Where the Demons Dwell: The Antichrist Right
Those blissfully ignorant of right-wing soap opera will have never noticed the Antichrist Right, a loose coalition of writers who regard the Church as the worst thing that ever happened to Western civilization. If I understand correctly, the Antichrist Right would describe Christianity much as Christianity defines evil: a shadowy, parasitic negation that possesses no substance of its own and prevents its mesmerized victims from attaining their true destiny.
One proposed remedy for the Christian plague is a revival of paganism.
I honestly don’t know how seriously to take the Antichrist Right’s neopagan aspect, but I do know that in opposing it Christians should take care not to belittle actual pagans, whether ancient Stoic or modern Shinto. As C.S. Lewis observes, “If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through . . . you are free to think all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.”
More authoritatively, St. Justin Martyr referred to nobler pagans as having received “seeds of the Logos,” while Saint Ambrose employed Homeric imagery to illuminate the human condition. And as Josef Pieper writes in his Guide to St. Thomas Aquinas,
Plato undoubtedly understood the sacred tradition of the myths [of Homer and Hesiod] as lore descended from a divine source, and he believed this lore (“You think it a story, I think it truth”). From which it follows that the effort undertaken in the Platonic dialogues to extract the true meaning from the symbolic language of the myths is theology in the strict sense of the word.
Now the truly exciting thing is that St. Thomas, too, would term this Platonic interpretation of the myths theology in the strict sense. For he, along with most theologians of the Christian West, was ready to allow that revelation, the veritable speech of God, had been vouchsafed to men outside Holy Scripture. Multis gentilium facta fuit revelatio; “revelation has been made to many pagans”—this was an opinion that Thomas pronounced many times. In line with this he saw no difficulty in assuming that the Sibyls, say, had spoken under an inspiratio divina.
Though Theogony is not Scripture any more than Plato is a Church Father, per Pieper we are nonetheless obliged to recognize that pagan poets and philosophers convey clues about deeper realities via “‘God’s speech’ sounding and resounding throughout the mythical traditions of many nations.”
Those who complain of America’s descent into paganism are being unfair—to pagans, that is. After all, polytheistic cultures typically recognized that vocation is not an entitlement: A Vestal Virgin who felt she had an inalienable right to get married was simply out of luck, as was any male who resented the aforementioned office’s sex restrictions. Pagan culture often surpassed modern-day America by Americans’ own standards. Our “egalitarian” society treats political elites’ lives as infinitely more dear than those of military recruits drawn from flyover country and the ’hood. At least Agamemnon was no chickenhawk.
More importantly, though, Agamemnon acknowledged a coherent communal order handed down unbrokenly from one generation to another. He differs greatly from the neopagan, whose alleged ancestral reverence is decidedly selective. Why should the unknowable names and faces of distant Germanic ancestors count for more than a great-grandfather who frowned fiercely upon heathenry? Because the latter is not exotic or cool enough? Neopaganism advises us to serve Kith and Kin and Tradition at the expense of identifiable kith, kin, and local traditions, much as liberalism advises us to serve grandiose global causes at the expense of our God-given duty to our neighbor. I am not suggesting one should parrot the convictions of parents or grandparents at the expense of truth; rather, I highlight the absurdity of invoking filial piety in scorning many generations’ worth of Christendom. As a “tradition,” neopaganism has hardly been passed down unbrokenly, and is at best analogous to gnosticism—or better still, to the impiously engineered dinosaur clones of Jurassic Park. It is paganesque, not pagan.
Ásátru practitioner Stephen McNallen contrasts “indigenous religions,” which “are innately tied to a specific people and cannot be transferred to another group without losing their truth, power, and integrity,” with religions like Christianity, “which claim the allegiance of all the human race.” Exposing the Church’s dirty little secret that “‘catholic’ means ‘universal,’” McNallen mercilessly rubs our noses in the fact that a full-fledged Christian can be “Chinese or Nigerian or anything under the sun.”
All true. And?
At times I worry that anti-universalist hysteria has attained the same grip with the “paleo” and “post-paleo” right as antiracist hysteria has attained with the left. Race is significant; so is the fact that we live in a universe. In condemning “the attack upon universals,” Richard Weaver rightly observed that “the issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of man.” Fear of catching cooties via communion with Nigerians and Chinamen leads the neopagan toward relativists, subjectivists, emotivists, postmodernists, and other metaphysical anarchists who regard truth, essences, and objective value in much the same way as vampires regard sunlight.
For the Universal position on race, consult Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge:
Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community—however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things—whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.
Minimize neither the “necessary and honorable” nor the warning against idolatry. The real divide is between those who believe we live in an ordered κόσμος subject to a transcendent authority, and those who do not. The former recognize that folk religion cannot replace God religion for the same reason one cannot replace a window with a mirror. If we cherish our individual selves, kin, and homeland, then we are bound to honor their Maker that much more, as loyal Anglo-Saxon thanes honored generous gift-giving lords.
Yes, ethnic identity is important, but not because there is no universal human nature; on the contrary, ethnicity is important precisely because there is a universal human nature, and part of that nature is to have ethnicity. True, I could never experience The Odyssey in quite the same way as someone born and reared on the isle of Ithaca. Nevertheless, it insults Homer to suggest his epic offers little to humanity in general, which is what is implied by the doctrine that race is the highest level of communion. Furthermore, in denying universals and worshiping creature instead of Creator, the Cult of Germanic Humanity differs from the Cult of Generic Humanity only in exclusivity of kind: The neopagan is closer to the liberation theologian than either would like to admit.
