally stand in the presence of a woman, hold doors for her, carry her burdens. Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman historian Tacitus was struck by the high regard in which Germanic tribesmen held women. He thought it remarkable that even the most powerful men were content with only one wife and that women should be admitted to councils of war. Like all members of white societies, women have rights and sensibilities that must be respected.

The idea of love and romance is likewise almost exclusively European. Nowhere but in the West has it ever been supposed that men and women could share a romantic love that lasted until death. Many couples fall short of this standard, but the standard itself is virtually without parallel. What passes for “love” in such famous non-white literary works as The Tale of Genji or Tales From the Arabian Nights is brutish womanizing by the standards of Western romance.

Does the concept of noblesse oblige have non-white parallels? Or is it only Europeans who believe that the wealthy and high born have particular, unwritten obligations? It is no accident that the welfare state is an almost exclusively white enterprise. It is a logical if misguided extension of the tradition of private charity and philanthropy. Muslim societies have the zakah, or obligatory alms for the poor, but among the people of no other race are found the habits and institutions of charity common to Western man. Nowhere else is there so much volunteer work or even an understanding of what it is.

Another exclusively European expression of concern for others is the missionary calling. Although it is fashionable to mock Christian missionaries, they made tremendous sacrifices to bring what they believed were truth and salvation to people who would otherwise burn in hell. Other people — even foreigners — not only had rights, they had immortal souls that it was the white man’s duty to save.

International organizations like the European Union and the North American Free Trade Association are implemented exclusively by whites. The theory is that some national sovereignty may be given up in the name of “fairness” and the common good. Latin Americans and Asians have tried similar economic groupings, such as the Association of South East Asian Nations or any number of abortive South American trade zones, but they invariably go nowhere.

Whites also show their characteristic concern for others in attempts to protect wildlife and the environment. People preserve the environment because of future generations; those not yet born have rights, too. Third world nations are notoriously unconcerned about the environment, partly because they may be too poor to afford to care, but also because they do not share Western concerns. The environmentalist movement was inspired by whites and continues to be the work, almost exclusively, of whites.

One need go no further than the closest multi-racial metropolis to see who cares about the immediate environment. For example, the annual celebration of Puerto Rico Day in New York City leaves the streets clogged with trash. The rather different clientele that picnics on the Great Lawn in Central Park before a free symphony concert leaves scarcely a scrap of paper behind. We are invariably told that differences in income explain differences in behavior, but the poor can pick up trash as well as the rich.

Efforts to protect wildlife are a lopsidedly white concern. The Japanese, who are as rich as Westerners, would rather eat whales than save them. Hong Kong Chinese, many of whom are millionaires, continue to pep themselves up with doses of rhino horn without regard to what this may cost the rhinoceros. Nor do they seem to care that every serving of bear paws means another dead bear.

Campaigns to protect the wild life of Africa are likewise mainly a white concern. African leaders who, themselves, take little interest in lions or elephants, use the threat of extinction to extract aid from whites. Similarly, South Americans play on European worries about shrinking rain forests.

The black sociologist, Elijah Anderson, in his 1990 book, Street Wise, describes how differently blacks and whites feel about dogs. Inner city blacks do not think of dogs as companions but as useful creatures that can be trained to terrify and attack people. Prof. Anderson reports that they are disgusted to see whites, on their knees, hugging dogs and burying their faces in fur.

A strictly utilitarian, even exploitative attitude toward animals is taken for granted in the third world. It is rare to see a sign of affection or kindness for the donkeys, camels, and draft animals that still power much of the non-white world. A Tunisian would be amazed at the homes for retired donkeys that are found in Britain. Laws against cruelty to animals are an almost uniquely white phenomenon — not even the Japanese have them.

Like all European virtues, this one can get out of hand. Animal “rights” activists don’t mind putting lumberjacks out of work in order to save the spotted owl, and have disrupted scientific experiments that use animals. Some would make it illegal to eat meat. Extreme or not, this concern about the rights of others, even the rights of other species, is a white preoccupation.

Champions at ‘saving’

Whites are the world’s unsurpassed champions at “saving” and improving things. They have fought wars to end all wars, make the world safe for democracy, and — some say — to end slavery. They launch “wars” on inanimate enemies like poverty and drugs. They are off to feed the world, save the ozone layer, prevent global warming, spread democracy, liberate women, stop acid rain, promote human rights, end child labor, and persuade every man on earth to wear a condom. Much as liberals may think they disdain the missionary impulse, they far exceed their ancestors in righteous zeal. There is nothing on the planet that escapes the white obsession with doing good. For non-whites it must be an astonishing spectacle.

Where does all this moral energy come from? There is increasing evidence that personality traits — including such things as introversion/extroversion, respect for authority, strength of religious convictions, and impulsiveness — are under considerable genetic control. Fifty percent seems to be about the average figure for heritability of such traits. This means it is entirely possible that there are biological bases for racial differences in what one could call “average personality,” just as there are for differences in average intelligence.

In a provocative article in the April 1995 issue of AR, Prof. Michael Levin speculates about the origins of racial differences in altruism, or the capacity to respect the wishes of others. He cites evidence for inherent differences in morality, and suggests that just as local environmental pressures directed group evolution towards different levels of intelligence, they probably produced different levels of moral perception.

The way whites organize their societies may therefore reflect inherent racial traits. Respect for others, formal restraints on political power, support for the weak, the desire to keep the planet habitable — these typically white traits are all altruistic and find only incomplete parallels among non-whites.

Ways of War

Aside from these general principles for the organization of society, there are many specific historical examples of white behavior that are difficult to imagine in other races. Some of the most striking come from the conduct of war.

