e/S3£3srnPaleoconservatism and Racernby Samuel FrancisrnSeveral years ago, while still at the Washington Times, I publishedrna column on the occasion of the appearance of 77?ernBell Curve in which I wrote,rnWhat you think the state ought to do about race has littlernto do with what you think about race. It has everything torndo with what you think about the state. Under the properlyrnlimited federal government with which this countryrnstarted out and to which it should return, the state wouldrnbe unable to do very much at all about race, hi the modernrnleviathair created by liberals, where smoking, sexualrnbeliefs and guns are approved targets of federal meatgrinding,rnthere’s no limit to what the state might do aboutrnrace or those whose IQs it doesn’t approve.rnThese sentiments, as harmless as they are, probably did mernno good, but they are nevertheless a fair and concise summaryrnof what most paleoconservatives believe, or ought to believe,rnabout race and the state. Paleoconservahsm, strictly understood,rnhas nothing to say about the natural phenomenon of racernor the relationship of race and social environment, any morernthan it has anything to say about the heliocentric theor’ of the solarrnsstem, the doctrine of transubstantiation, or the auHiorshiprnof the plays of Shakespeare. Most paleos whom I know tend tornbelieve, insofar as thev think about the matter at all, that thernhereditarian view of race is scientifically correct, but it is quiternpossible for paleocons to believe (as I think the late Robert Nisbet,rna great paleoconsen’ative, did believe) that race is purcK’ arn”social construct” and that behavioral and psychological differencesrnbetween the races are due to social-environmental causes.rnPaleoconservatism does have something to sa’ about whatrnthe state —especially the federal government in the Americanrncultural and constitutional setting—should and should not do,rnand in what we may somev’hat laughingly call paleoconscrativern”doctrine,” there is no reason whatsoever for the federal governmentrnto do an)’thing at all about race—any more dian it shouldrndo anything at all about sex, religion, class, neighborhood, orrnfamily. As one of the foremost paleoconservative Hicorists, DonrnVito Corleone, used to say, “Even the King of Italy didn’t dare tornmeddle with the relationship of husband and wife.”rnThroughout American histon,’, race — through the crusadesrnagainst slaver}’, hiichings, and segregation or toda”s war againstrn”hate”—has provided the occasion for the expansion of die centralrnstate and its destructive intrusion into social relationships,rnand the current endless “war against racial discrimination” byrnthe federal leviathan and its allies —dirough the civil-rightsrnstatutes of the I960’s, forced busing and school integration, affirmativernaction, “hate crimes” legislation, the encouragementrnof virtually unlimited Third World immigration, “teaching tolerance”rnand multiculturalism, and President Clinton’s ill-advisedrnsermonizing on “racial reconciliation” a few years ago —isrnactually a central part of the managed destruction of such rcla-rnSamuel Francis is the Washington editor for Chronicles.rntionships of civil society as propert}’, patterns of association, education,rnand employment.rnThe managerial ruling class, lodged primarily in the staternand the other massive bureaucratic structures tiiat dominate therneconomy and mass culture, must undermine such institutionsrnof traditional social life if its power and interests are to prevail.rnDisparities between races —rebaptized as “prejudice,” “discrimination,”rn”white supremacy,” and “hate” to which state andrnlocal governments and private institutions arc indifferent or inrnwhich they are allegedly complicit—provide constant targets ofrnconxeniencc for managerial attack on local, private, and socialrnrelationships. Seen in this perspective, as a means of subvertingrntraditional socict}’ and enhancing the dominance of a new eliternand its own social forms, the crusade for racial “liberation” is notrndistinctly different from other phases of the .same conflict that invoKcrnattacks on the fiimih’, communih’, class, and religion.rnThe managerial attack on traditional race relations has coincidedrnwitii an ec|ually world-historical process tiiat Nisbet calledrnthe “racial revolution,” tiie replacement by “color” of “nationalit}’rnand economic class as the major setting for revolutionaryrnthrust, strateg)’, tactics, and also philosophy.” The racial consciousnessrnof die nonw hitc peoples has been used by the newrnclass as part of its broader war on traditional social structuresrnand relationships. Today, it is increasingly unclear which wingrnof the revolutionary assault is dominant, the managerial or fliernracial, or whether the racial consciousness that has so far ser’cdrnmanagerial purposes will remain subservient to those purposesrnas flic racial composition of flic nation, if not of the ruling classrnitself, continues to darken.rnPaleoconservatives niav differ among tiiemselvcs as to thernreal meaning of race and the ultimate resolution of racial conflictsrnor even as to whether flicre is or can be any such resolution,rnbut flicy should be able to agree, at a mininuim, that if thernhistoric character of flic American nation is to sunive, flie exploitationrnof race as a political weapon bv the ruling class mustrnend. Hence, common paleoconscRative goals should includern(I) a long-term moratorium on all immigration, (2) the withdrawalrnof the federal government from inyolvcment in all racialrnlANUARY 2001/23rnrnrn