Thought experiments in the valley

Being out of internet reach for a day, down in the San Joaquin Valley, I was musing about a political order that would attempt reverse the many ills of the current regime of unfolding catastrophe. (It would doubtless produce its own ills; that is the nature of man on Earth.) And, synchronistically, I was reading some of Simon Schama's volume on the madness of the French Revolution, Citizens. Mass insanity in the names of equality and reason.

What I came up with in this fantasy order incorporated Harold Covington's earned grades of citizenship and his libertarian attitude toward firearms. It also reminded me of the conscious ethnocentrism of the State of Israel and the realistic minority politics of the Ottoman Empire, with a dollop of the Original 13 Colonies and the Wild West.

Multiculturalism, feminism, redistributionism, pacifism, transnationalism, secularism and (radical) environmentalism would definitely not be on the menu. It would not be based on grand universal values enunciated from On High, but built for the sake of a particular people, adapting to their realities, for their survival and flourishing.

It is one of the many madnesses of our current culture that ethnicity and race are considered paramount in shaping identity yet must be both publicly denied as marks of worth and obsessively named as tags of power. Race isn't real, they sometimes tell us, but it is the most obsessive, taboo and compulsively watched element in American life. The twisted dogmas of the Church of Liberalism make the Trinity and Transubstantiation seem simply obvious by comparison.

Conservatives, libertarians and traditionalists would find things in my imagined Republic both to love and to hate. Liberals would hate every bit of it. Which, of course, is fine with Ex Cathedra.

One example. It would be clear that this fantasy Republic would not be a Christian country, in the sense of a theocracy with a State religion, but would recognize itself as a country of Christians, in the broad sense. (Even now in the US, fully 80%+ so name themselves.) And since people and culture precede the State, the State, while standing aloof from religious matters, would honor the expression of religion in public. So, both not theocratic and not anti-religiously secularist.  The way the US once was.

I resurrected the Roman notion of religio licita, lawful religion. All religions would be assumed to be such unless it were shown clearly that by both doctrine and behavior, a faith was incompatible with the existence of the Republic. The point of that, of course, would be to restrict Islam. And satisfyingly, to treat it much as Muslims treat Christians in the dhimmi mode.

In place of the idolatry of equality, I use equity: treating what is the same in the same way and what is different, differently, but not arbitrarily.  Liberal society abhors unequal treatment except* when it comes to affirmative action or age discrimination, which discrimination is actually required by both Constitution and law. About that it is both unconscious and (as-always) self-righteous. I just extend that not-the-same treatment of young people to other areas of life where, frankly, it also makes sense.

As I sketched the critical whys and wherefores of differing status for differing groups, I asked myself what the Achilles' heel of Whites might be. Two items popped up right away: a more than ordinary attachment to fratricidal wars, and a vulnerability to foolish idealist and utopian ideologies and schemes. This second is true even, or especially, when these grand visions lead to their own destruction; they hold onto the dream rather than waking up and saving their lives. Another baleful result of decaying post-Christianity.


*Except, too, when it feels that it is redressing historic wrongs by granting privileged treatment to Official Victim Groups. As the Equalities Minister in Britain said, In order for everyone to be equal, some people have to be treated unequally. Pure Orwell.
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