Not all Antichrist Rightists are practicing neopagans, but the sentiment is usually about the same. In “The Hero As Victim,” Dr. Steve Burton laments that “heroes of suffering”—such as those singled out for favoritism under affirmative action—have replaced bygone “heroes of achievement.” He then slyly brings up his theory of leftist victimology:
Would it be mischievous for me to suggest that this interesting phenomenon represents the ultimate triumph of the Christian aspect of our Western cultural inheritance over both the Greco-Roman and the Germanic aspects? So far as I can determine, neither the Greeks, nor the Romans, nor the Germanic tribes ever regarded the victims of history with anything but contempt. They were champions of achievement—especially military achievement. If any of them ever lost any sleep over the sufferings of the losers, I have yet to hear about it. But the deification of the victim—God on the Cross—lies at the very heart of Christianity.
Vicisti, Galilaee.
Count on the West’s “defenders” to concede the left’s central slander: European civilization boils down to ruthless (albeit colorful and creative) SOBs carelessly trampling on the weak and the poor. In truth, no Westerner worthy of the name would consider shrugging off the Trail of Tears, pogroms, or lynchings; what he objects to is the bad-faithed, oversimplified, one-dimensional exploitation of such events by those with no authentic desire to make peace. In other cases, he rejects leftist martyrology because he doesn’t believe that those in question are victims—e.g., traditional “gender” roles are not inherently victimizing.
Of course, one may find it hard to believe—especially the miraculous parts—but, as a story, the Passion is about a perfect Man unjustly condemned: “but this man has done no wrong.” Hence, it’s far closer to Socrates—“one should avoid doing wrong with more care than being wronged”—than to conniving sophists, ancient or modern. It is also about a Man sacrificing His life to save others, thereby having more in common with a soldier throwing himself on an enemy grenade to save friends—or a mother dying in childbirth, or a black-lunged father descending into a coal mine to support his family—than with the Gramscian cuckoo Burton reinforces. Was Aristotle too cryptic when he explained that “people are sometimes actually praised, whenever they endure something shameful or painful as the price of great and fine results”? Identifying Christian self-sacrifice with leftist victimology demands total disregard of teleology on the part of cultural Marxist and Antichrist Rightist alike. There are many purposes—some good, some bad—which might inspire patient endurance of outrageous fortune’s slings and arrows (to cite one suffering-sympathetic mediocrity). It is the understatement of the century to say that man’s reconciliation with his Creator and the eradication of Western Man are not the same purpose.
And do modern Westerners really need more appetite for “achievement,” anyhow? If so, why are so many parents experimenting on their kids with electronic learning “toys”? Why so many deified, steroid-saturated athletes? If leftists dismiss achievement, why do they fervently insist that women have contributed to art, science, and culture every bit as much as men, and that Muslim Spain was a cosmopolitan utopia? Some cynical wags even mischievously suggest that what “heroes of achievement” have accomplished with such inventions as radio, TV, and the internet has been the transformation of Americans’ brains into something not unlike tapioca pudding. Meanwhile, unpatriotic conservatives still claim our glorious military achievements in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t so triumphantly shiny as we thought.
Perhaps Austrian Jew Erwin Chargaff was a hero of achievement. A Habsburg subject in boyhood, Chargaff later mastered a dozen languages so as to read Pascal, Dante, and Meister Eckhart in the original, chaired Columbia University’s Department of Biochemistry, won the National Medal of Science, and discovered the base-pairing principle used by Watson and Crick to analyze DNA. Alas, our magnificent achievements at Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompted this last of the natural philosophers to lose sleep over the sufferings of the losers, and he mused uneasily,
My life has been marked by two immense and fateful scientific discoveries: the splitting of the atom, the recognition of the chemistry of heredity and its subsequent manipulation. It is the mistreatment of a nucleus that, in both instances, lies at the basis: the nucleus of the atom, and the nucleus of the cell. In both instances do I have the feeling that science has transgressed a barrier that should have remained inviolate.
Even as he championed a “science with a human face” that would be “disengage[d] from technology and the pursuit of power,” Chargaff worried about the weak-mindedly ambitious, who like the poor are always with us: “Today the cure of genetic diseases, tomorrow the experimental improvement of the human character. Erimus sicut dei, as someone promised to my ancestress. The poor fool bought death instead.” In a letter to Science he warned that the Baconian project had turned into “a destructive colonial warfare against nature,” predicting grimly, “The future will curse us for it.”
Chargaff leads us back to those allegedly Nietzschean Greeks: “there is a measure to everything which must not be exceeded. Nobody knew this better than the Greeks with their famous μηδὲν ἄγαν—of nothing too much . . . Man is only strong when he is conscious of his own weakness.”
How does Social Darwinism explain Odysseus pitifully weeping like a war-victimized widow keening over her husband’s corpse? Why does Sophocles’ Neoptolemus show such compassion for the stinking abandoned cripple Philoktetes; why is Antigone named for a self-sacrificing girl who gets buried alive; why does the long-suffering, excruciatingly shamed Oedipus turn out to be a holy man? (Need we bring up hemlock-chugging Socrates again?) As to the Greeks’ inheritors, why does Vergil treat Dido sympathetically and describe “losers” founding Rome, and why does Plutarch commend a failed republican politician whose head and hands got nailed to a lectern?
