The best of Lawrence Auster

In light of the bad news on the Auster health front it seems appropriate to highlight some of Lawrence Auster's best writing, and say thanks for his untiring efforts to bring some clarity to the problems facing the Western world. Obviously this is not his best in any objective sense, but rather, just some highlights that resonated with me.

When the planes hit the Twin Towers, I said to myself  "My God! What has America done to deserve this?". I knew nothing about Islam, and its motivating role in these attacks. It wasn't until the Catmeat Sheik and Cronulla Riots and an article by John Stone that I awoke to the unique problem of Muslim immigration.

Soon after, I stumbled upon Auster's Separationism article which hit me like a bolt of lightning:

I subscribe to the now tiny but, I believe, some-day-to-be prevalent Separationist School of Western-Islamic Relations. We separationists affirm the following:

• Islam is a mortal threat to our civilization.
• But we cannot destroy Islam.
• Nor can we democratize Islam.
• Nor can we assimilate Islam.

Therefore the only way to make ourselves safe from Islam is to separate ourselves from Islam...

Other writers who might be called separationists include Serge Trifkovic, Diana West, Randall Parker, the Norwegian blogger Fjordman, and Hugh Fitzgerald...

To date, there's no better article on Muslim immigration on the internet. Finally someone had the sense and guts to say it. Thank you, Lawrence Auster.

Of course Muslims are not our only problem and Auster gets to the heart of the matter about black crime, immigration, etc.

Lawrence Auster, Another white family desolated

Here's another white person, police officer Andrew Widman of Fort Myers, Florida, a father of three, murdered on a whim by one of the innumerable Negro savages whom we allow to roam about at liberty in our society...

Is it racist, i.e., is it morally wrong, to speak of "Negro savages who are roaming about at liberty in our society"? No ...

Indeed, I am acting according to the Kantian categorical imperative, speaking the way I think everyone should speak. If our whole society began to declare plainly that predatory black savages are running loose among us and that this is totally unacceptable, then we would start to do something about it, and many innocent people, white and black, would be saved, and many families, white and black, would not be destroyed. But so long as the reality of this race-specific savagery is daintily covered up, society will remain passive and helpless, absorbing one black murder after another, forever.

Civilization is the opposite of savagery. Therefore part of what defines civilized people is that they oppose savagery and do not tolerate it. And to oppose it, they must speak truthfully about it. So let's forget about the superficial contemporary "civility" that never calls unpleasant and dangerous things by their proper names, and so allows aliens, enemies, and savages to take over. Instead of practicing such "civility," let us stand for civilization.

Lawrence Auster, The Second Mexican War

The Mexican invasion of the United States began decades ago as a spontaneous migration of ordinary Mexicans into the U.S. seeking economic opportunities. It has morphed into a campaign to occupy and gain power over our country—a project encouraged, abetted, and organized by the Mexican state and supported by the leading elements of Mexican society.

It is, in other words, war. War does not have to consist of armed conflict. War can consist of any hostile course of action undertaken by one country to weaken, harm, and dominate another country. Mexico is waging war on the U.S. through mass immigration illegal and legal, through the assertion of Mexican national claims over the U.S., and through the subversion of its laws and sovereignty, all having the common end of bringing the southwestern part of the U.S. under the control of the expanding Mexican nation, and of increasing Mexico’s political and cultural influence over the U.S. as a whole.

Lawrence Auster, Our moral dilemma in Afghanistan that we never discuss

Should we be helping sustain a society and government the fundamental laws and customs of which require the execution of people for distributing a negative opinion about Muhammad? Obviously not, since to do so is not only wrong in itself but means supporting a religious system that seeks to subdue us to the same law. What then should we do? Obviously we do not have the ability to modernize or democratize a society ruled by a religion that executes people for expressing opinions. Nor do we have the ability to destroy that religion, short of destroying the country and killing most of its people. Nor do we have the ability to assimilate the followers of such a tyrannical religion into our society and into any international order that recognizes basic human rights and liberties. What then can we do? We should withdraw our forces from that country, and end our connection with that country, while promising that if a regime, such as the Taliban, comes to power there that threatens us, we will return and destroy it. (Or alternatively we should wage a standalone war of extermination against the Taliban, without connecting that war with support for the existing sharia government.) As I've said over and over, a three week war once every ten years will be infinitely less costly to us than permanent occupation. Other than that, we have no interest in the internal affairs of Afghanistan. We cannot, in the name of democracy, be propping up an Islamic sharia regime which executes people for questioning Islam.

