Although he is not “one of us,” Southern conservatives can certainly learn something from the eloquent blogger Steve Sailer. For instance, Sailer recently summarized a new theory from a book which relates the Woke Cult to the North’s two characteristic religious strains: “Puritans tended to be intense and Quakers nice,” Sailer observes. “Put them together and you get an intolerant religion of tolerance.” (Here the regular Abbeville Review reader is invited to go back and reread that statement, and then speculate regarding when and how the aforementioned evolving, intolerant religion of tolerance might have first come to dominate the American mind.)
Sailer himself has long been ostracized from polite conversation by the forces of Puritanical Quakerism, but with high-profile publications like The Atlantic and The Guardian now labeling him an “extremist,” his stock may in fact be rising. After all, if the 2024 election has demonstrated one thing, it is that even bad publicity can prove to be good publicity; until now, the Establishment has found it much simpler and more effective to sustain an iron curtain of silence around Sailer and his witty commentary.
So the new, active campaign against him may be a sign of alarm, if not desperation, a sign that he is becoming impossible to ignore. Along with the increase in hostile publicity, he has also drawn positive attention from a few prominent conservative outlets, e.g. an article in The Federalist entitled “America’s Most Controversial Columnist Is Its Most Prophetic.”
As it happens, Sailer’s new book Noticing features an essay highlighting just how ironic it is that leftist “Cancel Culture” pretends to hold the moral high ground when it stigmatizes various right-wing dissidents as if they were untouchable monsters. Citing quotations from contemporary literary superstars like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sailer suggests that in addition to Puritans and Quakers, the “woke” movement may also owe much to a very different, non-American source – one whom the Quakers would have undoubtedly disapproved of, to their credit, and whom the Puritans might even have burnt at the stake: the 1960’s French academic Michel Foucault.
Sailer’s entire essay “The Whip Hand” exposes the unsavory career of this “brilliant and sinister” homosexual sadomasochist Foucault, who exhorted like-minded intellectual radicals to deconstruct morality, tradition, human identity, and rationality itself. As Sailer observes, in Foucault’s case it really is not clear which came first, deconstructionist theory or repulsive practice:
How much of Foucault’s vast intellectual enterprise of denouncing categorization of individuals as possessing distinct identities was intended to undermine the legal category of children too young to consent? Did Foucault happen to dream up his ideas first and only then realize that his logic proved that it should be legal for him to have sex with boys? Or did he want to have sex with boys first and then dreamt up his vast system of justification?
To convey a fuller idea of Foucault’s nihilistic bent, suffice to say that he once envisioned the institution of “suicide-orgies,” whereby those intending to do away with themselves might get together and go out with a bang. The surreal punch-line, however, is that while today every right-winger – including those of us who cherish Southern culture and heritage – is expected to walk on eggshells to avoid becoming a canceled un-person, unemployable and unworthy of consideration in public life, Google Scholar identifies the degenerate Foucault as the most cited academic of all time.
Suddenly 21st – Century America makes a whole lot more sense.
Of course, the postmodern academic left may chafe at Sailer labeling Foucault “an evil man” – for after all, all the chic Foucault did was promote pedophilia and wantonly infect an untold number of sex partners with AIDS. Hasn’t Mr. Sailer himself done far more horrible things, far worthier of cancellation, such as notice how many more African-American youths have died from drugs and gang violence than from racist policemen?
Sarcasm aside, this brings us to the new book’s title. As the author has practiced it for decades, noticing is an art which consists of one part honest observation, one part common sense, and one part statistical analysis. The results are devastating for political-correctness, but edifying for Sailer’s sizable underground readership, to whom Sailer has introduced a myriad of conceptually useful albeit tongue-in-cheek terms: “Identity Stalinism” was illustrated by the Covington Catholic students’ ordeal at the 2019 March for Life, where the question of who-versus-whom totally eclipsed what actually happened; the left’s coalition of mutually hostile ideologies is held together only by “KKKrazy-Glue,” i.e., a paranoid fear and loathing of America’s WASPy origins; the Beltway establishment’s twin policies of open borders and global interventionism can be summed up as “Invade the World, Invite the World.”
Last but hardly least, those shocked that American politicians seem to care more about illegal immigrants than about US citizens may familiarize themselves with “the Zeroth Amendment” – an unwritten piece of legislation implicitly ratified by our journalists and lawyers, one which declares an inalienable right to US citizenship for everyone in the world. (Again, readers are invited to wonder just when and how the written letter of the US Constitution began to be twisted beyond recognition on behalf of an increasingly radical egalitarian “spirit.”)
As for that most sensitive of subjects – race – Sailer is not only not a rabid “white supremacist,” but instead expresses an outlook far more sensible and humane than anything we may encounter in the mainstream left or right: “Race is hardly the most important thing in life, but it’s not so insignificant that we can blithely ignore it.” Races exist just as extended families exist, he argues, which is not to say that members of the same race will be identical anymore than are members of the same family. His basic position is that human beings are informed by complex webs of nature and nurture, and that it is dishonest to equate rational discourse about such webs with “hate.” Whatever we think of his perspective, it is worth mentioning that Sailer has repeatedly and explicitly rejected ethnonationalism, and advocates instead for what he calls “citizenism” – the old-fashioned idea that government exists to sustain the common good of all its actual citizens, regardless of race.
Even though Sailer is no Southerner, he kept a level head during the latest wave of anti-Confederate iconoclasm, observing in his articles the disconnect between today’s exaggerated sensitivities and those of just a few years ago; e.g., no less a luminary than the late US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg named Confederate statesman Judah P. Benjamin as one of her personal heroes. Moreover, Sailer is willing to take Southern culture seriously on its own terms, perhaps because of his own admiration for classic Southern writer Tom Wolfe.
Like Wolfe, Mr. Sailer is fascinated by the often bad, occasionally mad, always compelling tragicomedy of modern American sociopolitical life. Also like Wolfe, he is indifferent to the strictures of political-correctness regarding what we are and are not allowed to notice. This is not to say that Sailer is a narrow-minded political junkie, anymore than Wolfe was – Sailer’s essays reveal his interest in down-to-earth topics ranging from sports to homesickness to the history of Hollywood.
While this reviewer hardly agrees with Sailer about everything – the technocratic-leaning, California pundit tended to be very pro-shutdown during COVID, for instance, and has tended to gloss over NATO’s culpability for the Ukraine war – the author of Noticing typically exhibits a gentlemanly openness to discussion, shows interest in the real problems facing ordinary people, and has a dry sense of humor. This is more than we can say for those who have it in for him.
“As Sailer observes, in Foucault’s case it really is not clear which came first, deconstructionist theory or repulsive practice:
Did Foucault happen to dream up his ideas first and only then realize that his logic proved that it should be legal for him to have sex with boys? Or did he want to have sex with boys first and then dreamt up his vast system of justification?”
Because they are both the same (a dream), the premise and the contrapositive of the premise have equal truth value.
I.E.
P implies Q
Not Q implies Not P
“Moreover, Sailer is willing to take Southern culture seriously on its own terms, perhaps because of his own admiration for classic Southern writer Tom Wolfe.”
I am hardly an expert, but William Faulkner was hunting with this dog long before Tom Wolfe. Right?