I know even less of Germanic tribes than of Greeks and Romans, so all I may say of them is that, if they never “regarded the victims of history with anything other than contempt,” then so much the worse for Germanic tribesmen. It will be a cold day in Hell before I blush before some “champion of achievement” for having lost sleep over the “losers” depicted in The Gulag Archipelago. The author of that left-wing-pinko victimological tract knew there is no conflict between love for homeland and Christianity, for “nations are the wealth of mankind, its generalized personalities; the least among them has its own unique coloration and harbors within itself a unique facet of God’s design.” Yet he likewise contended that “the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but . . . in the development of the soul.” As for Bolshevik followers of Thrasymachus—“The result is what counts! It is important to forge a fighting Party! And to seize power! And to hold on to power! And to remove all enemies! And to conquer in pig iron and steel! And to launch rockets!”—he perceived, “They are turning into swine, they are departing downward from humanity.”
This brings up, finally, the bottom of the barrel of the Antichrist Right, the lobotomized cybertrolls who fantasize about bioengineered Übermenschen, post images of women dancing in front of Stonehenge as if auditioning for a Spinal Tap video, eagerly anticipate the coming of The Mighty Thor™, and excel at nothing except for willfully stupid malevolence. “This scum, which exists in every society, rises to the surface in any transitional time,” wrote Solzhenitsyn’s countryman Dostoyevsky in Demons. “And yet this scum, without knowing it, almost always falls under the command of that small group of the ‘vanguard’ which acts with a definite goal, and which directs all this rabble wherever it pleases, provided it does not consist of perfect idiots itself—which, incidentally, also happens.”
Indeed, it does.
This article first appeared in the August 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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Scott, regarding #148 paragraphs 4-5.
A few of generations ago most of us ceased being Poles and WASPs and Germans because of decisions our ancestors made. I don't think they should have done this but they did.
I'll use myself as an example. Ancestrally, as precisely as I can get it I'm 62% British (English, Scottish and Ulster. Anglican, Wesleyan and Presbyterian) 25% Niedergerman-Catholic, 9% Italian (Trieste, Catholic) and 4% Austrian Catholic. And, by American standards, I don't think I'm particuarly mixed. I'm Anglican (and if I couldn't be, I'd be Lutheran). If I could construct my ancestry, I'd be a WASP.
Which group should I decide to belong to?
We're at where we're at, not where we'd like to be or should be. This seems to me to be the problem with the Paleoconservative position. What's wrong with "white" and what's the viable alternative?
How on earth does anybody know the clear-cut racial ancestry of any group?
It's impossible to know exactly, and the margins are inevitably fuzzy, but it's something like defining the exact edge of a forest. You might not be able to, but you know when you're in the woods and when you aren't.
I read this a lot, but in practice, it’s simply not true.
I've noticed also that, for all the complaints about e.g. La Raza, La Raza has had to disclaim in the past that they are any kind of Hispanic nationalist or racialist group. La Raza may in the end be exactly that, but they aren't allowed to be any more honest about it than whites are.
I do think there is a double standard in that whites arouse more suspicion along these lines, as with the bogus claims about the Tea Parties, but it doesn't go as far as many on the right believe.
MAR @ 100:
"Most of the students I encountered espoused forms of liberalism, a type of universalism: egalitarianism, global equity, international charity, various themes of the universal brotherhood of man, etc."
I daresay most of those students base their positions at root on a form of agnosticism: Even if I think abortion wrong, I can't dream of imposing my mere opinion on somebody else. While I may prefer Shakespeare to Harry Potter, it would be oppressive and elitist to suggest that Harry Potter is not worthy of academic study.
The militant universalism of the left is merely the flip side of its rejection of transcendent truth and objective value.
This point might be clearer if one keeps in mind something we all might agree on, namely that liberalism -- advanced liberalism, anyhow -- is absurd. By "absurd" I don't mean it's impractical or merely betrays poor judgment, but rather that it is literally absurd, in that it epitomizes illogical self-contradiction as indicated by implicit statements such as "Be tolerant -- or else," "Question authority because celebrities and college profs say so," and "The truth is that there is no truth."
In his essay "The Truth of All Things," Pieper traces spirit of the liberal project back to Renaissance humanists who "despised and eliminated the principle of ontological truth" and who "dismiss[ed] also the traditional teaching on 'transcendentals,' the doctrine of those notions that 'transcend' and encompass the different types and categories of all existing beings: the concepts of unity, truth, and goodness." I think James Kalb says something similar, describing liberalism as "the rejection of authority which transcends human purposes," though the quotation may be off as I loaned out my copy of his book. (I mention Kalb because he may be more familiar than Pieper.)
Consider Richard Rorty -- as perfect an exemplar of Americanism as anybody. I'll take the liberty of quoting from a piece my brother wrote some time back concerning Rorty's *Achieving Our Country*.
"Rorty despises Communism, arguing that Liberals should get on the right side of anti-communism. But Rorty’s problem with Marxism is not that it is atheistic, but that it is not atheist enough. Marxism is a philosophy that results in an idolatry of labour, but Rorty has no real interest in any system that emphasises ANY objective value, even one as debased as a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’
So what is [Rorty's] Americanism if not an objective value?
