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There are those who wonder what the point is in discussing abstract theory while we are losing control over our society, in concrete and measurable ways, on multiple fronts, on a daily basis. For them abstract theory is just words, futile and devoid of meaning because their effect cannot be quantified, because their abundance is disproportionate to their physical effects, and because what ultimately counts for them is what transpires in empirical reality.
This is an extreme empiricist view, which is driven by a pragmatic turn of mind. However, it is not an uncommon view, given that only a small minority are capable of thinking in very abstract terms. And yet any movement that seeks fundamental political change is mostly about words, which means it is mostly about ideas. While it is true that what counts, ultimately, is what happens out there in the empirical world, what happens out there represents the culmination of a process that began once upon the time with a lone man thinking.
We can find no more obvious example than the debate about race in the West in the 21st century—probably because it is existentially the most important debate of our times. In liberal epistemology knowledge results from empirical evidence processed by reason (Kant). On that basis, one would think that, repeatedly presented with “the facts” about the diverse nature of man, even an enthusiastic proponent of equality would in time be induced to reflect and modify his views accordingly. However, this very rarely happens. The commitment to equality remains impervious to evidence. Convenient facts are given maximum weight and authority, while inconvenient facts are explained away or altogether dismissed as flawed or irrelevant. The scientific method is thus subordinated to “proving” an a priori value position, and science is thus relegated to serve yet another battlefield in the war of ideas—ideas that are entirely outside of science. The matter of who has claim to objectivity turns out to be a highly subjective matter.
The struggle for the West is not, therefore, about truth or factual accuracy, but rather about the a priori value positions that determine the interpretation of evidence. These positions are integral to the dominant moral system in our society. As such they are emotionally compelling, because morality is largely determined by emotion (something noted by Hume, a liberal). It is not “the facts,” then, but how people feel about “the facts,” and the reasons why they feel about in them in the way that they do, that defines our battleground.
The Five-Factor Model
In discussions about race and race relations, people in the West are generally motivated by five implicit considerations:
- The need to be liked by family and friends;
- The desire to be liked by those one likes and admires, and by whom one desires to be liked and admired;
- The need for social status;
- The need to feel good about oneself and the world one lives in; and
- Ethnic identification.
Social validation and status are important external sources of self-esteem. Self-esteem itself is important, being an innate human need. Assuming healthy family relations, these sources may be seen as concentric circles of relatedness, whose importance is inversely related to distance from the center. In North Western European societies, which are based on the nuclear family and lack the extended kinships of Southern and Eastern societies, importance diminishes very steeply, which means they also become vulnerable very quickly. Where family relations are poor or non-existent, a person usually finds alternative sources in close friendships. There is a practical side to this, in that family and close friends also provide support networks, a sort of insurance and place to go to if things ever go wrong. Disapproval and ostracism at this level can make life very difficult, emotionally and otherwise. Hence, we will often find those with non-conforming opinions exercising restraint, attenuating their expression or denying them altogether, unless safely cocooned by the knowledge that unorthodoxy will be taken lightly.
No negligible factor is the desire to be liked by those who are admired or whose social standing is aspired to, as well as by those who would, by virtue of their reputation and social standing, provide premium sources of status and self-esteem. At one extreme, the relationship may be entirely instrumental (an employee may wish to be in good graces with his superiors, even if he has no opinion of them personally, in order to maximize his chances of a promotion) or entirely refractive (a person may get satisfaction from a personal relationship with someone who is eminent in a particular field, or from membership to an elite circle, which is more or less the same). A person may regard appreciation from high-status individuals as an external measure of personal development, and a motile life that offers possibilities of improvement is always more fulfilling than a stagnant life. Indeed, stagnation can be worse than deprivation, and there have been cases of individuals who, having attained—or stagnated into—a comfortable affluence, have given it all away in search for the thrill of redevelopment.
Nowadays there is a tendency heavily to correlate status with material success, which is the basest source of status, being just one level above brute force. Status can, however, be achieved through reputation. In the West, even in times that we perceive as degenerate, being of good character and morally sound is of paramount importance. Usury or promiscuity may no longer be stigmatized as they once were, but challenge the notion of equality and you will be met with a reaction of puritanical fervor, which will come in unison and, if the offence is deemed grave enough, without pity, with irrational fury, from all quarters, relentlessly, until your life and reputation have been ripped to pieces. When it comes to equality, we are living in puritanical times. Is it a surprise, then, that people keep certain opinions to themselves, or that they keep away from certain strands of opinion? To this we must add the fact that the ideas sanctioned by liberal morality, which is the established morality in the West, enjoy all the high-status trappings of institutional support and legitimacy, and institutionally recognised social advancement is ostensibly conditional on scrupulous obeisance to the established morality.
A significant obstacle nowadays for those with so-called “Right-wing views” is the negativity, pessimism, naysayerism, necrophilia, museology, and paranoid conspiratology popularly associated with them. The liberals and the Left like to perpetuate the idea that their critics on the Right are always miserable, have a miserable worldview, and will only bring misery if they are ever again allowed to hold power. Liberal/Left historiography has been tendentiously constructed to demonize anything that came before it. The term “Enlightenment” is an obvious example: implied is that before it there was an age of darkness—you are only “enlightened” if you agree with the liberals, or their critics on the Left, no matter how far to the Left. (After all, the liberals and their critics on the Left have common philosophical roots.) This makes perfect sense because no one wants to be miserable, be in miserable company, or live in a miserable world. It is far more tempting to think that everything is well, that everything will work out fine, and that the world is a wonderful place. Marketers know this is what sells and we see it reflected in most of their advertising campaigns.
Whites in the West today have no understanding of racial dynamics. In ordinary circumstances they may notice a person’s color, but if that color happens to be brown or black the awareness is quickly suppressed and not given great significance. Sometimes the White party effectively “forgets” that he is talking to a person of color. This is because they operate on the assumption that a brown or a black man is just a man, like any other, who happens to have more pigment on his skin, and may belong to a different culture or subculture whose impact amounts to little more than a slightly different dress sense and exotic cuisine. The White assumes that the brown or black man in front of him operates just as he does, and, automatically replicating liberal assumptions, reduces inter-racial encounters to rational, mature, free individuals transacting in the market place. Ethnocentrism, and therefore racial self-identification, is very weak among Whites. Their tendency to formulate universalist worldviews, whereby all men are created equal or in God’s image and whereby salvation is available to all men, reflects this. And it reflects this, in part, because it also affirms it as a virtue. This is not to say that Whites are not, at the same time, acutely aware of race. The exaltation of “color-blindness” to the level of virtue demands, ironically, an acute awareness of race, since treating men equally, irrespective of their color, requires actively policing behavior respective of color. Thus, “color-blindness” curls back upon itself to become a mechanism of racial self-flagellation. Thus, the sights of White marchers wearing yokes, chains, and black t-shirts moaning “So Sorry,” as an act of apology for the fact that several centuries ago a small minority of wealthy Whites, to whom most were not even distantly related, purchased black slaves from black enslavers in West Africa, who were only too happy to get rid of their vanquished, rebels, and psychopaths in this way.
