This is the true face of the Alt-Right II

My first post by this title is here. It was sparked, in part, by a vile article at Radix Journal deploring the pro-life movement for being "dysgenic." Just to show anyone who is listening that this is not a mere accidental aspect of the alt-right, the infamous Richard Spencer has recently come out with a similarly despicable rant of his own, apropos of Tomi Lahren's firing for being pro-abortion. Jonathan von Maren quotes his comments at length here. I'm having a bit of trouble finding a link to Spencer's own video from which von Maren is quoting, but I'm going to assume that the lengthy quotes are accurate. Here are some doozies:

And if you look at the writing of people like Ramesh Ponnuru (of National Review) it is directly associated with this…that every being that is human has a right to life and so on. Well that’s not how we think as identitarians, to be honest. You are part of a community, you’re part of a family, you’re part of a collective. You do not have some human right, some abstract thing give to you by God or by the world or something like that. You’re part of a community and that’s where you gain your meaning or your rights. The anti-abortion crusade is often associated with family, the traditional family, but to be honest it’s descended into not just a human rights dogma but a kind of dysgenic “we are the world” dogma.

So if your community is dysfunctional or thinks you should die, you're outta luck, buddy. It's the community that makes it wrong or right to kill you. I guess exposing infants on hillsides in the Roman empire was just fine as long as they were exposed according to the rules of their community.

The most popular propaganda line for the pro-life movement is about “black genocide,” how this is “destroying black communities” and indeed is a racist plot by Margaret Sanger and so on. This gets to something that I think is a bigger point, and that is that the alt-right or identitarians, we can’t think about these issues in this kind of good or evil binary. We actually have to think about an issue like abortion…in a complicated manner, something that that issue deserves. Lothrop Stoddard talked about contraception, not so much abortion but contraception, as a potentially world-changing—for the good—technology, or something that could change the world for the worse. In a way he was absolutely right and I think contraception has to a large degree changed the world for the worse. Intelligent people will engage in family planning because they naturally have long time horizons, they think ahead. They aren’t just going to go run and have sex with someone without a condom and get them pregnant and so on…In a way, contraception has been terribly dysgenic in the sense that it is only the smart people that really use it. Smart people are not using abortion as birth control. Smart people are using abortion when you have a situation like Down Syndrome or you have a situation where the health of the mother is at risk. I would say that it is the unintelligent and blacks and Hispanics who use abortion as birth control, as a kind of late-term birth control. [snip] What I’m saying basically is the abortion issue is just a much more complicated issue than this kind of “good or evil” binary that the pro-life movement and the Christian movement want to use. We need to be more adult than they are.

I don't actually think the "black genocide" claim is the most popular pro-life line, but whatever. Spencer's point about what makes this "complicated" is that if the right babies are getting killed in the womb, it's okay. That's the "adult" way to think, according to Spencer.

We should recognize that the pro-life movement—this is not the alt-right, this has nothing in common with identitarians, and I think we should be genuinely suspicious of people who think in terms of human rights and who are interested in adopting African children and bringing them to this country and who get caught up on this issue. We want to be a movement about families, about life in a deep sense, not just “rights” but truly great life, and greatness, and beautiful, flourishing, productive families. We want to be eugenic in the deepest sense of the word. Pro-lifers want to be radically dysgenic, egalitarian, multi-racial human rights thumpers—and they’re not us.

As von Maren says, this does a service to conservatives. Spencer is absolutely right that pro-lifers are not the alt-right, and if he wants nothing to do with pro-lifers, the feeling should be heartily mutual. Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering if a campaign official for the Trump campaign was dog-whistling the alt-right when she referred to Mitt Romney as pro-adoption, I'd say this last paragraph bears on that.

Beyond drawing attention to this new evidence of the despicable nature of the alt-right with regard to the abortion issue, what I want to do in this post is to take you all the way back to 2009 and show some eerie similarities between Richard Spencer's disgusting recent comments and a bizarre, not-wholly-coherent column by paleoconservative guru Thomas Fleming. The overlap, I emphasize at the outset, is not total. Fleming, as a Catholic, is clearly somewhat "conflicted" (to use a jargon term) about the abortion issue, whereas Spencer is a full-bore fascist eugenicist pro-abort as long as it's the right people being aborted. But the similarities are there and are instructive, especially if one wonders how various paleocons who should know better have gotten caught up in the alt-right. Also instructive for those who want to draw a sharp distinction between paleoconservatism and the alt-right. As I've already pointed out, historically such a sharp distinction is dubious, since Paul Gottfried did an explicit "handoff" of the paleoconservative movement to the "alternative right."

