Posted on July 31, 2009

A Certain Trumpet

Sam Dickson, American Renaissance, May 1997

The title of my remarks is drawn from First Corinthians, Chapter 14: “For if the note of the trumpet be uncertain, who shall prepare himself for the battle?”

Trumpets

At this conference we have had speakers who have served as trumpeters, sounding a clear and certain note, and the battle to which the trumpet calls is likely to be the decisive one for our people.

As most of you know, the militant advocates of racial equivalence and racial integration tried to prevent this conference from taking place. It was their intention to prevent our ideas from being heard, and to keep in place an iron curtain sealing off any discussion of racial differences. Their campaign failed and, I would note, their failures have not been limited merely to one momentary failure here in Louisville. Their failures have been consistent.

When the theory of racial egalitarianism had not yet been put into practice, it did not have the disadvantage of a track record that could be examined to test the validity of their hypotheses. Thoughtful people — those who opposed the integration of the school systems in the 1950s and other subsequent proposals to force racial mixing — predicted correctly that these policies would fail. However, they had no examples to point to as proof of the inevitable failure of racial egalitarianism.

The advocates of integration had the advantage of a theory that appealed to human emotion and that promised to accomplish great things. We were told when the liberal program was in its infancy and was then called “desegregation,” that if the races were mixed and white control of our society removed, poverty would be abolished. Blacks would rise to the academic levels of whites. Crime rates would drop. Schools would improve. As blacks were elevated academically, welfare would decline. Since the theory had not been put to the test, such prospects were very alluring.

Despite the warnings of such men as Lothrop Stoddard, Madison Grant, and Carlton Putnam, the racial liberals had their way. They triumphed — temporarily, of course — but they triumphed. The policies they advocated have been implemented all across America, and indeed throughout the entire European world. In every case they have failed. Who can name an integrated community that has succeeded? Where has integration led to greater prosperity, higher academic standards, reduced welfare and less crime? “Success” exists only in the imaginations of liberals, who are always willing to try their failed experiments yet again.

It is perhaps significant that the liberals themselves speak of their policies as “experiments,” yet they are unable to draw any lessons from the results. As each liberal program fails for the umpteenth time, the liberal diverts his gaze and focuses on the horizon where he sees his utopia hovering somewhere out there; where everyone of every race and hue will be exchanging comments in their bathrooms — as they do on television — over the wonders of respective brands of toothpaste or shampoo.

The fact that the liberal racial program has failed consistently for 40 years does not phase or deter the liberal. He remains convinced that he is only one more civil rights law, only one more government program, only one more Supreme Court decision away from reaching his dream. The liberal reasons: “It didn’t work in Miami, but we are going to make it work in Jacksonville. Maybe it didn’t work in Atlanta, but we are going to make it work in Louisville.”

The only concession the liberal seems to make to the reality of his program’s terrible record is that he cleverly gives the same policy different names. We note that the egalitarian product has been constantly repackaged, as the public comes to associate the name with its failed results. Thus does the name keep changing, from “desegregation” to “integration” to “multiculturalism” to “diversity.”

What is truly appalling is how slow this country is to catch on to the failure of the experiment. It took the United States only about a decade to recognize that Prohibition was unworkable. Prohibition was correctly described by Herbert Hoover as “the noble experiment,” but it failed. The country soon realized that the costs of Prohibition outweighed the benefits. And unlike desegregation/ integration/multiculturalism/diversity, Prohibition could show some successes. Alcoholism and its attendant tragedies declined. Nevertheless, Americans by and large, after only one decade, recognized that the cost to society in the form of organized crime outweighed this benefit, and that Prohibition should be abandoned.

Today, Americans seem to be slow learners.

When the grip of the Communists began to slip in the Soviet Union a few years ago, opponents of that cruel system, who had previously been silenced by the secret police finally were able to demonstrate openly their disdain for the failed Marxist state. In the first anti-Communist demonstration in Red Square in Moscow, Russians marched with placards bearing a wise and clever slogan: “70 years on the road to Nowhere!”

I could not help but notice the absence of any similar slogan or demonstration here in the United States two years ago on the 40th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Where were the demonstrators bearing signs reading, “40 years on the road to Nowhere!”?

