Our Sacred Honor

2,800 words

John Trumbull, Declaration of Independence, 1819

This is my speech that I delivered at the American Renaissance conference on November 15, 2025. I would like to thank Jared Taylor, the American Renaissance team, the Counter-Currents Brain Trust, and everybody who attended the conference.

White Nationalism is all about giving white people a future again. Whites today face a momentous decision. In every white homeland, trends toward below-replacement fertility, mixed marriages, and open borders mean that, first, we will lose political power in our own homelands, and then, sometime later, we will cease to exist as a distinct race. If these trends are not reversed, the white race will simply go extinct, but only after suffering all the horrors and indignities of being a conquered people.

There are two kinds of extinction: natural, like the dinosaurs, and man-made, like the passenger pigeon. White extinction is man-made. It is the predictable outcome of trends set in motion by bad political decisions. Thus, white extinction can be stopped by better political decisions.

Unfortunately, there are millions of people, most of them white, who will fight tooth and claw to stop us. But there are not even 300 people in this room. Given the magnitude of what is at stake, AmRen conferences should be held in sold-out stadiums.

But if we win, our descendants will look back on those who turned the tide as heroes akin to Leonidas and his brave 300, only immensely greater, because so much more is at stake: not the future of a single people but of our whole race.

Yes, we have made tremendous progress in recent years. I have had a front row seat in this movement since the year 2000. I first met Sam Dickson on Labor Day of 2000. Thanks to Sam, I met Wilmot Robertson, Sam Francis, and Jared Taylor in the Spring of 2001. Back then, they were lonely voices, crying out in the wilderness.

Today, when you log on to social media platforms like X, Instagram, and TikTok, their ideas are everywhere. Ideas that were marginal even within White Nationalist circles 15 years ago—such as secession, white genocide, and the Great Replacement—are discussed in mainstream Republican circles today.

And, since policy is downstream from culture, we are seeing progress in the political realm: the border is closed to illegal migrants, deportations are happening, DEI and “wokeness” are being pushed back, and there are now serious discussions about dismantling the Civil Rights regime.

None of this would have happened without our movement. For all our follies, schisms, and tactical errors, we’ve been doing something right. I call it “metapolitics”: basically, building communities and changing minds, the battle of ideas. In America, the best part of “third” political parties and “activist” groups is also building communities and spreading ideas, including what can be called “propaganda of the deed.” The rest is baggage that is best discarded.

The battle of ideas has two main dimensions. The first is simply informing people of important facts, for instance, facts about racial differences, diversity, immigration, and globalization that doom the multicultural experiment.

But the facts aren’t enough. I have met many people in the last quarter century who are fully informed about the issues discussed in this room. Yet they choose to do nothing. Or worse, they choose to actively collaborate with the system.

The problem here is not a lack of facts. The problem is what they choose to do, or not do, based on the facts. It is not a question of what is but of what ought to be, specifically what we ought to do. In short, it is a moral issue.

The biggest moral impediment to white identity politics is the idea that racism and nationalism are evil—but only for white people. The racism and nationalism of other groups are to be encouraged. That’s it: the fake moral imperative that vetoes every policy white people need to survive. Thus it vetoes white survival itself.

This blatant double standard is premised ultimately on the idea that white people are uniquely evil and thus do not deserve good government or nice things. White extinction is a moral imperative. This heinous dogma animates the Left and paralyzes any resistance.

This is how I see the political domain. Our enemies are the people who wield the charge of “racism” (meaning white racism) as a club. Our false friends are the people who cringe and cower before that word. Sadly, that includes Donald Trump, who resorts to ridiculous measures to insure himself against that charge: photo ops with Kanye West, sentencing reform, pardons for rappers, the Platinum Plan, and so forth. White Nationalists are the people for whom the word “racism” has no power.

Much of the progress we have made in recent years is due simply to the weakening of this absurd moral inhibition on white identity politics.

But there is a deeper source of moral reluctance to getting involved with our cause. You hear this when people warn you: “Don’t go to American Renaissance. Don’t talk about White Nationalism, not even on the internet with a pen name. Because if people find out, your life will be ruined.”

