To Win or Die with Europe

Although underreported, it is now clear that the United States has shown far too little concern for the civilian casualties of Iraq. Should this surprise us? How can a nation that has so little respect for its own peoples’ desire for a secure homeland have any respect for another peoples’ homeland.

Every American of European ancestry is told from the first hour of his birth that he has been born into a unique nation. His is a proud inheritance. Is it really? It doesn’t seem that way to me. I’m proud of the Christian inheritance my ancestors brought over from Europe, but I’m not proud of an anti-nation that respects creed over blood, religious diversity over Christianity, freedom over virtue, and the power of government over the hearth.

Despite the fact that we are told we don’t need a homeland founded on a common faith and common ties of blood, many American Europeans still long for one. It is not possible to completely kill the yearnings in a European heart. I know I have always longed for a homeland, which is why I suspect I have always been in sympathy with the Southern side in the Conflict between the States. There was a real sense of the homeland in the Old South. Thomas Nelson Page suggests a reason for this:

The difference between the Southern civilization and the Northern was the result of the difference between their origins and subsequent surroundings.

The Northern colonies of Great Britain in America were the asylums of religious zealots and revolutionists who at their first coming were bent less on the enlargement of their fortunes than on the freedom to exercise their religious convictions, however much the sudden transition from dependence and restriction to freedom and license may in a brief time have tempered their views of liberty and changed them into proscriptors of the most tyrannical type…

The Southern, on the other hand, came with all the ceremonial of an elaborate civil government—with an executive, a council deputed by authorities at home, and formal and minute instructions and regulations.

The crown hoped to annex the unknown land lying between the El Dorado, which Spain had obtained amid the summer seas, and the unbounded claims of its hereditary enemy, France, to the North and West.

The Church, which viewed the independence of the Northern refugees as schism, if not heresy, gave to this enterprise its benison in the belief that “the adventurers for the plantations of Virginia were the most noble and worthy advancers of the standard of Christ among the Gentiles.” The company organized and equipped successive expeditions in the hope of gain; and soldiers of fortune, and gentlemen in misfortune, threw in their lot in the certainty of adventure and the probability that they might better their condition.

Under such auspices the Southern colonies necessarily were rooted in the faith of the England from which they came – political, religious, and civil. Thus from the very beginning the spirit of the two sections was absolutely different, and their surrounding conditions were for a long time such as to keep them diverse.

--The Old South

So, in Page’s view the North was settled by Europeans with utopian notions and a willingness to impose those notions on others, and the South was settled by adventurous (but less discontented and quarrelsome) Europeans more in tune with the ancient rhythms and evening lingerings of Europe. Certainly that generalization doesn’t apply to every individual (Washington Irving, born in New York City, for instance, was not a utopian), but I think Page’s assessment is essentially correct.

And our current American oligarchy, instead of encouraging white American school children to feel connected to the land of their ancestors and to their ancestors’ faith, teaches them to despise their European inheritance. It’s small wonder that white adolescents grow up without any sense of racial pride and see nothing wrong with mixing their blood with that of blacks. In fact they see it as a positive good because in doing so they are killing their European blood ties.

I’ve written about H. V. Morton on several occasions because I love his books. During a time (1920 – 1950) when other European intellectuals were traveling to the Far East or Africa looking for something novel and exciting, Morton traveled through Europe and wrote about his travels because he correctly saw that the history and the people of His continent were the only really interesting history and people to write about. And that history has been suppressed by the Gingerbread House technique. “The great satanic wisdom of American totalitarianism is this: if you ban the old books and the old traditions, the people might still love them enough to fight for their restoration. But if you give them a gingerbread house to munch on and coat the older books and traditions in monkey vomit, the people will joyfully let the old books remain unread and the old traditions die.”

In the works of the great novelists of the late eighteenth century and the entire nineteenth century, the villain is often an Uncle Silas type. He can ape the Christian forms because he has a superior intelligence, but his heart belongs to Satan. But so long as Christian principles rule society, the Uncle Silases have to keep their hatred of Christ and Christians a secret. Now, however, Uncle Silas no longer needs the mask; his type now rules. And they are not going to permit a bred-in-the-bone Christianity to surface again. They will permit Church-on-Sunday/Mass-on-Sunday Christianity to exist because that type of Christianity generally supports Uncle Silas-demonism. And when it doesn’t, it is ineffectual because it is not integral. A true bred-in-the-bone Christianity is rooted in European history, European traditions, and European blood. If white European Americans were actually exposed to that type of Christianity, the Uncle Silases would once again be on the periphery of society instead of at its center. It’s not a spirit of our “democratic humanity” that we need. White people need a spirit of clannishness. When the fiery cross appears high on the mountain top, we must rally to it. And then, man to man and “in the van,” we’ll win or die with Europe.