The River vs. the Open Road

…the innate conservatism of youth asks neither poverty nor riches, but only immunity from change. – The Golden Age by Kenneth Grahame

If we can judge by the literature of that century, and we can, the 19th century was the century of war between principalities and powers. God and the devil were going at it hammer and tongs. Melville put it quite well: “The light is greater hence the shadow more.”

European man entered the 20th century spiritually exhausted and very much under the spell of satanic ‘isms. The first world war was one of the most startling proofs of Satan’s new dominance over the hearts and minds of the European people. In sheer number of adherents and societal influence, Satan had triumphed over our Lord. The old Faith still had an influence; it had not been thoroughly eradicated, but it would no longer be the centerpiece of Western Civilization. It would now be an underground faith, hidden in the subterranean vault of the European heart.

In every Christian century preceding the 20th century, there were the Athenian intellectuals who treated the Christian faith as foolish or childish, but the sneer of the intellectuals did not affect the Christian faith of the great mass of European people. In the era of the Enlightenment, for example, despite the deism of the philosophers, the faith of the common people remained intact. It is in the 20th century that we see, for the first time in European man’s history, the great mass of people adopting the faithless faith of the intellectuals.

What does it mean when we say a man has a faithless faith? It does not mean that he flat out denies Christ. What it means is that he hedges on all the crucial doctrines of Christianity. Nikos Kazantzakis, in The Last Temptation of Christ, gives us an example of Western man’s faithless faith. In the novel (I didn’t see the movie, but I suspect it was quite different from the novel), Kazantzakis, who revered the person of Christ, presents us with a Christ who is something more than man but also something less than God. Christ does bring Lazarus back to life, for instance, but as a scarecrow Lazarus, not completely alive, and not quite dead. Such is the faith of the modern European.

One doesn’t need an encyclopedic knowledge of ancient civilizations, just a little commonsense will do, to see that when a particular people loses their faith their civilization declines. European civilization retained its vitality when Athenian skepticism was confined to a few intellectuals, but when that skepticism became part of the common culture, the civilization that was once an all-consuming fire became a dying ember.

Of course we can’t artificially recreate the old European faith in order to restore European civilization. That’s not how things work. First comes faith, after which all those things are “added unto” us. But if the European were to embrace Christianity, full and free without let or hindrance, it would not entail the acceptance of a way of life or mode of being that was completely alien to him. It would merely entail the opening of the subterranean vault of his heart and letting his childlike faith in Christ back into the light of day.

It is painfully clear, however, that European man does not want to bring Christianity back into the light. He wants it to remain in the cellar. Yes, occasionally he’ll refer to Christianity when it supports his liberalism, but it is not his guiding light; reason is. And he persists in the belief in his own reason, despite the fact that the evidence is in. Man cannot live a moral life, or any kind of life, when reason alone is his guide.

If, in modern times, they who own the restraint of philosophical discipline alone have not given way to such grossness of conduct, it is because those principles of religion, which they affect to despise, have impressed on the public mind a system of moral feeling unknown till the general prevalence of the Christian faith; but which, since its predominance, has so generally pervaded European society, that no pretender to innovation can directly disavow its influence, though he endeavours to show that the same results which are recommended from the Christian pulpit, and practised by the Christian community, might be reached by the unassisted efforts of that human reason, to which he counsels us to resign the sole regulation of our morals.

In short, to oppose one authority in the same department to another, the reader is requested to compare the character of the philosophic Squire in Tom Jones, with that of Bage’s philosophical heroes; and to consider seriously whether a system of ethics, founding an exclusive and paramount court in a man’s own bosom for the regulation of his own conduct, is likely to form a noble, enlightened, and generous character, influencing others by superior energy and faultless example; or whether it is not more likely, as in the observer of the rule of right, to regulate morals according to temptation and to convenience, and to form a selfish, sophistical hypocrite, who, with morality always in his mouth, finds a perpetual apology for evading the practice of abstinence, when either passion or interest solicit him to indulgence.

--from The Lives of the Novelists by Walter Scott

The delusion that reasoning man can function quite well without Christianity was always the delusion of a segment of European intellectuals. And they never were forced to see it for what it was: a delusion. But now that European man en masse has fallen prey to the same delusion, we must look at it. Why, if reason is sufficient, does European man want to prostrate himself before the gods of color? What is missing in his rational self-sufficiency that makes him go whoring after the savage races? He misses a vital faith and he thinks that the blood orgies of the heathen can provide him with the vitality that he lacks. He thinks this because he has cut himself off from the wisdom of his race. The white man rejected the pagans’ faith because they saw God only in nature. In contrast, the white man saw that God was the animating force behind nature and His motivating principle was mercy and not sacrifice. When Christianity becomes a philosophy, the neopagan is right: it lacks vitality. But when it is a faith, it has the vitality to renew lives and the world. Let the neopagan who doubts the vitality of Christianity ask himself this question: Who fights the more fiercely for the fair maiden – the Christian knight who loves her or the pagan warrior who wants to possess her for a night?

