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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The point, as far as I can tell, is that there is an upcoming sector of the right that is nonreligious that believes that
a) 'conservative' truths can be deduced by empirical investigation of the natural world (e.g. Human Biodiversity explains gender roles) without any recourse to religious doctrines.
b) Christianity is actively holding this back, by preaching egalitarianism and universalism and pacifism rather than the tribal loyalties and defensiveness of paganism.
So the point is to weaken the hold of Christian doctrine on young conservative minds so they can then pursue the secular arguments that may have an influence in the post-Christian West. I think some of it is a product of understandable frustration that religious leaders that should be on the conservatives' side end up kowtowing to leftists that hate Christianity anyway. Another part is simply that leftists really don't care much about religious reasoning, so conservatives need to change their tactics. Paganism is a means to an end, rather than something that inspires any real passion (some secular conservatives are happy to let Christianity continue as long as it promotes conservative causes...which isn't much different than how liberals treat it).
It is sometimes amazing the way Sempronius thinks he can get away with absurd allegations--paganism survived more virulently in the north than in the south--without even pretending to support them with evidence. Then, to top it off, he drags in the poor nutball Evola, whom even Mussolini derided and the later MSI washed their hands of. Evola,like Nietzsche, had sparks of brilliance, but his lack of self-criticism and tendency to hysteria render his work useless to all but the most disciplined and best educated. By the way, Evola loathed south Italians, and he whined after the war that now Italians could go back to eating spaghetti and singing O sole mio to their hearts' content. Taking Evola on faith is like taking Joseph Smith on faith. Any clever person can make up this sort of self-inflating stuff all day long. "Though I'm anything but clever, I could talk like that for ever," observed a far deeper man than Evola.
What is the real neopagan case against Christianity? I suppose you mean--get ready for this, boys--a JEWISH cult that infected the wholesome West. Guardi, amco. Lasci questa stronzata teutonica ai barbari tedeschi!
Thanks to Dr Fleming for his perspective. I'm largely a victim of public education myself, though maybe a bit more inquisitive than most. I've actually read the Aeneid, but it might be time to bring it out again.
One problem with the Alternative Right is that it lacks elders to provide the enthusiastic young'uns with some tempering wisdom. So it just lurches from one absurdity to the next, Game -> neopaganism -> HBD -> back to the beginning and on and on forever.
Yes, the Jews inflicted it on us in the first century knowing it would destroy us. Peter and Paul didn't believe all that stuff and were winking at each other as they were writing it. Or, they were acting subconciously out of ethnic genetic interests. Infinitely clever.
Of course, if that were true, then we're so stupid to have fallen for it and built our entire civilization on it that we deserve our fate.
If we wish to go all Nordic, then we should do something sensible, like reading the Eddas, the Origo Gothica, Nibelungenlied, Beowulf, etc. and learning about what mythology survives, and recognising what wisdom there is to be found in them. Then study some of the archaeology and linguistics.
Nothing else is sensible or useful, and there is certainly nothing there that can even reach the point of becoming philosophy, much less religion.
If DNA is any guide, then it appears that we British Americans (speaking just for ourselves here, not other Americans) are not really descended primarily not from Germanic or even Celtic ancestors, but from the pre-Celtic people of the Isles, about whom we know absolutely next nothing at all. Good luck to anyone who wants to revive their religion, and as for linguistic revival, the best we could do might be to learn Basque - or that may be entirely the wrong language to learn. They apparently built Stonehenge, and if it's really is a big observatory, then apparently they were a race of astronomers.
Let's all go pray to the stars, and we can get those Christmas tree stars and put them on our heads as religious garb. Anyone who wants to build a big observatory out of boulders can be my guest, but I'm too lazy to go that far.
As for Evola, though he's quite intriguing and fascinating, there's just something about him that gives me the creeps, so I stay away.
Allen Wilson: the composition of the ethnic layers of the British Isles is still up for debate. Interestingly, as you allude, DNA studies find the British Isles to be more ethnically homogenous than people would have thought. It could well be that earlier invasions were exaggerated and were cases of the populace adopting the invaders' customs. We saw this with Anglo-Saxon, about which there was a good article in Chronicles some months ago.
Regarding the Stonehenge - and granted, Stonehenge theories are a dime a dozen - Mike Parker Pearson has offered (I think) compelling evidence that the Stonehenge (and its mirror wooden site) served as a place of ancestor worship.
Here are a few quotes:
From Heritage Riverside Project:
"Stonehenge and by default Bluestonehenge seem undoubtedly connected with ancestor worship, and the discovery of over 60 cremation burials at Stonehenge, and large amounts of charcoal at Bluestonehenge, indicating it could be the cremation site itself, supports this.
The cremations at Stonehenge were in fact a part of the structure of the standing stones, as a number of the Aubrey holes were packed with cremated bones, holding the standing bluestones in place. Being part of the structure itself may have been an important element of the henge complex, and Parker-Pearson believes the people who built Stonehenge may have been of Welsh origin, who may have colonised the area. Constructing the henges with the bluestone was perhaps a means of honouring their Welsh ancestors."
From NPR:
"Well, I think one of the things about Stonehenge is that it must have embodied lots of different purposes. I mean, my favorite view is that this is built as a place of the ancestors, and the reason for thinking that is that we've got a wooden version of Stonehenge just a couple of miles upstream. We know it's the same date as the stone version and they've both got very similar features, avenues linking them to the river.
And the stone version, we've now recovered the - sorry, the wooden version, we've recovered the entire plan and it's so very similar that these are almost - this is the same architect, I would say, designing the two.
So we have to explain Stonehenge as one half of a complex. It has not sat there on its own, and it's realizing that the wooden version is surrounded by the remains of the living. It's got all of their houses, that sort of thing. There were no cremations anywhere in it. So these are two very different sites with different purposes, and to understand Stonehenge, we've got to understand that relationship between the wooden and the stone. And so that's why we think that they are actually separating its purpose out, if you like, to specifically be to do with the ancestors.
...
Yes, yes. I'm not sure that was a problem back in prehistory. But yes,there are lots of other theories. One theory some colleagues of mine at a different university have been working with is that of healing. But of course, what I'd say is that's more of a secondary purpose because this is one of things about ancestors, is that they bring blessings to the living if you treat them right in societies that worship their ancestors. So healing as well as fertility, these are going to be some of things that places like this would have been thought to provide."