By contrast, ethnocentrism is much stronger among other racial groups, for whom it is a necessary, healthy, and socially sanctioned behavior. Theirs is a particularist, not a universalist morality, so the good is what is good for them. Where a brown or black man repeats liberal nostrums of racial equality, he does it for purely instrumental reasons: he knows this is an effective tool for extracting resources and concessions from the Whites. In the West, the White man is his best friend because the White man is his worst enemy. The brown or black man who arrives as settler in the West, therefore, quickly learns to master the basic language of victimhood, so helpfully supplied by the theoreticians of equality. The brown or black man who was born in the West is, in turn, macerated in this language from day one. Any conversation about race and race relations is thus defined by this dynamic, where Whites are preoccupied by a desire to prove their moral virtue (to themselves and to others) while the rest look for ways to exploit that preoccupation to their advantage. It is difficult not to imagine that the latter group privately marvel at the idiocy of the Whites.
Liberal Morality and the Five-Factor Model
All of the above considerations are, in turn, subordinated to the dominant morality, which in the West is liberal morality. In the latter we can identify two strands, which are in opposition: one that favors liberty, another that favors equality. In both cases equality is regarded as an absolute moral good. However, the egalitarian strand is nearly hegemonic, while the libertarian strand, which is closer to classical liberalism and is therefore a form of liberal fundamentalism, is a critique.
The aim of liberalism was to “liberate” man from anything that is transcendent or external to him. The moral goodness of equality is attained in this way, for if one abrogates the transcendent and the external, one is left with a collection of individuals, with generic humans, who are little more than abstractions in a purely material world they must negotiate through the use of reason. This is, in essence, a secularization of the part of Christian metaphysics that views man as created in God’s image, each with a soul that is equally eligible for salvation. (This is not to say that Christians are to “blame” for liberalism; liberals were seeking to liberate themselves and man in general from Christianity, but also religion in general.) Thus, equality is the more fundamental value because it is the first consequence of liberation. This creates a self-destructive logic, whereby inequality is taken as a sign of a lack of liberty (obviously, since inequality results from hierarchy, which implies levels of subordination), signaling the need to restrict freedom in order to prevent those hierarchies from occurring. The resulting circular logic, whereby freedom is restricted in order to increase equality and thereby freedom, is the counterpart of its twin, whereby equality is good because it is good for equality. The pursuit of liberty then ends up subordinated to the pursuit of equality, which is why libertarians constitute a minority pressure group, and why the egalitarian state eventually morphs into a totalitarian state, in the grip of a secular puritanism.
In the context of race and race relations in the West, mention has been made elsewhere of the limited value of hard data in the effort to instigate policy changes at institutional and government levels. Because knowledge is always evaluated and interpreted in accordance to a moral code, no amount of empirical evidence relating to the science of race, and therefore to the fundamental inequality of man, will make any difference so long as the dominant moral code is one that enthrones the absolute moral goodness of equality. In a society, such as ours, where moral abstractions are important, where individuals sort themselves micrologically on the basis of shared moral values, where a man like Barry Horne becomes a vegetarian and immolates himself to advance the rights of other species, people derive much of their self-esteem and sense of well-being through their being thought of as a “good person.” If equality is an absolute good, then inequality is the ultimate evil. Even if one advocates “equal rights for Whites,” the act of singling Whites out as a special category needing attention indicates that the advocate regards Whites as more than simply generic humans, that they are, in other words, imbued with valuable characteristics not present in others; this implies inequality and therefore immorality. Perceived immorality results in disapproval from family and friends, in not being like or being liked by high-status individuals, in loss of social standing, and in feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. The consequence is that “the facts” are trumped every time.
Flipping the Table
Any movement for social change can be divided into hierarchical fields of operation. At the highest level are the “philosophers,” because these influence the strategists, who influence the organizers, who influence the activists, who influence the man in the street. (All are necessary parts of a whole.) A slogan on a placard, a talking point, or even a Molotov cocktail flying through the air en route to a particular window in a particular building, all have a body of theory behind it, and represent a distillation of a complex of concepts and values that originated at the level of abstraction. Millions of words are poured out at all levels before that slogan is painted on the placard, that talking point is used in a conversation, or that bottle is filled with unleaded petrol. And it may well be that the balaclava’d rioter does not understand a word of the theoretical texts that constitute the intellectual foundation of the movement to which he belongs, but, unless he is engaged in random violence, he will know instinctively, through exposure to the mass of words around him, and through the feelings and attitudes inspired by them, which window to target with his Molotov cocktail and why it must be that window in that particular building and not another.
The reason we must think in terms of abstract moral theory, rather than a simple desire for power or loot, is that our society attaches importance to moral justification. The desired end result may be a change in practical politics, but politics is the art of the possible, and the realm of possible is delimited by the dominant morality. And we think of morality as a series of emotionally charged abstractions, then the project of fundamental political change in our society cannot begin anywhere else but on defining how we are to feel about a certain set of abstractions. Unless this is worked out first, action at any other level further down the hierarchy may prove futile and even counter-productive. Ultimately, a project is a narrative that tells a story, and the future prospects of the project hinge first of all and at the most basic level on being able to tell the whole story till the end to people who want to listen and want to be seen listening because they feel really good about it.
We can think of liberal morality as a game designed by an opponent in such a way that he wins every time. It is not quite like that, obviously, because liberals are convinced that their morality is the best morality there is, but the net effect is the same. In such circumstances, it makes little sense to play this game. It makes better sense to flip the table, battle it out in the bar room, and start a new game.
Reinventing the Wheel
In some ways metapolitics is about reinventing the wheel. A common objection that is made to the metapolitical project is that reinventing the (morality) wheel takes too long and that we do not have that kind of time, because our demographic decline puts a time horizon that is closer than the time horizon we would need to do our own “march through the institutions.” This objection, therefore, sees metapolitics as a form of dropping out, a retreat into a comfortable irrelevance. The error objectors made is to assume that we are starting from zero. This may have been the case for the liberals, because they were starting more or less from zero, in that they were breaking with tradition (although they remained European); and it may have also been the case with the Marxists, because they were breaking everything. This is not the case for us, because our ideas are ancient. They have been dominant for most of our history, albeit in a variety of different ways, depending on location and period. In other words, we are not talking about abolishing ourselves and becoming something alien; we are not talking about changing the gene, so to speak, only how it is expressed. What is needed is a way of thinking and feeling that remains profoundly European, but which in our times offers a way forward, beyond modern liberalism.
