IN an excellent VFR entry from 2007, Lawrence Auster addressed the question, “Is it wrong for me to talk about race?” He went on to explain the difference between a race reductionist and someone who believes race is a “constituent element” of culture.

By the way, the beginning of that entry includes a reader’s comment that contains several minor grammatical errors. That is unusual. Mr. Auster, who died in March, spent many hours correcting even the most minor of grammatical mistakes in comments submitted to his blog and had devised a unique and complicated system of Microsoft Word macros for quickly fixing common errors and style irregularities, such as punctuation marks outside of quotation marks. It was an awe-inspiring system, a writer’s wrench set for fixing anything minor.

That entry begins:

A reader writes:

When reading your blog, I am struck by the number of times you and others talk about the “white race” or a “white majority.” You seem fixated on race.

However, the battle we are fighting has little to do with “race” and everything to do with “culture.” For example, I am an Indian (i.e., non white). Yet I am also a traditionalist Catholic who believes very strongly in the superiority of Western traditions and culture. Ninety-nine percent of the whites I know are probably not even aware of their own cultural tradition. However, the constant fixation with the “white race,”  would exclude me and other non-whites from being a traditionalist simply because of the colour of my skin.

Race is irrelevant. Culture is what matters. Whether a person is black or white, Hispanic or Asian, their adherence to traditional Western culture is paramount. At the moment, they are encouraged by liberals to hate Western traditions and celebrate their own cultural identity. But there is no reason why non-whites cannot be traditionalists or spearhead the Western traditionalist movement.

LA replies:

Context and numbers are everything.

A small number of people of different race can join a majority group without changing the identity of the group, because, being a small number, they act as individuals and are seen as individuals, though they may be seen as exotics.

A massive number of people of different race fundamentally changes the whole society. Then it becomes a matter, not of individuals joining an existing culture, but of one group and its culture replacing another group and its culture.

This distinction is all important. You must understand it if you are to understand the immigration problem.

If you don’t get the distinction between a few people and a lot of people, you are going to go on believing the neoconservative fantasy that you can transform an entire country from a 100 percent or a 90 percent white country to a majority nonwhite country and everything is going to remain the same. You’re not going to see the reality of, for example, the Mexican invasion, in which Mexicans are involved in a national/racial takeover of major parts of the U.S., in which they, the Mexicans, are conscious of themselves gaining power as a group, and of the whites as losing power.

As we see in places throughout the country, particularly California, when a foreign people moves in en masse, they bring their culture, their way of life, their notions of law and order, their notions of right and wrong, their ethnic and national loyalties, with them. The former majority people and their way of life are pushed aside, and a new people and way of life displace them. You may THINK that culture has nothing to do with race. But that doesn’t change the fact that one people brings one culture, and displaces another people with another culture.

The entire discussion is worth reading.

— Comments —

Bill R. writes:

The whole discussion is indeed worth reading. I especially liked it when Auster replied to his Indian Catholic from Australia, “You have no regard for the actual peoples and their qualities that made the West and its distinct cultures and nations. In reality people’s ethnic, racial, physical qualities are part of what they are. By disregarding that, you deny people’s humanity. Your view is anti-human.”

The discussion reminded me that while it is important to take into consideration various qualitative issues when discussing race, such as differences in average IQ, it is important for people who defend the interests of the white race not to let the discussion become one of superiority vs. inferiority. It’s not about that. It’s not about which race “works better,” as if we were talking about a particular make of car engine. Fundamentally, it’s about having similar feelings for one’s own race as one does for one’s own immediate family. A family has a history in common, and memories, of living and working together in mutual affection for the good of the family and the household. This inevitably leads to the development of a household culture, so to speak, that members of the family come to love and cherish. Even if another family honestly wanted to (which they don’t, but even if they did, I would not consider it an admirable quality; weird and suspicious at best, in fact), it is not possible for them to become members of my family, let alone by merely espousing its values or imitating its routines and manner of working and thinking. The memories and experiences of a family are unique. There can no more be a “proposition family” than there can be a “proposition nation.” Such would no longer be a true family, but a shell of one, a caricature, a mockery, just as such, striped of its racial identity, is no longer a true nation. Furthermore, my family is made up of blood relatives, something members of no other family can ever be to me. Everyone immediately recognizes and understands such obvious feelings for one’s own immediate family and the reality upon which they are based; why should it be any different with one’s own race? Why does that understanding, so obvious to everyone in the case of family, fly out the window in our culture when it comes to race? (Actually, of course, it doesn’t fly out the window as long as you’re talking about non-white races.) The white race is my racial family. That’s reason enough to defend it against having it and the culture it created displaced by some other race.

