Author Archives: Contra1789

Brexit – The First Crack In The Edifice

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June 23, 2016 will be a day that will go down in history as the day when the downfall of of the post WWII liberal order in the Western world was set in motion.  The departure of Britain from the EU will the first domino in the fall of liberal internationalism as the fall of the Berlin Wall began the fall of the Soviet system, even if in this case the process may take longer.  Britain may have seemed an unlikely place for it all to begin, but nevertheless that is where it happened, and the damage has occurred in a particularly sensitive spot.

Britain’s history as the country that successfully colonized North America and defeated its rivals gave it a link to the New World that other European countries don’t have.  Indeed, it was Britain’s former colonies that would later form the United States.  This fact is well known, but it provides some background for position Britain plays in world politics today.  After the dissolution of the British Empire, that role was largely as a mediation between the US and Western Europe, and later the between the US and the EU.  Britain was in the unique position of sharing a common historical connection to both America and continental Europe.  By helping to keep the liberal internationalists on both sides of the Atlantic on roughly the same page, Britain continued to play a role that was disproportionate to her size.

Britain’s withdrawal from the EU significantly damages that link.  In effect, it threatens to cut the forces of global liberalism in two.  Rather than increasing US influence in Europe, it will actually reduce it.  A house divided against itself ultimately will not stand.  This is not only good news for people, wherever they may be, who are unhappy about the way the US is influencing world politics, but also Americans who are unhappy with the direction they have seen their county move in recent years.  It weakens the powers that be in Washington, and focuses the spotlight on their failures at home.  The New World Order, which hasn’t won a major victory since the fall of South Africa, is now receding.  The wheels of history grind slow but exceedingly fine.  They a turning a different way now.

The Foundation Of Hope For Eternal Life

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The only certainty of life is that it all comes to an end.  Death is the ultimate deadline around which everything moves.  If nobody ever died, nothing would ever get done, because there would always be tomorrow to do it.  Paradoxically death moves everything that happens in life into insignificance; death is still the end in any case.

“For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool.” (Eccl. 2:16)

Present moments are as puffs of smoke here, and never seen again.  That which truly matters, matters in eternity.  Nature itself, in the long run, leans toward death.  The second law of thermodynamics tells us that order leads toward disorder.  Creation itself is on its way toward inert energy.

Immortality entails participation in that which is immortal, and nothing in the physical universe is immortal.  Immortality, if it is to be found at all, is to be found in that which transcends the physical.  The world that is discernible by our five senses may point to it, but such is not to be found in it.

For the Christian, the answer is quite simple – it is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  He lived again after having died.  He lives eternally in a spiritual body not subject to death.  If this is true, the case is closed.  Death is not the end.  “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (1 Cor. 15:55).  Conversely, for that same reason, the Christian’s hope for eternal life can rest on nothing else.

“And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.  Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.  If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”  (1 Cor. 15:17-19)

What is the testimony to us of our Lord’s resurrection today.  All the witnesses to it have since passed; it is the testimony of the church, in the Scriptures, and in the rise of Christianity itself.  It is the effect that one obscure carpenter turned itinerant preacher had on history.  It won’t do simply say you do not believe the testimony.  You would also have to find an alternative explanation as to how Christianity arose.

We, the body of Christ, do not hold hope in eternal life based on a future promise as did the Hebrews of old, or based on metaphysical speculation, as did the Greeks.  We have confirmation in history.

“For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. ”  (1 Cor 1:22-25)

MARANATHA!

    

Syrian Fallout

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For the past three months, Europe, particularly Germany, has been inundated with immigration, from a number of places, but most of it purporting to be fleeing from the civil war in Syria.  Third World immigration to Europe has been going on for decades, but it is now that the limits of immigration policy are being put to the test.

