[FULL] My Collected Conversations w/ George Bagby: The J. Burden Show

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two conversations totally about three hours. So I think i'd put these back out. Obviously, that debate continues to rage, and I think even though it's been a while, these conversations hold up a lot of you haven't seen them. I was a very small channel. And if you've enjoyed my conversations with Bagbee and wondered how we got started, well this is the answer to that question. So hope you guys enjoy. Be back with a more regular episode soon.

But people tend to like these. It's a good way to hear the old content in one place and in much hopefully much much better audio I used to have. Anyway, guys appreciate it. Be back soon. Thanks. All right, I'm really excited for this. This is a big guest for me. You guys may not know them, but George Bagbey is a long term friend and mentor of mine, and before before I introduce him directly, you wanted to be actually

asked to come on to speak about America. So obviously there's been a lot of dialogue recently, mostly between AA but also you know previous guy the show Pall Fahrenheit, Ryan turnip Seed and some other people about essentially the nature of America. You know, the global American Empire is a phrase that has been popularized in our circles and essentially is there some type of I guess is the global American Empire and American culture? Are those the same things?

So obviously a lot of you know, digital ink has been spilled on that. And while there are a lot of you know, well written articles, I wasn't you alwaysn't quite satisfied with that. You know, I didn't feel like my position got expressed, and so I was really happy to hear when you know, George Bagby reached out to me and essentially asked to come on my show. So, George, could you introduce yourself and then we can head straight into it.

history talking about history? What's its purpose? And I guess that was my initial interest in this subject of America. It's a perennial subject among Americans. We all were frequently talking about America. What is America? What should America be? We've got a lot of ideologies on this subject, but it's certainly the matter with the American question, as we might term it, what what AA and Paul Fahrenheit have

been talking about lately. It occurs to me AA said something that I thought went to the heart of the matter. I would like to I'd like to clarify I have. I have great respect for AA. He's he's truly an aristocrat. He's a man who's whose opinions matter and influence many of us. But AA said said something that struck me. He said, everyone knows what American culture is. Everyone knows what we're talking about when American culture. What American culture is,

he says, it's homogeneous. He said, the outright denial of the very thing the United States has known for the world over is astounding to watch. And I guess I fit into that category. I am what he's talking about right there, because when I think America, I'm not thinking of McDonald's. I'm not thinking of Walmart. I'm not I'm not thinking of Major League Baseball. I'm thinking of a

weird little town in Maine. I'm thinking of whatever Utah is supposed to be, which I'm not at all clear of, by the way, But I think it's weird and I think it's it's also great. It's like very American. Whatever they're doing out there.

in both talents. Yeah, the idea that those cultures are the same, although I will say there is an odd amount of Acadian French in both that that is an odd but that's not what we're specifically talking about. The idea that those two places are the same, that the people who live there are the same is it is. To me, it's flagrantly untrue. And I think that before we get into this, there's something we should separate, which

is there are kind of two claims being made. Which is, one like, the global American Empire is horrible and evil and we should oppose it, you know, almost at all costs. I agree with that. I think both of us are firmly anti empire, absolutely, But the other one is that American culture is deeply and irreparably flawed. You know, it's this kind of like immense force for evil that nothing good has ever come from American culture, And those are

kind of equivocated. You know that you when you well, if you don't agree with one, you disagree with both. And to me, I would put myself very much in support of the first position and very much against the second.

Our landscape is marred by the highways and exit ramps and everything that that involves, the parking lots we have. We have a degeneracy that we're exporting to the world. Yes, yes, I know what what America's opponents are talking about when they say these things. If that is all America is then we're sunk. I mean, why not kill ourselves or something. There's there's nothing really worth worth dying for when it comes to McDonald's food, for heaven's sake, and no one

ever said there was. We've got degenerously, we've got no borders, we've got debt our people are sterilizing themselves. I get that times are bad, we don't deny that. But what is America? And why would anyone love it? I happen to believe America is worth loving. I happen to believe that there is an awful lot of interest here that hundreds of years of settlements have built up distinctive, valuable things in this land, things that I happen to love.

I feel kind of like like Robert Oppenheimer. Do you ever hear that story about Oppenheimer? He had some Communist ties early in his life. He was a member of some kind of communist organization, and it came out during the Cold War and there was some congressional investigation. Do you know about this?

kind of teared up. Allah Jordan Peterson, if you will, and he said, God, damn it, I happen to love this country. And I kind of feel I kind of feel like that with with all the put downs that we hear about American now. But we have something else

to go on here. And this is important. In the midst of all of the lockdown hysteria, in the midst of all of the vaccine mandates, in the midst of the gay the global American empire really lashing out, the deep State trying to manipulate US and trying to manipulate Europe, Americans have arguably done the most to resist those things. They have organized by the tens of millions. These efforts have not always been well spent, admittedly, but as far as the dissident right goes, a huge number of US

A disproportionate number of US are American. So my contention is there must be something constructive here. You cannot damn all of these people to hell. You can't say they have no place in the movement because they happen to like America, because they happen to be Americans, because it may not be right for them to be anywhere else, to go and expend their efforts anywhere else. This is actually where we belong. This is our patrie right, this is our homeland, and we should be allowed to be

patriotic about it. And I want to qualify that, to be patriotic about the United States, I'm not I'm not being a nationalist chauvinist when I say that. I'm not saying raw rah rah USA. We've got to be the biggest. We've got to be the best. We've got to be the strongest. We've got to We've got to, as the Bush administration official said, we've got to pick up a shitty little country every once in a while and throw it against the wall, just to show the world that

we mean business. That's what a Bush administration official was quoted as saying on one occasion. That is not what I mean that's not my America. As Bill Kaufman said.

live in. A myth, if you will, Okay, it's a myth that makes sense of our government, a myth that makes sense of our policy goals. But here's my point. AA says, the gay is an American myth, the gay is an American ideal. We can see this in our history. I agree, but I contend strongly it is not the only myth, and we have a number of constructive things that are alternatives to this. Myths come and go in our history, and myths are forgotten, myths are shelved, we

move on to something else. We have many exams bolts of that in our history. But now maybe the perfect time for my thesis statement. Although the Gays is every bit as bad as AA says it is, I'm willing to make that concession, all right. And I'm not on board with the American Empire. I don't like it his thesis. AA's thesis that this was the destiny of America is incorrect and demoralizing, and it's incorrect and it's demoralizing to his American allies. And we want to be allied with

the dissident sphere. I certainly do. The United States was colonized by British people, and it became an empire, and it became an empire for a time, not so very unlike the British Empire. Americans have created good and bad political formulas to justify their powers. And these narratives must be a place where Americans can find inspiration and not to spare it. This is my contention. We have to have some constructive vision based on our shared experience in history.

like the founding stock Americans were British. But where do you kind of, I guess, to a certain degree, like draw the line of who is you know, truly American, right, because on one hand, right, you have the you know, the the Irish, the Germans, you know, the Italians, you know, the Swedes, Lithuanians, pollocks, everyone, right, And obviously there were waves of that and maybe fair enough the lines about nineteen sixty four plus or minus, and that would be

maybe a better one than others. But it does seem to be to be a certain extent kind of an arbitrary distinction, because there are fundamentally different types of Americans with a different conception of what that nation is.

world could imagine America without pizza? And that comes from the Italians, right, And for that matter, the Chinese food, you know, the inevitable American Chinese restaurant, which isn't even Chinese, you know, but it's what we call Chinese food. But this is the matter, this is where it all comes together.

We're all speaking English, and if we are to understand our own American story, if we're going to understand the war for Independence, if we're going to understand our own constitution, if we're going to understand the Declaration of Independence, we have to be plugged in to the British culture that gave all of that birth. So it's not just very Anglo Americans like me, and I'm very thoroughly British in my heritage, unusually, so both sides. It's my family or

very Anglo. It's not just me that have the blood ties here. It is the third generation Italian American that has no cultural memory vitaly at all, has has no connection with the language they're speaking English, They've inherited, they've assimilated, and now their story is wrapped up in British Americans.

it gives them, it gives them the background knowledge to be just as American as anyone else. But that isn't actually how it works. Someone who has knowledge of the English Civil War and cares about the sides that that fought in it, have a deeper knowledge of what's going on in American history. Those that know the difference between an Anglican and a Baptist and a Puritan, they're going

to have a much deeper knowledge. Now maybe they are, you know, by legacy, by inheritance, they're Greek Orthodox or Italian Catholic or something like that, they still have to understand those English issues in order to understand America. And that may sound particularist. It's harder for some than others. You and I, our ancestors go back to the early sixteen hundreds. Our ancestors were colonial Americans. For us, I really don't think it's all that hard, and I honestly

do and I know this is a controversial. Take the easiest way to explain this is that it is a legacy of the blood that's passed down from generation to generation. Of course, you can explain it that it's partly contact with parents and grandparents who talk about things, who have ways of explaining things, who have a kind of oral heritage that they pass down. Of course, that's part of it.