In the spring of 1863, the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock river. Here is a passage from Bruce Catton’s Mr. Lincoln’s Army about one evening when massed Union bands gathered by the river in earshot the Confederates:

Northerners and Southerners, the soldiers sang those songs [‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,’ ‘Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,’ ‘John Brown’s Body,’ etc.] or sat and listened to them in their thousands on the hillsides . . . Finally the Southerners called across, ‘Now play some of ours,’ so without pause the Yankee bands swung into ‘Dixie,’ and ‘The Bonnie Blue Flag’ and ‘Maryland, My Maryland.’ And then at last the massed bands played ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both armies went to bed. A few weeks later they were tearing each other apart in the lonely thickets around Chancellorsville.

Here were men whose patriotic duty was to kill each other and who, indeed, did so with great ferocity. This did not prevent the Union bandsmen from playing the tunes they knew would most please and inspire the Confederates.

Here is Mr. Catton again, in A Stillness at Appomattox, describing an incident that took place during the battle of Petersburg:

The 39th Massachusetts won an advanced position, losing three color-bearers, and at last was forced back, leaving its colors on the ground. Its colonel asked for volunteers to go out and get the flags. A corporal and a private responded and ran out to get them, and suddenly — and quite unexpectedly — the Confederates stopped firing, allowed the men to pick up the flags, and as they went back to the regiment the Rebels waved their hats and raised a cheer.

This was four years into the bloodiest war Americans ever fought. If these soldiers were ever going to despise their enemy, give him no quarter, and kill him at every opportunity, that point would have been reached long ago. Can we conceive of common soldiers in an African or Arab or Asian army showing as much consideration and magnanimity as these hard-pressed Confederates?

The Battle of Saratoga in 1777 produced another memorable incident that illustrates both the gallantry of warfare among whites and the unusual status of women. Major Ackland, on Gen. Burgoyn’s staff, was shot through both legs and left on the field as the redcoats retreated. His wife was with the British forces and was deeply worried about her husband. She had had a very rough retreat along with the soldiers — 12 hours without food in a driving rain — but she asked Gen. Burgoyn to petition the American commander, Gen. Gates, to let her through the lines to tend her husband. Burgoyn was impressed that she would undertake to go several miles in the dark, cross a river, and go over to the enemy, and was moved to write this letter to General Gates:

Sir — Lacy Harriet Ackland, a lady of the first distinction of family, rank, and personal virtues, is under such concern on account of Major Ackland, her husband, wounded and a prisoner in your hands, that I cannot refuse her request to commit her to your protection. Whatever general impropriety there may be in persons in my situation and yours to solicit favors, I cannot see the uncommon perseverance in every female grace and the exaltation of character of this lady, and her very hard fortune, without testifying that your attentions to her will lay me under obligations. I am, sir, your obedient servant, J. Burgoyne. (Quoted in Edward Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World)

She was accepted through the lines and cared for her husband. Within a week Burgoyn’s army had surrendered.

This letter, and especially the complimentary close, may strike modern ears as fantastically mannered, but it reflects a conception of the antagonist and a respect for women not likely to be found in non-white histories.

Admittedly, white armies do not always behave chivalrously, and during the Second World War, both the Axis and the Allies launched civilian terror bombings without much compunction. To some degree, a gallant attitude towards the enemy may require war on a more intimate, technologically primitive scale. Moreover, modern wars — especially those fought by democracies — are mass wars that must mobilize an entire nation. The best way to do this is by demonizing the enemy and it is much easier to kill civilians if we are convinced they are demons.

Even so, armies of whites rarely commit the barbarities that have sometimes been common among their enemies. American Indians seldom took prisoners unless it was to torture them for sport. They liked to strip the bodies of enemy dead and mutilate them, as the U.S. Cavalry found when it arrived, too late, at what was left of Custer’s last stand. The Viet Cong frequently killed wounded Americans they found on the battlefield, and the cruelty of Japanese troops in China and the Pacific is well recorded. A few unfortunate exceptions in the Balkans notwithstanding, what soldier today, given a choice, would surrender to a non-white rather than a white army?

Curiously, it is the fashion today to describe whites, whether civilians or soldiers, as uniquely evil. Detractors point to the great butcheries of the Second World War as proof. Of course, the scale of the killing only reflected European and American technological genius.

Far more remarkable than the violence done by whites is the violence they have not done. In the history of that near-universal institution, slavery, only whites ever thought up philosophical justifications for it because only they had bad consciences about it. Other peoples simply took slaves when they had the power to do so. When whites persuaded themselves that slavery was wrong, they not only abolished it within their own realms but forced abolition upon reluctant non-whites. It is pure, anti-white nonsense to pretend that American slavery was somehow uniquely shameful.

Whites in this century have treated non-white nations with remarkable forbearance. The European powers had established vast empires that included most of the rest of the world. Non-whites did not win independence; they were given freedom by whites who decided this was the moral thing to do. Now, when former colonies stumble under the weight of independence, European countries prop them up. In the colonial era, there was a name for this kind of care-taking: the white man’s burden. Much as it is mocked today, it was in many cases a sincerely-felt desire to raise up less fortunate races.

After the Second World War, whites had the power to organize the planet into a system of exploitation entirely for their own benefit. They could have kept all of Asia as client states rather than permit Japan, Korea, and — soon — China to become real competitors. Even today, whites could completely dominate other races — even exterminate them — but this is simply not part of their moral repertoire.

What would the world be like if some other race had the tremendously disproportionate power that whites have had and continue to have? Would Africans or Asians act with the restraint whites have shown? Would they voluntarily sheath their weapons and instead give aid to help races less successful than themselves?