One also wonders how it is that our people ever succumbed to the nonsense of racial equality. People have known the truth about race for centuries. They did not need the research of Arthur Jensen or Philippe Rushton. The truth about race was obvious to virtually all people until very recent times. Now is it not odd that the burden of proof has been shifted to us to prove a negative — that the races are not equal?

Two clear examples come to mind immediately to show how preposterous is the liberal position. The first is the evolution argument. Most liberals believe in evolution, as do I. Yet the position of a liberal who believes in evolution can be summed up as follows:

After a period of hundreds of thousands of years, evolving under different climatic conditions, encountering different challenges such as the Ice Ages, suffering different epidemics, subjected to different catastrophes and good fortune, all races magically ended up equal.

It would appear unlikely and hard to believe that after such an enormous length of time and under such different circumstances every group would end up at the same point, but this is the theory the liberal has to sell to intelligent people. Astonishingly, they seem to buy it.

The other example of a liberal position that seems impossible to defend is the view that the human brain is the sole exception to the laws of heredity. It is now indisputable that heredity governs many facets of human life. It is admitted even by the liberal that heredity governs height, eye color, and hair color. The liberal will concede that heredity governs all forms of plant and animal life. Nor will it be disputed that it governs every organ of man — except for the human brain.

The egalitarian’s position may be summarized as follows:

All creation, including plant and animal life, is subject to the laws of heredity. Every organ of the human species is likewise governed by the laws of heredity. The human brain stands alone as the only object of creation whose functioning is unaffected by heredity and is controlled strictly by environment.

Amazingly, this goofy theory prevails in our greatest universities, and its opponents have to explain scientifically why such a preposterous theory is fallacious. And those who refute the theory of racial equality have to do so at the risk not only of their financial security, but sometimes even of their physical safety.

This situation has been brought about in part by the strategic use of guilt. The only people who outperform Christians in the business of guilt are liberals. And I will concede that when liberals decry the white race as the cancer of history, they are right about one thing: It was our race that gave the world liberalism and for that we should feel guilty.

White Racial Weaknesses

Our race has many fine qualities. We have given the world great things — a magnificent literature, incomparable music, the world’s greatest architecture, the breakthroughs in science and medicine that have made humanity’s lot so much better. But while we may take pride in the achievements of our race, we would be foolish not to recognize that our race also has its peculiar weaknesses.

We are already able to warn individuals of genetic susceptibilities they may carry. We will soon be able to determine, for instance, if a child has the genes that dispose him toward alcoholism or Alzheimer’s disease. We would be similarly advised to look at ourselves to see if there are any peculiar weaknesses we have as a race that put our survival at risk. Specifically, we need to determine if there are any particular factors that make whites vulnerable to the preposterous but fatal theory of racial equality and even equivalence — the theory that whites could be displaced, without much loss, by people of any other race.

One notes at the outset a peculiar phenomenon — the more gifted and well educated a European is, the more likely he is to succumb to this fantasy. It is a commonplace observation that the average truck driver in America has a far better understanding of race than the average professor. Anyone who has talked with cab drivers in London knows that they have a much better grasp of racial problems in England than does Prince Charles with his Cambridge education.

We can partly excuse the academic and the Prince of Wales because of their relative lack of exposure to racial realities. Certainly, Prince Charles knows little more about race than what he has been told. But how is it that the leading minds of our people have succumbed to the fallacy of egalitarianism? Observations of this kind are admittedly speculative, but I think the explanation lies in our genetic weaknesses, weaknesses that are the unfortunate “other side” of our virtues.

The excessive sense of “fair play” of which Mr. Taylor spoke in his talk can be a severe and crippling weakness in the struggle for self-preservation. Blacks are, I believe, less hampered by such feelings. For example, they vote far more intelligently than whites. Whites vote to please their college sociology professor, their newspaper editor, their priest, or their fellow yuppies. Whites therefore do not vote for what is good for themselves, their people, their progeny, or their country. Blacks are not so befuddled. They go to the polls in election after election and return an overwhelming vote for candidates and policies that favor them, their race, and their children.

Only a tiny number of whites are able to think coherently about their survival as a group. Even we in this room are often unable to think consistently; we must concede that we, too, can be victims of liberal guilt feelings foisted upon us. Recently, American Renaissance published an elegant essay in two parts written by Michael Masters, (Part 1; Part 2) explaining in most convincing terms why it is moral for whites to survive, why it is moral to resist the forces that are reducing us to a racial minority here and, eventually, even in Europe.