The foundations are there and even those have a long history: tradition was given a modern formulation beginning two centuries ago. It may have been mostly forgotten or pushed to the margins, but it is there, being redeveloped, repurposed, and adapted as we speak. And they have already been in popular culture for several decades, even if on the margins. The major question pending is its moral justification. Everything follows from that, although it has to be said that artistic and literary expression is implicated in the justification process, simply because they have the power to produce altered emotional states.
The conditions are also there. Liberalism is in decline, morphing into oppression, catalyzed by its incorporation of Marxist criticism, and therefore falling into discredit. As a creative political force it is dead, condemned to an endless reiteration of its mantras because it has nothing left to say. The creative force of rebellion, the real action, is now on the outside.
It may be useful to imagine ourselves looking back at our present moment in history from a future time, maybe a century or two hence, when our preoccupations have become irrelevant. Future historians will likely interpret our present, and our past, in ways that make sense of the outcome. A successful reassertion of European tradition will produce likely produce a narrative where the post-liberal moment is not seen to begin in our century, but as a culmination of a process that began centuries before. In such a scenario, liberalism would be seen as an anti-traditional phase or period, a sort of deviation that ran its course before it was devoured by a resurgence of tradition, out of which a new syntheses emerged. Whether this scenario or another comes to pass, however, is entirely up to what we do today.
The Myth of Theoryless Liberalism
Some commentators argue that liberalism does not have a theory. This is partly because triumphant liberalism has, as Alexander Dugin points out, become a practice; because it is no longer a creative political force, and, having defeated its challengers, crushing one and partially absorbing another, its assumptions are now “common sense” and taken for granted. The myth of theorylessness is partly due also to the obvious and ever-growing divergence between theory and practice: egalitarian liberals preach the moral goodness of equality, even to the point of committing mass violence, but then segregate themselves into exclusive neighborhoods, à la Bill Clinton. Yet none of this indicates an absence of theory, only a triumph and human weakness in the face of impossible or impractical ideals.
The fact is that there is a great body of theory. Classical liberal epistemology, which is invisible because hegemonic, comes from the Enlightenment traditions of rationalism (René Descartes) and empiricism (Francis Bacon), which followed the scientific revolution (although they go back to the ancient Greeks) and were finally synthesized by Immanuel Kant, once a rationalist who was later inspired by the skeptical empiricism of David Hume. The conception of the human mind as a tabula rasa comes from John Locke. Social contract theory comes from Thomas Hobbes, who believed in the natural equality of men, individual rights, and the liberal interpretation of the law (according to which, all that is not explicitly forbidden is allowed). The idea that markets automatically channel human self-interest toward socially desirable ends, a central justification for laissez-faire economic philosophy, comes from Adam Smith. A not unrelated idea, the utilitarian axiom that greatest happiness of the greatest number is the measure of right and wrong, which permeates anything from government policy to manufacturing, comes from Jeremy Bentham. And so on. These ideas are very familiar to anyone who lives in the West, affecting their daily thinking and activity, even if they do not know where the ideas came from, who came up with them, and where they are written down. They are, nevertheless, disseminated throughout Western higher education, even if, in some cases, via Marxist criticism.
Marxist theory is essential to understanding modern liberalism, which is a synthesis of Marxism and Classical Liberalism. The Frankfurt School of Social Research, on whom Pat Buchanan (a liberal in the classical mold) blames the decline of contemporary America, was instrumental in the achievement of that synthesis. The Frankfurt School itself was a synthesis of Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis. They are associated with the radical Left, even though Theodor Adorno, one of its principal theorists, was an elitist and in some ways a Right-wing deviation. Indeed, some of the theorists of the Frankfurt school were critics of Marxism, and we must mention Herbert Marcuse, a key influence in the sexual “liberation” of the 1960s youth culture. (There is hardly any need to dwell on Freudian psychoanalysis, many of whose phrases and pseudoscientific concepts have entered the English language and are ceaselessly repeated in popular culture: “ego,” “anal retentiveness,” “Freudian slip,” “oedipal complex,” etc.) Marxism provides an important foundation to modern race relations and postcolonial theory (Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak), where the colored men and women from the former colonies, now colonists seeking to colonies the homelands of their penitent Western colonizers, have been reconceptualized as an oppressed class, who must now be given an equal legal and cultural footing in Western societies. Post-colonial theory is permeated with post-structuralist methodologies. Homi K. Bhabha, who was the first to apply these methodologies in the field, was influenced by Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and Michel Foucault’s notion of discursivity.
In Western higher education, all of the above-named intellectuals, plus a great deal more in that same Freudo-Marxian tradition, supply the analytical frameworks that are used across the humanities: feminism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, post-structuralism, neo-Marxism, and incestuous hybrids of the above. One cannot do a humanities course at university without encountering them and being required to master them and use them. Deviation is discouraged and may result in academic failure. Eventually, the students passing through Western universities take up jobs. Some achieve positions of influence, and some within those go on to teach the next generation, thus replicating the paradigm. Even if most forget almost everything they were taught, and could not five years later even vaguely summarize Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge, their feelings and attitudes will have been molded by the moral suppositions underpinning that entire body of liberalism and Freudo-Marxian criticism. They will find the idea that there may be a moral case against equality completely unimaginable, and will, if challenged, instantly reproduce as arguments every liberal cliché they have ever heard. It is therefore important that there be a coherent body of counter-theory, founded on articulable moral suppositions, that can effectively challenge these clichés, halting their replication through inducing self-doubt, soul-searching, and shame among those infected by them.
Because, as we have seen, empirical evidence is interpreted in whatever way satisfies the dominant moral theory, this challenge cannot be accomplished with facts and statistics. The challenge must first be constructed at the level of theory.
Mindless Collapse
The rickety state of zombie liberalism should not be taken to mean, as is often the case among Right-wingers, that all we need now is a cataclysmic event—the so-called “Collapse”—to catalyze a rupture. As I outlined in my talk in Sweden last July, a collapse can take any number of shapes, most of which are unrecognizable. A collapse also offers no guaranteed outcome. As we saw in London and elsewhere in August 2011, without a morally justified worldview to direct righteous action and establish an objective (i.e., what comes after the collapse), a collapse event will produce no more than mindless arson, rioting, and looting, followed by suppression, arrests, and prosecutions.
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38 comments
Many of the current so-called liberal (& conservative) political ideas and thinking process have jewish origins.
There’s nothing wrong with thinking deeply about the world around us, but you cast theory skeptics with a straw man of your own description…something like the way the dominant media culture reduces the diverse white American peoples to “white” or “whites” in a pretty clear attempt to strip us & our children of awareness of our cultures, histories, traditions, morals, and folkways.
It is theory that is unlinked from action that is unhelpful. Any number of people can sketch out grand theories that explain everything but unless those theories are linked with our communities, they are useless.
Theories that produce no ideas or guidance for community action are just words.