But is it not also in the blood of men, as Donald Davidson said, is it something put in a book only or also passed down that's actually part of our flesh. I think it makes sense to think of it that way to some degree, but it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that people with other heritage, bloodlines, people with different ancestry, people whose ancestors spoke another language up until this generation perhaps cannot claim some some place in

this society in the United States. It has meant that I'm thinking of African American Christians, for instance, all right, who up until the Civil War would worship with their white neighbors. That that is a very interesting story, and it's the story of assimilation. How did African Americans become Christian? How did they learn to speak English? And we can tell that story about about any any group potentially that has joined American society to some degree. There there are

those that identify, there are those that have assimilated. There are those that obey the laws, those that act like citizens. There are those that know the backstory to some degree, and there are those that don't. And of course that's not a good description of citizenship, but we see both in America, is is my general point. I'm not trying to be contentious.

And to me, again, I like paulic a bit, but he strikes me as someone and I feel like he would probably agree with this, who's essentially pro American empire, right, like we will use the American empire to essentially create like a pan European imperium, you know, to be to lead into the stars. You know, I don't know if that's one hundred percent right. But I've talked to him fairly recently and that seems like his point, and so

that is definitely one part of it. But to me, the the kind of American tradition that you and I are a part of is very firmly anti empire and very firmly I guess, localist and decentralized. So can you go into that distinction a little bit, kind of that that you know the on one hand, the kind of like you know, Lincoln Wilson tradition that you know Paul to a certain degree is a part of, and then maybe where you and I come from.

be dynamic. He wanted big banks. He wanted big business, he wanted big cities. He wanted American ports open to the world, he wanted American influence overseas. Hamilton's model was the British Empire, and I love, I love to remind my students on this point. It's a good thing to look at what works in history and to try to imitate it, and Hamilton was no fool. I also like to tell my students about Hamilton's views of debt. He's he said, a national debt for us, if not excessive,

will be a national blessing. And I like to remind them, you know, Hamilton is no dumb cop here. He actually knows something about what he's talking about, and he would be absolutely appalled to see our levels of debt today. But just the same, Jefferson was his antagonist, and I really I like to see a little Englander in Jefferson.

These these are the English dissenters of the imperial project of the British Empire, if you will, the ones that are content with a with an isolated agrarian Britain, who don't know what what the British army is doing in India. You know that they they like what they have and they want to keep it back in England. When I'm looking back at the American legacy, I like to see that in Jefferson. I am aware that's not entirely what he's after, but just the same, Jefferson did more than

anyone to advance that vision of American affairs. Jefferson wanted an agrarian state. He believed that Americans will care about politics only if they own property in this land. He did not think that a proletarian class could be effective citizens, or even citizens at all. Herbert Agar, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning Jeffersonian an American historian, Herbert Agar said Jefferson believed all men should have the vote because all men should have property, and for him, those things are

closely connected. Jefferson's vision of the United States was not a United States of big cities, not a United States of big factories, not a United States with any corporations at all, and he started a political heritage of small property owners that still resonates with Americans today. We have we have a Jefferson Monument in Washington, d C. For whatever that's worth it, just if nothing else, it shows us that vision is something that survived in America to

a very late date. I think the Jefferson Memorial ironically was commissioned by FDR.

from the prevailing prevailing culture. And I think that so much of what we've seen over the pandemic is essentially a move to essentially muscle that to essentially crush that group, right, to essentially incentivize everyone to be tied into the state, to the system, and to me right, this kind of like tradition of you know, independent small hold you know, when either it comes to literally farmers, right, or ranchers or friend tiersman you know, or kind of like the

you know, like the Roman you know, kind of like farmer warriors or that you know, the actual English yeomen Right, that's a deep tradition in the West. And I think that kind of fosters the type of kind of like truly like manful independence that is kind of central to so much of I guess like I guess like the Western project more broadly.

Actually having property is a way to have an unpopular opinion in the modern world. And this is something that has captured the American imagination. This is a really powerful point in our heritage that we relate to very strongly. Most Americans lived on farms up until World War Two. This d NATed city dwelling, proletarian American is a recent phenomenon. And the American independence of living in the country, having

one's own business, even farming as a hobby. To remember that way of life is something that many Americans aspire to deeply desire. We talk about fleeing the rat race in the cities Practically everyone I speak to says, oh, I don't want to live in the city. I want to live in the country. I want to be connected to the land. I hear that from my acquaintance as often. Perhaps I know I'm hanging out with certain people, But it's a mainstream idea in America just the same. And

this is the thing I wanted to reiterate this. Our elites are telling us that America is just an idea. America is nothing organic. America is not something your ancestors left to. You know, your ancestors were wicked. Our elites are telling us always that America's mission is to spread transsexual rights in Romania, all right, and they send ambassadors to for that specific purpose. I understand Americans resist this instinctually, maybe even forgetting the other narratives that can explain their

position and that they can relate to. And what I don't understand is some of our British friends, who who I love very much. I think of myself unironically as a colonial. I'm a child of the British Empire in a way. But them embracing this ideological, degenerate mission as as America's some purpose, and uh that that explains everything we need to know about Americans, or America or all that America could be. They're they're joining with our worst

enemies in saying that. They couldn't possibly mean to do that. They couldn't possibly mean to demoralize their own American allies by saying that. Which is why I want to be diplomatic and reach out to them and offer them on alternative. This this narrative that we just that we just talked about the narrative of Jefferson and Hamilton, Hamilton the imperialist booster, the big business guy, versus Jefferson, who has this small

vision of an agrarian America. It's a it's a more a more humble vision, certainly more independent, right, independent Americans who are not dependent on on a big government to regulate their lives, not dependent on a big business to employ them. They aren't paying monthly payments to the banks for you know, capital that they've got on loan out. That's Jefferson's vision and independent America, and that's a compelling

vision for us. It's one of our biggest alternative visions to what we have right now, and it's one that's still alive. Another vision I wanted to bring up was that of the imperialists of the turn of the century and the anti imperialists. Have you done much reading on this subject? Do you know these guys?

and the Miminican Republic and Cuba and other places. These these countries are not sovereign in any sense, but so so on the one side, you've got you've got the imperialist camp, which includes people like Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson said,

the idea of America is to serve humanity. And and it's like, oh, well, that's awful big and sounds so nice, but in fact it involves like sending the Marines to do the dirty work of big American banks who've loaned Haiti a bunch of money and they're going to get it back with interest. William McKinley, the president at the time of the Spanish American War, he said the conquest was for humanity's sake. He said that we wanted to uplift and civilize and christianize these these uh lesser people's

around the world, especially the Filipinos. No one bothered to tell McKinley that they were Roman Catholic or mostly Roman Catholic at the time, but that may not have mattered to McKinley. He was, he was speaking to a very Protestant audience.

You know, at first it was you know, our they hate our freedom, you know, kind of like all the endless like George Bushism's you know, and then currently, right, we're still in the same wards. But now it's about you know, ensuring that that girls can read. You know. So the state religion, you know, as it is, has changed very much, but the core impulse is not.

reconstruction in the American South. One of them was George Horror of Massachusetts, who was a senator from Massachusetts, and yes his name was Horror, just Hoar, I believe. But he was an anti imperialist. He got and made several speeches against the colonization of the Philippines, said the Filipinos should be following the declaration of independence, the Filipinos should

be allowed to choose their own destiny. But another of Mark Twain, is another one of the famous anti imperialists, and he was maybe the most eloquent of the bunch. He gave us a famous version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which you ought to look up. It's one of the most amusing things he wrote on the anti imperialist vein. But my favorite is General Smedley Butler of the United States Marine Corps, who won the Medal of Honor twice, and he came out strongly against these

imperialist projects in Central America and elsewhere. He said it was a racket. He said, famously, war is a rat backet. And he claimed that he was sent on all the campaigns he went on. He went to China during the Boxer Rebellion, for instance, he went to the Philippines, he went to Nicaragua, he went to Haiti and Cuba. And he claimed that most of his missions involved securing the collateral of Wall Street banks and collecting their profits.

the Civil War. But what I found especially interesting in it is that that I guess, like the amount of sway that the financial industry has had as it relates to kind of like US military endeavors, has always been there. So a large section of the book, which is well

worth your time. It's you know, a little bit rare, but not too hard to find for anyone in Chatty is interested essentially deals with the immense amount of corruption in the in the Lincoln government, and I mean all the way down to you know, much like the same

system of government contractors. You know, we kind of like know and loved today that was very much alive that And so it's odd because on one hand you kind of have this the same like urge to you know, private enterprise, which is in many ways kind of like essential to I guess kind of like the yeoman you know, the yeoman farmer, the you know, the homesteader, that archetype that we spoke about earlier. In a certain degree, you know,

they're kind of the same thing that doomed us. You know, it's like we almost we formed that, we forged the change for our own risks, if you see what I mean.