What the European liberal finds out when he goes a whoring with the “vital natural races” is that “where man is not, nature is barren.” He needs the Christian fairy land, not heathendom. Take a walk through the forests of Arden or share the oars with Ratty on his river. In those worlds, blood is sacred because it is animated by His spirit. And nature is revered because it houses His Kith and Kin.

It is sad that with our Lord’s words before us, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,” we still turn to “adult” theologians and philosophers for guidance. It would be much better for our souls if we turned to those poets of the West who retained, in the face of the emerging atheism of the 20th century, their childlike faith.

In The Wind in the Willows (1908), Kenneth Grahame writes a poetic defense of Christian Europe. The white Europeans in The Wind and the Willows are Ratty, Mole, Badger, Mr. Toad, and all those animals who adhere to the same code as the four heroes. In the outer wood are the weasels and the stoats, the savage hordes of color, who do not see, when they view the ancient dwellings of the Europeans, home and hearth. They see only something to be plundered. And they get their chance when Mr. Toad, obsessed with his “cleverness,” decides that “the plowed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings,” cannot compare to the open road. And what Toad abandons, the weasels and stoats take. But they can do nothing but destroy, like the blacks in Rhodesia and South Africa; they can’t maintain or restore an ancient European dwelling. It is Ratty, Mr. Badger, and the Mole, who help Toad regain his ancestral dwelling. They face the barbarians of color and defeat them. They are greatly outnumbered, but they prevail because they fight for the homely virtues which only the European knows and treasures as his source of strength. The antique European has no magic talisman. He possesses something of infinitely greater value: a faithful heart. When Ratty declares his love for his river, he describes my love for antique Europe:

“I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So—this—is—a—River!”

“The River,” corrected the Rat.

“And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!”

“By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company, and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.”

Toad’s open-road philosophy leads us to the savage horde barbarism of the stoats and weasels. Ratty’s river leads us back to His Europe.

The White Deer

You may lie
On sweet grass by a mountain stream to watch
The last wild eagle soar or the last raven
Cherish his brood within their rocky nest,
Or see, when mountain shadows first grow long,
The last enchanted white deer come to drink

--Donald Davidson

There is nothing a writer can do to explain what he has written to someone who deliberately wants to misconstrue what he has written. But sometimes, very rarely, people ask for explanations because they genuinely want an explanation. For those people I offer the following.

First, I have never claimed that the Christian Faith is only a white man’s religion. But I have claimed, and will continue to claim, that I do not believe that the Christian Faith has ever penetrated as deeply into the souls of other races as it has penetrated into the soul of the white race. The white Europeans were the only race of people who adopted Christianity as conquerors. They alone saw Christ as worthy of worship because He was gentle, meek, and kind as well as powerful. All the other races adopted Christianity after they had been conquered. They saw Him only as a God of power, not a God of love.

Secondly, I do not believe that because whites have abandoned their cultural heritage it would be a good thing if whites were supplanted by other more “vital races.” I want to see a renewal of the white race, not an extermination.

Thirdly, I take issue with “Christians” who adopt, with glee, the false formula that says, as the white race falls, other races shall rise. In reality, I think the equation reads: as the white race falls, so fall all other races. The idea that white Christian churches can export a new, pure, nonwhite Christianity to other cultures is ludicrous. The Church has not stopped exporting white Christianity to other non-white nations; it has simply stopped exporting healthy, integral Christianity and is instead exporting decadent, liberal Christianity under the guise of a purer, non-racist brand of Christianity.

The myth of the black, noble savage does an injustice to white folk because it implies that the extermination of the white race is a consummation devoutly to be wished. But we must reject that false myth and the much-anticipated (by liberal and conservative whites) invasion of the black Übermenschen. For Western culture is irreplaceable, and it provides the only link to a world that is not of this world. As Christopher Dawson writes:

“And the importance of these centuries of which I have been writing is not to be found in the external order they created or attempted to create, but in the internal change they brought about in the soul of Western man – a change which can never be entirely undone except by the total negation or destruction of Western man himself.”

And the worship of the black Übermenschen will result in the complete negation and destruction of Western man.

Are we, as Christians, obligated to prefer polyglot societies to white societies? The modern Christian says we are, and Brazil is often held up as a model country. But is there some divine intent behind the separation of the races? The fact that the races were separated by God and the fact of the Tower of Babel story seem to indicate to me that God did intend the races to be separate. But of course liberals reject the reality of the Tower of Babel. They must needs reject almost the entire Bible if they are to hold to their view of polyglot universalism because there is no biblical sanction for their hellish vision.

What the racial universalist misses is one of the most essential elements of Christianity. A key building block for the Faith is a love for kith and kin. One can only love the stranger when one has learned to love one’s own kith and kin. To short circuit the kith-and-kin system, which has worked well for thousands of years (why has the Faith diminished as more “enlightened” views of race have gained ascendancy in the churches?), and to replace it with a bloodless racial universalism will ultimately lead to the extinction of the Christian Faith. And we are almost to the point where one could say racial universalism has led to the extinction of the Faith. In the end if the racial universalists get their way, the Christian Faith will be like a preserved corpse: it will still retain its outward form, but there will be no blood in it.