Moral theory is about the right way to act. Thus it is ALWAYS relevant to action, just as biological theory is always related to life. Moral theory without practical import is simply a contradiction in terms.
I find that Kurtagic is like reading Shakespeare, the beginning is difficult but then something clicks in my brain and then it just flows. Like a missing font was just installed. So much to digest and re read, and read again.
“The commitment to equality remains impervious to evidence”
Like his previous article-
https://counter-currents.com/2011/09/masters-of-the-universe/
Good read. I sensed the late Bowden, speaking through the author, in this piece.
This article should be required reading for all would-be Traditionalists.
Our “march through the institutions” should be framed as a gradual secession from THEIR institutions, as each of their institutions is exposed for the garbage it really is. We already see some of this underway in the home-school movement and the growth of alternative media.
I can’t express how pleased I am to know Kurtagić is on our side.
Kurtagic’s observations on Liberals’ unwillingness or inability to consider countervailing evidence can be summed up as follows: They create their own reality. There is a profound glitch in what passes for the Liberal mind.
An interesting essay with some insights.
But I wonder if the author has came across the notion of the ‘egalitarian plateau’ as the West’s ‘deepest’ normative assumption and various critiques of this idea that demonstrate it can produce perverse outcomes even from within its own liberal perspective?
It’s too simple-minded to say “equality bad, inequality good”.
A key question is: equality of what among whom? And the flip side: inequality of what for whom?
There is a lot of evidence that allowing economic inequality to be maximally instantiated radically undermines the ‘ties that bind’ or more formally the personal and political foundations of intra-group solidarity and cohesion (or even more formally forms of Aristotelian philia).
People might not like that but it does look to be true.
As for ‘theory-less’ liberalism well it’s more the ‘a-political’ politics of liberalism. Bernard Crick discussed this extremely well in his little book “In Defence of Politics” (see his chapter on liberalism).
“Because, as we have seen, empirical evidence is interpreted in whatever way satisfies the dominant moral theory, this challenge cannot be accomplished with facts and statistics. The challenge must first be constructed at the level of theory.”
We are told that facts and empirical evidence are ineffective due to a) social stigma, b) selective evidence, c) generous subsidies for post-Freudian verbiage. The conclusion: we must fight fire with… theory! And not just any theory, but an a priori moral theory that establishes conclusions first and worries about supporting evidence later. Because, of course, facts and empirical evidence have no power in themselves. But Kurtagic’s post-Semitic discourse ignores that abstract theories and a priori positions are likewise subject to the real-world exercise of power, and thus his entire [non]argument ignores the real issue, i.e. the exercise of power.
Kurtagic reifies the ideas of our ruling parasites into something which they are not. White liberals appear hypocritical because they are engaging in amoral propaganda, not “moral theory.” The actual theory that guides these individuals expresses itself as a cynical manipulation of public attitudes for personal gain. They are interested in power and loot, precisely what Kurtagic says is irrelevant.
Our racial enemies know very well that the encouragement of non-white immigration, racial mixing, and pathological behavior is the key to destroying us. That is the empirical basis of their theory. That is what guides their decision-making. Their morality is subject to their own innate worldview in which a people becomes improved by being destroyed. It is the morality of the tapeworm.
Like good cattle, most whites allow themselves to be herded along either anticipating that they can avoid the consequences or because they are simply too unintelligent to see what lay ahead. The majority are stupefied long before the bolt-gun knocks them unconscious. The few who willingly sacrifice themselves for the greater good of [sub]humanity are a vanishingly small, and pathological, minority.
The ‘theory’ needed is one that shows us how to organize for the extirpation our enemies and weeding-out our defectives. As such, it must be first an empirical and fact-based theory. Our inner morality is already “written on our hearts,” as the Jewish peddler wrote. The clash of moralities is only an excrescence of biological struggle.
Great response. Well done.
SD in blockquote:
I deal with a comment of Kurtagic below. The Adversary operates with less morality than a tapeworm. The tapeworm unintelligently consumes the host. The Adversary is different, and is very intelligent in how they have used our weaknesses against us. If we had a proper grounding in morality, and moral behavior, they could not have made the inroads they have. A course in “History and Moral Philosophy” presents itself as an Idea. In the meanwhile, I shall read “Imperium,” daily, especially the opening of the first chapter, “Perspective.” The “Foundations of the Twenty-Second Century” seem clearly defined in this work of applied morality.
True, and they need effective alternatives, organically developed and supported, to help them through What Is To Come. An excellent temporal framework, particularly from the perspective of analytical counterpoint, is the Northwest Republic as defined by Harold Covington.
If we focus on what is highest and best for us, we can work diligently to make it happen, and make the world – our world – a much better place. THAT is where we can be effective, THAT is the foundation for effectiveness, starting with US, starting where we ARE. Going after “THEM” is, essentially, a trivial pursuit. Hell, we invited “THEM” into our houses, and pay for the privilege to do so, when we have cable tv, which somehow ends up being turned to SportsCenter. We turn our Children over to “THEM” when we send them to the public schools, and wonder why they seem so alien to us in their worldviews upon graduation. FIRST close the energy leaks in the System. THEN, harness the newly discovered energy constructively. That’s why I speak on the importance of contributing to counter-currents regularly. Where else would the money go? Why is that remotely as good, much less better? The application of this to questions of morality is obvious. Alex Kurtagic in blockquote:
Kurtagic has correctly defined more of the mindless wishful thinking that has been the hallmark of Movement Past. Whether it was the US Army coming to our aid in the Southwest, or men hoping for the golden contributor who would fund our little enterprise, time spent looking for someone to fix what you allowed to be created is wasteful, indeed. If just TEN PERCENT of the money spent on various organizations of the past had been spent on counter-currents, we would have a parallel social order up and running in the Northwest Republic. From that acorn, might oaks would grow.
Kurtagic has hit on an important truth. Collapse functions are rarely all-encompassing, save for extremely localized events in place and time. The Collapse functions take place over decades, even centuries, and present wonderful opportunities for us to replace the failing nodes of the extant System with the foundational nodes for a Better System. THAT is where the philosophy of morality comes to the fore, and the grounding forces needed to fix our sight on the Pole Star of the Northwest Republic, the temporal bridge for the metapolitical project. This is where we have fallen down. The lack of explicit linkages in our own lives to our Duty to our Destiny renders us all the more impotent by the hour. Perhaps too many of us have misguided ideas of the Heroic as the vehicle by which Duty meets Destiny. That is why I ask for one all to contribute to counter-currents regularly. If they can not do this, they are simply fools who take refuge from a hostile world, not in laying the foundation for a better world, not in BEING the Living Foundation of the Better World, but in impotently ascribing Magic to people who conquered our country without firing a shot, through control of the pictures we see, and the words we hear.
We can Do Better.
