Beyond Conservatism: Peter Brimelow’s Speech To The National Policy Institute
This adapted from a talk that Peter Brimelow gave to the National Policy Institute 2015 Winter Gathering, “Beyond Conservatism.”
As Richard Spencer said, I have been hanging around the late, great American Conservative Movement for what seems like several hundred years, so he has asked me for an autobiographical talk tonight.
I was working on the Hill, for example, in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected President. I worked for a U.S. Senator whose last name I won’t mention as a professional courtesy. But we did get enough stuff into the Congressional Record opposing Affirmative Action to ensure he would never be a Supreme Court Justice!
Then, of course, I was involved with National Review for almost a decade until I was cast into the outer darkness for premature immigration patriotism and lèse-Buckleyism in 1998.
Americans are incessantly told that this is a Proposition Nation. Theidea is that anyone can sign on the dotted line and become American.
This is actually not unique to America: most First World countries think something like this. The Poles, for example, think they have a particular Catholic heritage; the French think they’re French and uniquely civilized; they take that pretty seriously.
But in fact the Founding Fathers didn't think this at all. The most famous statement is from Federalist 2, by John Jay, which I’m sure you all know (except for the SPLC spy here of course!) He said basically said the reason we can make a federal union work is that we are all the same people:
Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs…
And when Jay said “professing the same religion,” he didn’t mean Christianity—he meant Protestantism. At the time of the revolution, America was 98% Protestant.
That’s Protestant—not Proposition!
Now, obviously, things have changed since then. But by degrees. America has evolved much faster that most nations have done, but it did evolve in a similar way. The process that took England more than a thousand years, for example, took just 200 years here.
Now, in fact, I must admit that I did immigrate to an idea—a Proposition. I immigrated to the American Conservative Movement. In the late 1960s, my twin brother and I decided that all was lost in England. I remember sitting in the University of Sussex history library and reading National Review—we actually had to force the library to resubscribe to it because they’d let it lapse on the grounds that conservative movements in America didn't amount to anything.
This was the American Conservative Movement that began in the 1950s in opposition to Eisenhower. It nominated Goldwater in 1964. It elected Reagan in 1980. And it won the Cold War. It also ended the Great Inflation, which was the major economic event of the mid-20th century. Now, I've discovered that nobody under 40 has any memory of the Cold War. Richard was too young and Jared Taylor was on the other side—he was cutting cane in Cuba! Isn't that right, Jared? But nevertheless, I take it very seriously. I still think that was a very important achievement.
However, that was then and this is now. There is this famous quote from Eric Hoffer, which summarizes the whole thing: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.“ That’s what’s happened to the Conservative Movement. ...
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