This fundamental contradiction in our present policy is never discussed, and so we continue in our absurd and self-debasing course of "defending democracy" in a sharia country.

Lawrence Auster, Thank you, Mohandas Gandhi

Thank you, Mohandas Gandhi, for using your fabulous moral suasion, backed up by a personal hunger strike, to prevent the Indians from expelling the Muslims at the time of the Partition of India and Pakistan (even as the Muslims were expelling millions of Hindus from Pakistan), leaving a vast Muslim minority in India, now 150 million strong, forever carrying out jihad. Thank you, Nehru, thank you, Congress Party, and thank you, liberalism, which in the name of universal human sameness refused then and refuse now to recognize the nature of the eternal warrior religion of Islam, and thus leave civilized humanity helpless and vulnerable before it.

The only solution, the only way to save the world from Islam, is Separation, the permanent exclusion of Muslims from all non-Muslim countries and the containment of Muslims inside their own lands. In India, tragically, that is not possible, at least in the short term, because of the sheer size of the Muslim population that lives there thanks to the great liberal saint Gandhi. In India, the main method of preventing Muslim terrorism is the threat of mass reprisals by the Hindu majority, as explained here and here. But if such deterrence ceases to be effective, as is evident in this unprecedented Muslim attack, what is to be done?

Wake up, conservatives! Stopping amnesty is not going to save America!

... Democrats will take us over the cliff at 90 miles an hour. Republicans stay within the speed limit, but they will still take us over the cliff. That is the single most succinct account of modern politics. Now apply the same idea to immigration. Illegal immigration will take us over the cliff at 90 miles an hour. Legal immigration stays within the speed limit, but it will still take us over the cliff. Yet the energy of conservatives is focused almost exclusively on illegal immigration, and if you try to bring up legal immigration, you’re told, with annoyance, that the country is not ready to deal with that issue, we must focus only on illegal. And it’s true that there would not have been the hundreds of thousands of callers to Congress stopping the immigration bill in 2007, if the issue had been legal immigration. People are able to grasp violations of law—it doesn’t make them “racist” to oppose violations of law. But to oppose turning our country into a Hispanic country, well, that seems racist, or at least it’s something they don’t feel comfortable discussing.

When it comes to immigration and national survival, race is the supreme issue, the issue on which all others hang. On one side, our country is steadily being changed into a different country by the immigration of people of different race. On the other side, we are letting this happen because, controlled by liberalism, we are morally incapable of saying that we should not allow our country to be re-populated and transformed into a different country by people of other races. So: racially diverse mass immigration is undoing us, and our irrational, immoral, and cowardly fear of being “racist” makes us incapable of stopping that racially diverse mass immigration.

It all comes down to race. You may not want to think about race, but race is thinking about you.

For the record, Auster considers himself a racial conservative, not a white nationalist.

And here's a recent article on the likely coming amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Lawrence Auster, GOP drinks the Kool-Aid

Words are inadequate to describe the disaster that has now occurred. They are inadequate to describe how obvious is the delusion to which the Republican Party is subscribing by supporting amnesty for illegal aliens and by choosing as their official responder to the State of the Union address Marco Rubio, who will deliver his remarks in English and then in Spanish, as though we were a bi-lingual country like Canada. The Republicans think that by becoming the party which is pro-illegal aliens, pro-legalization of illegal aliens, and pro-Spanish as quasi-official language of the United States, they will save themselves as a party. In fact that are assuring their demise as a party, since every increase in the Hispanic population of the U.S.—which comprehensive immigration reform is designed to bring about, both through legalization of illegals and by increasing legal immigration—will mean an increase in the Democrats’ electoral margin over the Republicans. This is because, even if the GOP’s sell-out to Hispanics results in some increase in Hispanic votes for the GOP, a majority of Hispanics will never vote for the GOP, and therefore the more Hispanics there are, the greater the Democrats’ advantage over the Republicans.

So the death of the GOP as a national party is assured—at the hands of the very ethnic group whom in their fantastical mindless delusion they are now embracing, thinking it will mean their salvation.

And I think the GOP has now also assured its death from another quarter—from white conservatives who will now finally realize that the Republicans do not stand for America but for its undoing. How could any conservative now support the GOP? It deserves to be destroyed. I, for one, wish it to be destroyed, and to be replaced by genuine conservative party.