What kind of life can be ruined by frank talk about race? Obviously, your economic life. You can lose a job. I have lived with financial precarity my whole adult life, so I know how devastating that can be. But how did economic life become identified with life as such?

You can order Greg Johnson's Loving Our Own here.

That’s a long story that takes us back to the beginning of modern times, when the following view of human nature emerged. Life is short and insecure. Human beings do not just want to survive, we want to thrive. Reason is a tool by which we can conquer nature and reorder human society to secure life, liberty, and property.

The main impediments to this project are the Throne and the Altar, i.e., the aristocracy and clergy. Aristocrats are driven to extravagance and war in the pursuit of vain ideas about honor and glory. Priests are driven to asceticism and war because of ideas of the religious sort.

Modern men see themselves as producers and consumers. That’s life. The biggest threats to economic life are people who put ideas and honor ahead of self-preservation and comfort. Superstition versus science, war versus peace, and extravagance or asceticism versus the rational and industrious accumulation of wealth: these are the greatest threats to modern man.

There’s a word for people who regard honor and idealism as threats to life and comfort, a word used by critics of modernity on both the Left and the Right, a word dripping with contempt. That word is “bourgeois,” a French word for the urban, capitalist middle class.

We should all be grateful to the rational and industrious bourgeoisie, who have dramatically improved human life. But it is true that bourgeois types are not the best revolutionaries. Nor are they particularly good conservatives.

Leftists are idealists. They are willing to kill and die over ideas. This gives them enormous advantages. They have greater emotional intensity and are willing to do more to win. In any battle, other things being equal, the party that is willing to risk more—even life itself—has an advantage. Thus in a battle with the Left, conservatives lack an edge. This is why conservatives conserve nothing.

If the pure bourgeois type—the rational and industrious producer-consumer—cannot create or conserve a bourgeois society, is he even a political agent? There is something deeply apolitical—even antipolitical—about his aspirations. This becomes clearest in libertarianism, the purest bourgeois political philosophy, which envisions a world with no borders (and none of the us-versus-them that gives rise to politics), as well as a minimal state or even no state at all.

Now let’s revisit our hypothetical internet lurker who agrees with White Nationalism but is afraid to get involved because he’s been told “You’ll ruin your life!” If you think your life will be “ruined” by politics, that might be because you have defined life in apolitical terms.

But if you refuse to participate in politics, you are just a plaything of the people who do. You might not want to think about politics, but politics thinks about you. The libertarian just wants to be left alone. When he realizes that he needs to join a collective to force other people to leave him alone, he is no longer a libertarian.

If the bourgeois type is inherently antipolitical, then “bourgeois revolution” is a contradiction in terms. So what of the American Revolution? Wasn’t that the consummate bourgeois revolution? We all know these words from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

How many times have you heard these words piously intoned by people who don’t believe in a “Creator” or any religion at all but fervently wish that you adopt equality as a civil religion?

The words “Life,” “Liberty,” “Happiness,” and “Safety” are all capitalized here. What could be more bourgeois than that? How could such men create a revolution, which by its very nature imperils life, liberty, and safety?

To understand this, we need to look to the end of the Declaration:

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

After these words, 56 men signed their names. The youngest three—Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, Thomas Lynch, Jr., also of South Carolina, and George Walton of Georgia—were 26 years old. The next oldest were 30: Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania and Thomas Heyward, Jr., of South Carolina. The oldest, Benjamin Franklin, was 70. The average age of the signers was a little over 42.

It is important to understand that these men were pledging to risk losing their lives and fortunes, which is the last thing that bourgeois men would do. What made this possible? The key to understanding this is the last item on the list, their honor. They were not pledging to lose their honor, which is why it is characterized as “sacred.”

If the bourgeois value system prizes life, liberty, property, and safety over honor and idealism, then the American Founders did not have a bourgeois value system. Instead, they held that honor is sacred, but life and property were not. This is the aristocratic value system scorned by the bourgeoisie.

If a bourgeois man is given a choice—your honor or your life—he will choose life. Aristocrats, however, prefer death to dishonor. If given the choice between life and honor, aristocrats prefer to die with their sacred honor intact.