Here is Fleming's column. It got negative commentary at the time at W4 from one of my co-bloggers in a main post and even more in the comments to that post.

There are some interesting similarities between what Fleming says and what Spencer says. First, both of them use a kind of vague communitarianism and the dislike they feel (and their followers feel) for the language of individual rights as sticks with which to beat the pro-life goal of outlawing abortion. Spencer says outright that you get your rights only from the community. I kind of doubt that Spencer would want to take that to mean that he can be killed with impunity by a private entity, without having committed any crime worthy of death, if that's what "the community" decides, but he's very eager to apply this "nobody has an individual right to life" mantra to the unborn child as an argument that it's perfectly fine for unborn children to be killed at will by their parents. Especially if it's the "right" babies being aborted.

Fleming, similarly, seems quite opposed to the idea that abortion should be illegal and that it should be deemed a harm to the individual child.

But the fact remains that natural reason did not teach the Greeks and Romans that it is wrong to kill an unborn or newborn child, though some thought abortion shameful. There was no prohibition on abortion in Roman law, except where the father was not consulted. In that case, she was guilty of depriving him and his ancestors of an heir. This is, at least, a more wholesome approach than our current abortion law, though it rests not on reason but on family loyalty. [LM: How nice. What if the father is the one who wants the baby dead?]

[snip]

The most basic error is to cover Christian truth with the tinsel trappings of Enlightenment universalism that makes everyone owe everyone else the same duties. Thus, we hear sweeping claims, expressed in a Kantian idiom, that it is everyone’s duty to prevent a nonChristian female from killing her child, whether she lives in China or Peru.

[snip]

Mothers, in this tradition, do not have a universal obligation to prevent abortion but a specific obligation not just not to kill their children but to nurture and cherish them.

Fleming's sweeping talk about giving each mother an obligation to prevent other people's abortions is, of course, a strawman. I don't expect every individual pro-life mother to be out there marching for pro-life laws. She may be busy nursing her baby or doing any of a number of other good things! But Fleming's clear "down" on a duty to prevent non-Christians from committing abortion certainly looks like a "down" on pro-life laws.

The money quote is this:

The cumulative effect of much of the professional pro-life ideology is to distort and deflect the question, away from the really important thing, which is how to convert nonbelievers, who will then be far less likely to kill their babies, toward comparatively trivial legislative policies and judicial agendas.

One wonders if Thomas Fleming would regard it as similarly "trivial" to outlaw the private killing of himself. As opposed to "the really important thing"--converting people to Christianity so that they are much less likely to go out and murder Tom Fleming! Like Spencer's, Fleming's disdain for the outlawing of private murder and his disdain for the wrong of murder to the individual killed is highly selective. That is, it is most likely confined to those he doesn't think much of, though he doesn't show any good reason for thinking less of an unborn child than of an adult paleoconservative.

It is not necessary to talk, if one hates "rights talk," about a right to life in order to say that abortion is always wrong. And not just a wrong to the community, much less to the father (who may be as murderous as anyone else in a given situation), but wrong because it is murdering the baby--hence, a wrong done to the baby. So if you don't like "rights talk," don't use that as a stick to beat the pro-life movement any more than you would use it as an argument for removing laws against murdering you or your five-year-old. As usual, it all comes down to the status of the unborn child and to whether it is always wrong deliberately to take the life of the innocent. Smug "communitarian" talk and pushing people's buttons about "Enlightenment universalism" and what-not are no substitute for argument on this central point.

Second, Fleming's argument resembles Spencer's horrible rant in that Fleming clearly thinks that, if you're not a Christian, you don't have any really good reason to oppose abortion in all cases:

The argument, then, that all seriously moral people would oppose abortion cannot be true. It is a little like saying anyone remotely interested in science would agree with Newton or Einstein.

[snip]

Now, there is an element of truth in the argument, which is that just as we do not wish to be killed unjustly, we should not kill unjustly. But what if abortion is not unjust? What if we regard it as, in some cases, a necessity or at least a preferable option? After all, just because we do not wish to be executed does not mean that we necessarily oppose the death penalty. We might even say that were we to commit a cold-blooded murder, we should deserve killing. Thus, if we think life is not worth living without an IQ above 75 or without a reasonably healthy body or without loving parents, we might say that abortion in such cases is reasonable and just...