From USA Today:
"Inhabitants most likely raised Stonehenge as a monument to their dead, who were buried there ceremonially.
Stonehenge and Durrington Walls apparently were mirror images of each other, one a stone enclosure for graves, the other a wooden construction for the living. Their circular patterns suggest that lives centered on observances of sunrise and sunset.
"We are really looking at a solar cult where ancestors were a major part of their worship," Pearson said in a telephone briefing for reporters organized by National Geographic, a research sponsor. "Stonehenge may have been a swan song of a particular way of life."
Thank you for the information, MAR. Of course I was aware of the burials at Stonehenge, but I wasn't aware of most of the other stuff in your post.
The culture and religion of these people are so intriguing, and always just beyond our grasp.
I can certainly understand why so many Neopagans look toward Stonehenge as a religious structure. It's antiquity and mystery fascinate.
For the British peoples the world over, Stonehenge is the most significant structure built by our ancient ancestors, whoever they were. It's the primordial monument, with a significance vaguely akin to what the Parthenon is to the modern Western world, a symbol of origins.
If recent DNA studies are to be believed, then only about 25% of the British gene pool comes from the invaders, Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans. I think similar results would be obtained in many parts of Europe, in a varying proportions. But, as Chesterton might say, this method is only counting without weighing. The English and French aristocracies were clearly far more Celtic/Germanic than the general run of the population. Nonetheless, it is also true that the pre-IE-base of the European man is not a contemptible race but a sturdy stock on which to graft. Ancient Greece is particularly interesting since there may be three strata, not just two, since the so-called Pelasgian peoples the Greeks subdued and interbred with may have spoken a IE language. The jury is out, probably permanently.
Time for study is limited, but my sporadic readings in AS and Nordic literature has been quite rewarding to me and not just for sentimental or antiquarian reasons. Beowulf is not the Iliad and Snorre Sturlson is no Vergil, but they are worthy of respect. But this is precisely what the neopagans do not do, because they are too busy reading bad philosophy and worse anthropology. By the way, you are all to young to remember, but the American Spectator was originally called the Alternative but the term alternative attracted too many alternative types--hair dressers, ballet dancers--so they had to change the name. I fear that won't be a problem with the neopagans.
Dr. Fleming, you forgot the Danes. Steve Berg would want them included in the invaders list.
I know next to nothing about genetics but I wonder if Syke's and Oppenheimer's studies are the final word. Sykes seemed to make an awful lot of inferences (didn't read Oppenheimer). Cutting-edge science seems to constantly change its conclusions.
I think we should give some weight to linguistics, observations about place names, etc and consider the writings of Gildas and Bede.
Also the percent obtained (I remember 20%) was averaged geographically. It was considerably higher for east Anglia and even higher for Orkney and Shetland.
All interesting stuff but we'll probably never know. That's what keeps it interesting and fun.
Regarding the ancestry of the British Isles, here's a summary of the study by Bryan Sykes:
http://vdare.com/sailer/070415_diverse.htm
"From his database, Sykes concludes that the majority of the genes of the peoples of the British Isles are descended from the oldest of the modern inhabitants: Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, who began arriving 10,000 years ago from Continental Europe after the end of the last Ice Age, as soon as the islands became habitable again.
Global cooling had pushed modern humans out of northern Europe and down into refuges near the Mediterranean, remixing the early peoples of Europe. (This may be one reason that, as Cavalli-Sforza has noted, Europeans are the most physically homogenous of all the great continental races.)"
...
"Sykes writes: "Overall, the genetic structure of the Isles is stubbornly Celtic." (Interestingly, this means that the Irish and the English are largely the same—and Sykes is unable to discern any difference at all between the Ulster Catholics and Protestants, or “Scotch-Irish”, as they are known to American immigration history).
Sykes points, out, however, that the term "Celtic" is something of a misnomer:
"The 'Celts' of Ireland and the Western Isles are not, as far as I can see from the genetic evidence, related to the Celts who spread south and east to Italy, Greece and Turkey from the heartlands of Hallstadt and La Tene in the shadows of the Alps during the first millennium BC."
The British “Celts” have been in the British Isles long before the emergence of Central European Celts known to anthropology and the military history of the Roman Republic. These British “Celts” adopted the Celtic language, but otherwise their relationship with the continental Celts, if any, remains unknown."
Dr. Fleming,
What are your thoughts on the strata of the ancient Italic peoples?
MAR,
Sykes used surveys of Y-chromosome idenity in males and mitochondrial-DNA idenity in women. Seemed like a lot of inference to me.
The British Celts are often referred to as "insular Celts."
MAtt @206 "One problem with the Alternative Right is that it lacks elders to provide the enthusiastic young’uns with some tempering wisdom. So it just lurches from one absurdity to the next"
This is a very perceptive observation. Many years ago I recall attending a talk at my Univeristy delivered by the old Austrian gentleman,(May God Bless and rest his poor soul)Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. A few radicals tried to disrupt his talk and the conservatives began murmuring about how crude and rude the students for democratic government were acting. My classics professor leaned over and said,"The whole political debate in America --left and right has been taken over by kids." There were about eight to ten people in attendance for Kuehnelt-Leddihn's talk --at a university of 25,000 students. A few months later Louis Farakham and his body guard goons took center stage at the Auditorium and the students packed the house. Standing room only with folks watching outside on the big screen. Kids, stupid kids without adult supervision just wanting to watch the fireworks. Rather ironic that this was all happening in 1984.
Herr Salyer writes: What a pity I didn’t think to work in a reference to Roderick Spode.
Reading Wodehouse are we? Is that proper material for a nice Christian boy like yourself? What would the Sorrowful Heart of Jesus think? Listen goody two-shoes, I'll crack the jokes around here if you don't mind. At least I'm funny. As those wicked pagan Romans used to say: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. Got it?
Il Fleming writes: Guardi, amco. Lasci questa stronzata teutonica ai barbari tedeschi!
Dai maestro, i barbari si trovano ovunque. Perche' te la prendi cosi' duramente con i poveri Tedeschi? Non sono cosi' tanti male. Te lo firmo. Dunque, sempre amici per la pelle, no? Tranquillo.
