Not a Proposition

“America is part of the West, and as both a political and cultural order, is not ‘based on a creed’ or ‘derived from a proposition.’ America is neither a ‘universal nation’ nor an ‘experiment’ con-cocted by ideologues. America is the unique and irreplaceable product of centuries of specific racial, historical, and cultural identities. America and its cultural and political identity will endure only so long as the identities that created it and sustain it endure, and when they die, America will die.”

- from “A Statement of Principles” published in The Occidental Quarterly

I was pleased to see some recent articles in The Occidental Quarterly and Middle American News that criticized the propositional nature of the so-called American experiment. No nation can be a propositional nation – a nation based on an idea – and survive. The clarion call in both magazines was for European Americans to realize that their nation was Europe. We are only patriots to the extent that we embrace our European heritage. The American Legion and George Bush form of Constitutional patriotism is really treason.

There will be no counter-revolution in this country until the propositional notion of country is washed away. It will be a welcome cleansing. Standing foursquare against the counterrevolution are the mad-dog liberals, the Evangelical Protestants, and the Irish Catholic Americanists. It is easy to see why the mad-dog liberals want America to remain a propositional nation, but why do the latter groups want it? I would suggest the reason lies in their flawed concept of religion. Both groups have embraced the propositional faith of the medieval scholastics. The Protestants inherited it from our “enlightened” founding fathers, and the Irish Catholics received it from their church. “If God is a propositional God,” the evangelicals and the Irish Catholics reason, “then why not embrace a propositional country?” It is largely pagans who have rejected the false propositional nature of the American experiment because they do not have the same intellectual handicaps that the pseudo-Christians have. The destruction of constitutional America and the restoration of European America can only take place after the defeat of the liberals, the evangelicals, and the Catholics, after which, one will still have to convert the counterrevolutionary pagans to a non-propositional Christianity (which, come to think of it, was the original Christianity of the Europeans).

It seems from whatever side one tackles the ‘Decline of the West’ problem, one is always faced with the same dilemma. In order for the West to become the West again, it is necessary for a man, who is also God, to be born of a virgin, suffer and die, and then to rise from the dead. Eugene O’Neill once wrote a play called "Lazarus Laughed." In the play, O’Neill depicts Lazarus, after he has been redeemed from the grave, as a man without fear. He now knows that he can laugh at death, and the people close to him laugh at death as well. But then the talking begins, the propositional talking: “How do we know Lazarus was actually dead? How does one define death? Maybe it was only an illusion,” etc. And soon no one is laughing any more, not even Lazarus.

That metaphysical laughter is gone from European man. All that remains is a few dirty jokes. And we lost the laughter when we sat down with the scholastics at that great medieval talk show.