Wow, that's a toughie. I'm sure George Weigel, at whom Fleming is launching his ire in this piece, would find himself utterly at a loss for words in the face of such an argument.

Speaking for myself, I find Fleming's words here extremely creepy. He obviously has a lot of sympathy for this pro-abortion "argument." Throughout the piece he repeats statements to the effect that Christian women don't kill their unborn babies (that's nice), and he regards himself as a Christian. So presumably he thinks (to this extent unlike Spencer) that it's actually wrong to kill unborn children.

But he clearly regards the wrongness of abortion as really hard to see and as a distinctively religious proposition, which explains his disdain for the "trivial legislative policy" of outlawing abortion. One can gather, hopefully, that as a Catholic he would say that it's even wrong to commit abortion if the child would otherwise have to live with an IQ of 75 or below (!) or without loving parents, but Fleming takes little trouble to say so, and he certainly has no passion for saying so. Instead, all his passion is directed at spitting out the word "liar" at Weigel for arguing that abortion can be seen to be wrong by the natural light:

The real question is not whether abortion is consistent with reason but rather,whether it is right to lie in a good cause. That is, at best, what Weigel has done. Many pro-life arguments I have studied come down to well-intentioned lying, by which I understand not only a conscious and deliberate lie but the reckless disregard for truth engaged in by pseudo-intellectuals who pretend to learning and authority they do not possess.

What did George Weigel say to bring down the charge of "lying"? This:

[The Pope] told Pelosi, politely but unmistakably, that her relentlessly pro-abortion politics put her in serious difficulties as a Catholic, which was his obligation as a pastor. He also underscored — for Pelosi, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barbara Mikulski, Rose DeLauro, Kathleen Sebelius, and everyone else — that the Church’s opposition to the taking of innocent human life, at any stage of the human journey, is not some weird Catholic hocus-pocus; it’s a first principle of justice than can be known by reason. It is a “requirement of the natural moral law” — that is, the moral truths we can know by thinking about what is right and what is wrong — to defend the inviolability of innocent human life. You don’t have to believe in papal primacy to know that; you don’t have do believe in seven sacraments, or the episcopal structure of the Church, or the divinity of Christ, to know that. You don’t even have to believe in God to know that. You only have to be a morally serious human being, willing to work through a moral argument — which, of course, means being the kind of person who understands that moral truth cannot be reduced to questions of feminist political correctness or partisan political advantage.

And just reading that should make it evident that the charge of "lying" is the merest spittle-flecked silliness.

Also slightly creepy is Fleming's attempt to play gotcha with other arguments against abortion:

Among the worst are the utilitarian arguments that tell us we may be losing countless Beethovens and Shakespeares, to say nothing of millions of taxpayers who will pay my Social Security. But what if if turns out that in economic terms, abortion is a net gain, in preventing the birth of millions of welfare-dependent blacks and Mexicans? Would that make abortion a civic duty? Live by bad arguments, die by bad arguments.

I hold no brief for the "countless Beethovens" argument against abortion. But it's obvious from everything else in the article that Fleming would have no more sympathy for a pro-life argument that started with the premise that it is always wrong even to kill eugenically inferior unborn babies because all human beings are intrinsically valuable. That would be "Kantian idiom" and the "tinsel trappings of Enlightenment universalism." So the non-utilitarian pro-lifer can't win either with Fleming.

At a minimum, we can say that Spencer's position represents the non-Christian logical outcome of Fleming's position concerning non-Christians and abortion. Richard Spencer doesn't pretend to be a Christian, so he does believe that eugenic abortion is great, that killing millions of (otherwise) welfare-dependent blacks and Mexicans is good, and that it wouldn't be a bad idea to bump off children in the womb if they will (shudder) grow up with an IQ of 75 or below. And Fleming, by his own lights, has nothing to say to him. Unless Spencer converts, I guess it's impossible for him to see that his position is monstrously wicked.

Meanwhile, both of them play to their base's gut-level loathing for "those other guys"--the Satanic neo-cons, for Fleming and his paleos, and the c------s, for Spencer and his alt-rightists. Isn't it interesting that these are pro-lifers in both cases?

The morphing of paleoconservatism into the alt-right is not an accident. There are many morals of the story. Here's one: When your movement is defined entirely by what it hates rather than what it loves, to the point of despising those opposing heinous evils, don't be surprised when your movement turns into something purely dark and destructive.