Il Fleming writes: It is sometimes amazing the way Sempronius thinks he can get away with absurd allegations–paganism survived more virulently in the north than in the south–without even pretending to support them with evidence.
Thomas Molnar, The Pagan Temptation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans,1987) p.52.
Will that do as evidence?
Il Fleming writes: Then, to top it off, he drags in the poor nutball Evola, whom even Mussolini derided and the later MSI washed their hands of Evola.
You forget to mention the sequel. The Movimento Sociale Italiano later changed it's name to Alleanza Nazionale. AN is headed by the Emiliano Gianfranco Fini. Among his many antics, Fini has supported Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, apologized to the Israelis (the Israelis!) for Mussolini's Racial Laws and come out in favor of voting rights for immigrants. I'll take the "nutball" over this buffone any time. You can find more on Fini here.
Enough typing for one night. I still haven't fully responded. Tomorrow more on Evola, the Germans and the pagan critique of Christianity. Sorry for the delay Robert. As you know I don't type and it takes me too long to post serious comments. The Emperor Sempronius gives you a one day reprieve from his lions.
P.S. Maestro Fleming, Mom and Dad are in Italy even as we speak. Spoke to Mom yesterday. Having a blast. One regret: she didn't plan a longer trip!
Response to Salyer the Lesser
I would like to rapidly chime in.
Does the neo-pagan Right have significant potential, particularly respecting challenging Christianity—that is, the Christian ether remaining in the West—and supplanting godless (mindless) Liberalism as chief competitor?
I do not know how significant the potential is. Certainly today’s ethnocentric neo-paganism is such a de minimis phenomenon as to be reasonably dismissed. Yet, this may not be true tomorrow.
I am of the attitude that these polytheists are not closet atheists; rather, I think that the vast atheistic-confessing multitudes (the children of Liberalism) are self-deluded polytheists. [Indeed, I am not certain if I accept the existence of atheism per se. It depends upon how one understands theism I suppose. Polytheists, yes. Solipsists, yes. Atheists, not so much.] If so, then under the right conditions one might imagine a large shift from Liberalism to neo-paganism. Certainly Jerry could have easily made an exposition on the connections between primordial German National Socialism and an equally primordial European Green movement. And Greens appear to be alive and well.
I think that Jerry (as well as perhaps Scott Richert) is however perhaps unnecessarily hostile, and a touch self-righteous, when he faults the neo-Pagans.
Outside of the Christian communion, there is something called Christos ad absurdum. Its employment there cuts no ice. To the extent that Jerry's article is a warning, it is remarkably lucid. To the extent that it is anti-pagan apologetics, well….
I would not immediately accuse the neo-pagan Right of bad faith in their attempt to understand the world around them. Certainly simply calling them fantastic heathens is not an argument.
If we Christians are right, and, if Gilson is correct that the superior explains the inferior, there must be something to say of the neo-pagans.
Few Christians claim that they hold faith in the same way that St. Paul, St. Joan, or the children of Fatima held it. That is, they, unlike the aforementioned saints, believe because of some motivation from the purely created order. Unlike the aforementioned saints they did not have direct personal revelations.
What are your grounds (at least initially) of faith? Well?
Obviously this is a slippery slope to emotionalism, but I think for my own part I detected the good in Christendom, from Constantine to Charlemagne to the Crusades, and its infinite resilience and caritas. Thus, I joined up. [I am happy to say that my faith has matured further since this time. You know--believe so that one may understand.] I sense in the neo-pagans, the same admiration for the West at least, but they erroneously hold that this greatness is in spite of Christianity, as opposed to being perfected by it. That is, I am not that much different from the neo-pagan looked at from this perspective. Am I playing Christian? Perhaps. But I have bet my soul against it.
Christianity, the great perfecter. I do not think it appropriate to separate blood and faith, and make ideologies—i.e., pieces of information to which one clings—out of either one. But of course, some do.
Last pseudo-defence of the bogey men of the tattooed right wing: There is what one espouses, and then there is what one opposes. I wonder if we do not share a common enemy after all. The simple fact is that the anti-Western movements, whether they be godless Liberals, or men of the cloth, are likely to be influenced to a greater or lesser degree by Manicheanism, as opposed to Jean ValJean sympathy for the poor and downtrodden wog, wetback, jig, etc…. That is, the erstwhile Cathars hold in their hearts, if not minds, that being—that is being, inasmuch as it is that mysterious being distinctive—is at best a corruption and at worst a phantasm. A creation of an evil demiurge. Races, tribes, families, classes, sexes, etc…. All bad.
There are aspects of the neo-paganism which might agree with this metaphysical assessment. But I think that the viscereal reaction of most of those who feel a new found pagan sympathy is probably not that different from our reactions. That is, they wouldn’t reject the first chapter in the Book of Genesis in the old Jewish canon. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
This is what may legitimately distinguish them from the “Left.”
Isn't Julius Evola the man who claimed that Buddha was a White Man who got tired of racial intermixing between castes in Eastern India, and who wanted to channel back his Aryan spiritual ancestry through meditation? A Finnish acquaintance once recommended a book by him.
I think all these 20th century revisionists who want to claim white European ancestry and heritage in all major non-European civilizations are more than free to claim it. The local peoples will be more than happy to repudiate it and give it to them.
By all means, Evola and the like can go on and say that Egyptians, Persians, and the rest were Western European in DNA. To say that the rotten, backward, self-destructive society in South Asia was another proud Aryan achievement is only being modest.
#218. Looks like you (or someone with your exact name) sued the $PLC for defamation. So you must be an ok fellow.
To address Sempronius' "argument," let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that my late friend Thomas Molnar was the foremost authority on late ancient/early Medieval Europe. What he is saying here is that a resurgence of pagan intellectualism took place in Western/Southern Europe but not in Northern/Eastern. This has nothing to do with the question of pagan survival. In fact, the suppression of paganism in Slavic and Nordic lands took much longer than Molnar's brief account might suggest to the unwary. While paganism was more or less eliminated from Greece, Italy, and France by 600, the Christianization of Denmark, begun by Harald Bluetooth, was not complete by 1000, and St. Olaf of Norway in the early 11th century had a long row to hoe in converting his people. Visitors to Russia observed virulent strains of paganism much later.
