Halloween is the most conservative of holidays. It’s a time when the veil between the worlds is most thin. Horror fiction is an inherently conservative genre. It presupposes an objective moral order of good and evil. As Jake Bowyer just pointed out, it’s not a coincidence that Russell Kirk, perhaps the most important intellectual of the modern American conservative movement, also wrote ghost stories [The ghosts of Russell Kirk, by James Panero, The New Criterion, January 2019]. Ghosts haunting specific locations are a reminder that, in William Faulkner’s words: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” [Famed quotation isn’t dead – and could even prove costly, by Todd Leopold, CNN, November 11, 2012]. It all links us to our past and forces us to consider concepts like tradition, history, and death that modernity tells us are irrelevant—along with the nation-state.

Like many of you, I’ll spend this Halloween bingeing on my favorite horror movies. Tops among them: 1968’s The Devil Rides Out, a Christopher Lee vehicle based on the novel of the same name. It’s about three friends and their spiritual battle with an evil magician. The story subtly reveals the old-time Anglo-American conservatism of author Dennis Wheatley, a novelist-turned-British agent deeply involved in hugger-mugger planning against the Germans in World War II. He was a conservative, a race-realist, and an unabashed defender of the Christian civilization that formed him.

Published in 1934, The Devil Rides Out combines fast-paced action in electric-age London with the occult, foreign intrigue, and elements of imperial adventure. It’s the story of exiled French aristocrat Duc de Richleau, an American adventurer Rex Van Ryn, and their friend Simon Aron. Their enemy is Mocata, a necromancer. This is same trio of heroes as Wheatley’s 1933 debut, the anti-Soviet espionage thriller, The Forbidden Territory.

Earlier: Yes, Virginia (Dare), "Social Desirability Bias" IS Skewing Immigration Polls—And Trump's

BLM/Antifa Communists have become particularly notorious for tactics like mobbing innocent white Americans in restaurants and demanding that they “raise the fist” in solidarity or utter the sacred mantra “Black Lives Matter.” This summer, a brave Washington DC diner called Lauren Victor famously refused to comply, despite being surrounded by people, noticeably other women, who raised their fists  [BLM protesters accost white diners for not raising fists, By Kenneth Garger, New York Post, August 25, 2020].

Does mobbing of this kind work as a tactic—to extent of helping to ensure that Joe Biden will be elected president? Unfortunately, the answer is “potentially, yes”—at least in a close contest. (But read to the end to see a caveat).

There is abundant research on how the mob mentality can force people to conform, at least when in the presence of the mob. According to research by Damon Centola of the University of Pennsylvania and his team, when you are part of a group you will tend to conform—even to the extent of stating something to be true which you on some level know is not true—once you witness about 25% of your group do so [Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention, By Damon Centola et al., Science, 2018]. This percentage seems to constitute a “critical mass;” a “tipping point” after which the rest of the group will migrate over to the minority opinion, especially if fervently expressed, because this opinion appears to be the future, the opinion of the “winning team” that you want to be on.

Of the presidents in the modern era, many have been dealt a difficult hand by history, but perhaps none more so than Donald Trump.

In 1952, Harry Truman was in his third year of a stalemated war in Korea that was costing 200 American lives every week. He lost the New Hampshire primary to Sen. Estes Kefauver and decided to pack it in.

In 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson had also been challenged in New Hampshire, by Sen. Eugene McCarthy. And, he, too, had on his hands a seemingly endless Asian war if he was not prepared to escalate militarily and add hundreds of thousands more troops to the 500,000 already in Vietnam.

Philadelphia was under curfew last night and Danielle Outlaw, the black lady police chief newly hired after her stellar performance in Portland OR, is breast-beating about her force’s need for more mental health social workers [Philadelphia pledges better response after shooting death of Walter Wallace Jr., 6ABC.com, October 29, 2020]. Of course, this is completely irrelevant to the beat cops’ urgent need to protect themselves from Walter Wallace Jr., the “aspiring rapper” who attacked them with a knife, and to the city’s imperative need to assert law and order—the absence of which most hurts decent blacks, as Thomas Sowell has pointed out—if necessary by ruthless coercion. Riots are the new normal for America if President Trump is not re-elected—and maybe if he is. But Joe Biden tepidly condemned the recent riots only after expressing “shock and grief” about “another Black life in America lost” [Biden, Harris Express ‘Shock and Grief’ Over Police Shooting of Walter Wallace Jr., by Brian X. McCrone, 10 Philadelphia, October 27, 2020].

This was a fairly straightforward incident of an armed criminal being put down by police. If even this causes riots that the authorities are too Politically Correct to stop, every interaction between police and blacks can turn into an inferno. It means this country is on a permanent war footing.

One of the bizarre undercurrents of the Black Lives Matter movement is how the “victims” seem to be declining in quality. George Floyd had a lengthy criminal record, held a gun to a pregnant woman’s stomach, and died from a drug overdose but at least the initial video (dishonestly presented by the MSM) portrayed him as sympathetic. Someone could at least say that regardless of a person’s criminal record or evasive behavior, police shouldn’t be allowed to act in a certain way.

Then there was Jacob Blake, who was shot by police after his girlfriend called in a domestic violence dispute. He broke away from officers and reached into a car, something that would get just about anyone shot. Nonetheless, because he was at least shot in the back, Democrat vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris could meet with the family for what Ben Crump called an “inspiring and uplifting visit” [Kamala Harris meets with Jacob Blake’s family in Wisconsin, by Jason Silverstein, CBS News, September 8, 2020].

Now, there’s Walter Wallace Jr., who had a long history of abusing and threatening women, including family members. He approached police with a weapon. What do you think is going to happen?