The Duty to Do Better, the Duty to our Destiny, the How and Why of these – THAT’S “why all that theory.”
And that will lead us to proper Leadership, with the melding of Destiny, and Duty to Destiny.
That is why I am so hopeful about counter-currents, and the Northwest Republic. At last, Duty is meeting Destiny.
And if the Duty of all, in part, isn’t to send money to counter-currents, what is?
This is a very clear statement of a false position, namely a kind of historical materialism:
1. Morality is just a biological epiphenomenon not subject to reason or theory.
2. The white predicament has nothing to do with ideas and ideals, but merely with material incentives, which boil down to greed and fear.
3. Whites will save ourselves by fighting back only on the material plane.
Concepts like reason, idealism, and even morality only exist within biological limitations.
Give Christianity to a European and he builds a cathedral. Give Christianity to an Australoid and this happens: “Steven Tari boasted that he had sex with more than 400 young “flower girls” who joined his notorious Papua New Guinea sect. Yesterday the self-styled “Black Jesus” was convicted of raping four of those girls, who had been told that he was their bridge to heaven…”
Just because biology puts limits on reasoning, morality, etc. does not imply that these are mere biological epiphenomena, with no causal efficacy in the world.
The only question is: can you falsify the model?
What’s funny is that you’re arguing against me when my statements have been made within Kurtagic’s own framework. He said people aren’t moved by facts but rather emotional responses and social acceptability. Then he says we can reach people by crafting a “coherent [moral] theory.” Derp. If people’s responses operate quickly and efficiently to filter out individual facts then it follows that entire bodies of thought will be likewise flushed out before they are articulated.
According to Kurtagic’s logic we don’t need a moral theory but a clever manipulation of conditioned response. Not a new morality, but a new Skinner box.
And yet, somehow, some people do change their thinking about important things. But it is hard.
SD wrote:
Actually Mr. Kurtagic’s framework included the notion of a hierarchy of thought and action that I think you missed:
SD may not be entirely correct, but Alex K. isn’t either. He doesn’t seem to appreciate how contemporary moral ideas were and are imposed by force and that no amount of theorizing will ever overcome the use of force.
Re: The Mechanic
“Any movement for social change can be divided into hierarchical fields of operation. At the highest level are the “philosophers,” because these influence the strategists, who influence the organizers, who influence the activists, who influence the man in the street. (All are necessary parts of a whole.)”
This does not address the argument. A philosopher will have as little effect as an activist when it comes to breaking through a mental barrier. All levels of our hierarchy face the same problem when addressing the common mentality.
Now, Kurtagic’s final point is that without a guiding theory it is nigh impossible to bring order from chaos. This is true. I don’t think any of us believe that a collapse equals progress. The question then becomes what type of theory are we to develop? If we assume, reasonably, that a socio-political collapse is necessary for our ideology to dominate, then we must judge every contending theory by its usefulness in those circumstances.
Kurtagic says we need a new morality*. I disagree. Whites/Europeans retain the same moral impulse that existed before the anti-European revolution. If we assume we can persuade large numbers of people then we must portray our ideas as fulfilling a person’s moral values. But the entire effort of persuading large numbers of people assumes that we can effect serious real-world changes by such means, which is probably false, or more optimistically, irrelevant to our goals.
*As I said before, Kurtagic seems inconsistent in what he terms “moral code.” I am addressing his use of moral code to indicate an a priori moral value and not its resulting code or theory.
SD in blockquotes, cites in bold:
Re: The Mechanic
“Any movement for social change can be divided into hierarchical fields of operation. At the highest level are the “philosophers,” because these influence the strategists, who influence the organizers, who influence the activists, who influence the man in the street. (All are necessary parts of a whole.)”
The strongest philosophers form the new Cultural Reality. Two thousand years ago, the all-powerful Roman Empire crucified what they saw as a minor rabble-rousing preacher in the middle of Nowhere. All roads led to Rome.
Today, Rome has life only because the people who followed the preacher prevailed, in large part because His influence went beyond accepting the Cultural control systems of the day, forming a new Culture that transformed Mankind.
That is the level of scale we re ultimately dealing with.
Christianity remains the sole transforming force that raises Humanity into becoming Mankind, and laying the groundwork for us to return to where our Posterity can walk Among The Stars. (HT: Kevin Alfred Strom)
Western Civilization, at its best, is the outworking of the Process that began on Golgotha. It will transcend the America we know, as THAT America transcended Plymouth Rock, and Jamestown.
Yet, the misunderstanding of social collapse functions leads to improper solutions. Small collapses lay the groundwork for greater progress. Thus, these are not “necessary for our ideology to dominate.” what is necessary fr our ideology to dominate is for us, as the carriers of that State of Mind to prevail, at the most local of levels, and, in time, within the larger Culture. Christianity did not prevail by producing better Romans.
Hint.
Who is cheering in the audience on “Oprah?” Who votes anti-White, in spite of their European “moral impulse?” The “moral impulse that existed before the anti-European revolution” seems to have fallen somewhat short. Perhaps a clearer identification of that “moral impulse” might help us understand why and how it was neutralized, and then perverted.
We might then understand how we can do better.
Changing “Others” is a useful goal, if w can start by getting them to accept the reality of the policy and practices of genocide of their Race. If they look in the wrong direction, they will always get the wrong answer.
Changing ourselves, starting where we are, is what wins first prize. That’s why I mention the importance of contributing to counter-currents, each and every month. If people can not do even that, then the dreams of massive Cultural transformation die abornin’.
Remember, Oprah pulls in more followers, and much more money, than counter-currents. We will never be able to change them, and that is just as well.
Out of curiosity, how would you define the appropriate “moral code” for us?
How would you Do Better than Kurtagic?
Re: SD
Let me isolate some of your statements in blockquotes and address some specifics that indicate where I think we disagree.
Forgive me, but I think maybe you have succumbed to the power of too many Jewish peddlers.
Philosophy in the Western tradition is all about breaking through moral barriers. Reducing morality to “an excrescence of biological struggle” ignores the fact that we are capable of reforming ourselves and others according to reason. It is reasoning, however poor after all, that has allowed the “ideas of our ruling parasites” to hold such sway.
When Mr. Kurtagic writes “the a priori value positions that determine the interpretation of evidence… are integral to the dominant moral system in our society,” I don’t interpret this to mean they are paramount, merely integral. The problem is multifaceted, and is neither solely one of values or power or emotions, but combines all three. Being that we have no power, a theory that, as you say,“shows us how to organize for the extirpation our enemies and weeding-out our defectives” is useless without the motivation to use it. Motivation has everything to do with how people feel about facts, as Mr. Kurtagic puts it, and to this extent he is right when he says “the reasons why they feel about them in the way that they do, that defines our battleground.”
If the whole argument is about biology, as you suggest, then no reasoning and no strategy will suffice and the fact that you are here arguing about such things is inconsistent with itself.
