Wall Of Fame

Stanley Crouch

There are many cultural critics on the American scene who address American classical music, or politics, or literature, or pop culture, or urban life. Very few have the reach or the dexterity to wrestle capably with all those subjects -- and to make it look effortless. Stanley Crouch falls squarely into this category. A former jazz drummer himself, his output comprises numerous books, essays, and lectures on everything from jazz and blues to graphic novels to identity politics to the successes and failures of America's post-Civil Rights era. His works run the gamut from the polemical (The All-American Skin Game) to the fictional (Don't The Moon Look Lonesome) to the biographical (Kansas City Lightning), but a few common themes unite them all: a profound and defiant humanism, a rejection of essentialist thinking, a thorough awareness of human complexity, and an ironclad faith in the creative power of disciplined improvisation -- which finds its truest expression, according to Crouch, in the art form of Jazz and in the American experiment which gave birth to it.

The American conservative

The American Conservative comes closer to the ideal of principled advocacy than any other conservative publication -- from Daniel Larison's consistent opposition to dangerous militarism, to Gracy Olmstead's winsome embrace of localism and tradition, to the urgency of Rod Dreher's Christian-inflected Southern blues, anchored at the crossroads of culture and religion.    

First things

The Foundationist Society is not a religious organization, but we find much to appreciate in the writing at Catholic publication First Things: learned and well-written without being stuffy, opinionated and insistent without being strident. 

The honey Badger brigade

HBB, founded by Alison Tieman, is an organization run by happy warriors: women who are fighting the good fight for true gender equity -- in other words, against feminism. Two standouts: Karen Straughan's witty and sometimes sarcastic polemics -- backed up by her deep scholarship and rigorous examinations of the history of gender relations and politics -- and Hannah Wallen's calm but withering indictments of mainstream feminism, which are similarly rooted in fact and case-law study. 

Dr. Jordan Peterson

Clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan B. Peterson is on a quest to rescue what is best in Western society from those who would destroy it. His prescription most closely resembles the Foundationist one: to see deeply into things, to direct one's efforts first toward the self, to change the world by building from within. His attacks on the (post)modern Left have made him the enemy of the cultural establishment, both on and off college campuses; but his method of argument -- learned, passionate, reasoned, nonpartisan, and deeply humane -- has earned him the respect and admiration of a huge and politically diverse audience.

Peter hitchens

Peter Hitchens is a British conservative journalist and essayist. He is the author of several books, including "The Rage Against God", "The Abolition of Britain", and "The War We Never Fought".  He is also a believing Christian, and this partly informs his eloquent and principled defense of tradition and family as the keystones of civil society.  He is by his own admission a former Trotskyist, but it is a testament to his integrity that having rejected one belief system, he does not reflexively embrace its opposite; that is, he rejects both the (redistributive) state and the so-called free market as the foundation of a just and humane society. Mr. Hitchens has a regular column in the UK newspaper The Mail On Sunday.    

Tommy Robinson

To his enemies, Tommy Robinson is a dangerous man. It is more accurate to say that Tommy Robinson is dangerous precisely because he is a man: that is, a man as we used to understand the term. Courageous, plain-spoken, patriotic, family-oriented, and -- worst of all -- daring to be angry at his enemies for their attacks on civil society, particularly the most vulnerable members of UK civil society. His voice is one of the most prominent among the many which have risen to protest the grooming gangs which have been preying on underage girls in the working-class towns and cities of the United Kingdom. Reasonable people may disagree with his politics, but not with his fundamental message: that religion can be criticized without hatred, and society can be defended without bigotry -- but when children are attacked, men of good conscience must stand and fight.

james lafond

James LaFond is a fighter -- and a writer. In both occupations he uses a variety of weapons: fists, knives, sticks, satire, history, humor. In neither occupation does he give in to the deadly temptations of softness and sentimentality. One gets the sense from his writing -- which ranges from scholarly to bleakly humorous to frankly offensive and back again -- the that he is at war with a society which is determined to destroy itself by destroying its men. His humor reads at times like gallows humor, but in the fight he asks no quarter, and gives none. (Professional offense-takers of all colors -- and both genders -- take note: his numerous books, essays, and blog posts are not safe for those who seek safety or comfort.)

