{"id":158770,"date":"2021-11-23T03:46:08","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T08:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/?p=158770"},"modified":"2021-11-23T03:46:08","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T08:46:08","slug":"defaming-the-dead-by-tom-piatak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/defaming-the-dead-by-tom-piatak-158770","title":{"rendered":"Defaming the Dead By Tom Piatak"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tom Piatak at Chronicles Magazine<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Sam championed all three presidential campaigns of a conservative Christian, Pat Buchanan, who found philosophical resistance to liberalism in his Christian beliefs, and who wrote for decades in a magazine largely written by other conservative Christians.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two years ago, Matthew Rose wrote a lengthy article about Sam Francis in First Things (\u201cThe Outsider<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d October 2019) that I responded to in these pages (\u201cA Giant Beset by Pygmies<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d December 2019 Chronicles). I had hoped that Rose would consider the information I presented and use it to paint a more accurate picture of Francis. Instead, Rose turned that article into a chapter in his new book, A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right, which reinforces his old errors about Francis with new ones. The time has come to point out Rose\u2019s inaccuracies once again.<\/p>\n

The only concession Rose appears to have made to those of us who objected to his earlier piece is to change his statement that Francis\u2019s \u201cpublished writings displayed no feeling for literature, art, music, philosophy, or theology\u201d to \u201clittle feeling\u201d for these disciplines. However, as I pointed out two years ago, \u201cFar from being indifferent to art, Sam produced it himself\u2014if literary criticism counts as art\u2014as shown by his essays on the film The Godfather (1972) and the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, which I count as two of the finest studies of film and literature Chronicles has published in its long and illustrious history.\u201d Rose mentions neither essay in his book, but I will share two reactions to those pieces.<\/p>\n

One, from a liberal friend, a former history professor and lawyer, who had never heard of the author. After reading the essay<\/strong><\/a> on The Godfather and Sam\u2019s populist apologia \u201cFrom Household to Nation<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d he concluded Francis was a genius and asked for more of his work. In National Review, John Derbyshire reacted similarly to the Lovecraft essay. \u201cFrancis\u2019s review is simply brilliant,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI only met Sam Francis once \u2026 Now I wish I had made a better effort to get acquainted.\u201d I am confident no fair reader could come to Rose\u2019s conclusions about Francis\u2019s alleged tastelessness and cultural boorishness. Before Rose presumed to prejudge Francis, he should have read either of those two brilliant essays.<\/p>\n

Rose then presents Sam\u2019s concept of the Middle American Revolution as a conscious response to \u201c\u2018the colored world revolution\u2019 that both Spengler and [Bill] Clinton had glimpsed.\u201d He writes that Francis:<\/p>\n

never pretended, not even for a moment, that his was a matter of moral right or justice. It was a matter of power meeting power. \u2018The issue,\u2019 as he candidly put it, is \u2018who in the wrecked vessel of the American Republic, is to be master?\u2019<\/p>\n

One is led to believe by Rose that the struggle for control in the \u201cwrecked vessel of the American Republic\u201d is between whites and nonwhites. In fact, the Francis essay he quotes, \u201cNot Really a Republic<\/strong><\/a>\u201d (August 1991 Chronicles), casts the struggle as one between \u201cthose Middle Americans who were the nucleus of the American Republic \u2026 and who now find themselves victims of the new imperium\u201d and \u201cthe elite that now prevails.\u201d It is Rose who boils this down to a racial struggle, not Francis.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Francis would deny that this struggle has nothing to do with moral right or justice. Certainly, Francis\u2019s writings opposing antiwhite discrimination and the outsourcing of American jobs\u2014including, of course, those held by black and Hispanic Americans\u2014contained appeals to higher ideals. Does Rose consider Francis\u2019s opposition to affirmative action and globalization as racist or atavistic? It would seem so, by this logic.<\/p>\n

Rose also disparages Sam\u2019s criticism of the Religious Right of the \u201990s, the leaders of which ended up picking Bob Dole over Pat Buchanan, who had long been a stalwart champion of social conservatism. In 1994, Francis wrote an essay criticizing this iteration of the Religious Right, dubbing it \u201cthe religious wrong\u201d and asserting that many of its followers, although sincere in their religious beliefs, operated politically under a \u201cfalse consciousness.\u201d
\n… Read more at Chronicles Magazine<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/div>
Make America Think Again! - Share Pat's Columns...<\/div>
<\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/rect><\/rect><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>

By Tom Piatak at Chronicles Magazine Sam championed all three presidential campaigns of a conservative Christian, Pat Buchanan, who found philosophical resistance to liberalism in his Christian beliefs, and who wrote for decades in a magazine largely written by other conservative Christians. Two years ago, Matthew Rose wrote a lengthy … <\/p>\n

Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>
Make America Think Again! - Share Pat's Columns...<\/div>
<\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/path><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/rect><\/rect><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/path><\/g><\/svg><\/span><\/a><\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":158771,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[37,2128,10,38],"class_list":["post-158770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","tag-bill-clinton","tag-critical-race-theory","tag-pat-buchanan","tag-racism","infinite-scroll-item","no-featured-image-padding"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"views":1928,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/001-sam-francis-chronicles-333.png?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3hGdf-FiO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158770"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158776,"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158770\/revisions\/158776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buchanan.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}