SMALL MOVES AWAY FROM LIBERALISM ARE NOT GOING TO TURN AROUND THE SOCIETY AS A WHOLE
I have previously touched on the change in my thought that occurred last fall concerning the future of America and the West (here, here, and here). I have not been disposed to write a single, very large article explaining my new position. Instead, I will continue to lay out my ideas on the subject as they come to me.
One of the changes is this. Previously, when an establishment conservative writer or a Republican politician said something that indicated a new and better understanding,—an insight into the destructive nature of liberalism, a deeper grasp of the menace of Islam, a greater readiness to acknowledge the reality of cultural/racial differences and the unresolvable contradictions of “diversity”—I would welcome this development, seeing it as a glimmer of hope that a real conservatism, a conservatism that truly resists liberalism, a conservatism which does not now exist, might some day exist.
I no longer react that way. Now when a politician or a mainstream conservative writer says something relatively good, I see it like this: One individual has had an improvement in his understanding, has awakened to some aspect of the falseness of liberalism or of the truth of traditionalism. Other individuals will from time to time have other improvements in their understanding. This is good. But these individual bits of progress are not going to come together into a change in the society as a whole. The society as a whole is going to continue subscribing madly and blindly to liberalism, until the society crashes, or becomes materially or morally unendurable to a decisive number of people, which may be another way of saying the same thing.
At the same time, the rescue of even one person from the hellish falsity of liberalism, even if it does not affect the society as a whole, is a great thing. I know how much this meant in my own life—the process, extending over many years, by which I gradually recognized the untruth of liberalism and developed a new understanding distinct from liberalism, which stands on a separate ground from liberalism. The more people who undergo that liberation and that intellectual and spiritual growth, the better.
However, most of the “bits of progress” that one sees in mainstream conservatism are not of this deeper nature. They are tiny changes which, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I now believe are going nowhere.
As just one example, consider Michael Walsh’s New York Post column which I discussed in late December. Walsh now sees that “militant Islam” aims not just at our political subjugation, but at the destruction of our entire culture, including the greatest cultural achievements and artifacts of our civilization and of all non-Islamic civilizations. That’s a very important insight. Yet at the same time Walsh utters meaningless slogans about using “force” to stop “militant Muslims” from doing this to us, force that he apparently intends to be used against Muslim countries abroad. The idea of defending America and the West from Islam, by stopping, reducing, and reversing the growth of Islam in the West, is evidently the farthest thing from his mind. Given how similar his analysis and “cure” is to the statements of previous “Usual Suspects” over the years, there is no reason to believe that his future intellectual development—or rather his lack of future intellectual development—will be any different from theirs. He and they will continue to warn in the most highly charged terms about the horrible menace of Islam, and continue not to offer a single constructive and logical thought about how to protect ourselves from it.
And that, in a nutshell, is the way I see “conservatism”—and I’m speaking here of “conservatism” at its best, a “conservatism” which pushes against the liberal envelope but will never break free of it. And because any chance for the survival of our civilization depends on conservatism breaking free of liberalism, I no longer expect our civilization to be saved. Not in its present form. Not until after it has crashed, or, as I said above, until it has become morally or materially unbearable to a large enough number of people. Which may not ever happen. Our society—meaning all the societies of the West—may just continue getting worse and worse, even while it continues to contain enough good things that people make their peace with it and regard the traditionalist view as off-base and extreme, such as the author of this article.
Just as I no longer expect the good little changes to cohere into a good change in the society as a whole, I no longer expect the bad things in our society to be broadly discredited. For example, when I see Republicans or establishment conservatives uttering some vapid and dangerous idiocy, such as Condoleezza Rice still blandly insisting, as the answer to every criticism of the Bush/Obama/neocon Muslim Democracy policy, that “everyone wants freedom,” I no longer think, “This madness cannot last, it must be repudiated.” Now I think, “She and others like her will continue saying such things until our society crashes.”