Only in the last century has the history of the world been anything but the chronicle of aggressive war for the purpose of tribal or national aggrandizement. If, in the 1880s, the United States had decided to colonize Mexico or Central America would there have been much outcry? Today’s international morality of self-restraint is not universal, but it was established entirely by whites. It is this self-restraint, first practiced upon themselves by whites and then forced upon aggressive non-white powers by whites, that has changed the entire character of international relations. Since 1945, it has curbed large-scale war. Yet whites, ironically, are supposed to be the villains of world history.

The Ways of Our People will conclude in the next issue.

ARTICLE

Pocahontas: Destroyer of Nations

by Perry Lorenz

Recently, a number of children’s films have been retelling the story of the Indian princess Pocahontas, the English settler Captain John Smith, and the founding of Jamestown in 1607. In many ways, these events mark the beginning of America, and the beginning of the catastrophic loss of a continent for the Indians.

Pocahontas was a liberal. Her theory of permissive immigration as the route to peace was in sharp contrast to that of the braves in her tribe. They, too, favored peace, but the kind that flows from the separation of nations by an ocean of water. They wanted to defend their land by chasing the Europeans into the sea.

Pocahontas believed that men of good will from diverse nations could dwell in peace in the same land. Her vision of a pluralistic society required just one change in the nature of man: that he become indifferent to the survival of his own ethnic group.

The braves had a clearer insight into the nature of man, groups, and land. Borders between ethnic groups, enforced by military strength, determine access to the land. Tribes that successfully defend their borders survive into the future. Nations that practice the Pocahontas policy give their land over to aliens at the expense of their own families. They may experience an exhilarating rush of selfless moral superiority before they are displaced or absorbed.

One can imagine Pocahontas — if she had had our trendy vocabulary — calling the Braves “xenophobes,” “bigots,” and “racists.” The Braves, no doubt, would have called themselves “patriots.”

In this case the Pocahontas policy prevailed. It was followed by three centuries of ethnic violence. The violence finally ended, not because human nature changed, but because the few remaining Indians were pushed into remote regions and were effectively out of contact with the new occupying nation. To their credit, the Braves fought valiantly, but only after allowing the immigrants to get a foothold. By then it was too late.

For the Indians, the next three centuries do not look promising. Indians number only two million out of a population of 260 million and they will probably be absorbed. If so, their language, their culture and their race will become extinct. Perhaps a few of them draw satisfaction from the current wave of immigration that is threatening their old nemesis — the pale face.

The Pocahontas policy buys time for the new immigrants to build their population before challenging the dominant nation. The nature of man and the competition for land ensure that there will be ethnic competition — if not violent, then political, economic, or demographic.

The best chance for ethnic peace is secure borders and self government for every ethnic group or nation. The spirit of Pocahontas — kind heart and liberal pluralism — continues to destroy nations.

Perry Lorenz is a staff engineer with a major chip maker. He holds four patents.

MAGAZINE REVIEW

Don’t Tread on Me

The quarterly for soldiers (and civilians) who think.

reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Soldiers in the United States armed forces take an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. What would happen if some of them actually read the Constitution? What if they really believed in the individual rights and limited government so clearly articulated by the Founders? What if they despised federal meddling, foreign adventurism, and the socialist poison that has seeped into every corner of our lives? The result would be the Special Forces Underground, and its “political warfare journal,” The Resister.

The Resister is published pseudonymously by active-duty Special Forces men — the smartest, best trained soldiers in the army. They are experts in covert and delicate operations of all kinds: reconnaissance, sabotage, intelligence and operations behind enemy lines. It is a delight to discover that some of them cannot be corrupted by a regular government pay check.

Here are excerpts from the Statement of Policy that appears in every issue:

We advocate: individual rights, strict constitutionalism, limited government, isolationism, laissez-faire capitalism, and republicanism; in short, the principles upon which this nation was founded . . . We do not advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government. We do advocate resistance to government tyranny. We do not advocate the initiation of force in doing so. We do advocate appropriate force-in-kind retaliation. We advocate active resistance against the United Nations. Our goal is the restoration of the Constitutional Republic. Our aim is to see the federal government chained to the walls of its constitutional prison.

As the editor explained in a recent editorial, “the Statement of Policy is specifically designed to polarize our reading audience — to force them to choose sides.”

The army brass has certainly chosen sides. It has no legal means to suppress a publication that soldiers produce at their own expense on their own time, but generals of every stripe have denounced The Resister as “subversive” and “dangerous.” If the identities of members of the Special Forces Underground were to become known it would unquestionably damage, even end, their careers. It is typical of our era that people who actually read the Constitution and take it seriously are treated like potential criminals.

The philosophical stance of The Resister translates into a number of political positions that could not be more explicit. A selection from various issues gives a good flavor for the magazine:

