Sunday, January 08, 2012

Ch.5 Nation & ethny

If we are to follow liberalism consistently, then whatever is predetermined rather than self-determined will be thought to impede our autonomy and will have to be made not to matter.

Our ethnicity is formed from a number of unchosen, inherited qualities: ancestry, kinship, race, culture, language, history, religion and customs. It is something we are born into (an “accident of birth” in liberal terminology) rather than something we self-create.

We can therefore expect that the liberal attitude to ethnicity will follow the same pattern as the liberal attitude to sex distinctions and to the traditional family. Ethnicity will be described negatively as a restriction using terms like fetter or prison or chain; it will be held to be something the individual needs to be liberated from; to make this liberation possible, ethnicity will be described as a social construct or as an imagined tie rather than a natural one; some will wish to abolish it outright, whilst others will attempt to make it open to self-determination by making it more flexible, diverse and self-selecting. Those defending ethnicity will be criticised in moral terms as being bigoted or prejudiced or xenophobic.

This issue touches also on national identity. The traditional nation was often based on a shared ethnicity. Therefore, liberals have in practice rejected traditional nationalism in favour of a civic nationalism. Civic nationalism is the idea that what binds a nation together is not ethnicity but a citizenship based largely on a shared commitment to liberal political values or institutions.


The most consistent liberals will reject both sex distinctions and ethnic ones. An example is David Fiore who was quoted earlier as insisting that,



For Fiore, both gender identity and group affiliation are impermissible under the terms of liberalism.

Kang Youwei, the Chinese intellectual who tried to import Western ideas into China in the 1890s, also followed through with the liberal idea consistently. Kang held that autonomy ought to be thought of as a scientific principle of society:

he claimed, for example, that basic principles such as “human beings have the right of autonomy” and that all societies should be organized on the basis of "human equality" were all "geometric axioms".

This led him to prefer a society in which sex distinctions were abolished:


Here we have the familiar liberal claim that individuals need to be liberated from a predetermined quality like their sex. Kang applied the same logic to ethnicity; in his ideal society,



Across the spectrum

It’s notable that liberal ideas on ethnicity are held by those on both the left and right of the political spectrum. The right-wing libertarian Ayn Rand believed that,


Ancestry, being predetermined (an accident of birth), is held not to matter.

The left-wing English musician, Billy Bragg, agrees that ethnicity should be made not to matter:

The multicultural society would be one in which ethnicity, like class, no longer matters.

The right-wing former PM of Australia, John Howard, disliked multicultural programmes because they,

simply ensnare individuals in ethnic communities.

The assumption is that ethnicity is a negative restriction on the individual, hence the term “ensnare”.

John Howard’s one-time opponent, Mark Latham, a former leader of the Labor Party, also warned against preserving traditional ethnic identities as they might lead us to be "pigeon-holed into past habits and identities" ("pigeon-holed" being another negative, restrictive term applied to ethnicity). He advocated instead a self-selecting concept of identity, one involving individuals “picking and choosing from a range of cultural influences.”

Paul Kingsnorth is critical of his fellow leftists for following the liberal view on ethnicity:


Kingsnorth recognises here the basic liberal attitude held by sections of the left: traditional nationality is held to be limiting, a "chain," to be thrown off in favour of globalism.

If we go back to the right, we find the views of Augusto Zimmermann. He chooses to criticise multiculturalism for seeing human beings as “organically integrated into their ethnic groups” rather than as “free individual citizens”. He is worried that an individual might be “regarded as emotionally and psychologically connected with his or her ethnic group” which could reinforce the idea that a person’s character is “predetermined”.

We are not, in Zimmermann's view, allowed to be connected to, or integrated in, our ethnic group as that might predetermine who we are thought to be.

A left-wing Australian academic, Mary Kalantzis, wants to make identity more self-determining:


In case you missed it amidst the academic language, Mary Kalantzis believes that the very purpose of Australian society is to self-determine our identities. That requires fluidity (boundary crossing), multiplicity (multiple identities) and self-selection (the continuous hybrid reconstruction of ourselves).

