The American Traditionalist Society

MANY readers of this site have described their sense of isolation in a society that seems bereft of wisdom, decency and common sense. Whether it be a college student disgusted by her courses, a young man looking for a wife, a new mother who wants to remain home, a white man whose career has been derailed by affirmative action, an elderly bachelor in a once-thriving community now brutalized by black crime and vandalism, or a Marine in the feminized military, these readers share the feeling that they do not belong. They reject the lunacy and decadence around them.

So many feel this way, and share a common understanding of what is missing and what is needed to reverse this decline, that it makes no sense for them to remain as scattered isolates. They should join together and seek others to join them. They should collectively respond to the evil around them.

To this end, a new organization, the American Traditionalist Society is now in the serious planning stages. The purpose of the American Traditionalist Society would be to spread proper —that is, traditionalist — conservatism. As Alan Roebuck, who proposed the idea and who has written a manifesto, puts it, “Traditionalism restores the life-giving ties between a man and his people, their past, and his God.” Traditionalism restores wisdom and common sense. Whereas contemporary thinking is fundamentally unwise outside of the procedures of the natural sciences and technology, traditionalism seeks to fill this void and strives for justice, truth, beauty, and the proper ordering of society.

Traditionalism is not just about bringing back the good things that have been lost. It is not backward-looking, although it admires the best in the past. According to Lawrence Auster, “The past, ‘tradition,’ is but one dimension of traditionalism. Traditionalism is, first, an orientation toward the transcendent structure of the universe–the natural, social, and spiritual orders that make us possible. Each society orders itself uniquely according to those orders. So traditionalism is not just the past tradition, it’s our active relationship and tension with the order of the world, but always grasped and done uniquely and newly in each time and society according to the particularities of that society.”

So far, the American Traditionalist Society is just an idea and has no organizational structure, funds or staff. But in the weeks ahead, a fuller statement of its founding principles in the lengthy manifesto will be posted here, as well as at The Orthosphere and View from the Right. The first step is to define the intellectual parameters of such a group. In the meantime, here is a formal introduction.

Since roughly the 1960s, America has pursued a determined course of self-destruction in the name of liberalism. Our nation is now in a state of undeniable crisis. The federal government, close to insolvency, openly defies the Constitution and asserts its increasingly unaccountable and tyrannical power over the states and over the life of every individual. Our borders have been effectively erased, our language weakened, and our cultural foundations overturned. Our major institutions have been undermined from within. The media and popular culture have marginalized decency and virtue and made filth, transgression, and every kind of nastiness the new norm—a norm unquestioned by anyone in the mainstream culture, including conservatives. Our leaders pontificate that we must be tolerant above all else, and so many draw the natural conclusion that life is absurd. With the official-in-all-but-name denial of the God of the Bible and of any transcendent truth, many young men and women have become demoralized, leading lives that are amoral, selfish, and dissipated.

The response of institutionalized conservatism to this catastrophe has been wholly inadequate, for it has assumed that our nation is fundamentally sound and that we need only oppose the latest liberal initiatives. Failing effectively to challenge the false and evil premises of liberalism or even to acknowledge that these premises now hold effective control over all aspects of American society, the organized conservatism of our day has, at best, only slowed the rate of destruction. It is therefore time for a new, traditionalist, conservatism which recognizes the dominance and falsehood of liberalism and the need to restore the traditional American way of life, yet updated to suit the times. It is time for men and women of good will to stand together before God, repent of their liberalism, and turn their hearts and minds toward the formation of a new social and political order, an order based on God, the wisdom of the ages, and that which is enduringly true in the American and Western tradition. We seek to foster a better order through the spiritual, moral and intellectual renewal of individuals, families, churches, and other fundamental units of society, leading naturally to an organic renewal of American society.

To this end, ever in debt to our forebears and beholden to posterity, the American Traditionalist Society is devoted.

I like the Thinking Housewife site and visit it regularly. However, there seems to be some racism there. Not 100%, but, she takes a stand against such things as interracial marriage/relationships. I don’t think she’s gone as far as to call for them to be illegal, but, it gets close.

No site or person is perfect and I don’t mean to slam her. Most of the essays and points are right on. This is just a fly in the ointment.

So a word of caution to FReepers, before you sign up, be sure you check out any racial antagonism.

I have only been to her site a few times, so I hadn't picked up on that. There is some kind of line there that every person draws in a different place.

For a long time here at FR we were not really permitted to have conversations about race, it was considered bad form to say anything too blunt about, say black crime. But as the explosion of smart-phones has led to the endless stream of wilding videos that prohibition has faded away.

Being anti-affirmative action is pretty mainstream idea among conservatives, both now and pretty much for a long time.

Being able to talk honestly about black crime and black under-achievement is still close to forbidden, even in conservative circles. One can talk about it, but it is always in terms of the larger societies "racism" or the need for more special programs to "close the achievement gap". Laura Woods and others in her circle, like Lawrence Auster, violate this unwritten rule of conservative discourse.

And of course there are many conservatives who would loudly disagree that there is any racial component to black dysfunction - saying it's all cultural. To me that seems like hair splitting and an unimportant (and ultimatley impossible to determine) distinction without a difference. I suspect both nature and nurture play a part in these racial differences, but even if they are 100% nuture as someone like Glenn Beck would assert, the end result it the same. Blacks still commit a lot more crime and score lower on tests than whites.

Interracial marriage is a whole giant step further. Strangely the people I know who most loudly oppose it are all black. In college my roomate (who was black) was told by a another friend (who was black) to stop dating white woman or the black community would ostracize him. This was circa 1980! I know these attitudes continue in the black community, black woman particularly hate when (rich) black men (think OJ, Clarence Thomas, etc.) date and marry white women. Black woman's magazines like Essence have articles on this all the time weighing both sides of the question. They have their own term for it "swirl". (Date across races.)

I don't think too many people would accuse Essence magazine of being racist because they frankly discuss inter-racial relationships, including giving space to dissenting voices who oppose the practice. I see no more reason to tar Laura with that tag for her views, but I understand that some segments of the conservative movement will.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.