But Molnar was not a great authority on this subject, indeed, not an authority of any kind in ancient/Medieval history. His specialty was 19th and 20th century, though he was an immensely well read man. He would, in this case, have cheerfully deferred to my judgment in areas in which I have greater knowledge just as I did to him. Indeed, one of the things he taught me, very firmly, was to stay away from Evola, who exercised such a malignant influence on the European right.
Kidding aside about the Buddha, the subcontinent is another chapter in the history of racial and ethnic identity formation about which I know too little to offer any kind of judgment. I did take a course in Sanskrit, but I remember virtually nothing of it except the subtlety of the phonetics that makes it almost impossible to read. If Mr. Sanjay has studied Indian history, perhaps he could share something with us.
To Salyer Major I would pose at least two questions. First, do alliance based on common hatred really succeed or does at least one party usually subvert the other? As an example of this I would cite the National Review's fusionism that ended up subordinating the conservative elements to free-market liberalism and anti-communism. Second, the terms left and right, perhaps, should be confined to the historical period that gave them birth and to periods in which these concepts were dominant. Thus, alas, to be on the right is to define oneself in opposition to the left, a game that has proved to be disastrous for the counter-revolutionaries who play it up to today. I would suggest that it is time to chuck the whole thing--the revolutionary/counter-revolutionary, left/right, liberal/ conservative dichotomy--and get on with the more serious business of defending the truth. Now, of course the right has far more truth than the left, but not only the term but the intellectual movement--as Molnar has argued--has been self-defeating.
I have several times been lured into alliances based on common hatred--the anti-communist alliance, the anti-neoconservative "paleo" alliance, the anti-Yankee capitalist alliance--and on each such occasion I have been asked either to bury the hatchet or make common cause with people I despised for their lack of principle, intelligence, and learning. Gene Genovese, in one day, asked me to lay off the Podhoretzes and make friends with the d' Souza. This was supposed to be part of a strategy for allying scholars and intellectuals in the Southern tradition. Genovese never got over his Stalinist obsession with forming fronts, but he was a serious man worth knowing and working with. I would say the same of Alain de Benoist and some, though not all, of his followers. The American neopagans who have been discussed here are not even in the same class with Dinesh d'Souza, and that is low enough. What good could possibly gained from associating with such canaille?
@ 217: "At least I’m funny."
I can't argue with that.
Of course there's "funny" as in "ha-ha-ha," and then there's "funny" as in "queer."
But to return to #196:
"There seems to be a consensus here that paganism equals Teutonism, or Nordicism if you prefer... Nobody here has dealt with the main pagan criticism against Christianity. Revealing."
Yes, I am blown away by Evola's claim that "Christianity is at the root of the evil that has corrupted the West. This is the truth, and it does not admit uncertainty. In its frenetic subversion of every hierarchy, in its exaltation of the weak, the disinherited, those without lineage and without tradition..." etc., etc.
I've never heard that argument before. That's why I never addressed the Antichrist Right claim that Christianity has contaminated our precious European bodily fluids anywhere at all in my article. My goodness, I need to find a priest -- I think I'm having a spiritual crisis.
Clearly the 200+ comments which you haven't bothered to read only apply to Germanic pagansim, as does the reasoning of the original piece -- which does not mention the Greeks at all, with the exception of paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 18, and 19 (not counting block quotations).
As for my hoary beloved kinsman, I agree that one should not dismiss one's opponent as insincere, but must instead take him at his word.
I, for one, saw nothing in his essay which lets me assume that Robert Blumetti, for instance, is simply a closet-atheist feigning his beliefs. A quick perusal of his website suggests to the contrary. In his own muddled way, Blumetti believes in supernatural forces operating in the world and history. So far as it goes he is correct.
Yet in that he defines himself in opposition to the Church, he not only endangers his own soul but those of others impressionable enough to listen to him; in that he undermines what little Christian foundation communities still possess, he does great harm to society; in that he publicly emulates the bizarre necromancer from the B-grade film *Manos: The Hands of Fate,* he is making a prize ass of himself.
Thank you, Robert Salyer, for your very thoughtful comment. You exhibit an admirable charity in considering the motives of the new neopagans.
I am concerned, however, not with their motives (which we can never truly know) but with their purposes (or intentions, if you would rather use that word). Purposes are much easier to determine, and much more important. Sometimes writers state them outright; other times, they can be inferred from their arguments and attitudes and actions.
In my exchanges with the new neopagans at two different websites run (though not simultaneously) by a single person, it has become abundantly clear what the purposes of this particular group of new neopagans are. Chief among them is (at best) the subversion of Christianity, and, if they had their druthers, the destruction of Christianity.
By "Christianity" I do not mean here the creed of the post-Christian churches but the true Faith. Unlike Steve Burton, who publicly disavows the label "neopagan," his fellow writers at a "newly popular site" who openly adopt the label do not even pretend to admire the medieval Church.
Lacking both the intellectual brilliance and the scholarship of a Giulio Evola or a Revilo Oliver, they nonetheless willingly take on the worst aspects of both men.
Let's assume the best, as you have done: that the new neopagans "wouldn’t reject the first chapter in the Book of Genesis." The Christian understands that, yes, the world God created was good, but he also understands that the world man created from it is fallen and in need of redemption. Even if the new neopagans were to grant the Garden, we no longer live there. Our hope lies not in the goodness of Creation, and certainly not in the innate goodness of man, but in the mercy of God and the self-sacrifice of Christ.
It is precisely that difference between the new neopagans and Christians that the new neopagans reject the most vehemently, as proof that Christianity is a religion for losers and the ultimate source of the destruction of the West. And that is why they intend to subvert and ultimately destroy Christianity.
Those of us who point this out have been urged repeatedly on this thread and elsewhere to hold our fire, because we "share a common enemy." Yet those who excoriate us for criticizing the new neopagans for some reason never make an appearance on that "newly popular site" to upbraid the new neopagans for attacking true Christians.
One final note: You make much of the superior explaining the inferior, and Christianity as the great perfecter. But there is a difference between the pre-Christian inferior and the post-Christian inferior. Islam, for instance, in its rejection of the revealed truth of Christianity, is more wrong (not to mention more dangerous) than the pre-Christian Jewish religion. The Jewish prophets were pointing toward Christ; Muhammad turned men away from Him.