An American academic, Stephen Kautz, is a supporter of classical liberalism. He describes the classical liberal attitude toward communal identity as follows:


...the idea of community is always somewhat suspect for thoughtful liberals


Here we have the denial that ties of ethnicity, or family for that matter, are natural, as well as the belief that people are liberated to become free individuals by rejecting an ethnic or national identity.

Sukrit Sabhlok is also a classical liberal. He once explained the classical liberal view on nationalism to me in these words:


Again we have the idea that a national community is a mere construct rather than a natural entity with real meaning.

Strobe Talbott, who served in President Bill Clinton’s administration, had a similar idea:


For Talbott, countries are just “social arrangements” (i.e. constructs) and therefore can be made obsolete in favour of a world government.

Economist and writer Philippe Legrain prefers to reimagine the idea of community:

Misplaced nostalgia for the erosion of the coerced local communities of old – the flipside of which is liberation from the tyranny of geography, social immobility and the straitjacket of imposed national uniformity – should not blind us to the richness and vibrancy of the new chosen communities, be they groups of friends from different backgrounds, multinational workplaces, environmental campaigns that span the globe, or online networks of people with a common interest. Solidarity is alive and well when British volunteer doctors treat AIDS sufferers in Africa, when friends take over many of the roles that family members once performed (or failed to perform), and when the membership of pressure groups never ceases to rise...

It is Legrain’s view that we have been liberated from traditional “coerced” communities in favour of new “chosen” communities. What can these self-selecting new communities be? Not family as that is “coerced” and not nation or ethny (which are thought of in negative, restrictive terms – note the use of the word “straitjacket”). But they can be groups of friends, activist groups and multinational workplaces. Those are permissible forms of solidarity in a liberal society, particularly if they are diverse and boundary-crossing.

There is an internet writer in Australia who goes by the name Osmond. He is a social democrat (a left-liberal) and contributes to a Fabian website. In a post titled “What defines who we are?” he tells us that he is tempted to adopt a stance,

of individual identity, that I’m just “me,” I’m not locked into the confines of my heritage or culture.

When I wrote a post about this, Osmond left this comment:

people are individuals who are not trapped within some rigid prism of culture or ethnicity. We may be influenced by it but in the end we define who we are.

I have a sense of communal identity. That is my political beliefs, a universal social democratic viewpoint...

This, clearly, is the liberal attitude to ethnicity. We have ethnic identity being described in negative, limiting terms (“locked,” “confines,” “trapped,” “rigid prism”) as well as an insistence that identity must be self-defined. For Osmond, the best form of self-defining identity is a political one: he identifies with a form of liberalism itself (social democracy).

Finally, it’s interesting to look at the lyrics of a proposed new English anthem called England Forevermore. The anthem attempts to inspire feelings of patriotic solidarity, but it doesn’t entirely escape the influence of liberal ideas:

I am England, England is inside of me.
And wherever you may find me, you'll find England.

The anthem does, it is true, build up the idea of a communal identity (I am England to my core). But at the same time it insists that this identity is subjective and self-defining (England is inside of me, England is what I want her to be). The anthem follows the option of reimagining ethnic or national identity to fit in better with liberal first principles.


What I have tried to show is that the liberal view of ethnicity is to be found across the political spectrum. It is held by those on the left and right, by social democrats, libertarians and classical liberals.

To underline this point, I’d like to look at the attitudes of Andrew Bolt, a prominent Australian journalist. For many years he has been at the most right-wing end of the political mainstream in Australia. And yet he clearly shares the basic liberal view when it comes to ethnicity and national identity.

Take, for instance, the column Bolt wrote about a tribe of Australian Aborigines who wanted an important historic artefact returned to them. Bolt thought the Aborigines were guilty of forgetting,


Similarly, Bolt doesn’t want the National Gallery to recognise ethnic distinctions by having a separate category for Aboriginal art. He believes that art is supposed to “transcend differences of race and country” and that it is therefore wrong for the National Gallery to “drive us back into our racial prisons”.