In his "Harm City" pieces, which cover the many troubles in his native Baltimore City (including the Freddie Gray riots), we get an uncompromising picture of social breakdown, delivered in the uncompromising language of a working-class white guy who knows how to spin a hard-boiled narrative: equal parts Archie Bunker and Elmore Leonard.  His writing is devoid of bourgeois evasions and pretensions concerning ethnic conflict and human wrongdoing, but he never indulges in the collective white narcissism of alt-righters who frequent the same territory; he does not proceed from assumptions of, for example, Northern European racial superiority (LaFond, as a serious student of history, knows what "Aryan" actually means). He simply looks around him at street level, and casts an unsparing eye -- a fighter's eye -- on the best and the worst of what is there.   

Kelli-jay Keen-minshull (a.k.a. Posie Parker)

One of humanity’s most ancient religious traditions tells the story of a man who received, and was prepared to follow, a divine instruction to sacrifice his only child. At the last moment, a divine messenger appeared and stayed his hand. There is a school of religious thought which suggests that this most difficult and troubling Old Testament story represents a foundational aspect of the universal moral law: be prepared to sacrifice everything — except your children.

It is ironic that in an age of religious decline, the factions of Western society which tend most strongly toward militant atheism are playing out a bizarre variation on a Biblical narrative. In the grip of something which calls itself “tolerance for gender expression” — but which is actually a kind of religious fervor masquerading as tolerance — they are prepared to sacrifice not just one child, but all children on the altar of transgender ideology. Worse yet, unlike Abraham (who, at the decisive moment, put away his weapon), they are prepared to turn their knives on any messenger who asks them to reconsider.

Kelli-Jay Keen-Minshull is one such messenger. It is one of the tragedies of our time that we have so few like her, but it is a triumph that we have her at all. Like all the best heroes, she comes from humble beginnings and operates well outside the corridors of official power. Her message is simple: Men are not women, women are not men, and under no circumstances should you sacrifice your children — not for yourself, not for an idea, not for the false gods of this age who command otherwise.

Mrs. Keen-Minshull’s courage is an inspiration to those of us who oppose the lies and cruelty and vicious nihilism of the gender-expression extremists, whose power is ascendant. Like a figure from a different Old Testament story, she has stepped out of ordinary working-class life to do battle with a colossal and powerful enemy. Her weapons are meager: the simple truths upon which human society is based, upon which life itself is based. The odds are against her, as they are against us all. But as David knew (and Goliath learned), a little truth, like a little stone, can be a mighty thing.

Nigel Farage

It is easy to become cynical about politics — but cynicism, like most -isms, can just as easily become a trap. Who benefits when citizens recoil from the political process, when they come to see any form of engagement as futile? The very people who are most in need of close scrutiny; the very people who have given us reasons to be cynical in the first place.

One good way to counteract the self-defeating logic of cynicism is to return to basics. What is government for? What are the obligations of the state to its citizens? What does it mean for a people — for a country — to be democratically governed?

Nigel Farage, who may be the United Kingdom’s best-known Euroskeptic, has built a second career (his first was in commodities trading) on these very questions. As a leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), then later as the founder of the Brexit Party, he has campaigned relentlessly for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Farage and UKIP were instrumental in securing the 2016 referendum on the question of whether the UK should leave or remain (and which was settled in favor of leaving). The aftermath of that referendum — which was marked by political acrimony and seemingly endless debate — has culminated in Britain’s official exit from the EU on January 31st, 2020. What precise form that exit takes is a question that will be settled in the coming months and years.

But these facts alone do not capture the spectacular and radical nature of what Farage, UKIP, and the Brexit Party have accomplished. Spectacular because the political battles they insisted on fighting brought basic questions of citizenship, governance, trade, and foreign policy into full view and made them part of the fabric of public life. People thought about these questions; they argued with friends and family about them; they took them to heart, and in so doing, revitalized politics in the UK.

Radical because these same questions are at the root of the contract between citizens and those who govern on their behalf. What does it mean for a government to be legitimate? Where does that legitimacy come from? Where should ultimate sovereignty reside — inside the nation-state, or elsewhere?

Mr. Farage’s insistence on confronting issues of immigration and free movement inside the EU brought down the usual lazy condemnations: racism, xenophobia, isolationism. Yet it is worth noting that Farage never called for an end to immigration or a closure of the UK’s borders; he merely insisted — correctly —that the citizens of the UK, rather than unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, must be the ones in control.