One would think that even an amoebae would know that survival is better than death! With our people, however, one has to argue them into surviving. This situation is comparable to being sent onto the playing field, huddling with the team, and having to explain the exciting new idea that it is better to win than to lose. It is breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking, that our race is so tripped up in abstractions about racial equality and equivalence that we can now be objective about our own survival. To have to argue the men and women of our race into survival is like going hunting and having to carry the hound.

It could even be said that the prevalence of such fuzzy thinking about racial survival is an argument in favor of those who dispute the theory of evolution and believe in creation. The scientists among us are forced to explain how genes that permit abstract speculation about our own survival could possibly have survived the millennia. One would think that the genes of people this befuddled would be found only by scientists doing DNA research on the fossilized dung of saber tooth tigers!

Squanto and Ephialtes

When I was a child, my parents were not great believers in television. The first television program we were allowed to watch was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, which we were marched up the street and ordered to sit and watch. Since I had thought from what my friends had said that TV was some sort of sinful treat, I was surprised to see what appeared to be nothing more than another boring church service, with adults walking around in robes and reading the Bible.

The lack of television meant that I did a lot of reading, much of which was from the tales of antiquity and novels by the Victorian writer, G. H. Henty. One of these stories was that of the pass at Thermopylae. Like generations of Europeans before me, I sentimentally identified with the men of Sparta who died “obedient to her laws.” One main character in that story, however, fails to stick in most people’s memory. You will remember that a Greek shepherd showed the Persians a mountain path around the pass by which they could ambush the Greeks from the rear. That man was Ephialtes the Malian.

As a child I read about Ephialtes and imagined that he must have been the most shocking sort of out-and-out traitor. However, in my old age, having had much experience with liberals, and especially with Christian liberals who believe that Christianity enjoins more concern for other groups than for our own, I have changed my image of Ephialtes the Malian. I no longer see him as simply a traitor, pure and simple, but as a much more complicated psychological type.

I see him looking at the Persian “immigrants” as they come to take his people’s homeland. I hear him saying, “Oh, look! Here come those poor Persians looking for a home. I bet they have interesting things to eat. Maybe they will open up a Persian restaurant. We’ll have diversity. Why, look at that one there; he might want to marry my daughter. Poor things. They look hungry and thirsty. Maybe I can help them. It’s what Zeus would have us do.”

Likewise I thought for some time that only our race produced renegades like Ephialtes. However, I then recalled the story of little Squanto. Some of you will remember Squanto, the kindly Indian boy who showed the Pilgrims how to fertilize their corn by planting a little fish in the ground with each corn seed. Most of us were told the Squanto story in 5th or 6th grade, as the schools were already softening us up for multiculturalism and laying the ground work for guilt feelings we were supposed to have for mistreating the noble, kindly Indians, especially when whites should have been grateful to clever Squanto for teaching them how to plant crops.

In the light of later history, it certainly seems that Squanto and his female predecessor, Pocahontas, were both unlucky draws of the cards for the Indians. When one reflects that the Indians generally sired brave heroes like Geronimo and Sitting Bull, who defended — albeit without success — their people’s patrimony, how unlucky for them that at the precise moment when they most desperately needed a Geronimo or a Sitting Bull they got a Squanto and a Pocahontas!

Our own race has gone from a situation in which our equivalent of Squanto, Ephialtes the Malian, was the rare exception to one in which we have almost nothing but Squantos in churches, schools, colleges, newspapers and labor unions helping the alien colonizers plant the corn. I wonder if any of them ever reflect on how the descendants of Geronimo and Sitting Bull today — cooped up on reservations, having lost their native languages and culture — must gnash their teeth and curse the day when Squanto and Pocahontas were born.

If a fate for our people different from that of the Indians is to be avoided, it will require brave and intelligent leadership. When I was a child, one of my favorite chapters of history was the story of the Spanish Armada. I read and reread the G. H. Henty novel on this episode in British history, Under Drake’s Flag.