I don’t think he means a priori in this context as a philosophical principle because he is not talking about persuading a society of philosophers, but philosophers persuading society away from assumptions entwined with emotions and self-image. I think he means the assumptions are “a priori” in a metaphorical sense. When he writes the scientific method is thus subordinated to “proving” an a priori value position, he perhaps should have also put quotation marks around a priori as well as proving: I think that is what he meant.
Western Civilization, at its best, is the outworking of the Process that began on Golgotha.
The Battle of Marathon would be more accurate.
“Out of curiosity, how would you define the appropriate “moral code” for us?”
We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white* children. This is the moral code. The moral impulse is innate. Winning hearts and minds is a matter of reconciling this moral code, which is only a preference, with the inner emotions of the subject.
*Or European, Aryan, French, English, Irish, etc. It’s an adaptable slogan.
Bo Sears is right that political theorizing that is not explicitly linked to action has the potential to become irrelevant and aimless. From what I’ve seen, Faye does a good job linking linking theory and proposed actions that follow from the theory.
It seems the focus of the author is “moral justification”, “importance of our society attaches to moral justification”,”how we are to feel about a certain set of abstraction”.The goal would be to have theoretical, ideological foundations for WN movement.Does this mean that we engage in a theoretical and ideological discussion with centres of power in academia,media,churches,entertainment and other adjuncts of indoctrination? They have tremendous resources and highly, trained verbally, skilled sophists, and manipulators. Any such attempts would be almost impossible.So, what is the answer? The answer is focusing on the surrounding reality faced daily by every minimally perceptive white man and to some degree white woman: being discriminated against in work and education, subjected to ridicule, physically threatened, and so on. When they want to destroy all your cultural heritage, and to obliterate you as a race it stirs your emotions and awakes your instincts.The emotions which have to a great degree been tranquillized. Awakening those emotions and instincts is of primary importance.
Organic minds theorize all of the time. The only variable that changes is the duration of this theorizing. Sometimes, the duration is so small that it is as if no theorizing happened: but it did. When you go to your fridge to grab bottled water, the neuroelectric connections between will, action and result were established inside your cranium before your body started to move. “If I go there, and grab this, then the thirst in the body will disappear”.
The more complex the things, the more complex the decisions to take, the more the duration increases. For example, when you desire to win a war or to change society, there are so many variables that you can’t do without memos, to-do lists, analytic reports, etc. Or books like “Das Kapital”.
The pronounced dislike for theorizers and thinkers among the far-right fringes is preoccupying, because I know from experience that this sort of pragmatic, no-nonsense attitude will lead you to underachieve instead of overachieving like the Jews and their [very organized] lackeys do.
You must plan in your life to achieve anything worthwhile. Just look at military history for examples of efficiency. There is no reason it should be different for many people, i.e. society.
I wonder where ideas come from. Are they born in the mind, or do circumstances deliver them there?
It seems natural to believe that all ideas already exist and that they’ve only to be called upon for service, as dictated by circumstance.
The deliverer of theory likes to imagine himself a creator of theory, but he is not. He’s no more a creator of theory than the farmer is a creator of food. At best, he’s a steward; at worst, a conjurer. He calls forth from the library of the cosmos books which have long been shelved, or which have never been published, or which are ludicrous, or which are brilliant, or which are, as in the case of liberalism, terribly boring. He measures his environment and checks it for certain conditions. He then exercises a bit of black magic and calls upon the Gods to deliver him the necessary potions. He calls his sorcery “thinking”, and he introduces his idea to physical reality and observes its effect. This is the role of the theorist.
If liberalism had its beginnings in scientific revolution and its maturation during industrial revolution, I wonder if a collapse of the economy built upon a foundation of these ideas wouldn’t necessitate the delivery of new ideas to new minds.
Our physical reality demands different ideas. That world commerce is commandeered by usurers is something which cannot continue indefinitely. It has the potential to destroy all life on Earth. As our conjurers become increasingly alerted to this threat, they will call upon the Gods for new potions as remedy. This is just a sign of life.
Thinking in public.
As our theories expand and deepen, this will allow artists of various kinds to follow up with literature, music, and art that develop from these theories. These pieces will in turn help to capture the imagination of those on our side and those who could be.
Merely pursuing a reactionary approach that uses liberal theories would make us miss out on this. Our novels would remain too explicitly focused on race, and our music uninspired.
The Mechanic,
Reducing morality to “an excrescence of biological struggle” ignores the fact that we are capable of reforming ourselves and others according to reason. It is reasoning, however poor after all, that has allowed the “ideas of our ruling parasites” to hold such sway.
But it’s not. The ideas hold sway in large part though not solely because the enemy has the guns! These ideas have been and are being imposed by force on the subset of the white population that would reject the ideas if they could.
Alex Linder makes this point repeatedly. Separately, Andrew Hamilton recently observed in the CC comments that he sees the intellectual climate as an “artificial situation” because ideas are tightly “controlled” by those in power. Also separately, I noticed a while back myself some theory-oriented nationalists consistently ignore this factor.
The Euro nationalists, especially, come across to me like they don’t appreciate how these ideas have been imposed. Sunic and Kurtagic, for example, often trace the intellectual lines from the late 18th century to today. When they do, they write as if the progressive unfolding, expansion and entrenchment of egalitarian ideas across the West had to happen because people simply accepted the logic of liberalism. In fact, there was opposition, and the opposition was killed not persuaded.
I’m not suggesting ideas don’t matter, but they’re clearly not all that matters.
Nobody ever said that ideas are the only things that matter in history or in individual lives. People like Linder peddle ridiculous false dichotomies like “Morality does not matter. Only guns matter,” as if it were one or the other.
It astonishes me that these discussions take place at all, since a few minutes of introspection should be enough to dispel them. Sometimes people stand up to tyranny and risk their lives and property and comfort. Why? Because they think it is the right thing to do.
The human mind is complex. The oldest parts of the brain are concerned with survival. But there are other parts of the brain, including the uniquely human parts, that are concerned with things like right and wrong. Often these two parts of the brain conflict with one another. Sometimes greed and fear win out. Other times they are trumped by what is right.
About 5 or 6 years ago, a woman was killed in Atlanta. She was a doctor, I believe. She lived in a posh condo in midtown. As I recall, she was planning to rent it out. A 20-something ghetto black with one of those ridiculous names like Shawntavious asked to see the apartment. The security guard, who was black, offered to accompany them, obviously concerned with her safety. She said no. When they got inside, the young black murdered her for the money in her purse, less than $100, I recall.
Now, this is all speculation, but it seems pretty plausible that she looked at this ridiculous ghetto Negro and (a) her deep brain felt unsafe and (b) her common sense told her that it was hardly likely that he could afford the place anyway. But there were overridden by another part of her mind, her moral ideas about (a) the evil of racism and prejudice and (b) the high-minded moral superiority of taking small risks in trusting other people in the hope that they might become members of an enlarged community.