Many of us are dissatisfied with the state of politics. Some of us, convinced that the fix is in, have given way to despair. All of us should take note of something else Nigel Farage, UKIP, and the Brexit Party have shown us: that it is possible to wield decisive influence in politics without winning an election. Farage was able to push the Tory agenda in directions it might otherwise not have gone, simply because his grassroots following was large enough to worry party operatives who knew how to count votes. And in the general election in December of 2019, Farage and the Brexit party — through a bit of selfless and clever maneuvering — effectively took the Liberal Democrats off the board, eliminating any chance of a second EU referendum and assuring a handy victory for Boris Johnson and the Tories. The Brexit Party, it can be said, accomplished its mission without winning a single seat in the UK Parliament.

The Brexit saga is not over. Britain’s exit from the E.U. on January 31st, 2020 just marks the closing of the latest chapter. This may only be — to quote another famous Englishman — the end of the beginning. But those who believe in the independent, sovereign nation-state, and the right of its citizens to self-determination, have reason to be grateful to Mr. Farage and his organization.

Harry Miller

Harry Miller, the founder of Fair Cop UK, is a business owner and former police officer who served in the English county of Humberside. in 2019 he was contacted by Humberside police to “check [his] thinking” concerning his social-media correspondence: a collection of thirty tweets which, according to the police department, had constituted “transphobia” and might therefore have offended someone.

To describe the conversation between Mr. Miller and the officer — and what followed after — as Orwellian, almost fails to do it justice: a “crime” which was not a crime. A “victim” who was not a victim. An official report in which Mr. Miller was named, which might or might not show up in a criminal background check (despite the fact that he had not been accused of a crime), according to the whim of a Chief Constable. An agent of the state informing a citizen that his “thinking” needed to be checked.

Mr. Miller chose to take the police to court on the (obvious) grounds that their investigation was unlawful. It is gratifying, not only that he had the courage and the fortitude to fight the case, but also that the High Court recently ruled in his favor; but it is deeply troubling that there was any case to fight in the first place. It is also troubling that the court took no issue with the official guidelines under which the police launched their unlawful investigation. As a result, Harry Miller intends to pursue the case further, and we wish him every success.

Any free society is fortunate to have citizens such as Harry Miller — but no free society can long remain so if only a handful of its citizens are prepared to carry the weight. The people of the UK, if they value their liberty, must prepare themselves to fight this poisonous ideology; must fight; and must fight to win. The laws which govern free societies, and by which the agents of law enforcement must likewise be governed, are not to be toyed with by narcissists and grievance-peddlers. Those laws are the ground on which we, the people, stand. The fact that Harry Miller has so far stood his ground is not an all-clear signal; it is, rather, a clear and resounding call to action.

Janna Hoehn / The wall of faces project

There are over fifty thousand names on the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington DC: the names of United States Armed Forces personnel who were killed in action in the Vietnam War. For most of those names, there is a photograph to go with that name; for a significant number, there is not. These are the names which Janna Hoehn and an assortment of citizen volunteers have made it their mission to find. This is often slow, painstaking investigative work, and the people doing it are not paid, except perhaps by the gratitude of the surviving family members. There is no political imperative driving their work; no government committee or task force was ever formed to facilitate it; no budget appropriation was ever requested to pay for it. To the extent that these volunteers wish to drive awareness of their work in the news or on social media, it is not for their own sake, but for the sake of others.

A great civilization speaks to its citizens — at least in part — in the voices of its honored dead. The work done by these volunteers enhances that gift, allowing us a fuller remembrance of those whose lives and deeds are part of the foundation on which we, the living, stand.

To get in touch with Janna Hoehn, send email to neverforgotten2014 at gmail dot com.

Mike Rowe

The history of any civilization is, in large part, the history of work. A civilization’s infrastructure — its buildings, its factories, its machinery, its railways, its farms, its roads, its vehicles — are a kind of historical document which is always being written. To read that document, errors and all, with the proper spirit — with a becoming desire for human flourishing and human prosperity — is to open oneself to a profound sense of gratitude for the built environment and for the lives of the countless people who never finish building it. It is, in short, to bear witness to a sacred thing.

Mike Rowe — a podcaster, writer, producer, and television host — is such a witness. He is on a mission to revitalize America’s sense of the nobility and importance of what is often called blue-collar work. With equal parts gameness, self-deprecating humor, and plain-spoken humility, he is attempting to open more people’s eyes to the fascinating inner mechanisms of America’s industrial splendor. At the same time, he is a passionate advocate for vocational education as a viable and honorable path into adulthood for young people who have been told (wrongly) that a University degree is the only way. Most importantly, he is a relentless exponent of what used to be called “can-do spirit”: the willingness to face a challenge — any challenge — with courage, humor, determination, and above all, a willingness to roll up one’s sleeves and get to work.