The dangers of being part of the non-mainstream Right

No doubt, if you identify yourself as politically conservative in the United States, the majority of your acquaintances who also identify themselves as conservatives are more or less mainstream. They are, hopefully, socially conservative on issues like abortion. They tend to have a very strong admiration for documents like the Declaration of Independence. Sometimes they are bound and determined to co-opt iconic figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., for their conservative causes. They may be reflexively pro-military, which makes it a little difficult to criticize even the extreme left-wing aspects of the military without triggering a defensive reaction. They are extremely sensitive on the issue of race. They are foreign policy hawks. And they may have at least somewhat of a tendency to make excuses for the Republican Party, even when the GOP lets them down. (Though in my opinion the GOP has pushed its luck even with the mainstream about as far as it can or even farther and is starting to lose them.) They know that Barack Obama is a disaster and can usually tell you why in some detail, though the details may vary a bit.

The whole package deal is a great deal better than dealing with leftists, and if one had the opportunity to choose, say, a child-in-law (son-in-law or daughter-in-law), one would if one is wise far, far rather have a mainstream conservative than almost any other option.

Be that as it may, there are often areas of disagreement and even friction between those on the mainstream Right and those of us, among whom I include myself, who aren't quite in the mainstream Right. In fact, we are often to the right of the mainstream Right. The issue of race makes a pretty good example: One is always debating internally about whether to come out and say, "You know, MLK wasn't really a good role model. We shouldn't idolize him so much." Even a statement like, "Black culture in America is too often dysfunctional, and this, far more than any residual white racism, is the major cause of current disparities to the disadvantage of blacks in the country" can be explosive. It's likely, at a minimum, to make many of one's mainstream conservative friends or family uneasy.

I've found that saying that the military isn't a good career decision for a Christian and/or conservative young man can provoke quite an angry reaction.

Then there's feminism. Quite a number of social conservatives have made their peace with feminism. They're too busy telling us that Susan B. Anthony was pro-life (which appears to be true) and that feminism has been "hijacked" since the 1960's by "radicals" (which in my opinion is false) to have any really negative things to say about feminism. Sarah Palin, after all, was a proud member of Feminists for Life. Which doesn't mean that I would never have voted for her under any circumstancess, but for an Eagle Forum type like me it was a little bit of a let-down.

You get the picture.

However. I've come to realize that anyone who is Right but not mainstream Right, especially if proud to be to the right of the mainstream Right, faces some unique dangers in that position, and it seems like not such a bad idea for us to admit them outright and be on guard against them.

So here's some unsolicited advice. Prologue: Let me just say right now that if you take violent exception to this advice, please never mind. Quite frankly, if you get that upset, you are probably beyond being able to profit from it. Just go somewhere else and fume quietly or whatever, but don't try to post vitriol on this thread, because it won't be published. My intended audience here is an extremely narrow one, as is so often the case: It is those inclined to "hang with" some sort of non-mainstream Right, either in person or on the Internet, but still able to see the way back to the mainstream and still able to feel a little uncomfortable about where they might end up if not careful. To you, and here I include myself, I would suggest that we watch out for the following:

--The addiction to shocking for the sake of shocking. Yes, I know, it's kind of fun to say or to read someone else saying, "Women aren't on average as analytical as men" or "Racial profiling isn't always wrong." Nor am I saying that those are false statements. But beware the little thrill you get (you know that you do get it) from seeing or envisaging the look of shock on others' faces when you say it. That is addictive. And the further you go, the more often you seek that thrill of shocking, the more likely you are to say things that are overstated or false. (Compare, "The police should be able to stop blacks on the street just for being black, and that would be good because it would reduce crime" and "Women are dumber than men." Both of which are false.)

--Also, as you seek that thrill of shocking, you are in danger of falling in with extremists who are out first to shock you and then to transform you into talking and thinking like they do. Real extremists. Kooks, in fact. Beware of this. Not everyone that sayeth, "Feminism is bad" or "The word 'racism' is overused" is a good candidate for a bosom Internet companion, much less a mentor. Great surging seas of utter nut-ballery surround the small island which is the non-kooky but non-mainstream Right. If you don't end up finding that your "new friends" are silly and borderline seditious hyper-authoritarian monarchists (whose handle initials are MM), you may find that they are misogynists, anti-semites, eugenicists, or outright racists with no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Or some combination of the above. Or worse. Friends, including Internet friends, influence friends. Be careful with whom you hang out, even electronically. If you feel uncomfortable in some company, get out. Don't tell yourself that it's just the residual effects of political correctness making you feel strange. Stop going to those sites and commenting and interacting at them.

