Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech

This is the full text of Enoch Powell's so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which was delivered to a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham on April 20 1968.

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

"He was somebody who took a point, elaborated it, and was lead by it, to its own implied conclusion. And as a philosopher I admired that. That's the way one should think if one is interested in truth. But if one is interested in persuading people, then of course that might be a mistake. People are often frightened by logic. They are frightened by the truth."
—Roger Scrutton

Paved With Good Intentions: The Failure of Race Relations in Contemporary America by Jared Taylor. Paperback: 416 pages. (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Pub., 1993.)

Review by Ryan Setliff

Arguing rather persuasively that alleged white racism is more an excuse for black failure and social pathologies than an accurate explanation, Taylor challenges political correctness on issues concerning race relations and ethnicity in America. He brings a plethora of evidence, statistics and hard facts to the table which bear some uncomfortable truths for many Americans — black and white — and especially that nebulous group we affectionately know as liberals. As Jonathan West laments, “Liberals are not concerned with outcomes our even with how policies work. They are only concerned with how policies FEEL.” That Trotskyite-Marxist ideological appellation ‘racist’ is reflexively thrown at every sensible piece of social dialogue on the matter, and Taylor’s book has not been immune from such charges. But as black economist Walter Williams said, “Paved With Good Intentions should be on everybody’s bookshelf.” See for yourself, what the establishment doesn’t want you to see.

In his introduction, Taylor notes, “For many people, both black and white, the notion that white racism explains black failure is the key to understanding American society. They are so convinced of the prevalence of white racism that they refuse even to consider the possibility that it may not be the sole obstacle to success for black Americans. For them, white racism is a brutal fact that seldom need be questioned—to question it may be immoral” (p. 16.) Taylor points out with much validity, “if whites in America are inveterately bigoted, other nonwhite races should face obstacles similar to those faced by blacks. Ye Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and even black West Indians have overcome America’s storied racism,” and “instead of complaining about oppression and prejudice—of which there used to be plenty—they have taken responsibility for themselves and seized opportunities for a better life.”

West, Jonathan, Tragedy of Freedom: An Indictment of Liberal Democracy and a Call for Patriotic Resistance, (West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2006.) $14.95.

Review by Ryan Setliff

An Indictment of Liberal Democracy

Author Jonathan West grew up in liberal family, attended college in Washington, DC, during the tumultuous Vietnam era. There he witnessed the subversion of America by New Left radicals who made heroes of our nation’s communist enemies. During this time, West underwent an epiphany and became convinced that the democratic system itself, which coddles subversives, is the culprit. West laments, “Liberals recreated the American soul, first in the media and then in the teachings and textbooks of America’s schools. By the time the Viet Nam war was underway, the real battle was already over.” The liberal intelligentsia succeeded in sapping “America’s children” “of their national character, their cohesion and vision. In place of these stood attributes of ethnic pluralism, leftist self-hate, and alienation” (p. 90.)

Robert Nisbet: Conservative Sociologist by Gary North

"Conservative sociologist" is as close to an oxymoron as you can get in academia, comparable to "civil government."

There have been four prominent post-1950 conservative American sociologists with books to their credit, as far as I can figure out: Nisbet, Ernest van den Haag, Peter Berger, and Will Herberg. The original conservative sociologist was anything but prominent: Albert Hobbs. He wrote The Vision and the Constant Star, The Claims of Sociology, Social Problems and Scientism, and Man Is Moral Choice. I mention him because almost no one remembers him today. He wrote mainly in the 1950's. His name is not found even in monographs on the history of American conservatism. He was laboring unappreciated in the vineyard years before the others appeared.

There was one other possible candidate back in 1959: Stanford University's Richard LaPierre. He wrote a book that had some influence in the conservative movement, The Freudian Ethic: An Analysis of the Subversion of American Character, which in 1959 was about the only book critical of Freud that the typical conservative, or even the untypical Russell Kirk, had ever heard of. What his politics were, I have no idea.

Shots Fired: Sam Francis on America's Culture War by Samuel Francis, Peter B. Gemma, ed., (Vienna, Virginia: FGF Books, 2006), 361 pages with index

Review by Ryan Setliff

Samuel Francis—Culture Warrior for the West

The late Samuel Francis gained renown for his trenchant pen, as one of the most provocative paleoconservative writers of his generation. He possessed the trenchant pen of H.L. Mencken and the political predilection Patrick J. Buchanan. In fact, Buchanan has written the introduction to the book. Always caring more about the truth than political correctness, Samuel Francis stuck to his guns, and lost his journalist job with the Washington Times over his politically-incorrect positions on immigration and racial issues in the United States. Francis was the bête noire to the establishment. He kindled the ire of neocon stooges and limousine liberals. His friend, Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles, remarked, “In so many ways he was the opposite of most conservatives. He rarely talked a good game, but he always played one.” Paul Gottfried proclaimed, “Francis was not a conventional movement conservative. He was too smart, too honest, and, as these essays indicate, too ready to state social truths that the media had worked strenuously to conceal.” A vociferous pundit, Francis has condemned “immediate gratification, indulgence, and consumption,” while making a clarion call for a “thunderous defense of moral and decent traditionalism.” This powerful anthology of writings, edited by Peter Gemma, represents some of Francis’ most intrepid writing.

That the South was the first section of the United States to sense an enemy in fascism was indicated not only by polls of opinions, but also by its ardor in preparing for the fight. On the surface it is an anomaly of the first order that this most conservative of sections should have discerned a foe in the regimes gathering strength in Europe, for in open debate the South would have been hard put to it to distinguish between some of the slogans of the New Order and the tenets of its own faith, sealed with Confederate blood and affirmed in many a post-bellum oration. That the Southern whites considered themselves Herrenvolk in relation to the Negro is one of the obvious features of the sociological landscape, and belief in the influence of blood and soil is powerful with them, as with any agrarian people. The glorification of the martial spirit, the distrust of urban liberalism, the hatred of money economy are pages that might be found in the book of any unreconstructed Southerner. The restoration of medieval concepts in Europe might almost have seemed the Confederate's dream or reversing history and regaining the way of life which he lost in 1865. Why then the deep, instinctive hostility of the SOuth to Hitler and his allies?

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and The Crusades), (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2008.)

Book Review by Ryan Setliff.

This is some truth-telling for those clear-headed enough to fathom the proposition that a devout Muslim is in fact a terrorist.

Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by James Burnham. Hardcover: 320 pages.

Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism by James Burnham is a trenchant critique of modern secular liberalism, which Burnham characterizes as the ideology of Western suicide. "Liberalism," observes Burnham, "is the ideology of Western suicide." Why? Liberalism presents a false anthropology of human nature, seeing mankind as essentially good, but in need of liberation from social problems rooted in tradition, prejudice and ignorance. Liberalism appealed to the politics of guilt. Its ideological nostrums of egalitarianism and social justice meant the suicide of the West, he postulated, and the inevitable contraction of Western culture, power and social stability.

Calvinism and Politics by Abraham Kuyper

MY THIRD LECTURE leaves the sanctuary of religion and enters upon the domain of the State–the first transition from the sacred circle to the secular field of human life. Only now therefore we proceed, summarily and in principle, to combat the unhistorical suggestion that Calvinism represents an exclusively ecclesiastical and dogmatic movement.