• On democracy: “The presumption of democracy is that all people are equal in status, equal in ability, and equal in reason. Thus the practice of democracy makes the incompetent the equal of the competent . . . Democracy is government by mediocracy. Democracy is nothing less than the rule of the mob.”
• On the young: “One of the greatest obscenities tacked on to the Constitution was the 26th amendment, which further debased the franchise by granting it to 18 year-olds. Just what do these young ignoramuses, having spent their entire lives being dependent upon handouts from their parents and force-fed government approved socialist crap in their public schools, have to contribute to politics?”
• On a new think-tank in San Francisco: “Who gave Mikhail Gorbachev a green card? Not to mention a piece of the Presidio. Or is former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev just another ‘undocumented’ non-worker in California? If you were to ask Gorby for his green card, he would brush you off with ‘no spica da English.’ . . . Think of Gorby as a pensioner of the American liberal establishment . . . It’s not as if Gorby were a Nazi, after all. We can overlook Afghanistan.”
• On the role of the army: “Would you prefer an Army devoted to strictly defined constitutional limits on government power or an Army of toadies in the service of whichever political gang decides the Constitution does not apply to them?”
• On foreign intervention by the military: “Rational men look upon Bosnia and ask the only reasonable question about its self-inflicted savagery — ‘So what?’ The various Balkan tribes could slaughter themselves into extinction with exactly zero impact on the national security interest of the United States.”
• “In Somalia eighteen American slave-soldiers under U.N. command died, and seventy-seven were wounded, for exactly nothing. They were not heroes, they were sacrificial animals . . . Vice President Gore consoled the parents of the victims by telling them their sons died ‘in the service of the United Nations.’ (The Resister is reliably informed it is a good thing he had his Secret Service hoods with him at the time.)”
• “Haiti’s problems are Haiti’s. Let them murder themselves, starve, and perish from AIDS. Good riddance to them. They brought their problems upon themselves. That entire pesthole is not worth a single American soldier’s life.” [from a letter to the editor]
• “When soldiers kill, they mean it. When soldiers die, other soldiers take it seriously. The Resister is a reminder to American politicians that the United States Army is watching them. American soldiers will no longer die easily to promote your personal and party agendas.”
• On welfare: “[N]o wording in the body of the Constitution specifies or implies any grant of power to government to provide welfare, of any kind, to anybody, for any reason . . . The essential premise underpinning social security is that age and infirmities are a moral blank check on the ability of others to earn a living and, therefore a justification to loot the livelihood of the productive and redistribute it to the unproductive.”
• On federal law enforcement: “Today, the increasing militarization of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, aided by the duplicity of the Department of Defense, has created the very beast feared by the founders generally, and the antifederalists specifically; an armed force under the exclusive control of the executive branch of the federal government . . . These militarized federal agencies now constitute the functional equivalent of the standing army in time of peace the founders warned against as dangerous to liberty, which the Second and Third Amendments were intended to prevent.”
• On media silence about a pro-gun rally that attracted 2,000 people: “If an equal number of homosexuals, drug addicts, communists, bean curd eaters, animal worshipers, minority tribalists, or common street garbage had staged a rally, the carrion eaters of the media would have been there in force clucking their tongues wondering how these people could have suffered for so long.”
• On our government: “We do not advocate the violent overthrow of the United States government. (Although we believe there is cause, in theory, by virtue of the government’s cumulative improbity over the past 133 years, and sufficient historical and philosophical precedent, by virtue of the Declaration of Independence and the writings of the Founding Fathers, to justify it.)”

Consistent Themes

The Resister is published quarterly and recent issues have been 40 pages long. This is room enough for articles of considerable variety and length, but the authors return consistently to a number of themes. The most important is that we have a Constitution for a reason, and once government learns to circumvent basic law, the nation is on the road to tyranny. The Resister has published several excellent articles that trace the metastasis of federal power through Supreme Court decisions, treaty-making, and the machinations of power-hungry chief executives.

Another consistent theme is the right of citizens to arm themselves against dictatorship. The editors see gun control as a prelude to confiscation. They welcome the rebellious sentiment recent laws have stimulated but are not impressed by infatilism: “[O]ur support of the militia movement in general is unqualified . . . . [but] our support of particular militias is very much qualified.”

And elsewhere: “Most militia groups as they now exist (there are a very few exceptions), have all the clandestine subtlety and operational sophistication of the Kenyan Mau Mau movement of the early 1960’s. In contrast, the federal government has, at its immediate disposal — if it chooses to put it to full use — an internal security and population control apparatus that would have made Hitler and Stalin weep with envy.”

The Resister has published a number of articles no doubt intended to elevate the militias from the Mau Mau level: “Principles of Money Laundering,” “Principles of Clandestine Communications,” “The Principles of Escape,” and “Penetrating the Opposition: Some Reflections on the Principles of Cover Jobs.” The Resister also sells a number of manuals with titles like How to Spot Informants and How to Launder Money. These fellows are clearly angry about what is going on, and would like to see some changes.

The Resister does not promote racial consciousness — in fact, it frequently denounces what it calls “tribalism” — but it has no sympathy for the mush that passes for “equality:” “Affirmative Action . . . is nothing less than blatant racism, enforced over the sights of the government’s gun.”

Likewise: “The shrill bombast of the NAACP, and the groveling and scraping of appeasers in the media and government to their every whim and baseless pronouncement, has effectively eliminated any rational discussion of racial issues . . . Their demand to define and focus government force to enforce their racial gangsterism in all realms of human interaction abrogates the very foundation of human action — the natural rights of freedom of association, and the acquisition, use and disposal of property.” Elsewhere, The Resister has written that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the greatest single denial of natural rights in the history of the country.

Not all readers of AR will share The Resister’s sentiments about government, but they will certainly share its deep disaffection with the status quo and its impatience with the hypocrisies that prop it up. Here, one suspects, are men to be reckoned with.

The Resister panics the lefties. Nothing is more terrifying to them than principled men with guns. Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have issued frightened bulletins about the Special Forces Underground, and even the New York Times has joined the hand-wringing.

These are troubled times for our once-great republic. More and more Americans are recognizing the intensity of the crisis, and The Resister is another important sign that not all Americans are sheep after all.

Subscriptions to The Resister cost $25.00 a year. A sample issue costs $7.00. The editors do not accept checks because they compromise security. Please send cash or a money order with the “pay to” line blank to: The Resister, Box 47095, Kansas City, MO 64188. You may expect a delay of up to seven weeks before receiving an issue.

IN THE NEWS

O Tempora, O Mores!

