Does Front Porch mean "Get Off My Porch"?

The following concerns a debate on Front Porch Republic and First Things over racism and localism. Take a look at the links here and here for context.

Firstly, Mr. Bottum is being disingenuous in the extreme in the way in which he tosses around racism without defining what it means. The word has become so charged (possibly because it is the only sin that the modern world has sufficient moral force to condemn) that it has become the supreme allegation, against which there is no defense. If a person, group, society, or idea can be stained with "racism" or if it excepts anything less than strict racial orthodoxy, the whole thing becomes dismissed. There is nothing else that has a similar effect -if an idea can be shown to be illogical, murderous, rotten, evil, intemperate, foolish, or barbarous, it still has a good chance of being accepted by modernity. But if it can be shown to be racist -my God, that's a whole 'nother matter.

But, there is a larger point.

Nothing is without a price; localism is not perfect, nor does it pretend to be. The question raised by the Front Porchers, as I see it, is this: is the present, comfortable, bland, sterile, therapeutic, multicultural, industrial, consumerist existence worth the price it takes to accept it? And, let's not be mistaken, there is a price -the price of what someone (I can't remember his name at the moment) called the grand "liberal bargain." The price of the liberal bargain is this; the sacrifice of roots and hearths, of local patriotisms and local quarrels, the sacrifice of "thumos," of chivalry and honor and yes, violence; the sacrifice of self-sufficiency, of place, the sacrifice of the drama of limits and orthodoxy, of consequences, and the sacrifice of tradition and prejudice (in the Burkean sense). The question raised by the Front Porchers is: do all these sacrifices entail a sacrifice of our humanity?

Let me be frank. Does localism engender racism? To a degree, yes. Does localism engender conflict? To a degree, yes. Does localism engender prejudice? To a degree, yes. But that is because localism is, at essence, humanism; it is Man in his proper state, a life lived on a human scale. And Man is not perfect; even in in his proper state, in a well-ordered community, he will have problems.

But let us not forget that it takes modernism to make local racism scientific racism and justify mass genocide; to make local conflicts bloody global wars; to take prejudices and make them national policies, enforced by a pervasive state.

The impulses behind racism and violence are not inherent to any system, but to man. They will be present in a localist society because all of Man's nature will be present in its proper proportion, and a mistrust of the unknown and willingness to use force to avenge wrongs is part of our nature. We can try to "engineer" or legislate these things out of ourselves, through the grand liberal project that views Man as infinitely malleable. But we will not be able to legislate or engineer them out without legislating or engineering out something far more important -our humanity.

To paraphrase Chesterton, the liberal bargain wishes us to stop being human so that we may start being humane.

The "localist" or "traditionalists" or "Front Porchers" or whatever-you-have-its have a different vision; they propose that we be human, but do not and cannot guarantee that we will be humane.

Feel free to comment.

Yours, &c,