George Washington: The World Historical Figure in the Quintessentially American Tradition

George Washington, 1780
Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)
Oil on canvas; 95 x 61 3/4 in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Part of what makes his live story so gripping is that he shaped himself into the world-historical figure he became, in the quintessentially American tradition of men who spring, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, from their own Platonic conception of themselves. But his self-conception was extraordinary: it began as a worthy ideal and evolved into a magnificent one. In his fiercely ambitious youth, he sought to win acclaim for his for his heroism and savoir faire. In his maturity, he strove to be, in his own conscience even more than in the eyes of others, virtuous, public-spirited, and (although his ethic wouldn't allow him to claim the word (noble). He did hope, however, that posterity would recognize and honor the purity of his motives; and Americans, who owe him so much, do him but justice in understanding not only what he did for them but also what greatness of soul he achieved to do it.

From: The Founding Fathers at Home (p. 94)
By: Myron Magnet

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Brief Book Review: Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It

I hate to copy full texts from any book, especially one newly published, but sometimes that is the best way to make a point.

I've got Jim Kalb's new book Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It. It arrived at the bookstore where I placed the order far quicker than I expected (about four days). I think that is faster than Amazon.com's delivery time, unless one pays extra for overnight shipment.

In any case, I went to the table of contents first, and found in Chapter 10:

Making it Real
Difficulty of the Struggle - Towards an Anti-Inclusivist Right - Fundamental Needs: Ideals (The True, The Beautiful, The Just and Good, Religion); A Favorable Setting - Making the Case - Limits

I went to the "The Beautiful" section on pages 170-171, and below is what I read:

For modernity, beauty is no less a problem than truth. Since it makes man the measure, the scientistic view assimilates beauty to personal preference. It puts beauty in the eye of the beholder, and so makes pushpin as good as poetry. Such a view is contrary to all intelligent experience. Beauty is evidently part of how things are. It forces itself on us as something of indubitable value that cannot be reduced to personal preference. That is what it means to recognize it as beauty. Our perception of it may depend on taste, but a personal element does not make a perception merely subjective any more than the dependence of knowledge on qualities such as intelligence, experience, and good sense makes truth merely subjective (5).

Beauty falsifies the dogma that denies reality to whatever is difficult to analyze and impossible to measure. It connects the material world to something beyond itself and gives us an immediate perception of something transcendent that is worthy of our love. It gives pleasure, so it attracts and pleases, but it is no less at odds with the technological outlook than fasting and prayer. It cannot be forced, and technique serves it, but does not create it. You have to wait on it and let it be what it is.

So anti-technocratic education must emphasize the beautiful. When those who appeal to tradition and the transcendent lack a sense of beauty, what they propose seems less an absorbing way of life that leads us to a grasp of the reality of things than one arbitrary ideology among others, a matter of rules, team spirit, and group dominance and not much else.

5. For a ground-breaking study of the objectivity of aesthetic valuby by a scientifically-trained architectural theorist, see Alexander, The Nature of Order: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe.

I think beauty is even more problematic than truth. There is truth, based on facts, objective, scientifically obtained facts, but how does one objectively establish beauty?

The problem may be less difficult for scholars and (honest) artist, but how does an ordinary person identify and accept beauty?

One's children are "beautiful" however ugly they may be in reality. One's religion is beautiful. Look at the beautiful mosques that Muslims build to express the beauty they see in their religion. One's language has beauty, however gutteral it may sound. An ugly outfit designed by a prestigious designer is considered beautiful by the high-society woman who wears it.

Yet, these same people will recognize truth, and reject lies, if they are truthful to themselves. An ordinary person can identify truth and lies, and will often discern lies even when sugar-coated with what seems like truth.

Beauty, in modernity, is far more problematic, and far easier to misidentify, than truth. It requires a different level of discernment. It may indeed really be the territory of experts who can identify it, and who relay that information to others. People can live without beauty for a longer period than truth, as long as they have some basics fulfilled like a family life, a comfortable income, shelter and food, and even find it acceptable to live without beauty.

But, ultimately, lack of beauty is far more insidious, because it drains people's objective reality slowly. One can fight against an obvious lie, but how does one fight for beauty? Walking by an ugly building, day after day, will numb the soul. Perhaps we can be saved by small acts for beauty, like Winston in Orwell's 1984, when he bought a paperweight simply because he found it beautiful amidst the soul-numbing ugliness around him.

Winston looked round the shabby little room above Mr. Charrington's shop. Beside the window the enormous bed was made up, with ragged blankets and a coverless bolster. The old-fashioned clock with the twelve-hour face was ticking away on the mantelpiece. In the corner, on the gateleg table, the glass paperweight which he had bought on his last visit gleamed softly outof the half-darkness...