Under Drake's Flag

Most of you remember the story. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, England was a poor little island on the fringe of Europe. It was one of the last citadels of freedom left, as the Spanish Empire had crushed nation after nation beneath the weight of royal absolutism and the Inquisition. Everyone knew that there would eventually be war between the colossal empire of Spain and little England. For years the government of Queen Elizabeth had scrimped and saved, pouring what little revenue was available into preparing the fleet for the inevitable war and into succoring the hard-pressed Dutch patriots. Every loyal Englishman knew how high the stakes were, because he could see across the Channel what the results of Spanish despotism were.

At last, after years of waiting, came the long anticipated declaration of war from Spain. The greatest fleet in human history was preparing to sail. All the forces of Spain, the Inquisition, and the Counter-Reformation were descending upon England. Every Englishman knew what the fate of his country would be if that Armada were ever able to escort to an English port the Duke of Parma with his dreaded Spanish tercios, the unrivaled Spanish military formations that had never known defeat on land. No nation had ever stood up to the Spanish infantry. The only hope was to imitate the Dutch, who had opened the dikes, flooded their land, and defended themselves at sea. At all cost the Armada had to be stopped.

All during the spring and summer the sentinels had stood on the rocky promontories along the southern coast of Britain, straining their eyes south for the first sight of the Spanish sails. Finally, the word came to The Lizard, the southernmost point in Britain, that the Armada had been sighted and was now bearing down on the little island. The bonfire was lighted at The Lizard and then as planned all across southern England bonfire after bonfire was lighted as signals to send word to London and the Queen that the Armada was coming.

The Queen, knowing the mortal threat to England’s very survival, made a royal inspection of her army, gathered at Tilsbury for the nation’s defense. After riding slowly through the ranks, she made a magnificent declaration to the men, which was met with a thunderous ovation. It still speaks movingly — or should — to every Anglo-Saxon wherever he lives.

My loving people, I have been urged by some to take care how I expose myself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery [there had been assassination attempts]. But I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear their people. I have always so governed that, next to God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects. Therefore, I come amongst you at this grave hour as you see, being resolved in the midst of the heat of battle to live or die amongst you all for my God, for my kingdom, for my people and in defense of their religion and liberty. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms.

One can imagine the impact of this proclamation on the English. Spain was defeated by the superior seamanship of the British sailors as well as by a stroke of good luck in the form of favorable weather (the “Protestant Wind”), which scattered the Armada at a crucial moment.

Today, as an adult, having read more widely, I know that the story is not quite so pat as this. While England was freedom’s hope, her freedom was not all that it could have been. Catholics and the Irish did not enjoy that freedom, although in time they would come to do so. Nevertheless, I do not regret having enjoyed a boy’s view of such events, free of qualifications.

The Drakes of Today

As a boy I dreamed of being involved in such a cause. I would read such stories by Henty and other writers and I would imagine what it must have been like to have sailed with Drake. I never dreamed, however, that during my own lifetime there would arise an issue the stakes of which would dwarf to insignificance the stakes at issue in the battle between Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada. Today we stand at a turning point in the history not merely of our country or even of our race, but of civilization itself.

Sir Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake

We are the Drakes and his seamen of this later age.

Most of us can see three worlds. We can look back to the world of the America-that-was, the America of our childhood — which is a laughing-stock to liberals — the “Eisenhower era” America. That America was already not what it had been earlier or should have been. It already bore within itself the seeds of its own decline. Nevertheless, we remember it with fondness as a happy America of safety and confidence. That America is gone. It will never return.

When we look forward, there are two worlds in the future. We see one world in the chasm and one at the summit. Our species can take the road to either of these worlds. If we continue on our present course, we will use our marvelous scientific advances to encourage the procreation of the sorriest sort of our species and drag ourselves down into a debased humanity.

Or we could use the knowledge science has given us to carry our people and humanity to greater heights than have ever been dreamed of. We have it in our capacity to bring forth brilliant people who will be free of hereditary physical and mental diseases, people who will surpass the great geniuses of Pericles, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Tolstoy.

If we continue our present dysgenic policies (for we do have a national genetics policy — a policy of subsidizing the incompetent at the expense of the competent), we can continue to increase the number of problem causers and diminish the number of problem solvers with each generation. This policy can be pursued until we have debased the human race and are bereft of genius.