The new neopagans are far closer to Muhammad than to Isaiah. They have been exposed to the Truth which sets us free, and they have rejected it. What common ground can we have with these people? Should we ever vanquish our "common enemy," they will turn their fire upon us.
To make alliances against our own interest, with people who express nothing but scorn for us (not to mention for our Savior), is to live down to the new neopagans' view of Christianity.
@ 218 & 223:
It's also worth adding that while my article focuses superficially on neopaganism, it is not solely directed at neopagans. Hence the remark about "bioengineered Übermenschen" at the end; scientism is a significant element of the phenomenon I describe as well.
Salyer v. Salyer. Interesting.
I still maintain that these guys are atheists or at least skeptics/agnostics who are play acting paganism. It is very clear from how they deal with Christianity and Christians that they take for granted that they believe the particular truth claims of Christianity are foolish. They come off as if they are patting Christians on the head. (Poor little Christian, just can't cast off his upbringing like we have.) It is all about the utility of the belief for them, not its truth. They chose paganism not because they believe it to be true but because they find it more useful.
Dr. Red is right, of course, but someone--I believe Mr. Collins above--made the extremely valuable comparison with his childhood experience in inventing a religion. It's a goofy thing kids--and perpetual adolescents do--and it responds to certain needs in us for ritual and faith. I strongly recommend the Bunuel film, Exterminating Angel, which has a wonderful scene depicting the birth of a toilet cult. But, and I would say this especially to the estimable Salyer Major, there is a door which, if opened, can let in every kind of demon. In this sense neopaganism in some manifestations at least is a conduit for evil, much in the way that white magic can be. Read what happened at Salem. The girl, under the tutelage of a Black slave, started out by trying to find out who they would marry, and before long they were involved in love charms, curses, and poisoning. Marsilio Ficino was probably fairly innocent in his neoplatonism, but his disciple Pico ridiculed him for his timidity in not pursuing powers over the extra-planetary angels, while, on the other hand, the Medici court became a bordello. It is a subject worth a book or several books, but, please believe me, while this stuff may begin as a freak enjoyed by geeks, it can turn out quite badly.
"Our hope lies not in the goodness of Creation, and certainly not in the innate goodness of man, but in the mercy of God and the self-sacrifice of Christ.
"Christianity is a religion for losers and the ultimate source of the destruction of the West."
Scott,
What this thread illustrates is the truth, so apparent today for all to see, is that the obstacle today for Christians understanding other esoteric views and religious beliefs is the failure to understand our own. Thanks for your post above which, I believe illustrates a very simple and lasting dilemma for conservatives of every stripe and persuasion: What is it that we believe should be conserved and handed on to the next generation? Mr. Richerts faith has been a stumbling block for Jews and a scandal to the Greeks from the beginning. It also is true, and therein lies both the scandal and the obstacle. If kicking ass and taking names in the political arena of time is our ultimate end, we need Achilles, Agemmmeneon and their fallen angels to inspire us. If suffering and death are to be redeemed or perpetual light is to be found, we need "the mercy of God and the self-sacrifice of Christ." Thanks for the excellent post.
PS. One problem with all this "Christionas are pussies" talk is that there are not very many courageous Christians or even pagans who understand the greater part of courage is enduring the battle after the attack and not just the attack itself. Perhaps we need to go back and read Jose Peiper again and his commentary on natural virtues that the Greeks discoverd to be integral to happiness -- and Christ revealed to be necessary for the passing "now' as well as the "forever".Amen
Tom Fleming @ 262 "It is a subject worth a book or several books, but, please believe me, while this stuff may begin as a freak enjoyed by geeks, it can turn out quite badly."
It is a difficult book to find and even more expensive to buy but the book,"The Way Down and Out" by John Senior and published by Columbia University Press is a scholarly examination of this very fact. There are indeed ways to go to heaven and there are ways to go to hell. In fact one of the most painful experiences in the lower realms or hell is the day when one realizes how far they actually are from heaven. Dear reader do not mistake the hour of the night, the cock will crow thrice before morning.
Where are Salyer and Salyer published? I'd like to read more.
What anti-Christian racialists have failed to see is that when anti-Christian movements arise, politically speaking in modern times, they tend to divide the white race and set one part against another in very violent ways. This is true whether the anti-Christian politicians are red or brown.
or white, as in the case of Bosnian Muslims or American white nationalists.
"one part against another in very violent ways."
Yes, but so what? Doesn't being tough and domineering savor of vicotry? Isn't a win what the anti-Christian racialists are all about and what they think they can provide to those whiny little milk-sops who call themselves Christian? Magic is the attempt to gain control over supernatural powers to serve human purposes. True religion is worship, devotion, service, admiration, friendship and ultimately charity -- to die from love for ones friends. The differnce between paleo christians and all the rest, is that our God shines with the light of exemplified Love while their iluminator is Lucifer. There is no getting around these spiritual realities and those who try are fooling only the "self".
"Clearly the 200+ comments which you haven’t bothered to read only apply to Germanic pagansim, as does the reasoning of the original piece — which does not mention the Greeks at all, with the exception of paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 18, and 19 (not counting block quotations."
Characteristically, you fail to comprehend. I'm not defending "Germanic paganism". I'm opposing the smug, self-satisfied, smarmy attitude displayed in your piece and in many of the subsequent comments. No, I haven't read all 200 comments (wouldn't that make me a "queer geek"?). But I have read the comments by editors and contributors. As for your allusions to classical antiquity; your hackneyed opinions and turgid prose are hardly anything to boast of. But we can only deal with so much at any one time.
My position is that picking on easy targets like Blumetti (who isn't even German!) hardly settles the matter. Why not even things up and interpret Christianity through an indepth look at faith healers? Taking Christian victory laps and patting yourself on the back doesn't even begin to address the serious question of Christianity and the survival of the West.
Karl Schmitt, a Catholic, in his Political Theology had this to say:
This is important, because the blithe dismissal of modern political developments as non- or anti-Christian is mistaken. They are in fact secularized Christiany. This is why the American Nazi, Revilo Oliver, was correct in calling modern Liberalism a "succedaneous religion".
With Schmitt in mind, we can appreciate this short exposition of the neopagan position by the Catholic Molnar.