Notes on the Games

The Atlanta Olympic Games demonstrated vividly, as all international competitions do, the physical reality of race. Swimming was dominated by whites, gymnastics by whites and Asians, and running, boxing, and basketball by blacks. The running events are now simply a matter of which nation has the quickest blacks. Thirty-five percent of the “British” team was black, and even France, Switzerland, and Norway fielded naturalized Africans.

NBC, which provided exclusive television coverage of the games, noted that Americans used to dominate the sprints, but that now the “Englishman,” Lynford Cristie, was a serious threat. Englishman? How do they know Mr. Cristie — obviously African — isn’t a Welshman or a Scot? In the 4 x 100 meters men’s relay, an event usually won by American blacks, the “Canadian” team won the gold medal. Their four blacks outran our four blacks.

The Olympics were a clear demonstration of differences in body build, with blacks by far the most muscular race. The unsung but quite astonishing second-place finisher in the men’s 400 meters was a genuine John Bull Englishman, whose body was nothing like the mountain of muscle that propelled Michael Johnson to victory in both the 400 and 200 meters. The basketball competition was just as vivid a demonstration of racial body build. The Australians, Croatians, and even the Chinese can put tall men on the court, but they are bean poles. Only blacks appear to be capable of both huge muscles and great stature.

In one respect, though, this year’s games were different from all others. They were held in a majority-black city. It was coincidence, of course, but sports reporters who had covered as many as eight different summer games pronounced these by far the worst-organized. Spectators and athletes alike had nightmare stories about transportation. One defending gold-medalist in judo was disqualified because the Olympic bus took him to the wrong place and he missed his weigh-in. At the closing ceremony, it is tradition for Olympic Committee big-wigs to pronounce the current games the best ever. This time, they complained about miserable organization.

There had been signs. Back in February, a man calling the Olympic ticket office from Santa Fe, New Mexico was told that since he was calling from outside the United States, he had to go through his national committee in order to get tickets. When he asked to speak to a supervisor and explained that New Mexico was part of the United States, she told him, “New Mexico, Old Mexico, it doesn’t matter . . . You still have to go through your nation’s Olympic committee.” (Mike Downey, Bum Steers in ‘Bumfuzzled’ Atlanta, Los Angeles Times, July 23, 1996, p. 1. A.P., New Mexico Resident States His Case, but Olympic Ticket Office Skeptical, Athens (GA) Banner-Herald, Feb. 29, 1996.)

Church Arson Update

There have been developments in the once-huge but now fading story about black church arsons. The massive manhunt for perpetrators has, since last month’s report, snared three firebugs, all of them black. On July 24th, Al Hatcher was detained for burning a black church in Selma, Alabama. His sister explained that Mr. Hatcher’s Vietnam war experience had left him “basically homeless and troubled since he got back.” That would be for about the last 20 years.

On August 4th, a black teenager named Mark Young was charged with burning two black churches in Greenville, Texas back in June. This is where the New Black Panther Party had such a jolly time tramping around with rifles, vowing to kill any “cracker” who set a fire. The NAACP promptly insisted that Mr. Young’s confession was coerced.

The National Council of Churches (NCC), it will be recalled, has rustled up huge sums to help rebuild the burned churches and to “fight racism.” On July 8, the world’s largest forest products company, International Paper, promised to supply enough free lumber, paneling, and other wood products to rebuild all the churches. The company’s CEO, John Dillon, urged his employees to give money to the NCC’s Burned Churches Fund, and promised that the International Paper Foundation would match contributions, dollar for dollar.

On July 10, President Clinton signed the unanimously-passed Church Arson Prevention Act, which doubles jail time for church burners from 10 to 20 years and provides loan guarantees to help congregations rebuild. On the same day he addressed an NAACP convention, saying that the burnings were “an attack on the whole idea of America.” A fire-blackened crossbeam from a black church lay before President Clinton’s podium; he solemnly touched it after his remarks.

Meanwhile, a cable network called the Faith & Values Channel has scheduled two airings of a National Council of Churches production called “The Churches Are Burning.” The show highlights the NCC’s central role in calling attention to this vicious arson scourge, and to NCC’s sterling record in combating racism. The program is available on videotape for $19.95, postage and handling included, by calling (800) 251-4091.

Another massive campaign to humiliate white people seemed to have worked up an unstoppable head of steam — except that a few people began to ask what was really going on. On July 8, the Wall Street Journal published a story pointing out that there has been no sudden wave of arson, that blacks are burning many of their own churches, and that there is no plague of pyromaniac “racists.” The Journal traced the entire hullabaloo to a deliberate fraud perpetrated by the Atlanta anti-racist group, the Center for Democratic Renewal.

On July 29, the New York Post devoted its entire editorial page to exposing the fraud. It reported that the NCC’s Burned Churches Fund is administered by Don Rojas, who served in Maurice Bishop’s communist government in Grenada and later lived in Cuba. As the Aug. 9 Wall Street Journal points out, of the $9 million raised by the NCC, $3.5 million has been set aside to “fight racism.” Who is to get a good chunk of this swag? The Center for Democratic Renewal, which launched the fraud in the first place.

The story (and the money) have certainly come full circle, though the sordid details have not received anything like the attention the initial lies about “racism” did. Fire investigators agree that the media whooping prompted “copycat” church burnings that would not otherwise have occurred. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, this means the Center for Democratic Renewal and its friends appear to have brought about some of the very acts of terror for which they have cynically blamed white “racists.”

Real Welfare Reform?

The government has managed something thought impossible — an actual start at welfare reform. A new law will set a maximum life-time limit of five years on welfare, and will make non-citizens ineligible for most benefits. Any able-bodied person is required to work within two years of applying for the dole. Teen-age mothers will have to live with a parent or other adult and attend school in order to get a government check. (Elizabeth Shogren, Clinton Accepts Broad Welfare Changes as ‘Last Best Chance,’ Los Angeles Times, Aug. 1, 1996, p. 1.)