it attracts a stupendous amount of corruption. And it was following the Lincoln administration, the reconstruction governments like the Grant administration, it was from that time that we spawned the term lobbyist for the people that were looking for government contracts, the people that were willing to stuff the pockets of congressmen who were willing to pass them those government contracts. They were waiting in the lobbies, waiting to give the

congressman rich gifts and take them off to dinner. That's what lobbyists do to get the ears of the congressmen and to get some of that sweet government money.

of like positive vision out of this? Is there some way that we get out of this or is this all just kind of like some golden past we can kind of fondly look back on.

got the Bolsheviks. You could look at the ancient regime in France and things were going badly, and what did they get? They got Rospierre, you know. And I don't want to see reigns of terror in my country. So I need a positive vision. Americans do need a positive vision, and that is essentially my point in my thesis. We have to look back on our history and we have to see things worth believing it. We have to see things worth loving. This land is not going to get

any better if someone doesn't love it. Now, I will contend, and this is where I want to make another concession. I would be very happy to see Washington d c emptied. I would be very happy to see this continent balkanized. I think that would be the best thing to happen to it. Rather like our British friends say, they hope that American influence in Europe will subside and allow the nations of Europe to find themselves and govern themselves once again,

to find their own independent voices once again. That is my hope for the peoples of this big continent over here. We have a great many regions and distinctive peoples over here. They have also been the targets of the violence and the social engineering of the gay and this this arguably started before the Civil War. The the hymn of the Gay, you could, you could say, the song that you can well imagine them singing is the battle Hymn of the Republic,

which is a Civil war song. It it imagines the armies of the Federal Union as the armies of God himself, and they are out to to h stamp out the grapes of wrath on the earth. They are out to do away with evil. They are going to bring up men before the judgment seat This is all very apocalyptic imagery. And of course the chorus is glory, glory, hallelujah. Our God is marching on. But what God is that? It's the American government that has taken the place of God.

The actions of the American government are now a pseudo religion, a false religion. The alternative I see to that is also a song, and it's Dixie. It's a love of the land that you belong to. And what does Dixie say? This is one of the most famous songs to come from America, and it's not a song. It's not a vision that should threaten anyone, least of all Americans. This should be a song Americans love and know. I happen

to have a summer job. I was a Civil War tour guide on a bus and I had had lots of Boomers from all over the country, and I liked them very much, and they're the sorts of people that can still appreciate this sort of thing. I would sing the Battle Hymn the Republic to them in the midst of my Civil War tour, and I also would sing Dixie to them, and I talked to them a bit about both, and they loved them. Both, and that was

so reassuring to see. When I sing Dixie for my students, they think I'm being controversial, and that shouldn't be the case. What is Dixie. Dixie is like the country music that is so famous as a as an export from the United States. Some of it's better than others, admittedly, But Dixie is a song about loving your home because it's yours. It's where we live and die in Dixie Land, where I was born. Early on one frosty morning, look Away, look Away, look Away, Dixie Land. I wish I was

in Dixie to live and die in Dixie. It's about human life, right. We're born in a place, we belong to that place, that place belongs to us. We love it because it's ours, not because it's perfect, not because it's big, not because it's wealthy, not because Starbucks is better than whatever other coffee you might drink. That's not why we love America. We love America because it's ours, and we need to have a positive vision of it. We need to have a vision of its health, we

need to have a vision of its happiness. We need to embody that vision in our own lives and ambitions. That's my contention here. That's ultimately the point of my thesis, and I'd be happy to see Americans realize that vision one hundred different ways without the gay forcing their own corrupt degeneracy on us.

quinet essentially America. But as we were talking before, there is something kind of certain cultures have almost like potemic symbols, right like the for the Chinese, it's the wall, for the Russians, it's the open plane. And I think that there's something to be said for there's kind of a a wanderlust to being America, right, like it's the open road.

And I live that out myself, like I'm both very much a particularist and I get it, like I love, I love where I live, but also like I get the get this kind of just urge to drive, you know, And I've driven, you know, a thousand miles to your place, you know, once or twice already. And how do you kind of square that circle of that kind of like almost baseline kind of like contradiction in the American spirit.

and I want to drive. And I wonder if the car is the American symbol in Spingler sense. It wouldn't be a bad choice for that, I think, And that's both both good and bad for us, I think. But this is also part of my point these narratives that I've been talking about, the Hamiltonians and Jefersonians, the Lincolnites and the Southerners, the imperialists and anti imperialists. There's good and bad in these things, Like none of them are all that we want them to be, but all of

them are us, all right. They're part of our legacy when we think about America and what America has been, and what America has stood for and aspired to and things like that, and in some abstract sense, it's all of those things in a really spooky way. America is Rosie O'Donnell and Jerry Folwell, and I know this is just just preposterous. America is Trump and Biden. This is really strange, and you know, it kind of shows how

far we've come. Henry Adams said, if you look at the progression of presidents from Washington to Grant, then it's enough to disprove Darwin's theory of evolution. This is a really wild thing to say. How many people would include Lincoln in that lineup? Imagine Lincoln is in that lineup. Henry Adams certainly did put Lincoln in that lineup. But just the same we have good and bad narratives. Some of them are better, some of them are worse. But it's us that is our legacy. We need to be

okay with that. It's kind of looking like looking in the mirror and seeing an ugly worn out phase, but you know it's yours right well, And.

them down. I just mean that the level of problems that they have are fundamentally different than ours. You know, it's kind of like Baser levels of the hierarchy of needs. But in the or you get essentially that there is there is something to a place being yours. You know, in a place does it become lovely, It doesn't become kind of like worth dying for unless someone is essentially willing to kind of put in the blood, sweat and tears, you know. And I think that the negative side of that,

like oh well, just hit the open road. You know, things got rough, let's go out, let's head out of town, is essentially this like idea of always kind of like eternally searching for a greener pasture. You know, in the moment that something kind of like comes into your hometown, and you know, it makes things a little bit inconvenient. It's like, all right, well, we're headed off to Austin, or we're headed off to Atlanta, or we're headed off to you know, whatever the next big city is to,

you know, make it big and look like obviously. There's a certain amount of time when, you know, when God says, hey, Abraham, you've been living in your dad's proverbial basement your entire life. Leave. You know, there's a time when you know, Jesus and his family had had to flee to Egypt. I'm not denying that, right, there's a time to pick up your bedroll and go. But I think that there is a negative side of that in America, which leaves this kind

of like disposable everything. Everything is just you know, designed to be essentially like packed into a suitcase, and then all of a sudden you're a you know, a new man in a new city.

for hundreds of years. And you can still find that in America today, in the older cores of cities where the houses are still worth renovating. Right. But I agree with what you're saying very much. Americans. Americans were diagnosed by Wendelberry at one point. Wendeleberry, the essayist and poet.

He said that Americans fall into two categories. They are movers or stickers, or that he might have said boomers in the sense that they go from boom to boom, or they or they stick around no matter what the fortunes are from the place. And we see that with the major American cities these days, where, in particular, to be to be quite frank about it, the white populations

have abandoned their institutions. They've abandoned their old churches, their ancestral materies, they've abandoned their family homes, they've abandoned the businesses that they've built in those old legacy American cities, and they've abandoned them to the underclass, or they've abandoned them to the recent immigrants, and they've gone on, they've

gone away to the suburbs. Right. I can think of so many dichotomies of the old city that you've heard about and then the wealthy, overwhelmingly white suburb that you've never heard about. And that's where the core of that old city moved to. Right. They're still adjacent to where they're from, but they didn't stick around. And you know, the phenomenon of white flight is a good one to examine, and ultimately it seems to me to just be a lack of courage. But we know the institutions are all

set against them. We know the government itself has set very much against them, and that's a story to tell. But the American way is frequently to leave the troubles and go somewhere else. I also relate very much to what you're talking about with our South African friends, who

I also enjoy very much listening to. And this is another point in which I suppose I'll differ from Paul Fahrenheit at least what I know about Paul's position, which I want to be clear, I'm not entirely clear about, and I'm sure that he could clarify it.

until a new tenancy begins. Find out more about the phased introduction of these changes at RTB dota E from the Residential Tendencies Board.

dysfunctional society. But as I said before, being the heritage peoples of the United States means that we have a lot of insider knowledge, and we have the examples of so many other oppressed minorities, specifically targeted minorities in history,

that nevertheless were disproportionately prosperous in their countries. I'm thinking of the Christian minorities and the Ottoman Empire, for instance, who in like nineteen hundred they owned like over seventy five percent of the property in Constantinople, you know, and they were a small part of the population, but they did extremely well. And this was in spite of the

special taxes that only Christian Greeks had to pay. This was in spite of the Janis saries like take king away their eldest male sons from them as a form of taxing. They still did ridiculously well in the Ottoman Empire,

and they lived rather peaceably. That's an interesting story to tell, and perhaps eventually we'll end up telling stories like that to ourselves, will be like the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire, you know, telling stories about ourselves under the authority of the Ottoman sultans.

this has I don't mean this to be misconstrued. I almost wonder if I almost wonder if minority status would this is delicate, I almost wonder if it would be better, just because it kind of it forces a type of a group awareness that I think it is all too easy to easy to kind of take, all too easy to sorry, And this is I'm being a little bit delicate here, for both the sakes of YouTube and to

say explicitly what I mean. I think that for kind of legacy Americans, it has been all too easy to kind of just naively assume that while everyone thinks about things the way we do, you know, when we were ninety eighty seventy percent of America, but I think that when that becomes, you know, twenty or thirty percent, you have to act much more deliberately. And that might not be the worst thing about it.

are climbing. This is very disturbing stuff, and I cannot help but relate that to the decline of legacy America. Generally, these people also see it. It causes many to despair, and once again I return to my point, this can be part of our conclusion. We've been going on for an hour.

for ourselves and our posterity. There's nothing in there about immigrants. Now, that ended up being part of the American story, and that's a complex story of how immigration became so deeply wrapped up in our idea of America. It's another narrative, and it has an awful lot to do with John F. Kennedy. All Right, Kennedy is the origin of our aligned nation of immigrants. He popularized that term. Kennedy is recent. All right.