And it was not only the big issues, but the smaller ones too, that mark the difference between civilisation and chaos.

Lawrence Auster, An anecdote of black and white in America

... We were seated on a sideways bench seat on the left side of the bus about two thirds of the way toward the back, with my friend to my left. Ten feet to my right, near the rear of the bus, a black woman was talking on her cell phone. Her voice was loud and annoying but it not bad enough for me to say anything. She had straightened hair that was colored dark blonde, and she looked tall and strong, with not unattractive features. My friend noted that the woman was completely ignoring her small daughter, who sat quietly neglected while her mother carried on her over-animated conversation. The woman’s voice seemed to get lower for a while, and was more tolerable, but then it got louder again, and finally I had enough and turned to her and said, “Would you lower your voice, please”?

Before the words were out of my mouth, she replied very sharply and loudly:

“I’ll talk as loud as I want. It’s a public bus not your private space.”

I’ve handled these situations many times, but her tone and manner were so aggressive that I instinctively did something I’ve never done before. I simply repeated, in the same polite but firm tone of voice as before:

“Would you lower your voice, please?”

I somehow realized that as long as I kept repeating this request, I was asking something reasonable for which I could not be seen as being at fault, and, even better, I would be making it impossible for her to resume her cell phone conversation.

She answered:

“You want to bring back slavery. The slave days are over.”

I said:

“Would you lower your voice please?”

She got more aggressive:

“Shut the f*ck up. I’m gonna come over there and smack the sh*t out of you.”

I answered:

“Would you lower your voice please?”

“I’m gonna come over there and smack you.”

“Would you lower your voice please”?

“I’m not your slave. The slave days are over.”

“Would you lower your voice please”?

This went on for a while, with her alternatively threatening to hit me and accusing me of trying to bring back slavery, and me asking her to lower her voice, and finally it somehow came to an end.

As soon as our colloquy ceased, she terminated her phone conversation, telling her interlocutor that someone was objecting to it.

A few moments later, a man sitting toward the front of the bus, of mixed race, probably Hispanic, turned around in his seat and looked back at me with a big smile on his face.

I was sitting with my head turned to the left, looking forward in the bus, not looking back at the woman. I asked my friend to keep an eye on her, to let me know if she was coming toward me. But my friend told me that she was now playing with her child, holding her, talking to her, and that her whole manner had changed. Instead of being absorbed in the phone call and ignoring her child, she was being nice to her.

When the woman got off the bus with her child a few blocks later, she got off quietly, with no more words being said.

My friend said she couldn’t get over the way the woman’s entire demeanor had changed. As she put it later, “The woman had gone from being a neglectful loud-talking profanity-spouting single black mother to an attractive doting mom engaging lovingly and intelligently with her child.”

Anyway, how many black people are like this? If a white says anything to them, the black thinks that the white is trying to subject the black to slavery.

Jefferson was right that blacks would never forget slavery. There can never be peace and comity between the two peoples. That’s an illusion. Whites must be realistic about blacks and not buy into their complaints and demands or think that there’s anything they can do that will remove blacks’ hostility against whites and America.

That's Lawrence Auster, a beacon of sanity in a mad world.

Of course, Auster is a Christian and never missed an opportunity to suggest that Darwinian materialism will lead to moral nihilism. I'm an atheist, so I think that's overstated.

While it's true that if we change our guiding principle from "traditionalism or conservatism" to "the fulfillment of human needs/desires", then it becomes harder to corral everyone around a central culture. It might also be true that impulsive behaviour threatens to erode civilised behaviour. And everything is judged anew, according to the human yardstick.

So maybe it does get harder to preserve social cohesion, civility and tradition. But these are just competing priorities to be balanced out: social cohesion v. individuality; tradition v. progress; impulsive enjoyment v. civilised restraint, etc.

So, there's work to do, for sure, to maintain social cohesion, civility, and preserve what is good about our tradition, but a human-centred culture does not necessarily spell the end for civilisation.

Anyway, VFR has been a daily read for me for years now, and there's far more I agree with than disagree.

Hopefully this is not the end for Lawrence but if it is then there's only one thing left to say: thank you.

File under: some-day-to-be prevalent thoughts.

(Thanks to OzConservative for leading me to VFR).