Finally, having that loyalty implies no hostility to other races whatsoever, anymore than the loyalty and preference I feel for my own family implies hostility toward my neighbors across the street.  Nor is it necessary, nor even desirable for members of one family to join another.  The neighborhood is quite peaceful, content, and cooperative with each family in their own house, belonging and loyal only to their own.

Laura writes:

I agree with much of what you say except that it is more possible to have a proposition nation than a “proposition family.” The United States was formed under certain propositions, distinguishing it from England, but it has never been only a proposition nation. If Vermont seceded tomorrow, it would do so in light of certain principles.

Global Christian writes:

Having read the VFR article I have observed that Auster fails to defeat the argument that most of Western civilisation’s problems are self-inflicted.

I will remind you that race has no place in Christianity.There were plenty of interracial mariages in those times.The message of the Gospel is universal and by focussing on something like race you trivialise the essence of the truth that we are all created equal. How does race play a role in the slow decline of moral values in the West – can you draw a direct link between the rampant homosexuality, premarital sex, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, pedophilia, breakdown of marriage and its relevance with race ?

 Laura writes:

Mr. Auster would be the first to agree that our problems are self-inflicted. Indians or Mexicans are not to blame for excessive immigration. They did not make our immigration laws. Whites did.

As far as the universal nature of Christianity, let me ask you a question. Do you believe all human beings are the same? If you do not believe all human beings are the same, then how can you believe that the message of the Gospel is universal?

Finally, you ask how race plays a role in the decline in moral values in the West. For one, the project to eliminate racial differences is such an all-consuming battle with nature that it prevents human beings from attending to the project of sustaining civilization. It is a false god. Secondly, the denial of racial differences leads to self-hatred by whites and causes them to disregard and even actively to defeat their own survival. The problems you mention are the signs of a suicidal culture. They are ultimately caused by a rejection of God. The races are aspects of his creation and racial differences, like all things in this world, can be turned to good with love of God and submission to the reality he has created. Christ never asked people to deny reality. Before he performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, for instance, he didn’t say to the disciples, who presented him with the problem of the hungry crowd, “Well, these people have my Word to feed them. They do not need food.” No, he recognized that human beings are physical beings, not just spiritual, and as such they get hungry. They live in this world, not heaven or an earthly utopia, and so he fed them. When he cured the sick, he did so without curing all sickness. It is not for us to reject what he has created, but to submit to it and have confidence that he did everything for our good.

Bill R. responds to Laura:

You write that “it is more possible to have a proposition nation than a ‘proposition family.'” I agree. The parallel between nation and family has its limitations and I accept that there is more of the proposition in a nation than a family, particularly in the case of the United States. As I think about it, I’m not sure, however, that in the end propositions really count for all that much in the founding of nations. It seems to me their importance is more obvious in (if not confined to) the achievement of political independence which may or may not lead to nationhood. Furthermore, while a nation may not be as organic as a family, in the sense in which I speak neither is it quite as inorganic as your Vermont suggestion would imply. Surely if Vermont seceded tomorrow, she would be a politically independent country, but not a nation. Vermonters would still be Americans and would remain so indefinitely. Vermont could perhaps eventually become a nation but she would not become one by virtue of her mere political independence alone. Conversely, a nation can sometimes exist or at least be felt to exist even though it is not politically independent. Recall at the outbreak of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee, while opposed to secession felt he could not take up his sword against his own country, meaning Virginia. I suggest it was that familial feeling for Virginia that made the difference for Lee, regardless of any issue of political independence, and it was a feeling he did not have for the Union as a whole although he believed in the Union. For Lee, the proposition was the Union, and while he liked the proposition, his nation was Virginia and the South, for that is what represented the ethnically and culturally distinct organic entity for him, not the United States. As another example of the distinction, I would argue that the Soviet Union never became a nation even after 75 years. But Russia was and is. Even devoted communist tyrants like Stalin appreciated the fact and acted on it. When extolling his countrymen to stand fast against the Nazi onslaught, he did not do so in the name of Socialism or the Soviet Union, but in the name of Mother Russia. He knew that to encourage their patriotism and fighting spirit, he needed to appeal to the familial bond his people felt as a nation, and that familial bond he knew did not exist for the Soviet Union, but it did exist for Russia. The Soviet Union, by the way, was perhaps the purest example in history of a proposition nation, and the nation part never did succeed.

Laura writes:

Very good.

For that matter, families are somewhat propositional too, with marriages based on similar worldviews.

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