Bolt has chosen to apply a negative, limiting term to ethnicity (“prisons”). He has also followed the usual liberal pattern by insisting that our identity should be self-determined (“free to make our own identities”).

Bolt has also given this more general account of his attitude to ethnic and national identity:


...That's why I believe we can choose and even renounce our ethnic identity, because I have done that myself.

He considers ethnicity, nationality and race to be a mere accident of birth (predetermined); he prefers a model of society in which a communal identity is either chosen or renounced altogether in favour of identifying with ourselves alone as individuals.

He is serious about reducing identity to an atomised, personal one. He is the son of Dutch immigrants and so he once thought of himself as having a Dutch identity. But he tells us that,


And he has written of one mixed race Aboriginal activist that,


Bolt’s is a radical position rather than a conservative one. It is excessively individualistic: we are expected to ditch the larger and meaningful traditions we belong to in order to identify with ourselves alone.

Civic nationalism

It was once common for national identity to be based on ethnicity. Members of a nation were thought to share some combination of a common ancestry, culture, language, race, religion, customs and history.

John Jay, a founding father of the United States, held to this traditional understanding of national identity. He thought it providential that the US was “one connected, fertile, widespreading country.” He added:


Over time, though, Jay’s traditional nationalism came to be thought illegitimate. Liberals began to take a negative view of ethnicity as something that ought not to matter; therefore, there had to be some other basis for national identity.

And so Western societies shifted gradually toward a policy of civic nationalism. Membership of the nation was to be defined by citizenship, and unity was to be based on a shared commitment to liberal political values and institutions.

One prominent defender of the civic nationalist ideal is Michael Ignatieff. He is a Canadian academic and a former leader of the Liberal Party in that country. He distinguishes a civic from an ethnic nationalism this way:

Ethnic nationalism claims...that an individual's deepest attachments are inherited, not chosen...


This is the liberal logic at work. Ethnic nationalism is predetermined (“inherited, not chosen”) and is therefore rejected in favour of a civic nationalism which is thought to be self-determined (“right to shape their own lives”).

But is civic nationalism really a viable replacement for traditional nationalism? There are reasons to think not. Civic nationalism suffers from being indistinct, inconsistent, unstable and shallow.

A loss of distinct identity

People generally like to feel that there is something unique about their national identity. But if identity is based on liberal values and institutions then it won't differ much from country to country. The civic national identity will be much the same in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other Western societies.

That not only makes national identity less special, it also means that it makes less sense to keep to existing national boundaries. If two nations have the same civic national identity, then why not merge together if there are economic or political advantages in doing so? And why should citizenship stop at national boundaries? If I support liberal political values, and being, say, American is defined by such values, then why shouldn’t I consider myself American even if I live elsewhere?

There are liberals who have already drawn these conclusions. Thomas Barnett is a “distinguished scholar” at the University of Tennessee. This is what he had to say about the war on terror:








Thomas Barnett believes that America is defined by a liberal ideal. Therefore, being American is not about living in a particular place amongst a particular people. Any other country that wants to sign on to the ideal and become a “united state” can do so, no matter where that country is located.

Barnett has parted company with the vision of America held by the founding father John Jay. Jay, if you remember, stressed how providential it was that America was one connected country:


Barnett is not alone in drawing out the logic of civic nationalism. Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman, believes that America is exceptional in being universal:

America's "exceptionalism" is just this - while most nations at most times have claimed their own history or culture to be exclusive, America's foundations are not our own - they belong equally to every person everywhere.

That’s not a helpful way of defining your own nation as distinct. First, it’s not true that America is exceptional in holding to a civic nationalism – that is common amongst Western nations. Second, if the foundations of your nation aren’t your own but belong equally to every person everywhere, then why shouldn’t people choose to cross your borders to seek what belongs equally to them?

