They Want Absolute Victory

Reading the history of the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s is fascinating for a number of reasons, but one reason that particularly stands out is just how close the period came to being completely disastrous. It was an era of high crimes rates, assassinations, and riots. The fact that it all came right after the optimism of the post-World War II era, putting an end to the “Second Era of Good Feelings,” was shocking, really world-shattering to the people who lived through it. It really is no wonder that the politics of the era continued to resonate for decades. But with all that being said, and for everything that happened, the Unites States never fell into a full bore, Spanish Civil War-style conflict. Several times throughout the time period it looked as if it could have easily happened.

The reasons as to why this never occurred are, as it often the case with history, multicausal. But one reason stands out and will be the subject of this article – both the Left and the Right were allowed to have significant victories, thereby defusing some of the tensions of the era. Some of the Left’s victories can be directly attributed to Richard Nixon. Perhaps the single greatest explanation why the Vietnam War protests became as violent as they did was because of the draft; it turned what may have been a conflict on the other side of the world into a personal issue for many young men. As badly as the Iraq War went, the protests against it never became nearly as violent as the protests against the Vietnam War. Nixon ended the draft, thus ending the panic many young men and their families felt. Furthermore, as the Vietnam War was winding down, the Left began to focus on environmental issues. Nixon responded by passing some of the first environmental protection laws in U.S. history. Responding to the rise of black nationalism, Nixon also greatly increased aid to black ghettos. Not all the Left’s wins were from Nixon, though. Coming to a head in 1968, one of the Left’s major gripes regarding the primary process was its undemocratic nature that gave a substantial amount of power in picking the nominee to a group of party bosses. Led by George McGovern, this was ended – and the reforms exists today and were eventually picked up by the Republicans. The Right, especially the Southern Right, was also provided tangible victories. Although home rule was crushed, Southerners were able to express their identity freely and openly. The Confederate flag still proudly flew throughout Dixie and the monuments remained. There were also several significant cultural phenomena that showcased the continued resilience of Southern identity – see bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, television shows like The Dukes of Hazzard, and movies like Smokey and the Bandit.   

But the politics of today, despite all the similarities to the late 1960s and early 1970s, differs in one major respect – the Left is absolutely hellbent to deny the Right any victory, and the Right must come to terms with this. Support gay marriage but think reasonable accommodations should be created to protect religious traditionalists, as was largely promised in the 1990s and 2000s? Bake the cake, bigot! Support taking the Confederate flag from statehouses – as the Left claimed that’s all they wanted in the immediate wake of the Dylann Roof shooting – but think the monuments should stay up? You are still a neo-Confederate who should be unemployable. Oppose the bills to protect women’s bathrooms but think biological men playing female sports is a step too far and that children should wait until they are 18 to undergo life-altering surgery? You are still a mean transphobe. Remember, the Left recently went vigorously to bat for Cuties purely to spite the Right, there can be no compromise.

The Right must understand how utterly the Left hates them, and because of this hatred, they view the Right as an enemy that must be totally and completely defeated. They will go out of their way to deny the Right a victory, supporting things that they clearly and undeniably know are wrong. I understand that the Left’s wins in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War allowed them to get their foot in the door of mainstream politics, thus setting the stage for the insanity of today. Moreover, I strongly think that those that engaged in terrorism (Weather Underground, for example) should have been brought to justice and it is a shame this never happened on a larger scale. I can actually manage a cheer for the wins the Left was given in the years following Vietnam, or at least the ones I mentioned.  

I would lean towards having a draft in a Free Dixie, as I think it would instill a greater sense of civic virtue in the population and, very importantly, would serve as a way to incentivize politicians to use war only as a last resort. That being said, considering current conditions, I am happy there is no draft in 2023. The more Southerners that can be kept out of the U.S. military, fighting their fellow Christians and a few Muslims for an empire that hates them, the better. I dislike much of the nature worship of the modern environmentalist movement, but I am a bit green. Grey and green go well together, and I hate the Yankee mentality that desires to put a strip mall everywhere and to squeeze every last dime from the land. As a practical matter, we need healthy black communities and neighborhoods. I think giving each ethnic group its own neighborhood that they are, more or less, allowed to manage is the best, most humane way for multi-ethnic empires to manage the tensions inherent within a multi-ethnic polity. And while I do understand that the reforms made to the primary process helped transform the party of the South to the party of abortion-on-demand, I also recognize that those same reforms helped make Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, and Donald Trump all possible. We certainly would have been left with no alternative to Bush I, McCain, and Jeb! otherwise. Those campaigns helped lay the groundwork for the rise of the Dissident Right. I doubt we would have even gotten Ronald Reagan had it not been for those reforms, instead landing Gerald Ford again. But the Left will give us no such slack, we are their mortal enemies and must be defeated.

Once the Right understands this, it must assure that the Left’s insistence on absolute victory winds up becoming a good thing. Imagine, if in 2015, the Left had taken a different strategy. Imagine they got behind a religious freedom bill with actual teeth in the wake of Obergefell. Imagine if, after the Dylann Roof shooting, the Left called for the Confederate flag to be removed from the statehouses but supported the monuments remaining and resisted calls for an all-out cultural genocide of Dixie. Imagine if the Left opposed the bathroom bills but recognized that men should not play in women’s sports and that children should not be drug into this. Would life be easier? Sure, at least for now. The Dissident Right would not have been forced to rise to combat a movement hellbent on the destruction of the West; but in many ways, as was the case in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it would have kicked the can down the road for a future generation. Imagine an alternate history where the Left, in the wake of the destruction of home rule, launched a genocidal war against Dixie, as they did in 2015. Had they done that in 1970, they would have been up against a far healthier – demographically, physically, and spiritually – Dixie.

The task of Southern Nationalists must be to take advantage of how far the Left has gone and how badly they’ve overplayed their hand. The events of the past few years shows that there can be no compromise. Under these conditions, a union is impossible; thus, Southern Nationalism becomes the only viable solution to have a decent Christian order in the South. Had the Left restrained itself to a greater degree since 2015, even if they were only biding their time, this would have been a more difficult argument to make. As it stands now, they made it for us.

Harmonica