Principles are More Important Than People

1,550 words

There is a lot of wisdom in the anonymous saying: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

But understanding this saying requires some nuances. One can’t understand politics without discussing all three categories: ideas, events, and people.

Thus great minds do not discuss only ideas. They also discuss events and people. But they understand them in the light of ideas.

Average minds don’t simply discuss events. They also discuss people. But ideas are above them, which is what makes them average.

Small minds simply discuss people, because ideas and events are somehow beyond them, which is what makes them small minded.

It is easy to discuss people, so everybody does it. It is harder to discuss events, so only average and above-average people do it. It is even harder to discuss ideas, so only above-average people do it.

Small minds tend to think that everything is a matter of personality. Average and above-average minds understand that personality is important, but personality is not all there is to politics. Average minds recognize that events can’t be reduced to just personalities. Events can take on a life of their own. But only the broadest minds recognize that one also needs to talk about principles as well as events and personalities.

I also think speaking of “great” minds raises the bar too high, for it makes one think of Aristotle or Goethe. But one doesn’t need to be a genius to recognize the important of ideas. Thus I prefer to speak of broad, average, and narrow or small minds.

Intelligence is clearly a factor here, but breadth and narrowness are more important, and it is possible for small-minded people to be quite intelligent, within their limited horizons.

In politics, events can be understood as the result of ideas and people interacting. Both ideas and personalities leave their mark on history. But what is more important for understanding political events: ideas or personalities?

Two hallmarks of average and small minds are the narrowness of their focus and the shortness of their time horizons. If you focus on small-scale events and short time spans, personalities loom larger than ideas in the scheme of things.

But if you step back and focus on larger political trends—trends that can outlast individuals, parties, and nations—then fundamental ideas are decisive. But abstract principles and long time-spans only disclose themselves to broad-minded individuals. They are beyond the ken of the average and small-minded, who bump up against the ceiling of their understanding.

Typical politics is a bitter struggle between the personalities, interest groups, and parties of the Right and the Left. Sometimes the Right is dominant. Sometimes the Left is. Yet if one takes a broader view, one sees that politics drifts steadily to the Left, no matter how bitterly the Right resists. Robert Lewis Dabney brilliantly described this tendency in 1897, when he predicted the success of women’s suffrage based on the character of its opponents, the conservatives of his day:

This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader.[1]

This is because the mainstream Right shares the same basic egalitarian and universalist principles as the Left. But Rightists are just slower to embrace the ultimate consequences of these principles, because the Right is also the party of the bourgeoise, who regard a long and comfortable life as the highest good. Bourgeois conservatives have “got theirs” and are thus morally complacent and fearful of the radical changes required by the next phase of equality’s triumphant march through the world.

But the same bourgeois value system that leads to moral complacency also leads to cowardice and compromise. So, over time, the superior moral commitment of the Left, combined with the Right’s own latent Leftist premises, ensure continued Leftward drift. Because the Right shares the Left’s principles, the Left has a systematic long-term advantage over the Right. Every Rightist’s moral convictions are a Leftist fifth column, occupying the highest seats of his government, ending every siege with surrender.

This means that if national populists want to make long-term political gains, we need to focus more on fundamental ideas and not get distracted by ephemeral events and personalities.

These are some of the ideological dogmas shared by both the mainstream Left and Right that we need to destroy to secure national populist policies.

• Political Universalism: We reject the idea that every human being can be part of a single political community. Political universalism is the root of multiculturalism and multiracialism as well as cultural assimilationist, miscegenationist, and civic nationalist ideas. We reject multiculturalism and multiracialism because they lead to alienation and conflict. We reject cultural assimilationism, miscegenation, and civic nationalism because, although they acknowledge the problems of diversity within the same system, they either try to destroy racial and cultural diversity to make the system work, or they try to paper diversity over with manufactured creedal nationalist pieties. We want to preserve the full diversity of races and cultures by giving them their own homelands. We think immigration and “naturalization” should be restricted to small numbers of people who are genetically and culturally similar to their destination societies.

• The Taboo Against “Racism”: We reject the idea that racial and ethnic identity, solidarity, pride, and preferences are immoral for white people (and only white people). White identity politics is inevitable, necessary, and moral.

• Liberalism: We think that individual liberty, private enterprise, and social equality are genuine values. But whenever they conflict with the common good of society, the common good should have priority. Thus we reject liberalism, defined as the ideology that denies that there is a common good, or denies that the common good can be known, or denies that the common good can be pursued by state action. We stand for the classical philosophical principle that there is a common good of society that can be known and pursued by state action.

The Hypocrisy Question

If principles are more important than people, then what should one do if one catches one’s enemies betraying their principles? For instance, what should one do if one discovers that a leading advocate of diversity lives in an overwhelmingly homogeneous community? (It is true of practically all of them.)

The small-minded, high time preference type will call his enemy out for hypocrisy, for failing to practice what he preaches. This might impeach the credibility of an ephemeral political actor in the minds of ephemeral political observers—until everyone is distracted by new events. The trouble is that it leaves the presumably evil principle of diversity intact and unscathed. Indeed, if anything this approach strengthens the betrayed principle by demanding that people live by it rather than just pay lip service to it. But for small minds, people loom large, and principles are basically above them, although they are willing to use them as a weapon to “own” particular individuals.

The better approach is to point out the contradiction but then attack the principle that is being betrayed, not the person who betrays it. After all, diversity is not a good thing. It leads to alienation, conflict, social breakdown, and violence. Thus we want people to betray diversity. One should congratulate one’s opponent for having the good sense not to impose diversity upon himself and his loved ones. But then we should ask him to join us to help bring the blessings of homogeneous white communities to Americans from all walks of life, not just the privileged.

Not all hypocrites are alike. If you betray good principles, that makes you a bad person. But does it make you a bad person to betray evil principles? Quite the contrary. It is good not to follow bad principles. If liberalism is evil, then the worst liberals have integrity whereas the best liberals are hypocrites. If multiculturalism is evil, then the worst multiculturalists practice what they preach, and the best are hypocrites. We should applaud the betrayal of evil principles, not demand that people follow them.

La Rochefoucauld famously said, “Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue,” meaning that hypocrisy is superior to unapologetic vice that does not pay lip service to virtue at all. But when the “virtue” in question is actually a vice, then hypocrisy is not merely a tribute to virtue, hypocrisy really is a virtue, and it should be applauded as such, not denounced.

But this approach only makes sense to broad-minded people who regard principles as more important than people. The narrow minded are happy to uphold evil principles merely to “own” their political opponents for the life of a tweet.

Note

[1] Robert Lewis Dabney, “Women’s Rights Women,” The Southern Magazine, 1871.

Source: https://counter-currents.com/2019/07/principles-are-more-important-than-people/