Americanism is a civic religion that believes that Man cannot know truth, nor good and evil.
But Man can know — and know how to lessen — 'suffering' ... Therefore, he seeks a politics that eliminates inequality and shame. And one that establishes a classless and valueless society."
The point is not that every liberal treats Rorty as a guru or has even heard of him, but that Rorty's work pretty neatly sums up the mainstream American outlook, along with the nihilistic song "Imagine," which dogmatically exhorts us to abolish dogmas.
Liberalism ultimately resembles a holy war, yet it is the most bizaare of holy wars in that it is a crusade for Nothing. Sophists like Bloom notwithstanding, to be concerned w/ nihilism, relativism, etc. is not to fall for a bogeyman. It is in such doctrines that we see the purified & distilled essence of liberal ideology.
I don't like to be lumped in with WN-ists either because many are monomoniacal and crude and not much different from the rest of the culture except for their one concern. On the whole, I fret more about cultural issues and moral degeneracy than I do about racial issues.
Dr. Fleming has already said more succinctly than I could what's wrong with "white" (see #153).
We don't get to "decide" which group we belong to; we grow up in a web of attachments—genetic, familial (including those with whom we're intermarried), cultural, geographic. Thinking of ourselves as "white" obscures all of those much more immediate attachments.
And the problem gets even worse when we then project our current understanding of "whiteness" back upon a few millennia of European history, and start lumping, for example, my Polish ancestors in with those who built Chartres. The effect is to turn the wonderfully diverse and differentiated history of Europe (a history that continued in its diversity and differentiation for quite some time even in North America, as Roger McGrath has taken pains to show in Chronicles) into a rather monolithic "white" or European history.
Which is, by the way, exactly how the multiculturalists treat Europe.
The viable alternative is what is always has been. Grow where you're planted. Cultivate your attachments to your extended family and neighbors. Learn about your family's past, not just the generic past of European-Americans. Pass it all on to your children, including love of the place where you live.
SPR: "I read this a lot, but in practice, it’s simply not true [that one group of people is not allowed to protect its own interests]."
You really believe this? I can turn on CNN, and eventually I'll see someone from the NAACP or La Raza...or maybe, if I watch long enough, even AIPAC, USINPAC, or AAU. But what's missing from this picture? You don't think there's a double standard?
Matthew, did you bother to read the rest of what I wrote? I didn't argue that it's not true that "one group of people is not allowed to protect its own interests"; I argued that many of those who make the argument that only one group is not allowed to desire this spend much of their time complaining that other groups desire it.
In other words, they claim to want to have the same right to pursue their self-interest as, say, blacks or Jews, but they also don't want blacks or Jews to have that right.
And in the end, what does that amount to other than whining? Is this what the "white race" is reduced to?
Salyer, let me put it this way. If relativism truly were the highest value, then the left would tolerate female circumcision in Africa, but it does not. The universalist values of modern liberalism trump relativism.
Scott, I read all of your post (a couple times), but only quoted the first part for efficiency.
I too am no WN, but simply because of the manner in which the New World was settled, the US was basically a pan-western European country. Since most Americans are a large mix, 'white' is just the catch all for this group. Like an earlier poster, I will use myself as an example - I have a Scottish surname, but I have so many English ancestors I am probably more Anglo-Saxon (rather than Norse-Celt as the founding stock of the Maxwells were), mixed in with Franco-Spanish ancestry on my mothers side. A regular mutt.
While I agree with Dr Fleming that 'white' obscures more true identities, it is that same argument that leftists cynically use to excuse the repopulation of the country with foreigners. One ethnic identity is as good as another to them, since Americans supposedly have no 'real' pan-American ethnic heritage.
It doesn't bother me that you only quoted the first part, Matthew; what concerns me is that you seem not to have understood what I wrote.
Of course there's a double standard. The real purpose of multi-cultural diversity is not actually to promote them but to destroy us. The name is cultural genocide. We are helots in our own country--well, the helots, too, were in their own country. The difference is we were not defeated in a war or occupied by foreigners. We owe our subjugation to ourselves. So, step one: do not turn on CNN; step two, disconnect your cable TV; step three: turn off NPR and get rid of the Times and the Post. One cannot do what one does not have the power to do, but one can do what one can. Saving a nation of Wiggers from their suicidal stupidity is not within our power. That is where the example of the early Church comes in--or for that matter, the Stoics and Pythagoreans. They were able to survive, thrive, and propagate in a hostile world because they were clear about who they were and how to live. That is why there is no time for exercises in neopagan nostalgia or race fantasies.
While agreeing with most of what MAR is saying, I would point out to him that it is in times like these that the inadequacy of tribal loyalty is revealed. We have to have faith in something beyond ourselves and even beyond our ancestors and our tribes. This is what the prophets were trying to explain to the Jews and the philosophers to the Greeks. Some times, it is possible to believe that a commonwealth embodies certain virtues that maintain or support a higher power. That was Poseidonios' message to the Romans, picked up by Cicero and most tellingly by Vergil. That was the belief of many Americans in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but that time is gone. We live, now more than in Hardy's day, in the time of the breaking of nations, but Hardy's pessimism and his resolute clinging to the traditions of rural England cannot save us--though Hardy's agrarian pessimism is superior to nearly every form of political wisdom today. Now, we are being tried by fire, and, as every mostly good thing in our world is being consumed, it is only the imperishable gold that will endure. I hate to get preachy, but this is where we are.