Our ideas about the American people are much older than Kennedy, and there's no reason why Kennedy should win that narrative be the only thing we think about when we think about what who constitutes the American nation. We have other ideas to go with that are not despairing to us. When Kennedy reformed the immigration policy. It was it was something like eighty three percent of the United States was descended from Europe in settlers. That's not very long ago, folks.

A lot has changed since then. I get that. But what I'm saying is that we have other stories that we tell. Now, why is the gay so emphatic to identify and destroy anything that it recognizes as white supremacy? What is the code for that? It's about European Americans, It's about white Americans. Anything that white Americans built, anything that white Americans value, is we know on the chopping block to be canceled for being racist or exclusionary or something.

Look at what happens to white institutions in South Africa. We know that's coming for institutions we value generally in this country. But we need, we do need stories to tell our own people that does not leaving, does not leave them thinking, oh, I must be a racist, I need to die. Okay, that that doesn't help us. It hurts us. And Americans have something valuable to offer. We have something valuable to offer North America. We should give it to our own. We have a duty there. But

and I say this and I'm conscious conscientious here. I do not want to sound like I'm wanting to export imperial ideologies. That's the last thing I want to do. But America has had a role as being a kind of beacon or source of hope for other peoples who are struggling in the world, and it's been so many

things to so many people. I'm not I'm not talking specifically about the myth of the Shining City on the Hill, but that that has been a powerful sort of image for this If we Americans can can get some of our shit here together to be frank, if we can if we can have functional institutions, if we can be faithful Christians, if we can build functional families and raise our children and teach them effectively, and they can pass this on to theirs, and we can love this land

a little bit. This this this land that's been horribly abused and wasted, if we can give it some love and adornment. We can encourage our friends in other countries just by that example. I think we have something to offer. I really do, and I love this country. I want to be realistic about the problems we're facing, though right they're they're very significant and things aren't looking good right now. But that doesn't mean that we throw out all of

our fond, fear of feelings about America. If we do that, we might as well. I don't know what people who throw out all all of their fond feelings about America, what do they do? Do they go to West Virginia and take meth I don't know, but I don't think it's going to be very good. Why not? Why not join the enemy? Right? Why not push transgender ideology? If that is all America is going to be? Why not

join the state Department? Why not push this stuff? I don't agree that, but I don't agree with that because I don't believe that's what America is. My America is small, My America's regional, My America's mine.

on YouTube. Also, it will be correctly up on any podcatcher you know, Apple, Spotify. However, you guys listen to podcasts. We got an exciting episode coming up Normal Son on Thursday, Thomas seven seven and I are going to be talking about the middle class, so be sure to catch that one, and remember, guys, keep your head up well. I can't last forever. Good night everyone, Good night. All right, George Bagby, welcome back to the show.

so to speak. But that said, the reason I invited you back, Bagby is because obviously our last show, which is one that I really enjoyed, was kind of on the nature of you know, America and American culture, and that was kind of looking forward to a debate, a discussion, whatever you want to call it on Academic Agent's Channel, you know, between he Furious, pertinax Y Is and Paul you know who are all you know, one degree and

other friends of the channel. And I think all of us, you know, been kind of aware of the discourse around you know, America, you know, the global American empire, American culture. And I think that you and I both were you know, not particularly happy with how that discussion. And obviously, before we get into this, this is in no way a personal slight on any of these guys, is you know,

I like all of them. They're all you know, friendly to me, and you know, by virtue of the fact that they're not here, this is going to be an abstract view of their opinions. You know, we might get some things wrong, but all the same, I think that we wanted to have a discussion about that.

own ancestors, it destroys us. There's a writer who I really love, a Russian dissident, a Christian historian named Burdaiev Nikolai Burdaiev, and he was exiled by the Bolsheviks and such. He's a very interesting fellow and I've done a lot of work on him. But he said something very succinct about this. He said, without the love of country, a man is unable to create. And it does not seem coincidental to me that in this stage of the history

of the West, family formation is falling apart. People are walking away from any sense of responsibility to raise the next generation, people are voluntarily sterilizing themselves and numbers. All of these things really are connected, and it is based in an attitude and a kind of loyalty to the patree, right, the native land patree. We can translate that from the French as fatherland if you will. The words are related, you know, patrimony, paternity, All of these things are all

connected linguistically. People feel alienated from their homes. People feel separated from their ancestors. People have antipathy towards their ancestors and their homes. And this is not just an American phenomenon. We remember a couple of summers ago, the phenomenon of mobs taking to the streets and pulling down the statues and the rest of it. And that has not stopped. You know, that was only the opening movement of a broader campaign but this is going on across the West.

It's not just Americans. I remember meeting German college students back when I was in graduate school and talking with them about their heritage, because I knew enough to know that Germany was a substantial place that was deserving of respect and love. And yet my German college age peers could only dunk on their heritage. That was all they could say about it. And these chickens are coming home

to roost. If you will, you know that a society that does not honor their fathers and their mothers, a society that actively hates their own ancestors, is a society without a future. So I'm deeply invested in this issue. I think it's a basic responsibility of a humanities teacher, which which is what I am, to cultivate these kinds

of loyalties. And it's an uphill battle these days. But this is the discussion AA's cigar Stream Academic Agents cigar Stream just recently was about the question, and I wanted to return to that once again kind of kind of to go through the talking points of that and see what we can make of it. I'm going to say something potentially very unpopular here, once academic Agent had a chance to clarify some of his more controversial choices in wording.

Let's say he did publish a series of syllogisms outlining his argument for the cigar stream. Found that distillation of his basic argument theory illuminating. And it wasn't the cigar stream itself which had its problems. It was his syllogisms that and his clarifications, I must say, and have left me in a peculiar situation with some qualifications. And I would want to clarify, and I'd want some disclaimers along the way. I will announce myself in agreement with academic agents argument.

a modern Bailey move, you know. And maybe these are unrelated conversations that got pulled into one another because I feel like at first there was kind of the discussion about American culture, you know, which I felt a certain degree kind of baited by, and that was things that I obviously all of us on these side of things agree, kind of the debase nature of culture across the West, you know, Jersey Shore, and you know and and Lizzo and you know other kind of like things of that

of that nature, and so it was frustrating, kind of feeling like you were getting blamed for something you obviously

don't support. And so I think that got a lot of people's hackles up, and I made a lot of people angry, and it caused a lot of people to kind of reactively, you know, say things they probably didn't mean, or disagree with things that they ordinarily would because honestly, and I've said multiple times, you know, even talking to the Norwegian guys you know over at Longhouse, that I can't help but kind of agree with European anti americanism,

you know, I do. I find myself in agreement with AA's written arguments, not necessarily kind of like the ones you put up on Twitter or t Gram.

has to do with the cultural export to Europe. But this is this is one of those points that I wonder why would we contend on that issue? As an American, I have nothing in vest did in the garrisons captain Europe. I think that the American Empire is wasteful and presumptuous. The United States government does not have any mandate to police the world. The United States government has no mandate

to occupy Europe or tell Europe what to do. And I'm I'm willing to take the argument from our British friends. Tell me is furious pertinacts British because I don't actually know he's Australian.

things against their political interests. They are likely to be experiencing blackouts in the middle of the winter. They're unlikely to be able to heat their homes this winter because they are so obviously acting against their essential interests as sovereign countries, as traditional nations who supposedly have governments representing their interests. I don't know how else to explain that, other than they're obviously under the control of their enemies.