Or when I see Army Chief of Staff Army George Casey state on television that removing an openly jihadist Muslim from the Army before he committed jihadist mass murder would have damaged the Army’s diversity and thus been a “greater tragedy” than the mass murder that he did commit, I no longer think that this is a shocking, horrible outrage against America. I think: This is America. This is what our society formally believes and accepts. The total absence of any mainstream opposition to Casey’s remark proves it. And there is no reason to believe that such opposition will appear in the foreseeable future. Casey’s statement is not some freaky perversion of America. It is what America is.
In late November I jotted down a list of suicidal liberal beliefs that will continue and will not be renounced:
Accommodating Islam, not seeing what Islam is.
Accepting mass nonwhite immigration, thinking of America as a “nation of immigrants,” thinking that immigration is the essence of our country and therefore no criticism or restriction of immigration is allowed.
Accepting the empowerment of women.
Surrendering to most or all aspects of the homosexualist agenda.
Refusal to see negative truths about blacks, giving blacks more and more power.
Acceptance/support of the neocon agenda of spreading democracy
Sexual liberation / nonjudgmentalness.
And the most important one of all—the belief that black failure, dysfunction, and violence is due to white racism.
The list is just a beginning and could be expanded and refined, but you get the idea.
* * *
What I have been saying here does not mean that there is no hope and that there is nothing for traditionalist conservatives to do.
First, we must continue to fight to stop and reverse those things that will make our situation much worse, such as Obamacare and the legalization of illegal aliens (a.k.a. amnesty). These are battles that can be won.
At the same time, we need to recognize that even if we win those short term battles and slow the destruction of society, we cannot reverse the overall destructive course.
If the destructive course can’t be stopped, what then is there for us to do?
Continue to critique and denounce the mainstream and show why its false, evil, and doomed;
Lay out an alternative vision of society (which will not be adopted or have any significant effect on the society in the foreseeable future); and
Build up a traditionalist organization/community which serves as a spiritual and social life raft and which, as the mainstream society gets worse and worse, will attract more and more people.
I should add this. When I say that our society cannot be turned around, it is not my intention to persuade others that my view is correct. There are those who still believe, as I believed and argued for many years, that it is possible to save our society in its historical form. I am not going to tell them that they are wrong or try to win them over to my view. If a person is engaged in a battle to save society, he must be respected. What I state on this subject, I state as my opinion. We’re considering future events which no one can predict. If it turns out that I am wrong, I will be happy. But I see things the way I see them, and because VFR is so much an expression of my own outlook, I must be straightforward about the way I see them.
Finally, a thought on how to survive the darkness.
I wrote in a comment at VFR in July 2003:
About ten years ago I was watching Stanley Fish being interviewed by Richard Heffner on the PBS program The Open Mind. The sheer audacious evil and nihilism of the post-modern, truth-denying Fish—which was not opposed at all by the courtly, old-fashioned liberal Heffner—was incredible. But as I was watching this unutterably disgusting, evil man, an odd thing happened—I began to believe all the more in God. It struck me that such evil COULD NOT EXIST unless there was a good that it was rebelling against. After all, the very motive of the evil was to deny truth and goodness. Which means that such evil could not exist of itself. It is purely a derivative phenomenon. Therefore the greater the evil, the more that proves the existence of the good, and its power to defeat evil.
The evil that seems to be taking over America is like that: it calls us back to the truth of which it is the opposite and the enemy. So there is a plan. It is to know the truth and to resist the false—whatever particular political form that resistance may take.
From the thought that evil is but a reaction against the good, comes another: If evil is a reaction against the good, then the evil is coextensive with the good. If God is infinite, the reaction against God must also be infinite. If truth is infinite, falsity, which is the shadow of truth, must be infinite.
This explains why there is such falsity and evil in the world. It is not a proof that the good is absent or weak. It is a reaction against the good and derives its perverted energy from the good. It is the proof of the good’s existence. And this helps us overcome the despair that encroaches on us at the sight of evil and madness ascendant and triumphant.
