Subject: (urth) Wolfe's politics

From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:32:10 +0000

>>And I'm a bit afraid that Mr. Wolfe is turning into an old fart.  Not only
>>was the LONG SUN tetralogy a distinct letdown, but I recently read a review
>>that he wrote in which he made lame and gratuitous anti-"political
>>correctness" asides.

I don't think that Wolfe has ever made any secret of his
conservatism.  He has said that at one time he was a William
F. Buckley-type conservative.  Now Buckley himself is hardly a typical
conservative (he's been pro marijuana legalization for years), so
maybe that was part of the appeal.  Wolfe has also said (perhaps in
the same interview, one of the ones on Paul Duggan's Wolfe page) that
he occasionally finds himself agreeing with Pat Buchanan.  Now
Buchanan, despite seeming like the ultimate "Amerikanner" is also
something of a oddity among Republicans; he's been known to criticize
the zeal with which big business has abandoned American labor for
cheaper climes.

And just to bring it back to 5HC for a moment, VRT/Marsch claims to be
a member of "The Laissez Faire Party", which seems to be a sort of
humorous variation on libertarianism.

It's hard for me to imagine Wolfe as entirely "anti-PC"; after all, I
think that 5HC is essentially a critique of colonialism.

I suspect that Wolfe, like many people doesn't necessarily consider
his politics as being reducible to a party affiliation or set of
beliefs. 

D

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 16:58:03 +0000

>his politics as being reducible to a party affiliation or set of

	Speaking as a long-time conservative:

	1. Wolfe's conservationism (environmentalism) is wholly in keeping with
traditional conservatism, which is not committed to a total laissez-faire
approach to all matters. He's right in line with men like Russell Kirk and
Francis Schaeffer.
	2. The same holds true of his anti-colonialism. G. K. Chesterton was one
of many Catholic and non-establishment Protestant evangelicals who
advocated a "little England" and opposed imperialism on moral grounds. It
goes back to Edmund Burke's attacks on how the British abused the Indians
in India.
	3. It is safe to say that Wolfe started out as a generic Catholic
conservative, but as a mature thinker, has become too broad for any kind of
typecasting. But his general perspective is going to be pro-Christian,
pro-Bible, and thus pretty conservative as compared with modern notions.
	4. He is fully capable of sympathizing with anti-establishment movements,
as we see in "Hour of Trial." But notice that while Gene Wolfe marches with
the radicals, he does so praying the Lord's Prayer!
	5. The whole PC movement is so incredibly bigoted and anti-intellectual
that it is hard to see why anyone, conservative or liberal, would credit it!
	6. But the conclusion of the whole matter is this: Wolfe has said in
interviews that he is a practicing Roman Catholic, "but you may not
understand what that means." The same is true of being a conservative. A
great many people who have not read Christian and conservative (not the
same thing, of course) literature have very odd notions about what such
people actually believe and espouse.

Just some food for thought.

Jim Jordan

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From: Miles Goosens <outdoorminer at mindspring.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 17:35:04 +0000

At 04:58 PM 6/30/98 -0500, Jim Jordan wrote:
>approach to all matters. 

<snip>

>people actually believe and espouse.

Not to go entirely off-topic, but what Jim is talking about serves to
highlight the radical disjuncture between what most people think
"conservative" means vs. what academics usually mean by the same term.  As
Jim points out in #1, philosophical conservatism often questions the
morality of a "laissez-faire" market-driven economy, whereas those
popularly identified with "conservatism" usually fetishize "free markets"
and, in at least this sense, embrace liberalism just as heartily as
"liberals"!  

But if you tell people that their "conservatives" are really liberals,
you'll get nothing but puzzled stares.

I consider myself to be very left-leaning, and not religious at all, but I
often find myself in sympathy with those on the academic right.  If you
think of the range of political opinions as a circle rather than a
continuum, the far left and the far right are not that distant... :-)

later,

Miles

===============================================================
"Gettin' piss-drunk, givin' the players a hard time, throwin'
a chicken bone at the cop - that's what baseball is all about."
	-- a lout from Cleveland two rows in front of me at 
a Tigers game, waxing rhapsodic about how Indians games used
to be

Miles Goosens
outdoorminer at mindspring.com

http://www.mindspring.com/~outdoorminer/miles
===============================================================