I disagree with your first paragraph. Thinking of ourselves as "white and nothing but white" might obscure intermediate attachments. But not thinking of ourselves as "white" (I prefer Anglo-European). If we were still Poles and Germans you might make the same argument but that wouldn't necessarily make it true. These categorizations are all, to some extent, abstractions.
I don't perform the projection you describe in your second paragraph and I agree with you here.
"Grow where you’re planted.....Pass it all on to your children, including love of the place where you live."
East Central Florida. No thanks. Little pink houses (and Church's) for you and me. We dream of transplanting ourselves to a nice midwestern town but of course we'll have no relations there and I guess we'll be faking it.
By mostly good things I am referring to our constitutional liberty, cultural traditions, the rule of laws, our attachment to our race and nation. These are mostly good things, though they can be put to evil uses, but in trying to preserve what is left of these lower attachments, we should be working still harder to strengthen our highest attachments.
MAR @159 "But what’s missing from this picture? You don’t think there’s a double standard?"
Absolutely not!! There is no double standard, only one standard for the enemy: Locate, close with and destroy any remnant of Tradition by any and all means possible: stealth, silence, the root of all evil,(i.e. bribery or buy them) the seven deadly sins, character assasination, defamation, calumny, unpatriotic slanders, or any other means designed by the one who is LEGION. One standard, the evil standard, is the only standard I ever notice being practiced by the intelligent left and the useful rightest (read republicans)
who work for them.
DM: "While I agree with Dr Fleming that ‘white’ obscures more true identities, it is that same argument that leftists cynically use to excuse the repopulation of the country with foreigners. One ethnic identity is as good as another to them, since Americans supposedly have no ‘real’ pan-American ethnic heritage."
And this is the real danger. Once globalists have trivialized 'white' and have shown that various European ethnicities at one time didn't get along, they then bring out the dog and pony show that Haitian or Mestizo immigration is in no way different from Irish or German immigration. (I'm not saying Fleming and Richert are globalits, but I often see globalists trivializing 'white' for the purposes of social engineering: a dozen Irishmen here, a dozen Chinamen here -- it's all the same.)
I agree 100% with Fleming and Richert that deeper, ethnic identities are preferable and we don't want them to be lost, but nonetheless 'white' has a necessary usefulness.
But where do we go from here? The early Christians faced possible death from practicing their religion, but we have a different problem that it's very difficult to practice any kind of religion. The corruption is just extreme. The political situation is no better. The Romans were nasty to the Christians, but at least you could have some civic pride without being utterly ashamed of it. I don't find much to extol at all in the current American state. Perhaps I'm being overly negative, but it's very hard to raise a family, or even have a normal life, without engaging at all with the wider culture of mass media, mass entertainment, etc. I wish I knew more about the early Christians and how they coped.
ADVICE FOR MATT @170
Contemptus Muundi
How great the joys of heaven are
that need no April to recover
or surprise, no lilacs nor
the pumpkins of October!!
There they need no sun and rain-
bows are emerald.
Why must we burn in heart and brain
by flaming ficklness enthralled?
Two ways to make contemptible
the world:the first is not to look;
the second, and more sensible,
to read it like a book,
to learn the grammar and the word,
loving not the less but more,
contemning it as music heard,
supercedes the score.
js
"Once globalists have trivialized ‘white’ and have shown that various European ethnicities at one time didn’t get along, they then bring out the dog and pony show that Haitian or Mestizo immigration is in no way different from Irish or German immigration."
And so, in order to deny the globalists an argument for mass immigration, we should deny the truths of history?
Wouldn't it be better to uphold truth while fighting mass immigration? Why should truth be tossed out the window for political convenience? Isn't that exactly what our enemies do? Are we to be no better than they are?
Matt Weber is right, and as a father of four now grown children--and they are still children, though grown--I appreciate perhaps more deeply than he does the challenges we have to rise to. One thing I failed in was to teach my children enough poetry. I tried to do it all myself and failed, but we always fail at everything. All you can do is try, you do not even have to do your best. You can set an example. My father read in the evening, so I grew up reading. I had piano lessons with a teacher passionately committed to the great German traditions in music, so I grew up on Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms. Set an example and kick the junk out of your life. If you like movies, as I alas still do, then find good old films by the masters. We do know a bit how the early Christians coped because we have some apologetic documents that tell us. The best of them advised against hysteria and polemics. They set an example in their own lives and worked inexorably to make the life around them better.