Rudolph Guiliani, a former mayor of New York City, once explained his civic understanding of American identity as follows:

Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of one’s Americanism was not one’s family tree; the test of one’s Americanism was how much one believed in America. Because we’re like a religion really. A secular religion. We believe in ideas and ideals. We’re not one race, we’re many; we’re not one ethnic group, we’re everyone; we’re not one language, we’re all of these people. So what ties us together? We’re tied together by our belief in political democracy, in religious freedom, in capitalism, a free economy where people make their own choices about the spending of their money. We’re tied together because we respect human life, and because we respect the rule of law.

Those are the ideas that make us Americans.

Americans are “everyone” according to Guiliani, or at least everyone who believes in a set of secular ideals. The American political commentator Lawrence Auster wrote in reply to Giuliani:

...having told us the things that don’t make us Americans, he tells us the things that do make us Americans: belief in democracy, freedom, capitalism, and rule of law. But other countries believe in those things too. So how is America different from those other countries? If a person in, say, India believes in democracy, freedom, capitalism, and rule of law, how is he any less an American than you or I or George Washington? And how are we any more American than that Indian? Giuliani has removed everything particular and concrete about America and defined America as a universal belief system, not a country.

Giuliani did not shy away from accepting the logic of his own position. He made this declaration to the United Nations:


So how exactly is it distinct to be American? According to Guiliani there are many who are “Americans in spirit” in every country of the world. America is no longer defined as a particular people and place, as a country, in the traditional sense. In Guiliani’s hands American identity becomes a globalist secular religion.

The logic of civic nationalism has been drawn out clearly by Professor Peter Spiro. He too recognises that defining American identity in terms of political ideals or values leaves few limits as to who can be considered American:



At one time, that idea was distinct. No longer. The American idea of constitutional democracy has gone global. That's America's triumph, but it may also be its downfall.



If you define a national identity by an idea, then anyone anywhere can potentially belong to that nation. It starts to be thought arbitrary to limit membership of a nation to people who happen to live within a line drawn on a map. You get complaints, like that of Professor Spiro, about the “underinclusion of members-in-fact” living outside the territory of that country. The nexus between land and people is broken.

And that leads to an unstable form of national existence. If anyone who is willing to commit to a political idea is "in spirit" a member of my nation, then why won't it be thought right for them to migrate, in whatever numbers, to take up citizenship? How, in principle, is a transforming mass immigration to be argued against?

And if national identity is the same across nations, then why not merge nations into larger regional entities? Why not create superstates which give you more political and economic clout on the world stage?

Regional states

The creation of a regional superstate is already underway. The European Union continues to grow and to claim greater amounts of sovereignty over member states.

Are there any limits to the growth of the EU? Not if you follow through with the logic of civic nationalism. All that matters, according to that logic, is that a particular country is committed to a set of liberal political institutions and values. If they meet the test, they're in.

Stephen Kinzer is a former bureau chief of the New York Times. He believes that there are many countries which could reach a satisfactory level "of political and economic democracy" to qualify for EU membership:


Why not Morocco or a Palestinian state? They might not be part of Europe or populated by Europeans, and they might be very dissimilar to the European nations in their history, religion and languages. But if they meet certain political criteria then, under the rules of civic nationalism, they could potentially join. The English could find themselves subject to the same regional superstate as the Moroccans.

That outcome would sit well with David Miliband, a leading Labour politician in the UK. In 2007, as the then foreign secretary, he called for the EU to expand outside of Europe. He argued for new EU trade associations,

that could gradually bring the countries of the Mahgreb (North Africa), the Middle East and Eastern Europe in line with the single market, not as an alternative to membership, but potentially as a step towards it.

In what way, then, are national boundaries meaningful when the logic of civic nationalism is applied?

As you might expect, the European politicians are not alone in looking to create a regional superstate. In 2003 an Australian Senate committee recommended the formation of a Pacific Economic and Political Community (PEPC). The report of this committee proposed the establishment of:


It was intended that Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and 14 smaller Pacific nations would sign up to this Pacific version of the EU.

In 2005, the Australian Labor Party put forward a policy paper which again supported the creation of a Pacific Community. This policy paper advocated the establishment of a Pacific Parliament, a Pacific Court, a Pacific Common Market, a common currency and military integration.

Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, approved of the plan, writing that,

Closer Pacific regionalism - even eventual confederation - may be an idea whose time has come.

Kevin Rudd, later to be Prime Minister but then shadow minister for foreign affairs, boasted that the Labor Party was "leading the government on the creation of a Pacific Community."

So there have been significant political forces in Australia which have pushed for the integration of 14 very different countries into a single Pacific Community. And if this community were ever to get off the ground, there is no reason why its borders wouldn't shift again.

Is a civic nationalism fully consistent with liberalism?





















This angered Landsburg, who argued that by putting his fellow citizens first Edwards was no different to those, like David Duke, who put their coethnics first:


An Australian writer, John Humphreys, commented that,






Until [we act morally] by subsuming our nationhood into the single world polity...then we are lesser folk than our forbears...



A shallow identity









According to Professor Anthony Smith a traditional national identity,












Next: Chapter 6: Morality


  1. It's interesting that Kang believes both that
    a.) There should be no difference between males and females, even down to their attire.
    b.) All the races will blend into one.

    Isn't it interesting how liberals talk in metaphors?They talk as if their metaphors were reality itself and make calculations based in them. For instance, how does he think races will "blend" away without racially "blended" children? And how does he think there will be any children at all, "blended" or otherwise, if men and women aren't distinct enough to be attracted to each other as distinct sexes and you know, have kids?

  2. "blend" and mixed has a different meaning to liberals.
    Blended and mixed to them means a coffee coloured new man. For reference see other radical political ideologies that wanted a new race of ubermensch.
    The difference in meaning is that the Blended do not need a white component at all. The idea is that whites will not exist. They will mix or just not have kids. Then the remainder will be killed or forced to mix when the liberals lose control of the reigns.
    We will then witness as the Europid population declines the rise of the new "blended" man.
    World peace and warm fuzzy times ensue

  3. I've never understood the liberal hardon for "eventual abolition of state boundaries". The liberal doesn't require liberalism from native nonwhites, so why would he expect it from immigrant nonwhites? Letting millions of (for example) Muslims into your country isn't going to result in a bunch of new good liberals, it's going to end with the liberals having their heads chopped off and your country descending into a permanent hell.


    I just read this. Despite the act of mining a city seems absurd.

    Theres this:
    "West Australian Mining Minster Norman Moore warned the company its proposal would face intense scrutiny.

    "Anyone can apply for a mining exploration licence but whether they get it or not is another thing," Mr Moore told The West Australian.

    Can really any foreign national ask permission to mine anywhere in our country. Are there no exclusions at all to foreigners. Where exactly is our sovereignty?

  5. Yet Andrew Bolt still boasts about Dutch cultural and artistic achievements and makes a point to follow the Dutch national football team.

    Despite his philosophical viewpoints many of his blog posts show him to be an orange cloggie to the core.

  6. Ethnicity isn't like gender though. Fashionable views to the contrary, you're either male or you're female. Ethnicity is much less tidy. It's a matter of fragmented and overlapping identities that rarely synchronise with national boundaries.

    Nation states can accommodate multiple ethnicities, up to a point. The US absorbed Irish, Jewish, Polish and Italian immigrants without losing a sense of national identity.

    The problem comes with the modern assumption that a nation state can absorb an unlimited admixture of ethnicities from any source without collapsing. Some ethnicities just don't work together.

    It's also worth pointing out that liberals have created many of the problems themselves by encouraging a sense of grievance among certain ethnicities (blacks in the US, Aboriginals in Australia) with the result that those ethnicities no longer identify with the nations to which they belong.

  7. Randian said,

    "I've never understood the liberal hardon for "eventual abolition of state boundaries"

    For those who aren't totally ideologically committed I think they see it in their minds as a way of stopping or abolishing war.

  8. ""For those who aren't totally ideologically committed I think they see it in their minds as a way of stopping or abolishing war.""

    Yes it reminds me of those who see the solution to the current massive Salafist reformation in the Islamic faith crossing dozens of cultures and hundreds of millions of people is to abolish Israel, a state a quarter the size of Tasmania.