So to the idea that the West was weakened after Christianity lost it's grip the neopagan responds; modern Liberalism is a form of (secularized) Christianity. In other words, Christianity had a hand in it's own demise.
(It is interesting that Thomas Fleming, who likes to blame men for the evils of feminism, and whites for the evils of ant-white racism, doesn't follow through and blame Christians for ant-Christianism. Go figure.)*
It should also be noted that monasticism has had a great influence on modern secular ideologies. It is no secret that modern revolutions and "reforms" are attempts at turning societies into what can be called "secularized monasteries". Another link between Christians(not pagans) and revolutionaries.
Mention has been made of Lepanto.
Christian sectarianism and factionalism have greatly weakened it's grip on power (see above) as well as doing untold damage to it's classical patrimony (including it's political patrimony of inheritors of Roman dominion). Would the Turks have posed the same threat without the filioque controversy or the schism of 1054? And what do we make of the statement "better a Turkish turban than a Latin Tiara?" Is that pagan or Christian? Here are some more delicacies from kindly Christian hearts.
- St. Mark of Ephesus
Good luck fighting the Turks.
Doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible "you reap what you sow?" Does that apply to Christianos?
More tomorrow if anybody is interested.
* Or Jews for "anti-Semitism"
My apologies. I did not mean to suggest alliances. Good gravy.
Rather I mean to suggest sufficient axiomatic common ground to seek to bring some sense to those astray... or those prone to weakness. I suggest that guards be posted, and missionaries sent. NOT a Combined Chiefs of Staff.
We appear to be Christians. Thank God for it, and do not be pompous.
The door in which daemons may enter is perhaps (perhaps) the very same door in which some people (me) turn from a Calvinist-inspired atheism to the Church. I like Doc White's explanation, really (borrowed from Evelyn Waugh):
"in considering it, any man has to know that it is true because it presents a coherent philosophical system that makes intransigent historical claims."
My opininon is that most of the serious neopagans of today, sincerely, but vaguely and obviously erroneously, seek a similar claim for what they are searching. If you are accusing them of being wrong and/or dangerous, I heartily agree. But if you are accusing them simply of bad faith, I have pause....
And certainly I would give the same pause regarding at least some men of the Left as well. In this at least, I think the Lesser would agree.
"More tomorrow if anybody is interested."
Sempronius,
I always read your posts and admire your relentless pursuit of whatever it is you want to say or see. I know you labor over the key board, maybe with a pencil in the mouth or a beautiful secretary, (Who knows what Sempronius is up to day by day in these trying times?) but I also know you as a serious student and at times a very stubborn man -- both your grace and curse from the beginning of time.
Keep the post coming but loosen up a little. Around here good solid blows are admired and sometimes even desired but once you get a fellow down on one knee, or he gets you on your back, the tradition tells us to offer the hand, take the smelling salts and wait for the next bell. It is the honorable and Christian way of learning humility through humiliations and around here one is either administering the discipline or receiving it, nobody wins all the rounds. Hope to hear from you tomorrow.
Sempronius "makes enemies, where, with a little charity, he could make friends".
Liberalism/leftism's a Christian heresy? So what? Everything in the modern West is a Christian heresy because we were once a Christian civilization. Attack the heresy.
The Christian explanation of liberalism in all its forms is that it is a rebellion against Christianity, but like all rebellions it accepts the premises of the "enemy." Christianity supposes a benevolent creator who wants us to be not merely just but charitable and the justified are promised a place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Liberalism kicks out God and his Son, but retains--without any logical justification--a set of basic Christian ideals. This is not a new argument. As John Gray wrote in Chronicles some years back, we know that pre-Christian pagan societies could function and defend themselves; and--though no Christian--Gray concedes that Christians did at least as well. What cannot succeed is post=Christianity. But that is exactly what the neopagans have to offer, a rightist version of postChristianity.
I don't know how many neopagans Salyer Major has met, but I stand on my distinction between serious intellectuals in France, Germany, Italy, for whom the affectation of paganism is really a serious critique of modernism, and the Americans who are simply too silly to have any convictions. There is no point in calling them insincere or hypocritical, because that implies a capacity for sincerity and rationality which they choose to suspend. The ones I have met and read are simply postmodern adolescents who affect this or that attitude in the mistaken belief that it will make them more interesting. Death metal music and "the Game," Wagner and Nietzsche are all the same to them.
@Bruce
Yeah, but the roots of certain modern philosophies in practicing Christians of yesterday is something I found very interesting.
Extreme skepticism and thinking everything is relative was an idea of an honest French Catholic called Montaigne. (I just know vague details, having read about him only in two contemporary books on reasoning.)
Then those secular rationalists who wanted to confine religion to strictly "theological" questions - they were also serious Christians in personal life, like some of the scientific folks in Italy in 1500s. (As science teachers sometimes explain.)
Extreme egalitarianism, CRA 1964 style, is not so Christian in itself, but back when I was reading up European history for SAT II, I remember that Central European monarchs used egalitarian principles for turning one part of the population against another (much like today). One Catholic Habsburg Queen who did charitable work for the poor, also turned against the merchant class and Jews, in the name of protecting the poor. I mean, it seemed like there was both an ulterior motive and a genuine pious belief in such actions.
All I am saying is that it looks like it takes a Christian to reach such high levels of even wrong-headed thinking. Perhaps it is either a breaking away from or a poor understanding of the Christian faith. Maybe some Christians arrive at the wrong conclusions derived from good Christian ideas. Even ultra-secular rationalist skeptical thinking of some atheists today is derived from Christians.
Montaigne was not an honest man of any kind, much less an honest Catholic. He was a half-Jewish skeptic who disliked Christianity, though he dare not say so openly. His famous "Essay on the Cannibals" was the opening shot in the multi-culturalist campaign to defame all things Western. On a lower level, he was a self-abusing narcissist who could not break wind without commenting on the perfume. Many of the worst tendencies of the modern age--adolescent skepticism, self-aborption, the romance of the exotic, an admiration of the primitive--are anticipated by Montaigne. That is why American conservatives are so entranced with him and regard him as one of their classics.
Sempronius writes: "Characteristically, you fail to comprehend. I’m not defending 'Germanic paganism'...No, I haven’t read all 200 comments (wouldn’t that make me a “queer geek”?... As for your allusions to classical antiquity; your hackneyed opinions and turgid prose are hardly anything to boast of."