The history of this type of immigration has clearly shown to Europe that the world’s people are not interchangeable, that this type of foreign migration means foreign colonies forming on European soil.  We have already seen, looking at the Middle East, the type of societies they created.  Few Europeans of any political persuasion prefer that to the culture they live in.  The crisis itself was brought about due to Washington’s idea that Arabs will become Westerners simply by imposing a Westen form of government on them.  The saw what happened to such a government when it was first put to the test.  In contrast, Russia is showing a more realistic approach in working with existing forces of stability.

It is a deadly time for Europe, as it threatens a demographic shift that will quite literally mean the death of Europe if it not stopped.  It means the replacement of Europeans with Arabs and Africans in their own countries.  Fortunately, we see some European governments, particulary those formerly on the east side of the Iron Curtain, moving to resist it.  There are few countries in Europe these days, east of west, where popular opposition to immigration hasn’t become a major force.  Every election they seem to get stronger.  The FN in France this month saw its support uo in the high twenties, and even in Germany, for the first time in post-war history, the CDU is facing challenge from a party on its right.

This type of ideological upheaval is certainly going to shake Europe to its core, and could well split apart the EU.  Schengen is for all practical purposes already dead.  Western Europe already seems to be experiencing its own 1989.  It is only a question of what will emerge when the dust clears.

The Historic Faith

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It is unfortunate that this needs to be explained so much these days, but Christianity is a historic faith – it reflects a God at work though human history, and His work recorded in Scripture needs to be understood in the context it was done.  The notion of a “Bible Christianity” shorn of the baggage of history always leads to a hermeneutic where the Scriptures are read through the prejudices of the age, with modernist assumptions.  The great blessing of the Christian walk is that it offers freedom from slavery to the age in which the Christian lives.  (Rom 12:2)  In a mad world of constant tumult, it grounds the soul in a Truth that does not change, (Mal. 3:6) and in that Truth lies immortality.  (John 3:16)

The same Scriptures have been studied by the church for nearly two thousand years, and the timeless message in them is the message that has been understood by the church throughout that time.  For that same reason, for anything to supplant the historic faith something would have to come along showing itself more conducive to those who confess it.  From what I can see, there’s no sign of that.

The Significance of Donald Trump

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Donald Trump has this year decided to take it upon himself to do what only a billionare is in a position to do – launch a presidential campiagn with an agenda independent of those who pour so much money into the political process.  On the questions of immigration and trade, the GOP’s donors have ensure that it’s candidates take positions that allow them to take advantage of cheap foreign labor, both in the United States and abroad.  Trump has enough of his own money that he doesn’t need these donors.  Hence, he can play a strategy to play to the GOP base while telling the donors off.  Two presidential candidates since World War II have done this before – George Wallace and Pat Buchanan, and Trump has more resources than either of them ever did.

The ultimate significance of this goes well beyond the campaign itself.  Whether he gets elected is less important than the fact that he is changing the nature of political discourse in this country.  He has proven that you can speak negatively about immigrants and still be a popular canditate.  He has shown that the effective way to deal with the attacks of political correctness is to hit back, not to grovel and beg forgiveness.  As the campaign progresses, there will be further comments on this page.

Greece’s Default

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On the first day of this month of July, the government of Greece allowed the deadline do pass on the payment of its EU debt.

This event opens the way for the Greece to be the first country to leave the Eurozone, which will open up the way for others, in particular the Mediterranean countries and possibly Ireland, to follow.  It may also influence the question of the UK’s possible withdrawal from the EU.

The imposition of a single currency across countries at different levels of economic development, as is the case between the northern and southern European countries, never made economic sense.  Likewise, the imposition of the massive superstate that is the EU across the European continent made little political sense.  What we could be witnessing here the first crack in the edifice that holds the EU together.

Who could have imagined, when the Berlin Wall came down and free travel was permitted between the two Germanys, that a political chain reaction would be set off that would lead to the collapse of the entire Soviet system within two years?  The EU serves as the mechanism to keep the nations of Europe in ideological subjection to modern liberalism just as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact did for communism in the previous century.  Whether Greece’s exit from the Euro would bring the EU down as fast as the the fall of the Berlin wall brought down the Soviet Union, I cannot say.  Actually, it probably won’t.  It will, however the beginning of the end of the political order imposed on Europe in 1945, and open the door for genuine European sovereignty.