When the black security guard, who suffered from no such illusions about his people, offered to accompany her, her conscience kicked in again. She did not want young Shawntavious to feel that she did not trust him; she might have been slightly angry at the guard for articulating the fear that she was trying to repress; she might also have felt a little stirring of feminist resentment against male gallantry. In any case, her instincts for self-preservation were once again overridden by her moral principles and her desire to see herself as a moral person. And it killed her.
Now of course these ideals are manufactured and injected into our culture by people who want to kill us. But why would they bother, if all that really matters is brute force, right?
How did they gain that cultural power to shape our minds? Was it merely brute force? Did we have a Bolshevik revolution and I missed it? No, Jewish hegemony was attained in this country by about 5% violent criminal activity and 95% peaceful means, including a huge amount of moral suasion. They demanded that Americans live up to their universal moral premises, religious convictions, and civic principles. We are all God’s chillun, all men are created equal, and all that rot.
How did those ideas become hegemonic? How did Christianity and then liberalism become hegemonic? Was it all brute force? It was probably 40% force/60% suasion, since it takes more force to conquer pagans than Christians, surely.
But the actual percentages do not matter. What matters is recognizing that morality plays a role in history and human lives, because moral ideals and concerns are part of the human brain, mind, or soul.
Beyond that, we need to recognize that morality plays a defining, leading role in history because people are willing to killd and die for what they think is right. Morality can trump concerns about self-preservation. All tyrannies operate by (1) making it worth people’s while to comply (appealing to greed and fear), and (2) trying to persuade them that it is right to comply.
If we can convince people that it is not right to comply with the existing morality, that it is actually killing us, that still leaves the whole apparatus of police power and other base incentives (greed and fear) that shore up the system. But morality can trump those sorts of concerns and lead people to risk and even embrace death because they think it is right. At that point, of course, it would also be good to be well-armed, because most tyrannies will fight before they go down. But first things first.
Re: Mechanic
If the whole argument is about biology, as you suggest, then no reasoning and no strategy will suffice and the fact that you are here arguing about such things is inconsistent with itself.
You’re probably right, and my only purpose here was to make a funny jab at Kurtagic’s muddled thinking. My original comment involved tasteful barnyard metaphor but alas, it was not allowed.
“It is reasoning, however poor after all, that has allowed the “ideas of our ruling parasites” to hold such sway.”
Simply false. The overwhelming majority of white people disagreed with anti-white policies every step of the way. White people have voted against all of it. It didn’t matter, because the courts dismissed their votes. Then the government enforced the courts decision against the white majority. We have countless examples. Brown v Board, SB 1070, Prop 187, etc.
The problem is not white people being “convinced” that anti-white policies are “right.” They never believed that. Even self-hating white liberals usually live in all-white neighborhoods. Given a free choice, whites decide live in white neighborhoods, marry whites, and send their kids to white schools. I’m willing to admit that today things are a bit different, but that’s after fifty years of nonstop propaganda and government coercion.
This is not a matter of opinion. The historical record is unequivocal and repetitive. U.S. government forces races to mix. Whites resist. Government deploys troops. Whites flee to suburbs. Again and again and again. Government refuses to enforce immigration law. Whites vote for local enforcement. Court system throws out white vote. Etc, etc.
I’m not too familiar with Europe & Australia. What I do know seems to suggest that those governments silently allowed non-white immigration while ignoring it in national politics. There’s a book about Australia by Katherine Betts(?) in which a politician admitted to this tactic.
South Africa. Something like 97% of whites voted to keep apartheid policies even in its final years. Apartheid didn’t go away because whites were “convinced” it was wrong. It went away because South Africa was facing a guerrilla war and foreign sanctions. If I remember correctly, over a million whites fled the country after the blacks took over in 1994.
Summary: no white population has ever supported its own racial demise. The “suicide” myth is something encouraged by Jews like Gottfried, Kaufman, and Mercer. Getting crushed by governments and international sanctions then fleeing by the millions? Yeah, that’s not suicide.
Re: Greg Johnson
Rather than talk past you I’m going to accept that there are fundamental disagreements. Very few of us can agree on what’s happening or what needs to be done about it. I think the latter depends on the former. Being politically effective means stRiki-Eiking at the causes of problems rather than their symptoms. That’s the difference between WN and conservative boobery. But we need to agree on those causes. We need a common frame of reference. Then we debate goals and strategies.
That’s the A3P’s real problem. They tried to merge WN and Tea Party and the result is an inability to move in a clear direction. They’re a pro-white party whose presidential candidate admitted to being uninterested in racial politics. If they had sorted themselves out beforehand this kind of inner contradiction wouldn’t appear.
The problem with your narrative is that you do not explain why our people have failed to resist their dispossession. It is not all a matter of force, after all. A Bolshevik-style bloodbath has not been unleashed against us. Most people don’t want to mix with blacks or see their country flooded by non-whites. But many people think that desire is morally discreditable, so they will not stand up for it. Others may think that there is nothing morally wrong with racial separation, but they do not think it is important enough to risk the social consequences of standing up against it. It is not illegal, after all, to advocate our ideas in America. We are not hauled off to prison for being racists. (Although some of our people have fallen afoul of the law for other reasons.) But even if it were illegal, it is still possible for people to defy the law in the name of what they believe is right. What is lacking in our people is the moral courage and conviction to fight their dispossession.
“Most people don’t want to mix with blacks or see their country flooded by non-whites. But many people think that desire is morally discreditable, so they will not stand up for it.”
1) The number of people willing to fight for an idea is tiny. Most people won’t even take risks for tangible goods. Principled fighters are a minority within a minority. It follows that the majority of people do what they’re told so long as it doesn’t entail significant personal sacrifice. Stanley Milgram arguably proved this.
“It is not all a matter of force, after all. A Bolshevik-style bloodbath has not been unleashed against us.”
2) The masses may be herdlike but they aren’t stupid. They don’t need a Bolshevik-style massacre to realize when they’re beaten. All they need is an adequate show of force. The government ended any question of active resistance when it deployed federal troops against white protesters. Little Rock, Arkansas is the best known example but troops were also sent to places like Clinton, Tennessee and Clay, Kentucky. The government also deployed troops against white rioters in the 1970s after it implemented ‘forced busing.’ Boston is a good example.
3) Following this show of force, active resistance became passive resistance. People moved from areas with large but segregated non-white populations to 96% or 97% white communities. Forced busing schemes were implemented to overcome this form of “cheating the system.”
“The problem with your narrative is that you do not explain why our people have failed to resist their dispossession.”
