Teachers

American Dissident Voices broadcast of February 20, 2016

by Kevin Alfred Strom (pictured)

TODAY I want to honor the teachers in my life. In prior broadcasts I’ve shared some of what I learned from my mentors Revilo Oliver and William Pierce. Great men and great teachers they were indeed, and lucky I am to have known them. But today I want to acknowledge my debt to the truly exceptional schoolteachers who have touched my life and helped me to see the world the way it really is.

First and without a doubt foremost is Mr. Frank Herlihy. His colleagues called him by his first name, but, even when I knew him in his later years, long after I was an adult, he was still always Mr. Herlihy to me. A rubicund, cheerful, witty, and vital man of about 40 when we met, Mr. Herlihy was of Irish ancestry. He was my middle school history teacher.

Though he would probably have called himself a radical conservative, he could be better described, I think, as a free spirit and a free thinker with a strong streak of racial and cultural consciousness. His classroom style was anything but conservative, bordering on the downright free-form and experimental.

He’d begin with in-classroom reading of one chapter of our Virginia history textbook, and we weren’t given too much time for that. Then he’d give a lecture on the subject — a quick, pithy lecture — with a lot of spontaneous anecdotes, questions and answers to and from students, and irreverent questioning of some of the premises in the book, or even questioning of the assumptions that most students brought with them from the society at large. He made you pay attention, and he made it fun. Then about halfway through the period, there was a test. Yes, there was a test every day. He demanded real, provable learning every single day — and he never to my knowledge gave homework. After the test, he gave — and explained — the answers to everyone: another opportunity to learn if you didn’t get it the first time. Then he’d write a summary on the blackboard of what we would be covering the next day — so you could read ahead if you wanted to.

To those who passed the test, the rest of the period was free time — a great reward for bright students in a school day filled largely with drudgery. He encouraged us to spend our free time on intellectually challenging pursuits: chess, philosophical and political debates and discussions, historical films (in those days before video, a projector had to be brought in), and — most especially — reading. And what reading material he made available! As I said in “My Political Education“:

How many other 12- and 13-year-olds were reading The American Mercury, American Opinion, Western Destiny, Richard Cotten’s Conservative Viewpoint, or H. L. Hunt’s Lifeline? My history classes were a welcome island of intellectual freedom and patriotism and sanity; a refuge from the anti-White, anti-Western, and anti-American influences that were almost everywhere else at the school.

I recall he brought in publications representing other points of view as well. The New Republic and National Review and others were right there alongside all the local newspapers, historical, artistic, and educational journals, and Carto’s Washington Observer newsletter, and innumerable others I can’t remember now. He brought in books for his students, too — all the way from classic literature to free thought, from Upton Sinclair to H.L. Mencken. We were even allowed to borrow the books and magazines and take them home if we wanted to. (In those days of an almost all-White northern Virginia school system, there were no disruptors in our class and all of the students, as far as I could tell, were delighted to throw themselves into the intellectual pursuits Mr. Herlihy fostered.)

It was a heady atmosphere of ideas, like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and I liked it. I liked it so much that when I was to be transferred to another history teacher the next semester, I moved heaven and earth at the school office, and even risked getting behind in some of my other classes, to get reassigned to Mr. Herlihy’s classroom again.

Once there was a discussion in class about the Establishment conservative journal National Review‘s anti-labor position and the economic and political leftism of the labor unions. No doctrinaire “free market” conservative, Mr. Herlihy was quick to point out that, whatever their flaws and traitorous leadership, the labor unions were quite necessary as a counterbalance to the power of organized finance and big business, which could be every bit as abusive and tyrannical as the biggest of big governments. Some of us were very surprised to hear that from Mr. Right-Wing Herlihy, but there it was and it made us think.

On another occasion, the projector was brought in and we watched several old newsreels from World War 2, not unlike this one. They were over the top jingoistic propaganda, but we students didn’t know it. They simply repeated the memes that we baby boomers had been taught our entire lives about that war — German atrocities, Germany trying to conquer and enslave the world, and American patriotism and democracy saving humanity from unspeakable horrors. We believed it all. In the middle of one of the most anti-German and propagandistic reels, Mr. Herlihy dramatically stopped the projector. The announcer’s voice slowed down to an incomprehensible rumble and then stopped as the screen went dark. In the dimmed room, Mr. Herlihy stepped to the front of the class. He spoke:

“I just want you all to know that it wasn’t like that in Germany. It wasn’t like that at all. I’m a veteran of that war. I served with the military police during the American occupation right after the war. The Germans of that time weren’t monsters. Yes, they did some pretty bloody things during the war, but so did we. So did we. Just as much as they did. And some of the things that happened to the Germans right at the end and even after the war, things you’ve never been told and that I can’t tell you here, were worse than anything you can think of. You need to always remember that the winners write the history books. Don’t forget that. Investigate things for yourselves.” Clearly emotionally moved, and possibly with a feeling that he’d said too much, he walked back to the projector and started the newsreel again. We watched and tried to comprehend what he had said.