My purpose in calling your attention to the original article was not to boast about anything, but to make clear why your opening statement -- "Nobody here has dealt with the main pagan criticism against Christianity" -- is false.
Your response, in turn, is that there are a whole lot of comments and my writing is crap. Maybe true on both counts, but beside my point here, which is that you made a sweeping and rather flamboyant assertion ("Revealing.") without bothering to confirm that it's correct.
All this makes it seem as if you are indifferent as to whether or not what you say is actually true. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case; I'm saying that's how it appears at the moment.
Sempronius writes: "My position is that picking on easy targets like Blumetti (who isn’t even German!) hardly settles the matter. Why not even things up and interpret Christianity through an indepth look at faith healers? Taking Christian victory laps and patting yourself on the back doesn’t even begin to address the serious question of Christianity and the survival of the West."
I agree 100%. One should not rely on straw men.
But regardless of what we think of Stephen McNallen's peculiar activities, is his "Why I'm A Pagan" really a straw man? For whatever it's worth, had I thought it a straw man I would not have used it as a foil.
When McNallen favorably compares “indigenous religions,” which “are innately tied to a specific people and cannot be transferred to another group without losing their truth, power, and integrity,” to religions like Christianity, “which claim the allegiance of all the human race,” ... how exactly is this view a straw man? I thought McNallen's remarks accurately and concisely represented one major objection to Christianity as a universalist religion.
Do you consider the "heroes of achievement vs. heroes of suffering" question a straw man? How is that passage from "The Hero As Victim" any less a succinct and potent critique of Christianity than the quotations from Evola which you offered?
Would an earlier draft, which included Nietzsche's remarks about how Christianity had "turn[ed] men into sublime miscarriage" etc., etc., really been much of an improvement?
No, I didn't include every last possible rightist attack on Christianity in the piece, but then as you yourself observe "we can only deal with so much at any one time."
As to "the survival of the West," the passages regarding Erwin Chargaff are, in particular, meant to provide food for thought in that direction. Regardless of how turgid my prose or hackneyed my opinions, I don't think you can reasonably claim that you have nothing whatsoever to learn from Chargaff.
Sempronius writes: "It is interesting that Thomas Fleming, who likes to blame men for the evils of feminism, and whites for the evils of ant-white racism, doesn’t follow through and blame Christians for ant-Christianism. Go figure."
I can't speak for Dr. Fleming, but I myself would certainly agree that Christians DO bear much if not most of the blame for anti-Christianity.
This does not imply that we should reject Christianity any more than the ultimate culpability of men in feminism's excesses means we should reject masculinity.
The proper response to feminism is for men to stop slacking off in their duties as men and instead embrace a renewed and more profoundly informed commitment to masculinity.
The proper response to anti-Christianity is for Christians to stop slacking off in their duties as Christians, and instead embrace a renewed and more profoundly informed commitment to Christianity.
Amen
Dr. Fleming @ 95: I'm slowly plowing through the comments. Concerning the use of the vernacular in the Orthodox Churches, here is what one Church historian has to say:
"Finally, this chapter of Church history also serves to demonstrate another major point. Whereas Western Christianity at this time was zealously imposing a uniform Latin liturgical language on all its converts, Byzantine Christianity refused to do so. Generally, Greek was seldom used as a missionary language among the Slavs. On the contrary, the principle of a single liturgical language was avoided. Hence, the Cyrillic alphabet and liturgy which employed the vernacular language of the peoples created native-speaking Churches in the Balkans and elsewhere. Orthodox Christianity, in sum, insisted on preaching the Gospel in the ordinary language of the people so as to be directly and immediately understood by the new converts. And that, after all, is the ultimate goal of Christian mission. In the history of Orthodoxy, this legacy of the "Apostles to the Slavs," Saints Cyril and Methodius, is among the most precious."
The complete article can be found here:
http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/history.html
Bruce @ 212:
"Cutting-edge science seems to constantly change its conclusions."
I believe that is so because cutting-edge scientists are always too quick to jump to conclusions.
MAtt @206 (highlighted by robert @ 216:
“One problem with the Alternative Right is that it lacks elders to provide the enthusiastic young’uns with some tempering wisdom. So it just lurches from one absurdity to the next”
I had 12 years of pretty good Catholic schooling before I went to the Naval Academy. I instinctively was repelled by both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. After I completed my obligated military service, I started researching political theory. (I started my reading with The New Republic and National Review. I've been a subscriber to Commentary, The American Spectator, and other similar magazines.) Based on Catholic teaching, I believed there was nothing new under the sun and someone smarter than I was had written things I should know. That continues to be the reason I frequent this website.
Sempronius @ 233:
"Christian sectarianism and factionalism have greatly weakened it’s grip on power (see above) as well as doing untold damage to it’s classical patrimony (including it’s political patrimony of inheritors of Roman dominion). Would the Turks have posed the same threat without the filioque controversy or the schism of 1054?"
Of course Christianity would be stronger if the schism had not happened and the Orthodox and Catholic Churches were in communion. But serious theological differences cannot be brushed aside. At the heart of the filioque controversy are (1) a fundamental difference in the theology of the relationship among the three persons in the Trinity and (2) the Orthodox view that the Catholic Church made a unilateral change to the Creed by adding the filioque without the agreement of the Orthodox, after all agreed that the Creed could only be changed at a subsequent Ecumenical Council.
There are other fundamental theological differences between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. They will only be resolved through much repenting, prayer, and fasting.
“I have often wished that more traditional Catholics here in Kentucky would take a keen interest in the rich history, literature, art, and music of their own homeland.” - Salyer
Kentucky and Tridentine Catholics are even more incongruent than Lutherans and cornbread dressing. Kentuckians are Calvinists or Snake-Handlers. It seems like a you have to try to fit a square peg into a round hole to construct some of these “new” identities.
I grew up in KY, and almost everyone was Baptist from what I remember. There were enough Catholics that they didn't seem strange or alien, and my ancestors even built a catholic church in Louisville, which no longer exists (the church, not Louisville).
I don't remember knowing a single Calvinist, but truthfully I never really asked. Most people in KY don't greatly care about religion outside of Sunday morning. I didn't either, and have learned more about my home state in the last year than in the 27 previous ones.