Our British friends would like to blame DC on the same grounds that DC hates the likes of US and wants to destroy US culture as well, wants to destroy our religious adherents, wants to corrupt our children. They are they speak openly on these things. I don't know, And with respect to our American friends in this in this argument, I don't know why they would be unwilling to admit that and to make concessions and declare a kind of common cause. The DC regime is the enemy of the

dissident right. They did openly declare themselves to be so, and it seems to me that AA's assertion that we should have a common cause to clear them out, which in our case means wanting the dissolution of the regime in Washington d c ought to be something we can agree on, American or not. Now we Americans have taken exception to academic agents rhetoric in his choice of words. AA keeps saying America is cancer, and America has no culture,

and America is a made up nation and things like that. Okay, he has since qualified himself. I think he said those things disturb things up, and my goodness, didn't he It was very successful disturb things up and to tick us off. Rile is up. But he has since qualified himself. He says that at best, the United States is a collection of peoples. Well, I happen to be in the habit of referring to the American nations or American peoples, which

may end up being some kind of regional phenomenon. So it's uh, it's not a It's still not going to be like European ethnicities, and I'm not claiming that it is. But let's let's have that discussion later. Okay, Let's let's.

the historic conception. At one point in our history, we would have talked about the American people, and we would have meant white Anglo Saxon Protestants who were running things right, who conquered the country, named the country, created the laws of the country, so on and so forth. Up until the nineteen sixties, they still constituted over eighty percent of citizens. So people could speak that way and it made more sense.

And that wasn't very long ago. Paul Fahrenheit has talked about this, and kudos to him, give him credit where it's due. I think he's correct on this point. But the idea that the United States or that Americans just believe a proposition and that's what makes them Americans, that has become mainstream. I accept that. I agree that that's a mainstream idea. I don't blame anyone who assumes that that's what Americans have always meant. You kind of have

to get into the history to know otherwise. I was talking in our last stream about different narratives of American history, and that was part of my point. The propositional nation is a narrative of American history. Then the next syllogism, propositions spread like viruses, mutating and replicating themselves on other hosts. Syllogism a the United States is not a true nation, it's a propositional one third point of the syllogism, the United States is a virus that always seeks to replicate

even as it mutates. So the United States, in other words, is imperial in its basic composition. The third syllogism, liberalism is moral syphilis. The United States sees it as its divine mission to spread liberalism around the world. Therefore, the United States is moral syphilis. This is AA's syllogism. So he's saying that the United States and its central composition is a liberal internationalist project. At a certain point, it

certainly becomes a liberal internationalist project. I do not deny that that becomes the ruling regime in Washington, d c. Arguably in eighteen ninety eight with the Spanish American War, where the out and out imperialist party dominates the actions and foreign policy of the federal government. Now at that point in our history, we actually still have a lot of high quality dissenters. They are elites. These are not people that are excluded from positions of power. These are

not non political people. They are very political people. They are members of the old ruling class. They have a lot of clout, They have money. They begin a famous committee, the Anti Imperialist League, They have publications, they have famous spokesmen like Mark Twain and such. And the anti war tradition in the United States is still around. We still have groups like anti war dot Com, which has really been keeping the light alive all of these years through

the War on Terror. We have people like Ron Paul who really did strike a strike a chord with his presidential runs, his campaigns, and of course he's still around. He did take a lot of those campaign contributions, and he's set up a media enterprise, so he's he's still with us, and his people are still making a difference that the anti imperialist tradition in the American story is still something that's alive. It's still something that's vital. And I but I also I don't deny AA's point here.

I just want to qualify myself. Is any one of the opinion that there is a dissenting group of elites in power in Washington, DC that does not favor the American empire that's trying to bring at all home. I'm under no illusions about this. Donald Trump did not run on an anti imperialist platform. If anything, it was just an old fashioned imperialist platform. I don't know if you remember when he had an interview was it with George Stephanopoulos where Trump said, we we should have made the

war in Iraq to our profit. We should have taken their oil.

kind of like Scotch Irish Anglo core. You know. It's that the people who made the empire for for good or ill, you know, initially are no longer the beneficiaries of it.

They should never be sent into some some nation building project that's been that's been concocted in the Pentagon or the State Department, that is immoral. And I have believed that my entire adult life. I I fully realize I'm in a minority on this. Americans are are usually imperialists and take it for granted. They don't, they don't call themselves imperialists. But tell an American, let's bring the troops home.

We can't police the world. Why are Americans in practically every country in the world there is there is some American presence, some American military presence. We readily can list off the ones where the American military does have no troops. Russia, North Korea, China, Iran, countries like that where we have no troops on the ground, also completely dysfunctional countries like Somalia right where if we were there, we would be running the place.

are not a traditional nation. We are special. We have a divine mission, as AA put it in his syllogism, some divine mandate to police the world, to resolve differences, to establish peace among the heathen or something like that, and that is that's also preposterous. That's also unlimited commitment, and it's it's not responsible. I mean, I don't really need to say all of this, But the United States is an empire. The United States is made of many peoples.

That's one of the definitions of empire. The United States has this global presence. The United States has this presumption that it can insert itself in itself into the sovereign affairs of any country in the world and tell them what to do. Thankfully, some of the stuff is breaking down. Americans will learn real limits. But I see no reason why this regime deserves to survive. AA's argument that it ought to be dissolved. For these given reasons, I am

in agreement with them, with some qualification. I would like to see, as I said on the last stream, I'd like to see the Union dissolved. I think that that would be a good thing for everyone involved. I think we've gone enough through AA's argument here for me to properly qualify myself. But we return again to this question of patriotism. So patriotism does not mean that you're boosting all the actions of your government. It doesn't mean raw raw raw. We want DC to win whenever they get

into a fight. Patriotism means love of your place, love of the people that put you there, some affirmation of your heritage. You see something redeeming about where you came from what you are. And this is very important because we very seldom transcend that Homer said, the son is seldom better than his father. I think we can look at experience to bear that out. If we want to know what we can be, we look at our parents. That's the first place that we look. What are our characteristics?

What can we do with our lives? Our parents give us the primary image of those things, which is one of the reasons why we're commanded in scripture to love our father and mother, the first command given with a promise that our days may be long on the land the Lord, our God has given us. So we need to take into account our circumstances so that we can see what does it mean to love this country and

what should we do under these circumstances. A writer that I love on this point, who is popular in our circles, A guy that you really ought to go and read if you haven't already. Thanks to Imperium Press he is once again readily accessible. We have an awful lot to be thankful for. There at Imperium Press, they've started republishing the works of Joseph de Maistro. So go and get your copy. If you haven't already, you need to read him. He's the ultimate.

and bad qualities of a particular nation. To find the laws that suit it, we need to know what our situation is. And I regret that we were in serious decline culturally. We are not well suited to be governed by the Philadelphia Constitution anymore. It's not that we've outgrown it, it's that we've grown too small for it. We've become morally stunted. Think of what President John Adams said that the Constitution is fit for a religious people only. It's

wholly unsuited for an irreligious people. We still have a lot more religious adherents than Europe, and of course that's partly a regional phenomenon. Some parts of the country are far more religious than others. And I truly love my history. I do deeply love this country, and it does not please me to say it. But the Constitution is not limiting our government. The Constitution has failed to limit our government, and the Constitution is no longer the fit framework to

rule a people such as us. And I will return back to AA's point, the Union would be best to be dissolved. Now I realized that could mean civil war once again. What happened last the last time the Union was declared dissolved, and I don't want war. I'm a reluctant radical in this sense. I'm just saying what we have doesn't work and holding on to it out of a misplaced loyalty to our heritage and past one I'm a mistake I'm very likely to make. By the way, I have a lot of sympathy for those in those

circumstances that feel a loyalty to the old Republic. My contention is that it's gone. It was dissolved in several revolutions, the Civil War, the New Deal, the Wilson administration. Maybe these things should not have happened, and we can talk about that in an academic setting, but still they have happened. Their fade a complete, and we need to measure our circumstances. Now,

what is fit to rule us? Now? On your telegram channel a couple of days ago, I wrote a series of resolutions with this in mind, just to get just to get some feedback from our crowd on on your private chat. One of one of the things that I wrote was resolved the veneration of the Constitution at this late hour of our history has done more to paralyze than hell help our political allies, and thus the Constitution ought to be called a failed attempt to limit the government.