Afterwards, a few students tried to draw him out further on the subject. He suggested looking into what David Irving and General Patton had to say. He also told this much smaller, trusted group that the real winners of that war didn’t include the American people — but did include the people who were pushing Martin Luther King, “affirmative action,” and the “counterculture” into our faces every day.

After I left middle school, I kept in touch with Mr. Herlihy. I was very interested in shortwave radio listening and radio in general so, several afternoons a month, I carried my heavy reel-to-reel tape recorder to his classroom after school — my old middle school was within walking distance of my home — and we listened to interesting points of view broadcast from countries around the world, and also to the stories told by radio raconteur Jean Shepherd, which we both found very amusing. My recordings of Radio Havana provided an interesting fugue-like counterpoint to the controlled US media and the New Left. And Radio RSA, the shortwave voice of White-run South Africa, provided another example of a country being outrageously and unjustly vilified by “American” propaganda.

Eventually Mr. Herlihy retired and I moved away, so our conversations were mostly via telephone and much more limited than they had been in the old days. He died in the early 2000s. So often people suddenly leave this life and we never get a chance to tell them what needs to be said. That was not the case with Mr. Herlihy. I got that chance a few years before his death. I met him at his home told him how he had given me the gift of free thought and free inquiry — of questioning things and figuring things out for yourself — of understanding that what the establishment puts forward as “truth” is often only a half-truth or less. I told him how much that had meant to me and how he had changed my life. And I thanked him for awakening in me the first faint stirrings of the only real patriotism — race-based patriotism. Mr. Herlihy was a real teacher, worthy of the name.

I also want to thank some of the other teachers who made a difference in my life: Mrs. Rampoli, who helped a second-grader from faraway Alaska feel at home and “fit in” in a rural Minnesota classroom; Mrs. Pastor, who didn’t laugh, and in fact offered praise and encouragement, when a seven-year-old tried — with many mistakes that would have been embarrassing if I’d even known enough to be embarrassed — to talk of serious subjects like war and peace and foreign countries; Mrs. Lindstrom, who first showed me the power and majesty of great art; Mr. Zipp, who drew up the curtain on the infinite subtleties of music for me; Mr. Pigg and Miss Titus who showed me that there was both fun and sublime beauty in mathematics and geometry; Mr. Sane — he of the eminently appropriate name — who with great patience proved to me that biological evolution was not only true but was also the key to understanding the essential nature of all life — its past — and its future; Mr. Maiolo, who taught me the magic of literature; and Mr. Malone, who on the very last day of high school gave us a warning I will never forget.

Mr. Malone was my science teacher in my senior year. He was tall, thin but broad-shouldered, dark-haired and brown-eyed, and rugged-looking. He was a quiet, serious man of great knowledge and competence, but his words had seldom strayed from the subject matter at hand. That is, until the very last day of class of our senior year.

Final examinations were long over, and there was little to do in any of our classes on that last day except socialize, sign yearbooks, say goodbyes, share memories, and talk of future plans. Mr Malone’s class was the final one of the day, and toward the end of it some announcements came over the school-wide PA system. After the announcements, a group of students played some popular music through the PA system as, I suppose, a kind of celebration of our impending freedom. One of the songs they played was the popular “top 40” hit, “Brother Louie” — a song celebrating interracial sex.

Before the lead singer could get to the chorus, Mr. Malone rose from his desk and walked purposefully to the PA speaker and switched it off. He turned to face the class. With unaccustomed emotion he spoke: “I will not have that piece of filth played in my classroom. The people who produced that and other filth are trying to destroy us. To kill us. By mixing the races. They want to destroy everything that we are and everything we stand for. You may not believe me. You may think I am an old man who doesn’t understand the new ways. But mark my words. Those who made that filth are filth. They are your enemies. You will see one day.” The students, who had a moment before been in a relaxed, conversational, and almost-partying mood, were so silent you could hear their breathing. They seemed to be riveted in place, staring at Mr. Malone. The final bell rang and the spell was broken. Without another word, we students filed out to the buses and into our new lives.

Mr. Malone, I wish I had had the maturity to thank you for your warning and to fully understand it. If you’re in a place where you can hear my words, I thank you now.

Human lives are very short. For our people and our culture to live on beyond this brief generation, the two most basic things we must have are children and teachers. All those of our race with good genes should do what it takes to become parents, abundant parents. And I believe that all of us who know the eternal truths of race must also become teachers, and teach without end every day of our lives. Mr. Malone and Mr. Herlihy and Dr. Pierce and Dr. Oliver taught me. Someone taught them. Someone taught you. Now it is your turn.

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You’ve been listening to American Dissident Voices, the radio program of the National Alliance. Volume 2 of our CD series, containing 20 more of the best radio speeches by our founder, Dr. William L. Pierce, is now available. It’s entitled William Pierce: The Power of Truth, Volume 2. To get your copy, just visit natall.com/cd-offer or send $16 for one CD, $50 for five CDs, to National Alliance, Box 4, Mountain City, TN 37683 USA. That’s National Alliance, Box 4, Mountain City, TN 37683 USA or natall.com/cd-offer. Until next week, this is Kevin Alfred Strom reminding you of the words of Richard Berkeley Cotten: Freedom is not free; free men are not equal; and equal men are not free.