    Somehow all the problems of this current bout of Islamic expansion will all magically vanish along with the Jewish state.

    Similar thinking about State borders. Since borders are something people fight over, removing them should stop people fighting right?

    If these people did not have so much power in our socieities their naive nature would be almost touching.

  9. Yes it reminds me of those who see the solution to the current massive Salafist reformation in the Islamic faith

    The Salafists are not reforming anything. Reformation implies alterations to established doctrine. The Salafists want unyielding adherence to established doctrine, because many Islamic nations became somewhat lax in their enforcement of Islam (veiling of women, stoning of homosexuals, dhimmitude) during the 20th Century.

    Islam sees itself in a resurgence, after being kicked out of Western Europe and the disaster that was the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Petrodollars enabled the purchase of propaganda, western politicians, and instruments of war. It in the nature of Muslims to see all problems as being due to insufficient adherence to Islam, hence the Salafists, who have control of most of the world's mosques where strict (not radical, not hijacked, not a "tiny minority of extremists") Islam is taught. You see the new strictness in Egypt, where the historical treatment of non-Muslim minorities is one again being played out in massacres of Coptic Christians.

  10. Some leftist post on The Punch. Just so you know what "real" people think...

    " Mel says:

    12:47pm | 10/01/12

    Does anyone really care what whiny Hetero White Males feel ? . A lot more work is needed to be done to advance Women`s rights and the rights of non-white races and the gay community if We are to redress the thousands of years of oppression , slavery and intolerance at the hands of said Hetero White Males . When they have no property rights , are treated as property themselves and reviled because of their sexual preferences for the same length of time We might consider things equal . Untill then they should just shut up and wear it because real people don`t want to listen anymore to what a bunch of homophobic racist sexist pigs has to say

  11. ""The Salafists are not reforming anything. Reformation implies alterations to established doctrine.""


    The Salafists want a return to focus on the original texts of their faith as opposed to those traditions which have grown alongside them.

    From a European cultural background the easiest way to describe such a process is "Reformation" as the Christian reformation was a similar process.


    These people are not real. They're pods.

  13. Nice lift Anonymous. Of course there won't be thousands of years of history if those guys get their way. They'll happily destroy us in a couple of generations.

  14. These people are not real. They're pods.

    Funny conincidence a remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is on tv at the moment.

  15. Howard and Bolt believe that immigrants should assimilate. This blog normally argues that lack of assimilation is the problem with immigration. Why attack them for articulating conservative belief?

  16. I'm inclined to agree, why include Howard in with these other hopeless types? He is a strong nationalist, and didn't want immigrant communities to value their imported ethnic communities to such an extent that they established virtually no connection whatsoever to the nation. Ethnic communities, read foreign ethnic communities, can be uselessly and dangerously insular.

    For those who would argue that Howard opened the flood gates I would say that he didn't do enough to combat immigration or to argue the case against culturally diverse immigration and instead put the argument into the economic category, "If they're good for the economy etc they can come". Sooner or later cultural and economic considerations will be at odds with each other and nationalism itself will struggle to survive without an ethnic community at its core.


    No, it's right liberals who think that you can have mass immigration and assimilation and everything will stay the same and be OK. That's Howard's view. Bolt is a little bit better. He does at least allow that some groups are likely to assimilate better than others. Even so, as I thought I proved thoroughly in the post, he is a long way from being a real conservative. He's radically individualistic and doesn't believe in any kind of communal identity, not even that of a de-ethnicised nationality. In his world view, we are only allowed to identify with our own selves.

    He is a strong nationalist.

    In what way? It's true he was tough on the illegal boats. But that was to bolster support for a programme of mass immigration.

    All of these people, including figures like Abbott, if they identify with any tradition, it's at most a cultural one. They have a bizarre belief that you can keep the cultural tradition whilst importing a completely different population.

    They've talked themselves into the idea that "my tradition is that any people in any numbers can join in as long as they speak the language and sign on to the institutions."

    If that's conservatism then count me out. I'm something else.

