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.