This is a good start, but where will it end? The real test will be whether the authorities have the nerve to put a mother-of-four on the street when she reaches the five-year, life-time limit.

White Agents Everywhere

Molefi Asante is chairman of the African American Studies department at Temple University. He is one of the high priests of Afro-centrism, with 38 books to his name and lecture fees of $8,000. He recently wrote a high-school textbook called African-American History: A Journal of Liberation. A black woman who used to work in his department, Ella Forbes, claims that she did a great deal of the work on the textbook but her name was left off as an author. Prof. Asante has since given her bad teaching reviews and made sure she does not get tenure. Miss Forbes has appealed to the university for justice and is waiting for the results of an official inquiry. In the meantime, Prof. Asante blames “white people” and “their agents within the department” for trying to smirch his academic reputation. (Howard Goodman, Professor Depicts Dispute as Racist Plot, Philadelphia Inquirer, July 21, 1996, p. B1.)

Pizza Politics

Like businesses in most big cities, San Francisco pizza makers do not deliver to dangerous parts of town. Blacks made such a stink about this that the city passed an ordinance forbidding delivery discrimination. There has since been a huge outcry against the stupid law. The California Restaurant Association even says the ordinance violates federal occupational safety laws that forbid knowingly putting employees into harm’s way. The city now seems likely to amend the law to permit non-delivery if there is a “reasonable good faith belief” that delivery would be dangerous. (Sewell Chan, Hot Issue Becomes Law in San Francisco, Wall Street Journal, July 10, 1996, p. 1.)

Foolish Hopes

One of the silliest ways to “fight poverty” — and one that has been repeatedly endorsed by Jack Kemp — is to give companies big tax breaks to set up in bad parts of town. The theory is that this brings jobs to the poor, but it often does not work that way.

The Red Hook area of Brooklyn has been a perfect test bed for this theory. It has a booming waterfront area with many jobs for people without much education. There is plenty of public housing nearby, staffed with the usual uplift experts who try to help low lifes get jobs. Red Hook itself is not an easy place to get to, so is an awkward commute for outsiders. People should be pouring out of the projects into the jobs but, of course, they are not.

The owner of a furniture business tried at first to hire locals. One took a swing at him with a board, another showed up drunk, and several lied about their experience. Now he hires outsiders. Another man, whose business is unloading cargo from ships, was asked whether he would hire locals as security guards. “What? The bums hanging around outside?” he asked. “You want me to hire the guys who are trying to rob me?” (Malcolm Caldwell, Hiring Practices Undercut Inner-City Poverty Efforts, Washington Post, March 10, 1996, p. A1.)

Neither Democrats nor Republicans can fathom the obvious — that people are poor because they are unemployable, not because they do not live across the street from a job.

Africa in America

Joyce Moore of Harlem has been arrested for cutting Yoruba tribal markings into the cheeks of her six-year-old grandson. She was collared as she and her husband were getting ready to use the box cutter on two more of her grandchildren. Mrs. Moore is an American black but decided she liked African tribal markings. She had them cut into her own face as well as those of her daughters.

It was her 27-year-old daughter who called the police, not because she was opposed to the scars — she has them herself — but because she thought her son should not get them until age thirteen. Grandma thought he should get them sooner, since he had recently been hit by a car and she thought scars would bring good luck. Mrs. Moore was charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and possession of marijuana. (Phillip Messing, Granny Busted in Boy’s ‘Tribal’ Slashing, New York Post, July 8, 1996, p. 13.)

Real Africans may soon be bringing their customs with them. The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals decreed in June that women who fear female “circumcision” if they return to their home countries have the right to asylum in the United States. Two million African girls in 26 countries undergo genital mutilation every year, and anyone who might come under the knife now has a presumptive right to live in the United States. (Ancient Rite, New ‘Right,’ New York Post, July 8, 1996, p. 20.)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has discovered the first case in America of someone with the rare, Group O-type of AIDS virus. This virus sometimes goes undetected by usual blood tests, so more complicated and sophisticated screening will have to be used to ensure the nation’s blood supply is uninfected. The carrier is a woman who immigrated from West Africa in 1994. (Russ Bynum, Calif. Woman Carries Rare Form of HIV, Chicago Sun-Times, July 6, 1996, p. 11.)

Goat Suckers

A wave of fear is sweeping Mexico. There are reports from all over the country of chupacabras, or goat suckers — three-foot long rat-like creatures with wings and huge teeth that suck the blood from livestock and humans. The first sightings appear to have been in Puerto Rico, where goat suckers were big news for months. Then in April, they began to appear in Mexico, killing sheep and goats and occasionally attacking people.

In rural areas, people are afraid to go out at night. Farmers have been building so many fires in caves in the hope of smoking out the little suckers that the government is concerned about the environmental effect. Some people think the chupacabra is from outer space, others think it is an envoy from hell to warn people of their sins, and yet others think scientists have produced it in a laboratory.

In the state of Sinaloa, the government sent a team of 15 specialists to an area where goat suckers were reported to have killed livestock. Sixty policemen were sent to protect the specialists, who were afraid they might become the suckers’ next meal. Two nights of vigilance later, they reported that wild dogs were preying on the livestock, but the Mexican media still abound with fearful stories of goat suckers. (Goatsucker Fears Cause Nationwide Panic, Arizona Daily Star, May 12, 1996, p. A-11. Jerry Kammer, ‘Chupacabramania’ Sweeps Mexico, Arizona Republic, May 17, 1996, p. A-1.)