I’ll add a brief comment on the results of next Sunday’s referendum on whether Greece should accept the EU’s proposed bailout package.  The polls seem to show it will be very close…

Well Greece has rejected the austerity measures.  Either Greece is getting out of the Euro or the Euro is in for a world of hurt.  Possibly both.

The Way Out

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If you’ve read what I have to say about Western Civilization’s history and when it is today, you may be wondering where that leaves for it’s future, or lack thereof, and the future of the world as a whole.

In recent years, much of the Muslim world has become increasingly aggressive towards its neighbors and toward the West.  We are talking about a creed that views any way of life that is not based on its own code of conduct as offensive.  They have a large number of influential figures who would very much like to reverse the results of Tours and Vienna.  They have a very large supply of men who are willing to give their lives for this purpose.

We have also have seen the rise of China, a culture that has older roots than any other in the world today.  They are an industrious, disciplined nation with a high degree of social cohesion.  They have also proven to have a knack for adopting Western technology to their own purposes.  They have a sizable nuclear arsenal.  Their recent rise comes after a long period of decline, and they are certainly interested in influencing the world in to their advantage as well.  I have full confidence, I might add, that they are not about to let Muslims intimidate them.

Now the question is, who is going serve as a bulwark for the preservation of Western culture in this situation?

America?

No. Washington is living far beyond its means, borrowing almost half the money it spends, and any part of the budget it tries to cut some interest group will organize to oppose it. Those lines of credit won’t be open for ever, and the time will come when the money dries up, and then see how impotent the US becomes.

The US has for a long time been losing faith in itself, as well as a sense of self sacrifice.  We haven’t won a military victory against a formidable enemy since 1945.  Politics in this country are increasing polarized along lines of personal identity, especially race.  We’ll be to busy fighting each other to worry much about any external foes.  I think the US is headed for collapse in the next few decades, probably a Soviet-style breakup, and what’s left of it will not be a major force in world politics for some time.

What about Europe?

Probably not.  Military matters have never been a major priority for the EU, mainly because initially the US had kept its troops in Europe as shield against the Soviet Union so that the countries of Western Europe could devote their resources to building generous welfare states.  Even today, I believe that one of the few things that the EU has yet to create is a common European army.  We don’t see the EU anytime soon with its own army, navy and air force, with millions of men, including its own nuclear arsenal.

Even on economic matters the EU is on shaky ground. It wasn’t that hard to foresee what imposing a single currency on countries with different levels of development would lead to. It’s a tube sucking money from the north to south, which hardly engenders solidarity among the European countries.

As if that weren’t enough, with millions of Muslims that have been allowed to settle in Europe as “refugees”, it is hard to believe that Europe’s politicians are up to preventing Islamic conquest.

So that leaves Russia. Russia is led by an ordinary statesman, which in today’s world is an extraordinary thing. Say what you want about Putin, he doesn’t have any cookie-cutter political system that he wants every society in the world to fit. He doesn’t have a dysgenic ideology that he is relentlessly trying to export. The question, then, is not whether you like Putin or his policies, but whether you would prefer a world more in the image of Islam or China. There’s historical precedent for this. In the early Middle Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire, an unstable and fractured Europe relied, to a large degree, on the Byzantine Empire for protection of its eastern flank.

What distinguishes Russia from other major powers in the word today is that is actually ruled by an ordinary statesman and not some warmongering ideologue.  By comparison, this gives quite a positive view of Moscow.  Putin knows that his job is to protect the common interests of the Russian people, and that’s what he does.  Russia has a major role to play in history in the years to come, if she plays her cards right, a role that neither America nor Europe are at this time capable of playing.  In the face of an increasingly aggressive Islam and an ascendant China, I don’t see why we should be wishing anything but the best for Russia at this time.

