Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

Nothing routs us but
The villainy of our fears.

The 4th of July holiday is a depressing one for me because I don’t think a last-place team should be celebrating. And the U.S. is a last-place team. The European countries had many glory years before they hit decadence; the U. S. went straight to decadence. For the first time in history, a group of men decided to found a country without benefit of tradition and the wisdom of the ages. Solely through the power of enlightened minds, they were going to chart a new and better course for mankind.

The problem of the old world, the enlightened minds decided, was the throne-and-altar. By eliminating those two old pillars of society they thought something new and improved would emerge. Well, something new did emerge. But the enlightened minds did not solve the age-old problem of authority. They were still faced with the dilemma that Shakespeare’s Coriolanus warned the Romans about:

They choose their magistrate;
And such a one as he, who puts his 'shall,'
His popular 'shall,' against a graver bench
Than ever frown'd in Greece. By Jove himself,
It makes the consuls base; and my soul aches
To know, when two authorities are up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter 'twixt the gap of both and take
The one by th' other.

Andrew Lytle summed up our system of government quite well when he called it the “cynical balancing of powers.” The history of the English kings, and all of the kings of Europe for that matter, is a very depressing spectacle of chicanery and bloodshed. But one can always hope for a better King. There is no hope in a system where you are permanently locked into an endless cycle of sound and fury signifying nothing.

John Paul II’s biographer, George Weigel, claimed the Pope’s blessing for our democracy, and evangelical Protestants are always cranking out books equating American democracy and godliness. I could quote pre-Vatican II popes who say the reverse of Weigel and Wojtyla, and I could quote, against the evangelical Protestant, authors such as Fitzhugh who do not view the American Constitution as a sacred document. But there is no need to engage in a ‘dueling documents’ war. Instead, let’s simply look at the fruits of American democracy. On whose watch did Christianity thrive? Under the blood, throne, and altar Europeans or under the egalitarian, democratic Americans? Case closed.

A spiritually healthy people will always crave a monarchy despite the many problems associated with it. There is no poetry in our democratic system. And where there is no poetry, there is no God.

I often fantasize about what would have happened if Jefferson Davis had had enough sense to tear up the Constitution, appoint Nathan Bedford Forrest the Warrior King of the South, and then resign. For the Southland was our only hope for a different form of government in this hemisphere. It had the peasantry, the yeomanry, and the princes. All it lacked was a King. King Forrest would have retreated to the Deep South and told the Yankees, “We do not seek a battle as we are, but as we are, we will not shun one.”

All right, it wouldn’t have been that Shakespearean, but it would have amounted to the same thing. Forrest would not have made Brutus’s mistake at Philippi. He would have made the Yankees come and get him. And after the South’s victory? Industrial workers from the North, soon to be small farm owners, would have flocked to the South to become part of the Southern kingdom, and black serfs would have been sent back to Africa, a more humane fate than sending them North to work in the factories.

Well, it didn’t happen like that. But if this anti-nation of ours ever does become a nation, it will be one with a Christian king ruling over a Christian people who can say with pride, “I serve the King, and the King serves Christ.” But in the meantime our democratic system creeps in this petty pace from day to day.

When we talk about American democracy and the modern European democracies, we are not talking about a band of stalwart Saxons gathering together to vote for their King, we are talking about a messianic faith. The modern liberal believes the democratic process, in and of itself, is something holy. Participation in the democratic process is seen as a purification, and non-participation is seen as ungodly.

Modern democracy is a death knell for the white man. He must not consent to be part of the democratic process or to allow the democratic plague to remain in the nations of the West. Democratic countries have no borders. Nor do democratic countries respect the distinctiveness of the white race and the Christian faith. The world is one, big, democratic, melting pot in the minds of the modern purveyors of democracy. On this 4th of July, let us make some very undemocratic vows. We will not blend with the great colored hordes nor will we bend our knee to the democratic process. We worship a different God.