But religious weirdness in KY has less to do with snake-handling and more to do with the twin nutties of liberal protestantism and fundamentalism. I grew up in the nondenominational Christian church, which I guess is basically Arminian Protestant but scorns the whole idea of church government. I briefly flirted with Calvinism in college but then, spurred by my fiancee, ended up Catholic.
This isn't really on topic, I just feel it necessary to hold forth on KY whenever anyone mentions it on the internet.
"I grew up in KY, and almost everyone was Baptist from what I remember."
Like I said, snake-handlers. Oh boy, I hope Red doesn't see that one. Just kidding, Red!
"Scott @ 158. "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."
There's immediate attachments which I recognize as primary. I care much more for my family than for Anglo-Celtic-German-Italian Euromutts in general. But there's always an aggregate level "us" and I don't mean for reveling in past glories which I agree muddies things. I think "us" as 300 million people inhabiting an entire continent is probably too big but I'm not sure it's always clear as to where to draw the line as to when "us" becomes too big and inclusive.
I don't entirely understand Rockford's position (yes, I know "Rockford" doesn't have a position. Each author does). Often you seem to be advocating decomposition into constituent ethnic parts. If so, which one do us Euromutts belong to? Other times, you seem to be describing the formation of new peoples based on geography, localism, church identity, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with corn-bread stuffing eating Lutherans and Kentucky Catholics.
Not trying to badger, just trying to understand.
Mr. Salyer's persistence reminds me of a quote by Napoleon. At Waterloo Napoleon said:"This Wellington is so stupid that he doesn't know when he's defeated and he goes on fighting."
I'm not calling you stupid Mr. Slayer; only defeated.
It is well to remember that the word pagan is derived from the Latin pagus. Pagus means country district or town. The rustic areas of the Mediterranean held out longer against the Christian subversion precisely because they were closer to nature and their roots. Christianity spread principally through the major and minor conurbations. Christians, hearts full of love and joy as ever, used "pagan" as a term of opprobrium much as we today use the terms "hayseed" or even "redneck".
Nature with it's majestic rhythms and permanence provided pre-Christian man with a sense of stability and conservatism. Ol' Jesus changed all of that.
(Molnar)
Did you really address any of this in your diatribe?
Or what about this:
(Molnar)
Did you go over any of that, or did I miss it?
Mr. Salyer writes: When McNallen favorably compares “indigenous religions,” which “are innately tied to a specific people and cannot be transferred to another group without losing their truth, power, and integrity,” to religions like Christianity, “which claim the allegiance of all the human race,” … how exactly is this view a straw man? I thought McNallen’s remarks accurately and concisely represented one major objection to Christianity as a universalist religion.
Mr. McNallen barely scratches the surface of what he essays. If you're going to take up the question raised, McNallen is hardly an authority to turn to.
" Do you consider the “heroes of achievement vs. heroes of suffering” question a straw man? How is that passage from “The Hero As Victim” any less a succinct and potent critique of Christianity than the quotations from Evola which you offered?"
Evola, like him or not, is a major figure in European Rightist circles. I've never heard of McNallen before now.
"This does not imply that we should reject Christianity any more than the ultimate culpability of men in feminism’s excesses means we should reject masculinity.
The proper response to feminism is for men to stop slacking off in their duties as men and instead embrace a renewed and more profoundly informed commitment to masculinity.
The proper response to anti-Christianity is for Christians to stop slacking off in their duties as Christians, and instead embrace a renewed and more profoundly informed commitment to Christianity."
Communists (and Capitalists) argue similarly. When their regimes fail they disavow their resposability and claim that "true" Communism (or Capitalism) hasn't been implemented. All that is needed is a redoubling of efforts and the Workers Paradise (or the Consumer's Paradise) will finally be attained... meantime don't lose the faith! Keep hope alive!
Thank you Robert for the kind words. Mr. Van Sant, I'm typed-out at the moment so I can't respond. My apologies.
Your assertion was that the reasoning in the discussion had been confined to "Teutonism, or Nordicism if you prefer," to mere sneering at weirdo cultists, and that the essay consisted of my "taking Christian victory laps and patting [my]self on the back."
What you've just written does not support that, nor does it demonstrate that either McNallen or Burton's positions represent flimsy straw men.
At best you've demonstrated that I have not, in this > 2,650 word Chronicles essay, composed a systematic, comprehensive, and exhaustive dissertation which refutes rightwing anti-Christian ideology on every point. Your original claim was, however, considerably more extravagant than this.
Sempronius writes:
"Nature with it’s majestic rhythms and permanence provided pre-Christian man with a sense of stability and conservatism...Did you really address any of this in your diatribe?"
As a matter of fact, you have missed that during the discussion, yes, I did indeed bring it up.
The difference is that I take science to be an achievement of Christianity, rather than as a crime to be held against it:
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"Edmund O. Wilson — not exactly an apologist for Christian orthodoxy — has argued that the West outstripped China in science because of the Western devotion to 'a supreme being who created and supervises a rational, law-governed universe.'
This was, according to Wilson, 'the more fortunate metaphysics… [by which] to address the physical universe.' ... Then again, perhaps with the aid of their thunder-god the Norsemen were well on their way to building a superconducting supercollider… until those awful Christian missionaries with their talk of a divine logos had to show up, ruining everything."
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You will not, I trust, argue that Chinese paganism represents "Teutonism, or Nordicism if you prefer."
Sempronius writes: "When their regimes fail they disavow their resposability and claim that 'true' Communism (or Capitalism) hasn’t been implemented."
Two problems here. One is that this reasoning would apply equally to the revival of paganism as to the defense of Christianity.
Using your own logic I could simply say that paganism didn't work, and you need to get over it. Of course you may be more interested in attacking Christianity than in promoting a revival of paganism, so maybe that first objection is irrelevant.
Also problematic is the following analogy:
Christianity - anti-Christianity
Masculinity - feminism
I must point out that I was not the one who first tried to invoke this analogy.
Evidently we really must jettison masculinity, and anyone who denies the necessity is like a leftist who thinks Marxism a great idea that has yet to be tried.
Mr. Salyer, we are beginning to argue in circles. I will allow you the last word. My generosity is legendary.