And I also asked, I guess more out of curiosity. I have my own opinions about this, but we need to ask questions about what comes afterwards. Ryan turnip Seed has been insightful on this point. I'm not sure he's written at length on it, but he's at least made comments on this point that we have to have a positive vision so that we know we aren't jumping from the frying pan into the fire. We obviously don't want things to get worse. I'm not sure that the Constitution

is really helping us at this point. It is. It's clay in the hands of the judges, right. But another resolution that I shared with your group, and I'd be very curious for feedback here. By the way, resolved the end of the union could lead to non republican forms of government.

the constitutionalists and the boomer counts want. But it's hard for me to imagine a world in which it isn't kind of at least wearing the symbols of what has kind of come before it. So recently, obviously, like I said before, I've been ill. And so what I do when I get ill is I essentially go through the Distributis backlog and there's kind of like a big playlist as I kind of like sit there.

essentially like constitutional libertarianism. But he essentially he uses this analogy of essentially calling it a you know, a ghost dance, right, which was something that the Plains Indians did, you know, as kind of the US US military kind of like drove them from their lands, which is they essentially were like, all right, well, well what did we do when we

were great? And what did we do when we were powerful? Well, we did ghost dances, you know, we did these elaborate religious ceremonies, you know, kind of doing something that is it's almost it's comforting to do. You know, it's something that's kind of embedded in the cultural memory, and it is something associated you know, at a time in which you were you were great, right, but that's not necessarily

the reason you were great. There were other things and merely kind of like aping that won't won't bring it back, you know, it won't make it won't make the cowbalry go away. And so to me, a lot of I feel like constitution worship is very much the same thing. You know, it's like, oh, well, if we just do the constitution more, do the constitution harder, we can essentially

like stave it back. And I think that you know, at Domeister's point, it stands right that essentially like a constitution, And I realized this kind of flies in the face of a lot of you know, like our history, especially when it comes to kind of judicial history, right, that there is really something to be said that kind of like a constitution is made for a people at a certain time.

There is some polling organization or some social research organization. I just cited their name, c SPI. I'm not sure who they are, what that stands for, but they just recently published some sort of survey of American college students and according to their survey, forty percent are identifying as LGBTQ. And of course that does not mean that forty percent are getting sterilized, but we do know that those numbers are rising very sharply, and there is a serious social

contagion there. The generation that we see coming into adulthood is not going to successfully reproduce itself. That in itself, that's really catastrophic. All the talk right now is about inflation. We have very serious deflation on the horizon as well, and maybe maybe our lords and masters know that, which is why they have inflated right now. I don't know. That's all speculation, and I have a bad track record of making those kinds of bets. But still we're in

a really bad situation. People, Americans in particular, will be seriously disillusioned with our institutions are already. Institutional trust is at record lows across the board. COVID did a lot to undermine trust in the police, trust in the medical institutions, Congress has been you know, rated in the single digits for a long time, for ten years or more. You know what institutions do Americans really trust anymore? These things

really could collapse. And here's here's where I think that I'm actually I could actually be accused of being too optimistic, all right. I think that in my hopeful proposal to divide the Union in any way, Okay, I'm not really particular about that at all. All it would take would be one state or one region to try to do it, and that would set off the other regions and states. A lot of people would get the idea as soon

as anyone tried it, just like in eighteen sixty. By the way, but that actually gives us a chance to preserve something. I am not at all of the opinion that we can realistically ah that we that we could dream or plan to seize the institutions of power in this society today. Call it the populist delusion, if you will. I don't. I don't think that it works, and if it got any traction, it would be fortified. Call me a black pillar, okay, but let's be realistic about our situation.

I don't put stock in that I think. I think that we either wait for it to begin to collapse and then we act, and by doing so we can we can preserve the things, some of the things that we love. We can reconstitute some institutions. I think that universities should be dissolved and reconstituted from scratch. Maybe I don't know. We would want to give them the same names they had before, but you know, the physical plant is worth something. But you'd have to have very stringent

interviews to hire back any faculty or staff. Compared to the universities we have now, the universities we have now turned people into transsexual socialists. Let's be clear, and that's what they're meant to do at this stage. If they aren't doing that, they are failing in their mission statements.

Let's not delude ourselves. The same for the public school system, right, in no sense, our school boards run by parents or members of the community in touch or or in charge with what goes on in the public schools, and the kind of propaganda and subversion that is pitched to the students, and it's wrecking them, is rendering them not just incapable of loving their country or relating to their ancestors in a meaningful way, but it is alienating them from their

parents and faith. As a teacher, I've been with public school teachers. I have heard public school teachers tell me, frankly, they understood their goals as teachers to separate children from the faith and teaching of their parents and churches. A public school teacher has formulated that clearly for me, I don't want to save those institutions. I'm not a conservative. I think I spent most of my adult life calling myself a conservative. I'm a radical. I'm not trying to

save those institutions. Let them go to hell. But I love my country. I suppose i'm I suppose I'm I really am opening myself up to a charge of treason, and I am taking that seriously. But I do not want to be ruled by DC. The constitution no longer suits us. Our institutions are thoroughly corrupt, and I suppose I could take a quietest approach and hope that we can survive like Amish communities on the fringes of society.

But I would rather rather see conservative red states, if you will, strike out on their own, and obviously, if blue states did and founded socialist dictatorships or you know, radical people's republics or something. I would actually cheer that on as well, because it would at least get us thinking about how to survive. AA had an interesting point

in that stream. He said the communist experiments had a funny result and that they shored up social institutions because communism is such a bad system, the only way they could possibly survive was to shore up social institutions, which is a fair point. I mean, it's I'm not I'm not endorsing that, but it is a fair point.

is I think the real like dividing line. It's really kind of important between kind of like the Americans in this scene, you know, where essentially and I think that this really is, you know, what we can describe as the lines between the either the radicals and the conservatives or the radicals and the reactionaries, you know, and if the idea is essentially and this is what I think you see with kind of like the softer edge of our movement, is the idea that well, well, the problem

is just you know, we essentially went wrong somewhere in the past, you know, fifty one hundred years, you know, and it all would have been fine if we had just kind of stuck to those you know, original principles. And I have a certain degree of sympathy for that.

But the idea that you can essentially just go back upstream, you know, a decade or two at a time, and then just freeze it there, you know, that you can just be like, all right, well we can go back to you know, kind of like two thousand, or go back to you know, nineteen fifty five. I'm just not convinced. And I'm honestly, I'm a little bit confused how you can and maybe you don't think that directly, but how you can think that in effect and still out in these circles. And I don't know.

where I record this. But to me, there's something to be said for the fact that like that is you know, much like a constitution that is an idea kind of serted suited for a situation. You know, that is an idea that you know, realistically right, like a conservative tact made sense, you know, in the nineteenth century, made sense in the seventeenth century. But now it's almost like and this is not a you know, a particularly original point, but it's like, well, what is there what is there

left to conserve? You know, this actually like the post seventies economic system of US just you know, bullying everyone around with the petro dollar, you know. And it's hard because I share your kind of like love for you know, your love for my country. It just is is kind of and so I find myself in an odd spot, like you said, kind of like dancing around this kind of like trees and this idea, and I very much

find myself, you know, in agreement with you. And it's not something that I take likely and it's not something that I am I guess comfortable with in the sense that I think in a different time, I would, you know, be very much a patriot, but now I can't. It's hard to describe myself as such.

facing these things. And other times like now, it was the year of the lockdowns and such, and I remember having the conversation several times that we are nothing like those men. Now there is no Samuel Adams among us. If there was, there would have been more resistance to the destruction of those years. In one sense, I remember, I remember my reflection those the years of the COVID

stuff was from Julius Caesar. Cassius says Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods, and he says Caesar would not be a wolf if the Romans were not cheap. I remember reflecting on hl Mincoln's reflections or hl Mincin's quotes about Americans being sheep led to the slaughter, Americans being meek followers of malicious demagogues, And we ought to know that about ourselves. We ought to know our limitations, our weaknesses. But I love this country. I contend I

love it. It's mine. There are perhaps other countries more lovable, more lovely, but this is mine, and I belong to it, and it belongs to me, and my destiny is tied up in it. But I think that we we can think of ourselves as more traditional nations, and we can we can imagine other political destinies for ourselves. The Constitution should not be a suicide pact, and we ought to be able to think of our destiny outside of it. We have something to fall back on, ready made for us.

That's part of our historical inheritance, and that is the states themselves. The states themselves are are still political units. They do not command much loyalty from their citizens anymore. Their citizen and don't necessarily identify themselves with through states anymore. They may have this ideological national conception. They may live, they may just think of themselves as Americans. They don't

think of themselves in relation to their native state. But regional and state identities still do exist, and that is something that we may fall back on eventually. I hope we do well.

what I mean. A nation is in like a you know, an identifiable ethnos and then nation state and those are are two very different things, you know, And you've said before on the stream, right the idea of kind of

the peoples of America. You know that there are you know, multiple kind of like independent cultures that really are and obviously they haven't essentially you know really since you know, the last one hundred years speaven before that they haven't really been treated as such, but they really are kind of irreconcilable differences between people who live here, you know, and that is I think become more and more apparent.

And it is frustrating, right when you see from your friends the kind of like Linconian and wilson Esk like rhetoric that you, ordinarily they would kind of disagree with. You know, when someone punches them in the nose, they you know, they flash red and turn into Abraham Lincoln again.

the minority here. Most Americans will will make nation a synonym for government. That is our accepted usage. I do not deny that, but I say that it clouds clear thinking on the subject. Now, this is this is actually one of the things that made people will really upset with AA when he was saying America must be destroyed and things like that just disturb people up when we think that the destruction of DC, well just regular Americans would think the destruction of the regime in DC means

the destruction of us as a people. We took it to be an existential taunt or an existential threat or something, and that's not actually what he meant. And he did clarify himself on that. He said he has nothing against regular Americans, right, He did say that clearly and several times, and he said his beef is with the American regime, which he would remind us is our cultural enemy. They're avowedly so, right, And electing Trump didn't do anything about that.

