“Suicide,” as the political philosopher James Burnham observed in his book Suicide of the West, “is probably more frequent than murder as the end phase of a civilization.” And civilizational suicide, as Burnham knew, can take many forms and is always a more or less protracted affair. What Burnham warned about, and what we are still conjuring with, is the seductive toxin of unanchored liberalism.
Burnham subtitled his book “The Definitive Analysis of the Pathology of Liberalism.” At the center of that pathology is an awful failure of understanding which is also a failure of nerve, a failure of “the will to survive.”
Liberalism, Burnham concludes, is “an ideology of suicide.” He admits that such a description may sound hyperbolic. ” ‘Suicide,’ it is objected, is too emotive a term, too negative and ‘bad.’ ” But it is part of the pathology that Burnham describes that such objections are “most often made most hotly by Westerners who hate their own civilization, readily excuse or even praise blows struck against it, and themselves lend a willing hand, frequently enough, to pulling it down.
It is time–far past time–that we get back to the task of building it back up. The first steps in that process are 1) jettisoning the rancid, self-hating pieties of multiculturalism and 2) recognizing and celebrating what is valuable in our own civilization.
What Mr Scruton and other conservatives cannot allow themselves to say --if they even know it anymore-- is that civilization is rooted in culture and culture is rooted in a people. Not everyone, but a people. Which requires definition. And definition, by definition, includes exclusion. This, and not that.
Which, of course, means race and nation.
One of the central "rancid, self-hating pieties of multiculturalism" is that Western Civilization can be claimed and continued by non-Westerners, that is, people not descended from Europeans. The outcome of this is Nancy Pelosi's claim that the more non-Americans America is filled with, the more American it is.
And a big part of the multicultural lie must be laid at our own doorstep. Since the Enlightenment at least, our claim to fame has not only been that our civilization is better than everyone else's but that its superiority rests precisely on its being the true civilization of all humanity. That universalism, once a source of pride, is now the door to our destruction. Cause that means our White Western civilization is really everybody's property.
Except ours.
The bizarre state we have come to is this: for ExCathedra to claim that White Western Civilization is the property and patrimony of White Westerners --and therefore not of anyone else-- is considered to be the deepest sin imaginable. We are required to bear the guilty for all of Western Civilization's sins --if in fact, sins they be--but dare not claim its glories for our own.
When I first saw the phrase, Liberalism is a mental disorder, I thought it was wildly exaggerated.
No more.
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3 comments:
My inquiry into paganism has brought me face-to-face with Asatru, or German reconstructive paganism. It's definitely struck a chord with me. I quickly learned that there is not an overarching "church" of Asatru; rather, there are groups of Asatruar who roughly follow certain philosophies, namely "universalism" and "folkishness." The universalists say "anybody can join," and are extremely liberal, whereas the folkists say "straight white Scandinavians only." The folkists also have a historical-revisionist view of Fortunately, the vast majority of Asatruar seem more level-headed than all that: Asatruar is a massively white religion, but conversion through intermarriage is not an issue. Honoring your spouse's god(s) is permitted as well.
The majority view of homosexuality is comforting: you can live your life as you see fit in your dwelling and we won't give you grief as long as you honor the gods and aren't super flamboyant, but don't expect us to call your relationships marriages. In some groups, homosexuals and bisexuals seem to fill the shaman niche that they do in other pagan faiths. Male shamans have noted positively that gay and bisexual men are better at seithr (Norse magic) than straight men. Something to consider.
-Sean
It might be added not everyone in a people, but some of the men of a people make a culture. Thus heresy and honesty are enriched.
Bishop of Portland
The people are a necessary but not sufficient condition, as you say, Your Grace.
The "creedal nation" lie destroys the necessary condition.
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