--The miserable "satisfactions" of gloom and despair. Despair is a sin. Those of us who think that things are worse than other conservatives think they are are in great danger of committing this sin. If you find yourself constantly, unremittingly talking about negative things, just stop for a while. Talk about something else. Talk about and think about something beautiful, good, true and of good report. Especially avoid the deeply dark and bitter.

--Which brings me to...bitterness. Bitterness is somewhat different from despair. Among other things, bitterness is likely to be directed at those nearest to you ideologically who don't happen to be just exactly where you are. When some mainstream conservative says something like, "Hmm, I really think there's something awfully extreme about the homosexual agenda," resist the urge to sneer, "No, duh! Where have you been all this time, Sherlock? Have you been living in a cave?" Bitterness is rife in the non-mainstream Right. I will let you think of your own examples. Sometimes it verges on hatred for those (deemed traitors) who don't happen to have all the same hobby horses that the bitter person has or even who hasn't ridden all those hobby horses for as long as the bitter person.

--Coarse language. Maintain high standards in your writing and speaking. This, of course, is related to the love of shocking but is a special aspect of its own. The idea sometimes seems to be that there's just too much darned niceness in the world, that we need to send a wakeup call, and that throwing around coarse language is a good way to do that. Well, it isn't. Remember that if we aren't for something instead of just being against everything, we have lost our hold on a good raison d'etre. And if you have a high and positive raison d'etre (for your blog or your organization, for example), you won't need foul language to promote it.

--Coming around and just agreeing with the Left. For example, if you think that marriage was severely compromised long ago by no-fault divorce (which is certainly true) you will be likely to come under influences that tell you not to bother to oppose homosexual "marriage," because now, who cares? (See above on despair and bitterness.) If you think that "the game is rigged" and our entire political system is lost in corruption through a conglomeration of big business and big government (which has some plausibility to it, though overstated), you might, if you keep talking, come to start sounding like a member of Occupy Wall Street. That should bother you.

--A yen for destruction. If you want it all just to come tumbling down because "they," unspecified, "deserve it," or because you hope for Something Better to rise out of the ashes if only the present corrupt structure can all be brought tumbling down, if you even find yourself thinking this for a moment, something is wrong. Conservatism is not about destruction. Conservatism is about preserving, loving, and maintaining what is good and valuable. But more than that. The lust for destruction is just plain bad. When you find yourself loving destruction, you aren't just being a bad conservative. You're risking becoming a bad person. Don't listen to those voices.

--Distancing yourself every which-way, including interpersonally, from those "embarrassing" and allegedly "shallow" mainstream conservatives. You can't afford it. This world is lonely enough for, say, pro-lifers. Don't isolate yourself further because some pro-lifers don't seem to you to have a deep and nuanced enough understanding of, I dunno, the American Founding. (Many other examples could be given.) Enjoy cordial friendships with other social conservatives and acknowledge mutual goals. You might find yourself humbled, too. If this advice seems prima facie at odds with the advice above about not hanging out with nuts, well, such is the difference between wing-nuts and mainstream conservative people who maybe don't happen to dot every i of your personal alternative-right agenda or set of (alleged) special insights. One group is actually less dangerous than the other to your immortal soul, not to mention your sanity and your normal human relationships. Guess which is which?

I'm sure I could dream up more to say on this topic, but that will do for the moment. This is actually a serious matter for people, real people, in certain tiny little corners of the Internet. I'm quite serious when I say that I'm speaking to myself inter alia.

Perhaps what a lot of this has to do with is hubris. Being part of a tiny embattled clique is a very tempting self-image for some of us, but by that same token it can be a very dangerous one--the idea that we alone have the gnosis, that we alone have seen through what all these others who think they are conservatives are still trapped in.

Let's not go there. Let's stop and think instead.

What's wrong with paleoconservatism

Wow. Well, in keeping with my use of this personal blog as a sort of safety valve for all manner of things I can't sound off about elsewhere, herewith an endorsement of the following summary of the problem with paleoconservatism:

Their lack of any larger idea of the good is perfectly expressed in the way the paleocons typically express their positive belief. Over and over, you hear them say something like this: "I believe in hearth, home, and kindred." This is their affirmation of the particular and the local as distinct from the universal and the massified. But the problem is, it's not enough. "Hearth and kindred" boils down to one's family, neighbors, and locality. It has no reference to a political order, no reference to a cultural order, no reference to transcendent moral order, no reference to philosophical truth, no reference to a nation.

The rest is here.