By the way, A just back to my point, what is a nation? A nation is a distinct group of people. Again, this Russian guy that I like so much, Burdayev, he said that a nation isn't made of one blood kindred, it's not made of one language, it's not made of one religion or one geographical region. Nations don't have all of these things align for them. A nation can be dispersed over several countries, jurisdictions. A nation can have more than one language, a nation can have more than one religion.

But he said, the thing that does unite a nation is a beautiful thought. He said, a oneness of historical fate. That's what unites a nation. And I suppose with that definition we could talk about an American nation to a degree. But as you said, the ethnic tension, the ethnic element remains a very distinct division in America today, in our political discourse, in our demographics, in our geographic distribution. Many different reasons why it remains a major issue still today.

And I would like to suggest, once again, kind of going along my point previously, I think that there is some kind of solution to be found in a regional a regional reorganization or I don't think it's going to follow state lines exactly, but at least state governments give us a way to organize ourselves politically past the shelf life of the union the federal government. Well, and we might we might have some kind of national identity based in place and shared destiny in that place. That really

is something to build on. I no one can imagine the South without its ethnic mixture, if I can be clear on that, this is why the ku Klux Klan is ultimately a ultimately an ideological uh dream or something. It's and it's not even very southern. And that's the first or second, the second and third the second, and I suppose the one that still exists, I suppose as some some arm of the BiH.

was where the KKK took over the state government. I don't think that it's a coincidence that Oregon is a center of wokeness today when it was a KKK bastion in the nineteen twenties. I think the ideological politics is is a virus to follow the metaphor that academic agent gave us, and I think it may have worked itself out in anti fa today where it was you know, KKK terrorism back in the twenties or something. It's funny the second iteration of the ku klux Lan never took

over a southern state government. Well, that's over several northern ones.

you know, the reconstruction erae. But if you look at I think I think the largest percentage of population involved in the Klan was Connecticut, you know, which is alappable when you say it, you know, you think of Connecticut now, right, and it's like mystic Pizza and you know kind of like New York and communities and then imagining you know, like and I'm a firmly you know, anti Tarantino person, but uh, you can imagine you know Django Unchained taking

place in Connecticut, and it's a completely comical idea.

Americans a Britisher. If we can call AA a British er, please AA, don't don't take me to being for being condescending or something. Oh, I'm just mentioning your origin, you know, I'm I don't know if British er is is taken to be condescending or not, but sometimes we call you that. Here in the South. The question of the British Empire

was debated. AA said that the British Empire left ethnic hierarchies in place when it went around the world, and he said that was in contrast to the American Empire, which was always subverting hierarchies and filling people with liberal ideology and such. But I did want to offer a

retort to that. I agree that post eighteen ninety eight, after the American Empire is kind of informally declared with the Spanish American War, there was a previous tradition to that, and that was one that was actually more imperial along British lines. It was things like the Indian Reservations out west, which had a way of preserving distinct national groups, and we still call them, well, we still call them the

nations today, the Indian Reservations. We still colloquially refer to these areas as the nations, which I think is a good little clue in our common usage in America's day of actually the true meaning of that word nation a distinct ethnic group. But anyway, that question of the British Empire is an interesting one. I think Clossington is going to have a stream about that soon, about whether or not the British Empire was a progressive enterprise. Did you see something about that?

that's the word that he used. Charlemagne sided with our American friends. Paul Fahrenheit, for instance, in this exchange with aa AA, was blaming the American presence in Europe for various specific troubles that Europe is having right now. Specifically, I suppose foreign policy choice that are not favoring the populations of Europe. I say, fair enough, why not be conciliatory, Why not make concessions? After all, Europe really is in for some serious suffering in the near term. Why not

make concessions on this point. But I'm not condemning Paul. Paul had a very spirited position, and Paul came back saying, those Europeans really love those American subsidies. Europe has not had to defend itself since the end of World War Two. European armies are jokes. Basically, they have not been investing in technology or human resources for a couple of generations now, and those Europeans just want to take advantage of Americans.

And if they had, if the Americans or no, no, no, if the Europeans had decided to re arm and actually reconstitute their armed forces, there would be little the Americans could do to stop it. Our friend Charlemagne seconded Paul on that is what I understand. He said that if if the if Germany was to assert its foreign policy, if Germany was to rebuild an army, the United States couldn't do anything about that. Well, maybe maybe so, And I'm I'm very frustrated with countries like Germany right now.

It doesn't seem to me that they deserve to be called a representative government in any sense. They seem to have been hijacked, maybe by American funded enterprises, maybe by subversion from the State Department. Why not? The State Department has been running things in Europe for quite a while so far as I can tell. But my point is, why why not give our Europeans some concessions on these points? Do we Americans on the dissident right actually want the

American military in Europe? Do we want the American military or the State Department making policy in Europe?

architecture is horrible. You know, maybe you can say that the FDR era stuff had a certain amount of sould to it, but almost immediately after you know, kind of like the War of World Conquest that just you know, I went to Hell and you see that kind of like forced on everyone else, this kind of you know, like horrible, shapeless, you know, modern and postmodern architecture. So

I very much see what you're getting at. And I I don't know, it's why I say, like I'm if I were a European, I would be anti American and proudly so well.

grabs you in its hands, you're done, you know. And there's no you know, like hive mind of you know, like hyper intelligent you know, room and a man in a back room, you know, smoking cigarettes, planning it all out. It's just kind of a like incredibly powerful and incredibly poorly directed force. But carry on, it's.

around the world. They have no idea why. And yes, call them infantile and call them irresponsible for not taking the trouble to learn right. Mark Twain, the anti imperialist, he said God made war to teach Americans geography, and that's a very good point. Americans really rarely know what their country is doing around the world. And occasionally they read about a war and they find a country on a map and they go, oh, oh, that's where Ukraine is.

But it's really dreadful to reflect about what the American Empire has done over the years, what they did in Iraq. You know, Iraq was destabilized. A civil war broke out because the United States abolished the government and military of the country of Iraq. Though the country had done nothing

aggressive towards the United States. It had not attacked the United States, it had not threatened the United States, and as a result of the abolition of the government and military of Iraq, the country was plunged into a civil war that lasted over ten years. Arguably it's still going on now. The country was partially partitioned, you know, it hasn't been formally partitioned, but it's not operating as a unitary state anymore. And I believe it. I want to

say it's the United Nations estimate. I can tell you that the number is not overblown. The number is not controversial. To my knowledge, this number is not controversial. Over a million civilians died in the course of the Iraqi Civil War. The United States Empire is responsible for that. Americans don't know the first thing about it. There aren't any Christians in Iraq anymore. Before two thousand and three, ten percent of the country was. The Foreign Minister of Iraq was

a Christian. His name was Tariq Azase. He was an Assyrian Christian. I believe Roman Catholic, that would make him. It is a terrible injustice what the United States has done with these countries. And they have done it out of an absence of mind. They have done it because they have their head in the clouds, full of ideological dreams about remaking the world in their image. And there's a price to pay for these things. I am really I am mble for my country when I think of

these things. Americans will suffer for these for these horrible, unethical actions, and I don't want them to suffer for it. And for Heaven's sake, they had no idea and they

didn't come up with the plan. It was our criminal elites who seem to be, you know, some combination of criminal and insane, all all too obvious now where we actually have, you know, a demented old man in the white House who cannot string sentences together, and the same goes for his most unfortunate selection for the vice presidency. These people do not have much awareness of what's going on themselves. The United States does not elect its leadership.

We ought to know this about ourselves. We don't have a representative government. The people that we that we supposedly elect in the most fortified, secure elections are not actually the people that go run the country. There is a permanent elite that does not get switched out, and when Trump is elected, they actively subvert him. We know this to be true. We ought to all know this to be true. Now we don't actually have the government that

we claim to have. But going back, I did say I was going to read some of some of the actual interactions on the cigar stream. Here's well, I think we may have covered this. I think I did just cover that. Let me let me go further back. I apologize, okay aa. On one occasion he said European empires were

not anti European. I've got a response to that. That was so at least until they collapsed, and then those sophisticated Brits were supporting, you know, Indian terrorist actions against imperial outposts in India after World War Two and like cheering on Gandhi and stuff like that. AA likes to blame Americans for that. He likes to say, well, that's American cultural rot that's being exported into into Great Britain.

I'm not totally convinced of that. Do you have any opinion on that, Like the collapse of European empires, do you think that when when they're their own people were cheering on anti colonial dissolution of their of their own old imperial patrimony, do you think that that was an American thing or do you think that that was homegrown?