Speaking as the head of an organization devoted to this project, I am often near the point of despair. Then I take part in our Summer School, at which 40-50 otherwise normal people take out a week of their life to listen to long lectures, engage in debate, and argue all night long over drinks. Some of these people start with the rudiments of a good education with strong interests--Robert for example, who missed the Anglo-Saxons. Others are complete and total victims of American education but are responding to some needs they are not fully aware of. One friend in business came to me recently and asked frankly for some guidance in becoming a reader, an autodidact, and he joins a growing list of such people. OK, your teachers failed you and the masters of mass culture are evil. Start today. Read the Aeneid--it will only take you a week to catch up with our discussion. You all know the Confucianist teaching but I'll give it anyway:
"The ancients who wished clearly to manifest illustrious virtue throughout the world would first govern their states well. Wishing to govern their states well, they would first regulate their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they would first cultivate their own persons. Wishing to cultivate their own persons,they would first rectify their own hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they would first seek sincerity in their thoughts. Wishing for sincerity in their thoughts, they would first extend their knowledge. The extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. "
From careful observation of the world, one proceeds to sincerity--a refusal to deceive oneself about perceptions--and then to gain control over personal behavior, which allows one to set a good example within the household, and so on. Rather than imposing order on the world, the ideal ruler sets an example within his own home.
Thanks, TJF for #147. And all the rest.
I don't see how acknowledging the existence white people is tossing truth out the window. Is to be Scottish and white mutually exclusive? Is a chimpanzee, because it is a mammal, any less a primate? Is a square, because it's a shape, any less a quadrilateral? Are not generalizations sometimes useful? Didn't macro-groups around the planet evolve different looks? Without knowing anything about specific ancestry, I suspect that most people, looking at photos, could guess what part of the world David Cameron, Wen Jiabao and Robert Mugabe are from. I don't see how this denies the truth of history. In fact, I think it confirms it.
@ 161
And allow me to put it this way: Americanism (that is, advanced liberalism) is a civic religion that believes that Man cannot know truth, nor good & evil.
It is not a matter of one thing "trumping" the other as it is of advanced liberalism's devotees being absurdist hypocrites, who have jettisoned all commitment to rationality.
In that rejection of higher authority the problem has its origins; trying to deal with the problem without considering its origins, by trying to "rally" the "troops" of the "Right" and admonishing them to get along and not break ranks, is very unwise. It is an approach one might expect from a Republican.
I'm intolerant of subjectivism, relativism, etc. for approximately the same reason I'm intolerant of libertarians who think the cure for big government is more individualism and individual rights.
To say we shouldn't criticize such wrong-headed errors because to do so might give aid and comfort to the neocons is like saying I shouldn't criticize pacifism -- because to do so might give aid and comfort to the neocons.
I might also point out that my discussion of universalism is a response not to Dr. Burton, but to the comments of Stephen McNallen.
It seems a bit much to have to simultaneously defend from Mr. Roberts a critique I made of sentiments expressed by a neopagan, while simultaneously being accused of being "incorrect and uncharitable" in including Dr. Burton's views in the piece.
Matthew, my reference to throwing truth out the window had to do with your remark, which I quoted in order to avoid any misunderstanding, about the dangers of showing "that various European ethnicities at one time didn’t get along." Downplaying the both salutary and less than salutary differences between European nations and ethnic groups over two millennia in order to emphasize a concept (i.e., "whiteness") that has, in your word, a "usefulness" in opposing arguments for mass immigration is throwing the truth out the window.
Perhaps it's time for me to bow out of this discussion, since I seem to be unable to write anything that you can read without misunderstanding.
BTW, by my comment at 176 I didn't mean to accuse Mr. Roberts of actually being a Republican.
While I confess to being somewhat heated, I certainly don't want to cast aside all civility.
Let's set aside the tactical question of when and how to use the term white or whiteness. It is really a question of efficacy and context. Yes, generalizations and abstractions can be useful so long as they are not endowed with a false reality. If whiteness is useful in a negative context, so be it, but let us not put too much stock in entirely negative arguments. I am far prouder of my Scottish ancestry than in my skin color, which is not as white as it might be. Good men, like Mr. Salyer and Mr. Roberts, can surely agree to sink their differences over terminology and get down to the real issue.
The question was raised earlier, whether or not it is a waste of time to criticize neopaganism. The rather sharp and sometimes interesting discussion here gives one answer, but there are two others. First, I would say that while I am not much alarmed that the little dears who post on neopagan sites are going to attract a mass following--they have so far offered nothing either by way of original critique or as a reason for living or for political action--but I am disturbed that intelligent and good young men may be temporarily distracted from more important things by what I have mistakenly described as Wagnerian fantasies, when in fact they are comic book fantasies, more Conan than Siegfried. We all get sucked into time-wasting conspiracies--it is the world we live in--and I would not exempt myself, but I do think it is my duty as an older man to speak some sense to erring youth, whether the youths in question are chasing doxies or heterodoxies (to steal a joke from my late friend Russell Kirk).
On a larger level, though, as I tried to indicate above, neopaganism is one of the major elements of the complex movement that has undermined the West. To reveal it in its true colors--something that has never been done, so far as I know, in any serious essay much less book--would be worth a great deal of time and effort. If we do not understand the forces arrayed against us, we cannot know how to defend ourselves or what is valuable in our traditions. Then let us set aside some of the personal disagreements that have broken out here--and I truly believe that Mr. Salyer and Mr. Roberts, sitting down over a bottle of wine, would quickly shake hands on all the main points at issue.