Business as Usual

Corlis Moody is head of the U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity. She is black, as are her deputy and the three supervisors in her office. There used to be two white and one Hispanic supervisors, but they have been relieved. The Civil Rights Office, which is part of Mrs. Moody’s empire, used to have a white acting director, but he has since been replaced by a series of temporary directors, all of them black. Some department employees call her area “the black plantation.”

Perhaps this is why the American Society for Public Administration gave Mrs. Moody its 1996 National Equal Opportunity-Affirmative Action Exemplary Practices Award. The award, presented on June 30, recognizes people who “have made outstanding contributions to a more equal society.” (Black Plantation? Washington Times Weekly Edition, July 21, 1996, p. 6.)

More Business as Usual

On May 16, the San Diego Sector of the Immigration and Naturalization Service held its second annual multicultural celebration. The theme was “Celebrating the Unity in our Diversity and the Diversity in our Unity.” Awards were given for courageous acts of Equal Employment Opportunity, and the director of the INS EEO program was the guest speaker. According to an INS report, “her address reflected on the event’s theme, noting that the United States is truly a nation of immigrants, and that the INS work force is itself becoming increasingly diverse.” (Mike Emerson, San Diego Sector Holds Second Annual Multicultural Celebration, Communique (INS publication), July 1996, p. 19.)

Hispanic Power

By the 1996 presidential election there are likely to be more than two million Hispanic voters in California and about 1.5 million in Texas. Bloc votes of this size can easily swing the outcome of an election.

In Texas, Hispanic voters handed the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate to an unknown high-school teacher, Victor Morales, who campaigns from a pickup truck. With 1.5 million votes he can virtually count on, Mr. Morales is likely to give incumbent Phil Gramm a good run. “I literally have people with tears in their eyes, hugging me,” says Mr. Morales about his appearances before Hispanic groups. “‘Victor,’ they say, ‘finally a Hispanic going up to the top.’” (Gerald Seib, Despite Rapid Growth, Hispanic Vote May Play Only a Limited Role in Fall Presidential Contest, Wall Street Journal, July 30, 1996, p. A16.)

Grim Harvest

A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau projects the impact of AIDS on 13 African countries. In the hardest-hit areas, it is expected to have cut life-expectancy by one half by the year 2010 — from 69.9 to 33.1 years in Zimbabwe, 56.8 to 29.5 years in Malawi, and 66.3 to 33.4 years in Botswana. Despite these huge decreases, the overall population is expected to decline only in Zimbabwe and Botswana — and only by a fraction of a percent. Elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa, populations will continue to grow, but more slowly than before.

Part of the problem is that many Africans refuse to believe what whites tell them about AIDS. At the funeral for his son, who died of AIDS, the Vice President of Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo, said that AIDS was invented by whites and spread to Africa to depopulate the continent. Others claim that the famine-relief food supplies shipped to Africa from Western countries contain the virus. It is also commonly believed that whites have infected condoms with AIDS and then try to persuade Africans to use them. One of the more lurid myths is that sex with a virgin will cure the disease. In some areas, this has resulted in frequent rapes of 10- and 12-year-old girls by infected men. (Remer Tyson, AIDS Epidemic Lays Waste to Sub-Saharan Africa, Detroit Free Press, May 20, 1996, p. 1A.)

Payoff for Blacks

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth has granted preliminary approval to a $4.6 million class-action settlement for black ATF agents claiming racial discrimination. Any black agent who worked for ATF between Dec. 25, 1983 and Sept. 12, 1996 can collect a share of the swag if he submits a claim of discrimination. Discrimination can take the form of overhearing a white person use the word “nigger.”

The mostly-white National Association of Treasury Agents promises to fight the settlement. “There were individual instances of egregious behavior and we abhor that,” says a spokesman. “But for over the last 10 years, ATF has bent over backwards to give special preferences to minorities and females.” (Lisa Daniel, Black ATF Agents Get Millions for Bias, Federal Times, July 22, 1996, p. 5.)

Hispanic Cheating

More people than ever are becoming naturalized citizens. They see signs that welfare and other benefits will be cut off for non-citizens, and they detect an increasingly anti-immigrant mood in the country. There were 240,000 naturalizations in 1992 but there are likely to be 1,000,000 this year. The INS cannot handle all the applications, so it has farmed out citizenship testing, which includes a test of English proficiency, to a few private companies.

Citizens-to-be still have to take the oath of citizenship before an INS official, and some workers noticed that new recruits couldn’t even understand the phrase “Raise your right hand.” Video surveillance of citizenship testing at Spanish Business Services, of Dallas, Texas, showed that the company was helping people cheat on the test. (Frank Trejo, Immigration Firm Told to Halt Citizenship Testing, Dallas Morning News, June 28, 1996, p. 1A.)

The Price of Freedom

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Brown v. Board of Education, that public school systems had to be integrated, a large number of “segregation academies” sprang up all over the South. Some are still going strong. Indianola Academy, in Indianola, Mississippi, is 100 percent white while the public school system is 90 percent black. The whites who go to public school are almost all in the lower grades. Even working-class whites manage to find the $2,400 a year for the academy, once children reach the 7th or 8th grade.

In order to keep non-profit status, Indianola Academy must not discriminate on the basis of race. It even has a standing offer of free tuition to qualified blacks . Over the years, a few have accepted, though never more than one per year. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone. William Richardson is black and represents the area in the state legislature. “That’s just the way life is here,” he says. “It’s not an issue. We just all quietly go about our own way.” (Rene Sanchez, Academies Are Bastions of Separateness, Washington Post, July 17, 1996, p. A1.)

This is Diversity?