America's lap, so to speak. You know, if you look at kind of the First World War as essentially this massively destructed it, like essentially in intergroup conflict, you know, we're essentially like the last remnants of the Empires of Europe, which were, let's be honest, like they were to a certain degree they were already starting to you know, show where it the seems essentially blew themselves up, you know, all of them, you know the obviously you know, the

Russian Empire, you know really that, you know, the Royal House of Germany, you know, the Ottomans. Everyone kind of essentially like demolished their entire stock of you know, treasure, their their best and brightest. And so to me that

that seems to be largely unrelated to America. Obviously, America entered the war, but at least from my perspective, we didn't really have to do much with it starting, you know, and so obviously the rot posts that you know, you can say a lot of it is our fault, and I don't disagree with that, you know, especially post World

War Two. It seems largely incontrovertible. But we we can't deny that essentially like we you know, as the West, you know, put ourselves here, you know, we're the ones who essentially spent all of our in our entire patrimony in one hundred years of of what you know, and I realized that obviously, like we can't, we can't give the the usg you know, too much cover, Like there was there's act of evil in that, you know, like you quote it, yeah, and I'll get it right Madeline,

all right, not Madison, but you know, essentially saying like, oh, it was worth it, you know, the six hundred thousand children who died, it was it was worth it. I'm not I'm not in any way trying to justify that. But we got ourselves here, all of us got ourselves here, you know. And there's a certain amount where it's like, I don't mean to, by any means excuse the the US government. No, we need to look at what they've done,

you know, soberly and rationally. But also there's another part where it's like, at what point is looking for a culprit like kind of excuse, you know, excuse people who kind of actively made things worse, you know, before that, do you see what I mean?

the actions of my government. One is I want to register myself as a very profound dissident. I was against it, but my goodness, you know what I mean, what can you do to prove that you're against and still live in this country. It's a It's a real shame. I mean, does does this mean that Republican voters that elected George W. Bush should be judged for Guantanamo for Abu Grabe? The implications are are are really serious, and I take them seriously.

of bring you know, glory and riches back home, and I realized that that obviously I doubt that was you know, motivated by a sense of kind of like you know, charity, and that obviously wasn't necessarily the best thing for Rome in the long term. But it's kind of like this massive, you know, this incredibly destructive, evil empire is being run, you know, kind of like a counter you know, in opposition to the people it allegedly was was founded by.

It's like, it's incredibly perverse. And this actually goes back to the first ever episode of this show, episode zero, with Paul Fahrenheit, you know, where we essentially talked about kind of the you know, the the American you know, Southern you know, white man as more or less like

the janissary class of the empire. You know, we were the and obviously not me personally, you know, I was never involved, but a lot of people your age you know a lot of my friends are in your age group, you know, who were kind of in you know, in high school plus or minus when when nine to eleven happened, essentially got kind of chewed up and spit out by this, Like there are multiple people I know who were you know,

in college when I was in grade school. You know, who are either you know, veterans coming back on g I Bill or you know, we're about to go out. And a lot of those guys who I'm still friends with, you know, if they made it through, are incredibly broken and really like for what. And it's hard not to look at that. And I realized, like there's a human cost to any war, you know, there's no denying that, but the cost versus the benefit is just it's not even close.

these circumstances. But in the meantime, I guess I take some heart in signs of collapse because we don't believe lies as much. After we see them fail and no one can deny it, and it would it ought to deprive the Empire of energy and assent. It discredits them. Things like Afghanistan discredit them. And it's not that I am cheering on the Taliban, Okay, It's not that I want to give them energy, your strength, or power or anything else. But I don't. I don't want the Empire

to have that kind of legitimacy. I thought, based on what you just shared, that I'd go through one series of conversation from AA's Cigar stream, and perhaps we can exchange some opinions about that and then wrap things up. This had to do with something that you were mentioning. You and I were both reflecting about how the rot in the American tradition really does seem to start after World War Two. There was broad consensus on that point on the Cigar Stream, with both the Britishers and the

Americans in agreement. It seems to me so AA said the rot sets in around nineteen fifty. Yiz then said that this distracts from her point. She was speaking of a certain intellectual minority group, which she credits for a lot of a lot of the harm in the American project, especially the anti whiteness. And she said that in Annabellum America we had many distinct groups of people, and that

is quite true. The whole propositional nation thesis does not get started until Lincoln's rhetorical flourish in the Gettysburg address. Americans did not talk of themselves that way. They spoke of themselves as natives of their states. So AA then response, and he said, so the United States is not a true nation then, and Yiz agreed and said, yes, correct, there are many nations. She said, we were functional up until eighteen sixty. Then she goes back to the anti

whiteness thesis again. She says anti whites are the virus, not the empire or DC. So academic agent then goes back to the ethnic thesis once more, and he says, well, who cares about the fake nation of the USA? In that case, if you say it was something that was made up, that the propositional thesis is incorrect. At this point,

Paul Fahrenheit interjected and said he must disagree. He said, in the early Republic we were more like Europe, and you could say that we had traditional ethnic groups up until the Civil War, though there was talk of some kind of national collective identity in this I think Paul is correct. I would like to clarify. Then Paul comes

out with a more controversial thesis. He said secession and the whole attempt for the South to stablish itself as another country was suicidal like World War One for Americans, and that secession today would create worse entropy and it would impoverish us materially. I agree it would impoverish us materially, but I insist that there are far more valuable things

we stand to preserve by political breakup, political cultural, economic breakup. Yes, we would lose our standard of living, but I say we're losing it any way.

of that. And look, I agree with you that if we if we want to decouple ourselves from that, if we want to break down you know this, this unwieldy empire into smaller units like that will come with that will come with a decrease in complexity and a decrease and essentially like consumer purchasing power. To put it in a very blunt way.

price has been tremendous. We're facing many of the consequences of those addictions at this point, but we do not We don't need economic prosperity, We do not need GDP growth. Measuring progress by GDP is. Here's other controversial thesis for you. I say that that's part of the imperial system that's ultimately based on a lie things. We aren't constantly measuring the consumption of our citizenry as a substitute for their actual happiness. That that's just false, that's that's not how

it works. Other things that that actually make life worth living. The culture that that actually makes life worth living is is based on things like loyalties, faith, your your comfortableness in your own skin, which evidently is something that more and more Americans simply cannot live with. They need they need surgeons and and hormones and such to change these things. Not not to mention, you know, all all the other sorts of mind altering drugs that that we hear so

much about these days. We're very uncomfortable these days, and it's a sign of our spiritual unhealthiness. We don't feel comfortable in our land, we don't feel comfortable with our people, with our own families. We need a spiritual comfortableness, and we don't need more money for that. I think more money has made it worse. More conveniences, more luxuries may make it all worse. Our ancestors did not need very much in order to keep families together, in order to

raise children, in order to educate them. Go read their newspapers, for heaven's sake. These people could read and write far better than we can typically, and they raise the standard. They were not constantly dumbing it all down. There was a time when the entropy was was not visible in in things that people actually wrote, whereas now things like texting and such have done such a number on our ability to communicate clearly and effectively and even even to

spell our own language anymore. So my my contention, we don't We don't need more money, we don't need more prosperity and economics. We we we need spiritual revival at this point in our history. But I'm afraid we are going to go through a season of serious despair before then. I think I think the despair will be made of those who really believe in the empire. They they see

their ideals all round, wound up in it somehow. And a lot of these people are people that I have so much affection for, flag waving people right, people who sing country songs, people that go and tailgate and say I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free. Kind of right, it's a very pitiful slogan, it seems to me.

I'm feeling a little bit under the weather. Is there anything you want to say before we wrap things up?

be worth nothing if they are to be alienated. We have to find something heure, and I think there's a lot to love. By the way, I'm not saying that it's difficult. Just just find some good teachers. Okay, don't get teachers that hate it. There are plenty of those. Distinguish all right, But love where you are, learn the story of your people, learn the story of your place, and love it. That goes for you Australians out there, wherever, whatever strange place you might live in. We have a

basic duty to do that. And my initial beef with AA was that it seemed to me he wanted Americans to be alienated. I know better than that. Now that's not what he was talking about, and he did clarify himself, and I want to give him credit for that, but that that is a basic duty for us, and if we have any hope for our beliefs, it must include a patriotism. So that's my team this evening. I really appreciate coming on and I we do. Hope you feel better.

audio shows. And then after they kind of fall out of the top ten, they go behind a you know, a simple five dollars a month paywall at my sub stack, and that's obviously that's not a huge benefit, but it is a you know, a nice way to you know, access the backlog, a whay you're out away from your computer. And then other than that, I should be recording with with Liz soon with with Todd Lewis, and you know, sooner or later. And now we said, I don't want to spoil it, I might be on on Thomas just

so mind phaser. So we got a lot coming up. And thank you guys for coming out, and keep your head up, guys like it last forever. Good Night,