Europe’s escape from its current debacle lies first and foremost in stopped the the flood of Third World immigration, and ending dependency on the US.  This necessarily means the dismantling of the EU, which for purposes of international politics essentially a vassal of Washington.  The best to hope for as that America’s decline won’t be messier than necessary.  In the meantime, it can only be said that the weaker the US government becomes, the better.

Political Links

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American Renaissance

Jared Taylor’s seminal online maganize devoted to assessing racial issues from an honest perspective.

TakiMag

Taki Theodoracopulos’s irreverent online magazine.

VDare

Peter Brimelow’s website focused on immigration and other cultural issues.

Chronicles Magagazine

America’s longstanding paleoconservative magazine.

Antiwar.com

Foreign policy website from an anti-interventionist point of view.

Rassemblement National

France’s long-standing nationalist political party (in French).

Pax Americana

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As a citizen of the United States, the first specific question I’m going to address in an essay is the impact of my own country in history and current events.  There are several reasons for this.  First, because Washington acts on my behalf, I first need to address the actions and policies of that that regime and where I stand in regards to them, especially considering that I have served considerable time in uniform for them.  Second, because it is fashionable these days to call America a “propositional nation” that is “built upon and idea” which makes the country “exceptional”.  The implication here is that being American is an ideological act, and the assumption will tend to be, not unreasonably, that I hold to whatever notions my country was allegedly founded on, unless I specifically indicate otherwise.  Finally, the United States, though already past the noon hour of it’s power, is still widely viewed as the “world superpower” and is certainly the main power of the Western world, which this site is dedicated to.

The United States is not “exceptional”.  It is not exempt from the natural laws that have governed all other societies throughout history.  What applies elsewhere, applies here too.

The United States is part of Magna Europa, or Greater Europe.  It is a product of the colonization of the more sparsely populated areas of the world (North America, Australasia and some of the temperate areas of Africa) by the Western European powers, particularly Britain.  North America was the first of these lands to be colonized, and these colonies had always had a large degree of self-determination, even while holding a nominal allegiance to the British Crown.  Also, many of these colonies, especially the northern ones, were founded by England’s social dissidents, such as the Puritans, who had a significantly different cultural outlook than that which prevailed in the old country.  It was for this reason that the American colonies separated from the Britsh Empire as early as they did.  America is not then a “universal” nation.  It was founded by Englishmen, and not the delegates of the Continental Congress, at that, but the pilgrims who came on the Mayflower.

It is notable that the most quoted part of the Declaration of Indepenence, the premable, is also the least significant historicaly.  It is a bit of 18th Century Enlightenment table talk, derived from the writings of John Locke, that serves essentially to serve as filler between the introductory paragraph and the heart of the document, which is its list of complaints against the British Crown.  These complaints were regarding alleged violations of the rights that Americans were entitled to as British Subjects.  The Declaration was not some universal declaration of human rights like French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights of Man.  It was specifically a case for American succession.

America’s greatness is not separable from that of Western Civilization as whole; her greatness is Europe’s greatness.  America’s advantage over Europe was access to the rich resources of the North American continent and the protection of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from the conflicts that ravaged the Old World.  The two World Wars, in particular, leaving Europe in ruins, and destroying the European colonial empires, had left the United States and the Soviet Union to fill the vaccum as the world’s superpowers.  The United States was left, by default, as leading power of the West against Communism.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States seems to have set out on a course of making the world in its own image, as its reason for being.  The “universal nation” is the ideological justification.  It is also the justification for those within the governing class who are bent on importing whatever alien people or alien influence possible to America’s shores.  The essential political controversy in Washington is between these two forces.  As Robert W. Merry put it in Sands of Empire, “The domestic multiculturalists want to make America like the world, while the global monoculturalists want to make the world like America.”  These obstensibly oppose each other, especially as they manifest themselves in the two major political parties of the United States.  However, they ultimately work to the same end, like two sides of pair of scissors.  “The central point is that domestic multiculturalism and global universalism both deny the uniqueness of Western culture.  And both threated to destabilize the West as well as the world.”  The essence of both is egalitarian, and an egalitarian culture cannot assert its principles above those of other cultures while remaining true to its egalitarianism.  It cannot bear the thought of  “othering”, notwithstanding the fact that so many are perfectly capable of and willing to “other” themselves.