The people who prate about diversity are, of course, politically monolithic. The conservative Cornell Review recently found out the political affiliations of the faculty in humanities and social sciences at Cornell University. In all, there were 171 Democrats and seven Republicans, or four percent. In the history, sociology, and women’s studies departments, there were no Republicans at all. There were one each in psychology, government, and anthropology.

Cornell is not unique. A similar study found almost exactly the same situation at Stanford University, and the dean of the law school at the State University of New York at Buffalo once said, “As far as I know, there is not one conservative on the law school faculty.”

A recent Roper poll of reporters who cover Congress and of Washington bureau chiefs found that only four percent were registered Republicans. Eighty-nine percent had voted for Bill Clinton in 1992, and only seven percent for George Bush. (Francis Mancini, Where Are the Conservatives in Academia, the Media? The Herald (Miami), June 3, 1996.)

Floating Assets

Developing countries need power plants to generate electricity, but they frequently default on payments for the facilitates that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Until now, manufacturers could not take direct action against deadbeats, but American engineering companies have found a solution. They now build power plants on huge barges, tow them to a foreign coast, and operate them in harbors. If the country defaults, they can clip the power lines, repossess the plant, and tow it home. (William Bulkeley, Building Power Plants That Can Float, Wall Street Journal, May 22, 1996, p. B1.)

Invest Now

American Diversity Growth Trust is a stock mutual fund that concentrates on publicly-traded companies owned by blacks. There are 11 such companies, up from just one four years ago. Since the number is so small, the fund also buys the stock of companies that have a “strong urban consumer-market presence” or are “recognized for their commitment to diversity.” (Matt Roush, Investment Trust Targets Stocks of Black-owned Firms; 2 in Detroit, Crain’s Detroit Business, April 22, 1996, p. 28.)

International Corruption

Transparency International, a Berlin-based organization, has made a list of the most and least corrupt nations for doing business. The most corrupt: Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya, and Bangladesh, in that order. The least corrupt: New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Canada, and Norway, in that order. (Surveys Rate Nigeria as Most Corrupt Nation for Business, New York Times, June 3, 1996.)

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LETTERS FROM READERS

Sir — Father Thornton’s article in your August issue does a good job of explaining how unbridled commercialism has contributed to social collapse. However, there are other factors involved. The Cold War pitted the United States against ideological adversaries in a battle for the entire world. This was thought to require an enormous concentration of power in the hands of the federal government a concentration to which the Founding Fathers would have applied the quaint word “tyranny.”

The irony is that many of our elites had strong sympathies for their Marxist opponents and co-opted many Marxist positions. Thus was this tremendous federal power, which was justified in the name of fighting Marxism, used to force an essentially Marxist egalitarianism onto the American people. It is no wonder that the indiscriminate regulation of individual rights has left people feeling degraded and debased.

Name Withheld, Pasadena, Cal.

Sir — I read Fr. Thornton’s article with much interest and found in it a great deal of wisdom. However, by placing Christianity at the heart of Western civilization does he not imply that non-Christians cannot truly be part of that civilization?

Fr. Thornton’s argument seems to be that our culture, civilization, and way of life cannot be preserved without a return to traditional Christianity, but where does this leave the non-believer who nevertheless feels the deepest possible loyalty to the culture of the Christian West? In my own case, I am glad that I was reared in the faith because it is impossible to understand the art, literature, and music of our people without at least an understanding of Christianity. I even accept the view that Notre Dame Cathedral and Bach’s B Minor Mass have an even greater beauty to Christians than to non-believers.

However, what I take to be Fr. Thornton’s linkage — even today — of Christianity with our race and culture may set impossible conditions for our survival. First, there may never be a revival of traditional Christianity. Religion is waning in importance throughout the Western world, especially in Europe. Second, there are many thoughtful non-believers who love the West as passionately as does Fr. Thornton. Are they enemies or allies?

I do not think that Fr. Thornton means to divide our people; I certainly do not intend to. Still, I think traditionalist Christians must come to understand that even if they believe faith lies at the heart of our civilization there are many non-Christians who will stand with them as men of the West. Likewise, unbelievers must respect and perhaps in some ways even defer to those who live the faith of our ancestors as well as its culture.

Carl Shelton, Camden, N.J.

Sir — The way the United States handles illegal immigration reminds me of the Kingdom of Garbonza, a charming land that unfortunately has an extremely high rate of bank robbery. Nobody in Garbonza — least of all the king — knows why this is so.

To deal with this serious problem, the king has made bank robbery a very serious crime. In fact, if you are convicted of bank robbery in Garbonza, you will be forced to return every single penny you stole from the bank.

Perhaps one of your readers can offer some advice to the king.

Michael Hart, Crofton, Md.

Sir — One of the letter-writers in your July issue wondered, “Why does the white elite hate its own race?” Partly, it is because everyone likes to feel morally superior. The white elite enjoys saying that whites are bad, in general, but that they are exceptions. Another aspect of the problem is that the elite does not recognize the consequences of its actions and wrongly assumes it will not be affected. Whether and when our rulers understand their error and realize that they and their children will some day pay the price for their moral “superiority” — that is one of the crucial factors that will determine our survival.

Name Withheld, San Diego, Cal.

Sir — One of your August letter-writers mentions the segregationist Citizens Councils of America, and how their fears have been proven correct. The fact that we never hear anything about the councils once again demonstrates the old adage that history is written by the victors. Roomfuls of books have been written by and about the “heroes” of the “civil rights movement,” whereas the “villains” have disappeared. (The exceptions, of course, are people like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, who went over to the enemy.)

Today there is an uncomfortable sense even among liberals that America has not turned out the way they had expected. Perhaps now is the time to reacquaint them with voices of wisdom that they, in their youthful righteousness, chose to ignore.

Ellen Corliss, Florence, Ala.