If we are to pursue the path to a higher, greater humanity, it may be in no small measure due to the work of many of you in this room today. We are the Drakes and his seamen of this later age. It is up to us. No one else is going to do it, not even among conservative groups not represented here today.

For our opponents are not limited to liberals. Indeed, some liberals, a very few, are not totally lost to the cause of the survival of our race and the development of our species. Some liberals, who see the cessation of immigration as the sine qua non of a sensible environmental policy, can be welcome allies. Most liberals are quite otherwise. But while we condemn liberals, let us not forget that many conservatives are equally if not more to blame for our circumstances.

On the right you find many “responsible conservatives,” like the Bill Bennets, the Ralph Reeds, the Jack Kemps. You find many people on the right who believe that it is immoral to work for the survival of our race. Such conservatives firmly believe that it makes no difference if whites are displaced by non-whites. Admittedly, this is a strange mind-set, the “anti-racist” conservative, but it is a common problem. Indeed, such people are more dangerous to us at this stage than liberals. Through such conservatives the establishment is able to choke off debate on the crucial issue of race. The thought control begins with those conservatives who are in essential agreement with liberals when it comes to race.

Leadership on the race issue will have to come from the Right. Although there are some few liberals who may come to our cause, they will always be a minority. The Left can never part from its commitment to egalitarianism, which is the warp and woof of Leftism of all stripes. It has been the Right, which historically has accepted the fact of human inequality. A belief in the inequality of individuals and of races was the faith of the American Right from Jefferson, to John Randolph, to John C. Calhoun right down to the Taft Republicans and Southern statesmen like Senator Richard B. Russell only several decades ago.

Only in the last decades has the leadership of the Right been usurped by those who call themselves “conservatives,” but who are actually committed egalitarians. The establishment has succeeded in co-opting the legitimate Right and replacing it with an opposition that opposes nothing of consequence.

Jack Kemp or Ralph Reed appear as purported conservative spokesmen yet they promote egalitarianism and denounce opposition to the establishment’s racial program as “evil.” The unsuspecting white who looks upon them with a measure of trust is confused and misled into accepting the idea that it is somehow immoral to oppose the reduction of whites to a minority. This is especially true because the leftist view on race being promulgated by Mr. Kemp and Mr. Reed is seasoned with free enterprise economics by the former and a shallow, trendy theology by the latter.

It is up to us to break through the Iron Curtain imposed on the honest discussion of racial issues and it is time to get on with the task. When Joan of Arc finally found someone who offered to lead her to the King of France, he asked her when she would like to go. She replied, “Better today than tomorrow. Better tomorrow than later yet.” How then are we to get on with the task which history has laid before us? First by having the trumpet sound a certain note, “for if the note of the trumpet be uncertain, who shall prepare himself for the battle?” If we are unequivocal and unwavering in our message, our people will respond to the call.

Our message must be clear and uncompromising — not hysterical or overstated, but certainly clear and uncompromising. We must never waver or falter. We must without qualification stand for what we believe and hold our positions even under the fiercest fire. In the words Shakespeare put into the mouth of Henry the Fifth, “he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart. . . . We would not die in that man’s company that fears his fellowship to die with us.” Those conservatives who cannot or will not take a principled stance in defense of the historic conservative truths about race should retire to their homes and leave the field to those who can. After all, what could be more worthy of being conserved than the very genetic survival of our people?

Let the fair weather patriot and the sunshine soldier depart. We will not depart. We will not be silenced by media denunciations. We will not be bullied by threats of financial reprisal. We will not be silenced by appeals to guilt offered in the guise of Christianity. We are resolved to fight these issues out to their ultimate conclusion so that we can say, with the men who sailed with Nelson at Trafalger, “Thank God we have done our duty!” As Rudyard Kipling said: “The strength of the wolf is the strength of the pack, and the strength of the pack is the strength of the wolf.” Each of us adds his individual strength to our cause and each of us is strengthened by the strength of our cause.

To plagiarize William Lloyd Garrison in The Liberator, many will object to the severity of our language, but is there not cause for severity? We will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. We are in earnest. We will not equivocate. We will not excuse. We will not retreat a single inch. And we will be heard.

[Editor’s Note: This is an abridged version of the closing address to the May 1996 AR conference, which took place despite vigorous efforts to shut it down.]