Ultimately, with the United States as the fulcrum of  Western power, this late American Weltaunschung has prevailed across the entire Western world, from Australia to Finland.  The West has become its own worst enemy.  Welcome to the twilight of Western Civilization.  The times ahead are sure to be interesting.

The Story Of The Occident, Abridged

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So here’s were I explain what I mean when I’m talking about Western Civilization.  I’m not talking about based on airy abstractions like “democracy” and “human rights”.  I’m talking about something that, like all civilizations, was formed, matured and aged organically.  Culture isn’t confined inside the pages of a book; it exists by being lived.  More importantly, while Enlightenment liberalism is a product of the West, it is not the West.  Western Civilization predates liberalism, and liberalism is not an essential feature of Western Civilization.

First off, Western Civilization did not begin with ancient Greece.  The Greeks were an interesting and remarkable culture; they were not our forerunners.  The fundamental ideas of Classical Civilization differed on a number of points from those of the West, the most significant being the lack of influence from Christianity, Western Civilization’s religious foundation.  Greece made significant contributions to Western culture to be sure, insofar as they were preserved and handed down through Rome.  The components of the synthesis from which the West was made were the Roman Empire, Christianity and the customs of the Germanic tribes of Europe.  The process of synthesis began with Lydia, the first European convert to Christianity (Acts 16:14-15) and it is after her that I name this website.  The basic stages of its development were marked out by Spengler in Decline of the West.

It was at what is usually called the High Middle Ages that we see a distinct civilization form.  The First Crusade was its appearance on the world stage.  This was Western Civilization’s “spring” or what could also be called its “childhood”.  It was during this period that its distinct features – political, social, economic, philosophical and artistic – were formed.  Its later developments were built on these foundations.  The new civilization went by the name of Christendom.

The Early Modern Period was the West’s youth, or “summer”.  It is in this period that the Western world was at the peak of its cultural generativity.  At this point Europe has clearly progressed beyond the Arabs and the Chinese, and trade has opened up with much of the world.  Most of that which was great in the West had its origins in this period. In art, with the Renaissance.  In religion, the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.  Finally, with what is most celebrated, often idolized today, the Scientific Revolution.

The “middle age”, or “autumn” of the West coincides with the Enlightenment and the Romantic reaction against it.  It is characterized by rise of the bourgeoisie to replace the landed nobility as the ruling class, politically exemplified by the French Revolution.  Economically, it is manifest in the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the capitalist system.  Cultural generativity continues, but not an the rate of the previous stage.  Culture begins to solidify into civilization.  Technological advances accelerate but advances in the realm of ideas slow.  Europe and America ultimately hold sway over most of the world, with the British Empire playing the lead role.

Western Civilization’s “winter”, or what is could be called its “old age” began in the twentieth century as the previous world was blown apart by the guns of August 1914.  Technology has certainly advanced, but that’s about all that can be said of this period.  The bourgeoisie is supplanted by technocracy under a new managerial class.  Its rule is characterized by a remarkable appetite for power, which imposes itself increasingly into the everyday lives of even its common subjects, for in the age of mass politics, the personal is political.  Cultural life becomes increasingly sterile as it is packaged for the masses, by the mass media.  Public discourse is reduced more and more to clichés and sound bites.  The United States presides over the West during these twilight years.

My timeline differs from Spengler’s on a few points of detail regarding when the stages began and end, but he was absolutely correct regarding what path we have taken and where we are going.