  18. They're nationalists in that they support and promote the nation as an entity. They have argued in many instances that the economic interests of the nation are crucially important. They've also argued that this interest is seemingly almost synonomous with the cultural interest and in this they're mistaken.

  19. They're nationalists in that they support and promote the nation as an entity.

    They are, at best, civic nationalists. But civic nationalism isn't very meaningful and leads on logically to regionalism and globalism.

    The post War PMs have held confused and contradictory positions on this issue - both Labor and Liberal.

    The Labor ones have identified with a larrikin/blokey/irreverant strand of national culture whilst at the same time rejecting the idea of national particularity: Hawke said that anyone who lived here and paid taxes was Australian, whilst Keating is aggressively internationalist.

    The Liberal ones have suffered from the whole fusionist debacle of trying to merge liberalism and conservatism. It means that they've spouted meaningless conservative rhetoric about "reverence for tradition, institutions" etc whilst still committing themselves to non-discrimination, free movement of labour and other liberal policies which make the defence of a real, historic nation impossible.

    We need to reject the failed politics of both parties as precisely and decisively as we can.

  20. Its true that Labor taps into this blokey working class spirit whilst simultaneously going in the opposition direction, and so they're currently being punished in the polls for the confusion this creates. The Liberals are definitely more reliable when it comes to the national defence, economy etc. However they clearly tap into the liberal individualist agenda, which is additionally also why they get regularly punished in the polls. Few people happily want to vote for a bunch or asocial, purely economically focused, self promoters.

    A conservative movement is obviously needed. Do we say though that all of the policies of the Liberals, current right side of politics, should be rejected? Was it wrong of Howard to balance the budget or grow the economy? Was it wrong of Thatcher to beat down the Unions or control inflation? Was it wrong of Reagan to stand up to the Russians etc? Of course not. All these objectives were valuable and necessary, although the means through which they were carried out can be debated. Whilst not all Liberal/Tory/Republican policies are supportable much of their problem stems from what they don't do, or don't do sufficiently well, or don't feel they can publicly get away with and so drift along with, rather than what they do do.

    A large deal of their policy outlook also stems from the great historical trials and disasters of the last century, Communism/socialism versus the rest and Fascist authoritarianism. In the face of these the politically right groups saw individualism/economic growth as not just a valuable end in itself, but as a mechanism through which these aggressive movements could be combated. As the needs of the country change so too, hopefully, and with pressure from the public, should the politics. After all the cold war ended only 20 years ago and much of the west still has strong creeping socialism, meaning that there’s not been much time for priorities to be readjusted.

  21. Jesse_7 wrote...


    It amazes me that an ideology that has failed as often and as disastrously as socialism could actually be gaining ground. But of course today we have a generation that doesn't know that it's an ideology that has failed since neither the schools nor the media ever mention socialism's history of horrors and failures.

  22. We need to reject the failed politics of both parties as precisely and decisively as we can.

    Agreed, but how do we do it? Simply rejecting the whole political process would be tantamount to consigning ourselves to political impotence. Do we join the Liberal Party and try to shift it towards the right? Is there any chance that can be done? Do we support Bob Katter's new party? They're an alternative of sorts but they seem to be disturbingly pro-immigration. Form another conservative splinter party?

  23. dfordoom,

    The answer depends on what kind of influence we can build. I don't think you can go into an existing party and push it in the right direction as an individual.

    My own view is that we need to do the following things before we're likely to have much practical influence:

    a) Establish ourselves as a polical current. That's been done now at an international level but not at a national one.

    b) Establish some supporting institutions to give stability and resources to ourselves as a movement.

  24. The Australian political milieu is ripe for disruption. In my experience engaging with Australian leftists on the internet, they don't know anything about race and IQ, and they are utterly stumped when I ask them why it is immoral to want to keep Australia white (predominately Anglo-Celtic).

    I am planning on making a website to appeal to young Australians who are fed up with feminism and anti-white identity politics. I got a bit sidetracked by other things, so i didn't set it up when i planned to, but i hope to do it when i have time.

    1. Let me know if you do get it up and running, I'll check it out.