[Julia] brought the glass paperweight over to the bed to have a look at it in a better light. He took it out of her hand, fascinated, as always, by the soft, rainwatery appearance of the glass.[1984, Part 2, Chapter 4]

And here is the seemingly innocuous paperweight being smashed to pieces by the thought police:

Something crashed on to the bed behind Winston's back. The head of a ladder had been thrust through the window and had burst in the frame. Someone was climbing through the window. There was a stampede of boots up the stairs. The room was full of solid men in black uniforms, with iron-shod boots on their feet and truncheons in their hands...

There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass paperweight from the table and smashed it to pieces on the hearth-stone.

The fragment of coral, a tiny crinkle of pink like a sugar rosebud from a cake, rolled across the mat. How small, thought Winston, how small it always was!...

There was another, lighter step in the passage. Mr. Charrington came into the room. The demeanour of the black-uniformed men suddenly became more subdued. Something had also changed in Mr. Charrington's appearance. His eye fell on the fragments of the glass paperweight.

'Pick up those pieces,' he said sharply. [1984, Part 1, Chapter 10]

Charrington knows that beauty is revolutionary. It can ignite the rebellion of the weakened and submissive, like Winston. Once Winston realized the possibility of acquiring beauty, he started to gain some strength.

Kalb makes similar observations about the re-creation of language and meaning in liberal society in his new book:

To some extent, the new standards are based on the view that the old ones were bad, because they had to do with the non-commercial and non-bureaucratic arrangements of the old society. Reversing and violating those standards has therefore become a virtue. Central and marginal have changed places: Islam has become a religion of peace, homosexual couples stable and loving, blacks wise and spiritual, immigrants the true Americans. In contrast, Christianity is presented as a religion of war and aggression, Middle Americans as violent and irrational, Republicans as the Taliban, and traditional marriage as hateful, oppressive, divisive , and pathological. When women and minorities do well, they deserve the credit, when they do badly, white men deserve the blame. Any flaws in the groups promoted from the margin to the center are whitewashed, the more glaring the flaws the thicker the coating. [P. 8]

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Who is the True Conservative? This is a Rhetorical Question.

Larry Auster got into a lot of (blog) arguments when he put up photos of well-known personalities, and commented on their appearance. These observations ranged from discussions on physical alterations like plastic surgery, to sartorial decisions. One of his favorite (if that's the right term to use) personalities was Michelle Obama. He couldn't believe that the First Lady of the United States could tarnish the image of the presidency as much as she did, through her inelegant and crass appearances. He believed that one's appearance was a reflection on one's personality.

I think he believed that conservatives presented themselves better than liberals. But in our liberal-leaning world, he also realized that many self-proclaimed conservatives are actually more liberal than conservative.

Well, here I compare the appearance of two conservatives, one true and one false: Larry Auster and Peter Brimelow.


Left: Larry Auster, from a photo taken in 2013
Right: Peter Brimelow, from a photo taken around 2011

True to his precise and careful nature, Larry comes across as the conservative in this photo (which is cropped from a larger one taken by Dean Ericson). He is ill, but he came out of his home in a smart and well-patterned checkered tie, which matches his long chocolate-brown coat, and a cream (not white) shirt. His hair, which had gone through various ravages of cancer treatment, is thin, but short and combed.

His slightly upturned mouth, with a shadow of a smile, shows that he is a little amused, perhaps by all the attention from the photo shoot. But his eyes are calm and observant, and kind. He takes Dean's effort seriously, and came out dressed and ready for the occasion.

Look at Brimelow. He's about the same age as Larry (according to Wikipedia, older by about two years, so the photos above show them at about the same age), and his health seems fine. Yet his face is red and bloated, and his eyes are barely open in the fleshy face. It looks as though he's gained weight. His hair is disheveled and long, and needs grooming as well as a cut. His tie is a dull gray, which matches the lusterless gray of is suit.

His photo was posted on Belgian politician Filip DeWinter's website. DeWinter is fifty (only fifteen years younger than Brimelow, but still middle-aged), and the contrast between the two is great, with a vibrant and clear-eyed DeWinter standing alongside the puffy Brimelow.


Brimelow and DeWinter in 2011
[Image Source: Filip Dewinter's website]


Brimelow in 2013

This is Brimelow's toddler daughter from his second marriage. His second wife, Lydia Brimelow, is thirty-seven years younger than him. They have another daughter who was born in 2012. He has two older children in their late teens from a first marriage. Their mother died in 2004.

I wrote in 2012 about Brimelow, his young wife and their new born daughter:

Brimelow is close to seventy, which will make him an nonagenarian at his new daughter's college graduation, if he makes it that long. What kind of life has he subjected her to, with a senior citizen father, with his death imminent?