Then what, in substance, does the disagreement come down to? Is it different valuations of Nietzsche? I doubt it. FN, though an unsystematic thinker and a failed scholar, put forward, albeit intuitively and poetically, a critique of the weakness of postChristian Europe that is right in its diagnosis of the symptoms but transparently false in its attribution of the cause. Like many a fatherless boy--his pastor-father died before he could know him--Nietzsche led a troubled life and his disgust with the soft bourgeois world of 19th century Germany is understandable. He also foresaw the horrors of a world without God--a world in which men go mad. Let us praise him for his prescience without adopting him as a guru. And, by the same reasoning, let us cheerfully admit all the charges made against the effeminacy of our postChristian anti-civilization. What do we do it about it, then? Invent a new religion based on an ignorant misreading of pre-Christian Germany and Scandinavia? It hardly seems useful or practical. I will tell you what I have told Benoist, that if I were he, I would become an outwardly pious Catholic or Orthodox, because those two traditions incorporate all the richness of ancient polytheist paganism--if that is what they truly want. Then why fly from what is real and deep and true and complex to embrace something fictive, shallow, and ultimately useless?
" I am far prouder of my Scottish ancestry than in my skin color, which is not as white as it might be"
Off topic Dr Fleming, but where in Scotland do your Flemings come from? I wouldnt be surprised if we have a fairly recent common ancestor.
Mr. Sayler, glad to see you read Kalb. I enjoy reading him too!
I thought the Flemings were, well, Flemish. Your namesake figured prominently in the story of 1588.
I asked McNallen (in a comment) why, given his ancestry, he wasn't a Celtic pagan but he didn't answer.
Scott, Your position seems to be "blood and soil, just keep it small."
Bruce, I wouldn't object to that as a shorthand description of where I stand. Another shorthand would be to say that I believe in patriotism, not nationalism (white or otherwise).
Just catching up:
Eagle @ 122: what are you talking about? What "newly popular site?" What "exchanges?"
Bruce @ 124: None of my many Christian friends mind me quoting Nietzsche. Most of them enjoy arguing with him. Some of them are very good at it.
Scott P. Richert @ 129: I am a very well trained analytic philosopher. Part of being a very well trained analytic philosopher (or, indeed, a philosopher of any kind) is knowing when you don't know something, and when you should ask a question instead of making a claim. I think that the question I asked in the thread to which you link elicited some very interesting discussion, from which I profited.
Thomas Fleming @ 134: Yes, that was me, and I thank you for your generosity. Meeting you and your wonderfully charming wife was both an honor and a pleasure.
JD Salyer @ 135: When I wrote my little squib, I had no thought of offending you. Fortunately, my insensitive - indeed, almost criminal - nature prevents me from being quite so offended by your misrepresentation of my views.
Thomas Fleming @ 139: Precisely so.
I don't think that anything following calls for any response from me.
SB
Dr. Burton, if Mr. Salyer has misrepresented your views, why not tell us what you really do believe? You took Mr. Salyer to task for not contacting you before writing his article; please take this opportunity to set the record straight.
And, after you've done so, I hope you will take Dr. Fleming up on his challenge:
I look forward to a fruitful discussion.
Bruce, the Flemings probably were Flemish to begin with--though my father always denied it and preferred an Anglo-Saxon derivation of the name. They probably entered Britain before or after the Conquest. Since the name is an ethnic designation, the various branches are unrelated. I was told, I think on no great authority, that our branch became a sept of Clan Murray, which they ruled for a time. Somewhat more reliably, I was told they left Scotland after the '45 and went to County Kerry and lived in no great state in Castle Island until coming to the States. My father's mother was a Smith form Prince Edward Island, a Scottish Presbyterian until (according to Calvinist relatives) she converted to her husband's religion in order to drink and play cards with the priest. Her family had left North Carolina during the Revolution. They were Highlanders who had taken the oath not to fight against the king. Smith is a suspicious name for a Highland Scot, and I was told these Smiths were really McFarlanes, a clan that was proscribed--like the MacGregors--for their disloyalty to England, their violence, and their thieving ways. Like most Americans I am a mongrel, with some blood going back far into our history, some more recent. I have done my best to research every strain, to learn the history and literature, and to love my peoples. I think for someone who is, say, English and Polish, the task is not impossible. But Sicilian-Polish-Jewish probably results in a deracinated mutt. I once spent a few days with a prominent Italian Italianist at a New York university whose daughter was writing for a major newspaper. The Italian Italianist, who had married an Anglo-American, had helped to found an school to celebrate the dual heritage of Italy and British America. They taught Italian language,literature, and history but also British and American literature and history. They also taught a lot of Latin, which they saw as the bridge between the two traditions, as indeed it is.
Which is a parable for the obvious fact that within a narrow compass we can maintain a dual identity, that is, biculturalism is possible but not multi-culturalism, but for biculturalism to succeed in a diverse and large country, there must be a common core, which for us is British-American and the Greco-Roman classics.
"she converted to her husband’s religion in order to drink and play cards with the priest."
Dr. Fleming,
Other than the playing cards with priests,I can't think of a better reason to leave the Puritans.
Very interesting Dr Fleming. As a son of the “lion of the north” Great Grandma would have loved you (she was a WASP Scotto-file who was distantly descended from a lowland Scottish preacher. Hence, my first name).
I like to imagine descent from Hengist and Horsa through my Niedersachsen/Old Saxony patriline. My own personal myth I suppose but it makes me feel like less of a mutt. Hey, we just missed the migration to the Anglosphere by 1300 years!