4) I think my explanation is perfectly clear. Whites have resisted every step of the way. They tried voting and the courts overruled it. They tried legal challenges and the courts overruled them again. They tried physical violence and the government sent in the troops. In the face of bayonets, tear gas, and tanks, white people made the reasonable choice to simply avoid the problem rather than try to fight an unwinnable battle. Look at the historical record. It’s all there.
5) It’s an error of hindsight to assume that people could have known that what started as calls for “fairness” and “equality” would become forced busing, racial quotas, and mass exodus. Some did understand, but it was not self-evident at the time. It would have sounded totally absurd to an American in 1950 that by 2008 whites would be approaching minority status under the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama II. Likewise, most white people today don’t understand, due to insufficient grasp of facts, that what awaits us is another South Africa.
“What is lacking in our people is the moral courage and conviction to fight their dispossession.”
6) Moral conviction is like intelligence. It’s either there or it isn’t. White people don’t need a new morality to understand that the enriching diversity of the “rape capital of the world” is a bad thing. If we get them to accept our worldview then the solution is self-evident. For the reasons I’ve outlined, most people won’t take a stand on racial issues because they are, by instinct, susceptible to browbeating and social pressure. And since any legal means of redress is trumped by government force, they see it as a moot point. Even people willing to make sacrifices need to believe their sacrifice will have an effect.
Of course white people know that living in the rape capital of the world is a bad thing. But people are willing to suffer a lot if they believe that they have it coming to them.
What percentage of white Americans will respond to our demographic decline and loss of power by saying, “Well, we did it to the Indians.” Meaning: we’ve got it coming.
Moral sensibility is like intelligence, but it is not an on/off thing. It is distributed on a bell curve. Before Christianity, liberalism, and Jewish hegemony, whites had no problem fighting for their existence. That is because our moral sensibilities have been hooked to values that are destructive of our race. Our people have not become stupid, but merely misinformed. Our people have not become moral imbeciles, they have just accepted an imbecilic, racially destructive code of values.
Your description of events is missing something: the moral factor. If our people are really as you describe them, then they are natural slaves — otherwise known as the bourgeoisie — who are doomed to extinction. I don’t believe that.
After paganism’s decline Christian Whites surely had no problem fighting for their existence either, and did so until quite recent times. Actually, their will to fight started to decline around the same time their actual belief declined. In the beginning of “Faustian” culture, in the dark ages, Christianity was a supreme civilising force, and later-on as well. With Spengler I think there is no Christianity as such: it rather reflects the spirit of the people who interprete it. So that tree certainly carried overwhelmingly good fruit over centuries, imo. Enlightenment reduction of Christian religion to mere moral codes was one of the things that led to this world out fo balance we live in today. I have always felt that Nietzsche’s polemic rather fitted the Christians of the future (=today) than those of the past; but what those really believe in are basically atheist-humanist enlightenment rooted values, while actual Christianity and culture is under attack of the Kulturkampf.
Religions have eugenic or dysgenic effects, so causation is not simply one way when a people adopts or evolves a religion.
The fact that the Left wars against Christianity no more disproves their fundamental identity of values than the wars between Protestants and Catholics.
That is the question, as from the beginning there was never a consent what sort of values are the “truely” Christian ones. The Roman church struggled for centuries to get the dogma and doctrine straight, based on the sparse, contradictive and mysterious content of what was written down by the first Christians and which eventually became the canon, while confounding its earthly power, postponing the Apocalypse, brutally beating off rivals and heretics, making the arts flourish and civilise the mob. Whatever what one might think of it, it turned out as complex and impressive as the cathedrals. Protestants said the church betrayed the “true spirit of Christianity” by bringing it down to Roman Will to Power, Common Sense and earthly Glory, but they were as tricky as rabbis justifying all that, and luckily so. However the case might be: “values” is what’s left after the building’s crumbled and God has left, and didn’t become a centerpiece issue until the enlightenement cleared the heavens and brought it all down to Man, and Man only. In the 19th century the church was the fiercest opponent of liberalism, clearly formulating a principled, fundamental opposition. Today, well…
Now protestant and catholic Germans might have shared similar “values” in the 1500s, but tolerance, “inclusion”, “diversity” and turning the other cheek seemingly was not among them, but rather bring the sword and let the world turn to fire. One can see how much all that has shifted or morphed over the centuries. But I think it can be said there indeed existed a Christian ethos or thymos in the West, that was much different than what is valued by its secular inheritics and what was despised so much by Nietzsche. Best of all, it can be experienced in Christian Art, from Giotto and Dante to Donne, Bach and Rembrandt up to Messaien and Pärt. Heretics now might look very much alike the orthodox from the outside, but the orthodox knew better, that taking away a simple stone, a semicolon, changing a seemingly little detail, brings the building into danger and can turn into something alltogether different.
Take for example Kipling’s “If-“. Now K. isn’t exactly known as the most Christian of writers. But the moving spirit of this poem, humble, stoic and heroic at the same time, standing up in and to the world, but not being attached to it, strikes me as deeply informed by this Christian thymos and ethos, and I am sure someone like Chesterton or Lewis or Tolkien would have agreed to that. (Or even someone like Wagner’s Paulus H.S. Chamberlain who was in awe of the figure of Christ.) Nietzsche couldn’t have written something like this, nor Robinson Jeffers. I find it even in the emphasis, that “The Stranger” is not better or worse as the fellow countrymen, but having him around too much isn’t a good idea as he simply hasn’t their ways and values impregnated. One could still honor the Good Samaritan as an example, yet certainly admit that it was wise to “let the corn be all one sheaf”. Even “bread and vine” appears in the end. Now I can imagine the objections coming up – obviously I am biased to a rather Christianity-friendly p.o.v. What enabled to get St. Peter’s Dome and the Cappella Sistina built, cannot have been all that bad.
I really despise these sorts of apologetics, particularly since they so often issue from non-believers.
What is Christianity’s contribution to world culture, once you deduct the following:
1. The art forms that existed before Christianity, e.g., the dome, the fresco, and that will continue after Christianity
2. Great artists, like Michelangelo or Handel or Bach, who would simply have expressed their talents in different ways if they had been born in a pagan rather than a Christian society
3. The artists and cultural treasures destroyed by Christianity?
Europeans made great art before Christianity, and they will make great art after Christianity. So aside from providing patronage and a totalitarian straight jacket — although patronage and limits on freedom of thought would have existed in a pagan Europe too — what exactly is the church’s SPECIFICALLY CHRISTIAN contribution to art when it reigned supreme? Do we give Christianity credit simply for not following (for the most part) the biblical injunction against images? Wasn’t the Renaissance the rebirth of classical art after nearly 1,000 years of the ugliness of byzantine and gothic art? (Gothic architecture is another matter. But how much of that is Christian and how much is Germanic?)
SD:
If moral ideas aren’t important, why does the enemy invest so much in pushing its moral ideas?
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