What is this honor that the Founders held to be sacred? These were men who fought duels to the death over personal slights. Two of the signers actually fought duels: Burton Gwinnett and George Walton, both of Georgia. Gwinnett actually died from wounds sustained in a duel.

But the Revolution was not over personal slights but systematic abuses, which are detailed in the Declaration. The Founders believed they were owed a certain amount of respect as free men.

But to secure your freedom, sometimes you must risk your life. This value system throws light on a perennial complaint about the Founders: How could they believe in the rights to life, liberty, and happiness but tolerate and even practice chattel slavery?

The great German Idealist philosopher Hegel claimed that history begins with a duel to the death over honor. Such a duel is a test of character. If a man prefers death to dishonor, he will either die fighting or live victorious. If, however, he prefers dishonor to death, he will be willing to live on in defeat as a slave of the victor. For Hegel, the duel to the death over honor shows that some men are free or servile by nature, natural masters or natural slaves.

To put it bluntly, many of our ancestors regarded slaves with contempt for preferring to live on as slaves rather than die as free men. Now, that is an easy thing to say. But the Founders would have held themselves in contempt for making that choice as well. And when the opportunity presented itself, they put their lives on the line to live as free men.

None of the signatories of the Declaration were titled aristocrats. Nearly half of them (25) were lawyers. Law is the best-represented profession in our movement as well. There were also four physicians and one clergyman. The rest were farmers, merchants, and craftsmen. After the revolution, many of the signatories went on to have political careers. But all of them were businessmen to some extent. They knew how to make and manage money. They had material ambitions. They valued comfort and security to some extent.

All of these men knew they had but one life to live or lose, so they dared not waste it over small things. They all knew that discretion is the better part of valor.

They were men with a lot to lose, and they knew that when they signed the Declaration. Surely, there were people who tried to dissuade them, who told them, “You’ll ruin your life!” Surely, some people took that advice, but history does not record their names.

Those who did sign valued their honor and liberty more than their lives and property. And because of this, they launched a revolution while their more bourgeois neighbors played it safe.

So how do we overcome the reluctance of our own bourgeois friends and neighbors to get involved? How do we quiet our inner bourgeois, so we can do more for the cause?

We should, of course, do everything we can to make it safer for people to get involved. For instance, we can provide secure ways to send donations. We can protect people’s identities. We can secure our gatherings against protestors, spies, and thugs. We can promote legislation protecting people against being fired for expressing their political convictions. We can promote legislation to make the First Amendment one of the terms of service for every social media platform, bank, bookseller, and payment processor. We can help people who are doxed.

But we can’t make it safer for others if we play it safe ourselves. They say courage is contagious, but someone needs to be courageous first.

You can buy Greg Johnson's The White Nationalist Manifesto here.

So we return to the moral problem: we can’t reduce the risks of revolution to zero, so we must increase our tolerance of risk above zero. A good way to begin is to teach people that there’s more to life than the pursuit of comfort and security. Indeed, if everybody thought that way, history never would have happened. We need to study the psychology of heroism, for virtually every great man of history risked “ruining his life” by bourgeois standards.

Tacitus once said, “The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.” There is no cause on earth greater and nobler than White Nationalism. Our cause is to give white people a future again. Compared to that, the complaints of America’s Founders against King George III are trivial. Whites in every country, every day silently suffer indignities that would have caused their ancestors to draw swords.

Our enemies think we have become a race of sheep, fit only to be sheared and slaughtered. But our genes have not changed, only our morals have. It all comes down to a simple choice, a choice that our modern educational system never told us that we have: When there is a conflict between our honor and our appetites, which part of us wins out? Are there any values above life itself? Is there anything worth dying for?

Today, our default programming is bourgeois. But we are now learning that if we are unwilling to risk death over matters of principle, our enemies can take everything from us, even our whole race’s future, bit by stealthy bit. By putting our lives and fortunes before our honor, we will have none of them in the end.

The moral revolution comes first, and it begins with the question: What kind of men do you choose to be?

Thank you.

Counter-Currents, November 17, 2025