I don’t know much about my Trieste great-great grandparents because great-grandma and great grandpa divorced early and we never knew any father, grandpa, great grandpa other than her WASP 2nd husband. No memories, no family stories.
Thanks Dr Fleming. We believe our Maxwells were Catholics who fled to Ulster, not after the 45' but instead after the 15', but we lack the documentation to prove it. After a short and seemingly unhappy stay in Ulster, they came to Virginia in 1734 where the son was Captain in the regular Virginia militia in the Revolution (none of my Southern relatives were Tories).
Being almost entirely British in ethnic origin, I have found it easy to trace my own roots in an almost complete form to just before the Crusades. Unlike you, once you go back very far in my tree instead of finding Flemish origin there is alot of Norman in me through my descent of Robert de Brus and William the Conqueror.
"[M]y insensitive – indeed, almost criminal – nature prevents me from being quite so offended by your misrepresentation of my views."
At #115, Dr. Burton himself (commendably) concedes:
"It was ridiculous for me to write: 'if any of them ever lost any sleep over the sufferings of the losers, I have yet to hear about it.' Anybody reading that would think that I had never read – let alone taught – book XXIV of the Iliad.
It was a thoughtless mistake, and thoroughly unfair to our Greco-Roman cultural ancestors."
By his own admission Dr. Burton seems to have benefited from my correction in this regard, and acknowledges one of my article's key points regarding his own gross "misrepresentation" of pagans. With respect to Greco-Roman culture, the Christian understanding of suffering is not as alien as some might claim.
Boy I butchered that first sentence (Florida public schools). Great grandma wasn’t a man. How about “Since you’re a son of the lion of the north great-grandma would have loved you.”
There seems to be a consensus here that paganism equals Teutonism, or Nordicism if you prefer. This is absurd. Pre-Christian paganism survived and left greater and deeper traces in the south rather than the north. It was in the south that the pagan revival first got started.
Nobody here has dealt with the main pagan criticism against Christianity. Revealing.
Later, if I'm up to it, I will attempt to address a number of points brought up inter alia in this discussion. (Warning: my personal motto is,"Christians to the lions!")
Until then, you might want to ponder these gems.
-- Baron Giulio Evola
-- Baron Giulio Evola
Wiedersehen, Damen und Herren!
"Nobody here has dealt with the main pagan criticism against Christianity."
If Sempronius wishes to be taken seriously, he should refrain from making statements which are flatly untrue.
What a pity I didn't think to work in a reference to Roderick Spode.
"There seems to be a consensus here that paganism equals Teutonism, or Nordicism if you prefer."
This article and discussion appears to me to be a response to a particular trend among young right-wingers that's visible at (but not limited to) a certain publication. That trend involves flirtation with Germanic paganism in particular. Not much interest on their part in Greek, Roman, Slavic or Celtic paganism. This is presented as (part of) radical traditionalism. It's mostly young men of Northern European descent who are trying to get in touch with their roots. The best answer is the one Mr. Salyer gives. Why should I feel more affinity for an unnamed ancestor (virtually noone can trace their ancestry back to pagan Europe)than for Papa Joe?
The recreation of Northern paganism is just silliness. As mentioned above by I think TJF, there's insufficient continuity/consistency from one Northern area to the next or from one writer to the next to make a religion with any orthodoxy. There's a generally consistent spirit to Northern myths (the Northern spirit that Tolkein discusses) that makes for genuinely fun and inspiring reading. Inspirational, yes. A religion, no.
”Christians to the lions!”
The Christians of antiquity were made scapegoats.
Modern Christians should emulate ancient Christians and mind their own damned business.
Sempronius,
I rushed over to read your posts, as I usually do, only to heave a great sigh to discover you were just playing games with us today and were not going to join us with serious contributions . Read the thread before you comment if you are going to enter this late.
Nationalism, anti-clericalism and the 'Modern Mind are still the main opponents just as Evola's comments confirm. Authentic anti- clericalism originates in Catholic cultures as a natural result of a society working out the boundaries between the province of religion and of the world - a protest against extravagant action involving Beezelbub himself, (the world ,the flesh, etc) either by the clergy against the laity, or the laity against the clergy.The other form of anti-clericalism is a conflict between two incompatible theories of the State - the Catholic and the Neutral or Lay, or revolutionary state. Evola's comments are simply a more recent expression of this old dilemma?
The experiment testing his thesis about the lay state vs the normal state has been successful and proven beyond any possible doubt that his thesis was not only wrong-headed but suicidal.
Another 'Main Opposition' is simply the 'Modern Mind'. Belloc described it as 'a morass', a 'bog', not able to state its position with any clarity, and as 'contain[ing] three main ingredients ... Pride, ignorance and intellectual sloth; their unifying principle [being] a blind acceptance of authority not based on reason."
I trust you will not fall for this trap, when you post this afternoon?
BTW, there is compassion in the northern myths. See Bothvar Bjarki in one of my favorites, the Saga of King Hrolf Kraki. I guess the Niezschean pagans will have to throw this one out. Like the article says "all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth.”
Forget paganism for a minute. What do the anti-Christians think they'll accomplish, anyway? They're attacking Christianity but does anyone think that Christianity rules or even has much influence in our society? So where will they get to with this? Do the think the anti-Chrisitan left will do a 180 when they're convinced by something like: "See. You're beliefs are really Christian. Join us."