Such is the way of selfish, narcissistic men that "lead" the world these days. Of course, Brimelow is not a conservative, although that is what he uses to increase his website's readership. He is a libertarian.

I wrote about his second wife:

Sullivan has a hard glint in eyes like someone that goes after what she wants, and gets it. Such character doesn't discriminate by age.

Of course, our choices are determined by many factors, including the behavior of those around us. But, Brimelow could have tempered his behavior for the good, rather than for his gratification.

I think the consequences of his decision are what is showing in the photo below, which he posted at his public website Vdare. He is unshaven, with a tired smile. Toddlers require a lot of energy. His eyes also show ambivalence. Was this such a good idea after all?



I analyzed another photo of his, which he posted in December 2010 about three years after he married his second wife.


Brimelow in 2010

Here is what I wrote:

I believe that people demonstrate their inner conflicts and troubles in their expressions. Trying to cover them up only results in conflicted manifestations. Also, I believe that people with inner conflicts have a hard time deciphering their (and others') expressions. What looks strong may be weak, what looks attractive is subtly devious.

I don't mean to malign people, but Brimelow is a leaders of some kind who is asking us, mere plebs, to be his followers of sort. Brimelow wants us to read his online magazine Vdare. I recently wrote about his marriage to a woman almost forty years his junior, whom he met...through his online magazine! And now they have an infant daughter together. A sixty-something-year-old man with a twenty-something-year-old wife, and a new baby. Old enough to be the grandfather of his daughter is one unpleasant factor. But I wonder how this young girl will grow up, with an aging father who by the time she is ready to get married - the norm being in her twenties, like her mother is now - will be a real senior citizen who should be getting ready for his last rites?

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Finding Excellence

Hardy Geranium
Watercolor by Kidist P. Asrat
2008


Below is what I posted in my art and culture blog Camera Lucida on November 2009 (five years ago!) about conservatives and conservatism:

Doing Things: And finding excellence

I post this with some trepidation, since I don't want it to be misconstrued as an unnecessary focus on myself. But, I have no one else that I can use for this particular kind of example, so here goes.

I've talked extensively about various conservative groups and individuals in the past few months. I've also become aware that some who call themselves conservative are only so in a few (of their favorite) points. Some are outright libertarians, others have crossed the other side to liberalism

I think we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about, berating, criticising and moaning about liberals. Many conservatives have made this their mission (see Michelle Malkin here, who has a new book out on Obama).

I've always refrained from using my blogs as my sounding boards against liberals. I think it is far more important to put conservatives on track, or to point out their errors. This way, a real conservative body can be built. If we blatantly follow every conservative, just because he is not a liberal, then we have short-changed ourselves and the movement too.

But, one important thing is to DO things, as I wrote in a previous post on traditionalism, where small steps a movement make. This is where each individual behaves like a conservative, and not just talks about it. And since this world is a liberal world, that becomes much more difficult than it sounds. But, therein lies the challenge, and not only that, our very survival.

If I can use myself as an example:

I started out in experimental film. I loved handling celluloid. I would shoot, process and edit all my (very short) films myself. But, I found "art" film to be a dead-end. Rather than glorify art, it has become a hotbed for self-expression of the worst sort. Many (the majority) of the films I watched were, well, unwatchable. Aggressively so.

So, I left, rather than fight the failing system. I found textile design, which ironically attracted me because of the same hands-on, textural effect that I liked about film. Then I encountered another problem. I had very little drawing and painting background, and to my great surprise, our design instructors were just not willing (or able) to teach us those fundamentals. I started taking courses at various school boards, where I discovered a hidden gem of true artists, who I believe have been pushed out of the non-art culture prevalent in colleges and universities.

But what about design? Again, I found a vindictive hate of non-weird, non-edgy designs. Also, anything that looked like it had not been done using the much-touted photocopier or computer graphics, was frowned upon. It is too “old-fashioned” was the phrase. And all we want to be is modern, no?

In the end, I even left that group – psychologically, at least. Ordinary people seem to appreciate my efforts. Women like birds and flowers on their furniture fabric. Color and texture are always welcome. I hardly get a “what is that” when I show my work. I think that is the biggest compliment. My colleagues would beg to differ, of course.

My point is that all this is not a matter of perseverance; it is also a matter of pursuing excellence. If we give up on that, no matter how stubborn and persistent we may be, it will all come out wrong. We have to keep these traditions going strong, we have to learn them and learn how to use them. And then use them.

The funny thing about tradition is that it changes subtly through time. Innovations happen by building the new from the old; by adapting the past into our own present environments. This is what modern artists just don’t get. They are stuck in a rut with their experimentations and self-expression. The true inspiration and, paradoxically, change comes by pursuing tradition.