The character of Ratty in The Wind and the Willows is able to appreciate Mole’s love for his home because he himself has such a love for his own river. There is much to be learned from Rat’s devotion to his river. In fact, my own devotion to European culture and to my own race has never been expressed better than by Ratty:

“I beg your pardon,” said the Mole, pulling himself together with an effort. “You must think me very rude; but all this is so new to me. So-this-is-a River!”
“The River,” corrected the Rat.
“And you really live by the river? What a jolly life!”
“By it and with it and on it and in it,” said the Rat. “It’s brother and sister to me, and aunts, and company and food and drink, and (naturally) washing. It’s my world, and I don’t want any other. What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.”

A hopeless provincialism? No, it is a provincialism that leads to something much greater and more universal than the bloodless utopian universalism that is advocated by the Christian race mixers.

Addendum
Samuel Johnson was supposed to have claimed that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. I have often thought that mysticism is actually the last refuge of a scoundrel; after losing the debate, just get mystical with your opponent and tell him your argument defies rational constructions.

And yet although often the refuge of a scoundrel, there are mystical arguments that are valid and are not made because one is afraid of being challenged for one’s lack of empirical evidence and one’s lack of rationality. This is the reason many quite decent white “racists” often bring in false evolutionary theories to buttress up their case for the white race. They want something solid and empirical.

But the most compelling argument to me for the preservation of the white race, undiluted by other racial strains, lies not in the realm of evolutionary theory, which I do not believe in, but in the mystical realm.

In making my case for the white man, I am going to relate one example from what is a legion of examples. (And if you think a case for the white man need not be articulated, just listen to what is being said about him in all the citadels of ‘learned opinion’ throughout the world.)

When I worked as a police officer, there was another officer in a neighboring, urbanized borough whom we shall call Dave Mills (not his real name). Dave was a short, stocky, chain-smoking, overweight, fifty-one year-old veteran with over twenty-five years experience in police work. Dave was a white man. To the best of my knowledge, he never attended any church. Dave also, like the other white officers (and the black ones, too, for that matter) called black people ‘niggers.’ Dave was particularly anti-Negro, having been longer on the force than the rest of us.

Now, to the incident. Dave had finished his four p.m.-to-midnight shift and was heading back to his station. He was late because he had to finish up with a fender bender accident. On his way back to the station, he saw a congregation (not a religious one) of young black people. Two blacks in particular caught Dave’s attention, a boyfriend/girlfriend pair in their early twenties. The young black male was screaming at the young black woman, who appeared to be pregnant and was screaming back at the male. The screaming match was taking place on a bridge over a large stream. The stream was shallow enough and the bridge high enough to render someone quite dead if that someone were thrown off the bridge.

Dave’s first thought was to keep on driving – “Why get involved in some domestic dispute when I’m not even on duty? I’ll just tell the guys on the next shift to look into it.”

But Dave’s second thought, when he had driven about two blocks past the bridge, was “There might not be time for me to tell somebody else; that argument could turn violent.”

Dave returned to the bridge. When he got there he saw the same group of black youths as before, but the couple had gone beyond verbal confrontation; the black male had a knife to the woman’s throat and seemed to be trying to throw her off the bridge and/or slice her up.

Dave immediately called for assistance. And then he did something that is certainly not standard procedure but was something Dave often did because of his many years of experience. He unloaded his gun before getting out of the car. Why? Because Dave saw that he couldn’t shoot the assailant (the bullet might go through him and into the woman) and he also saw that he was going to have to grapple with a man decidedly younger and larger than he. If he lost the wrestling match, Dave knew he would be shot with his own gun. Yes, he could still be stabbed to death, but that, he reasoned, would take longer, and help (he hoped) was on the way.

I, being on the midnight-to-eight a.m. shift in a neighboring borough, and two other officers from Dave’s borough responded to Dave’s call for assistance. When we arrived, this fat, chain-smoking, politically incorrect, white male had the black male on his stomach (a black male with whom Dave could not have lasted one round in a boxing match) and was attempting to put handcuffs on him.

With help from the other officers and myself, Dave got the male cuffed. Dave was bleeding from knife wounds on his hands and arms. The woman was bleeding from wounds to the face, arms, and hands.

Dave called the ambulance for the woman and held her head in his arms till the ambulance came.

She recovered from her wounds and delivered her baby a few months later. Dave, whose wounds were minor, did not need to be hospitalized. He had undoubtedly saved the lives of the woman and her baby.

I have often pondered about that incident. Why did Dave bother going back to the bridge? He did not have to go back. No one would have faulted him for not looking into a non-incident. So why did he do it? There was a whole host of black youth who didn’t get involved, and who, in fact, were cheering for the assailant when I and the other officers arrived. So, again, why?

Well, I’m open to charges of mysticism at this point, but I must insist that the answer lies in the mystical realms. Dave, despite the fact that he was not a member of any Christian church and despite the fact that he probably had a rather hazy, nebulous idea about the Deity, was a blood Christian. Because he was a white man, he had the Faith which had been planted and nurtured in the blood of the white man some 1,500 years ago. That Faith can never be totally eradicated from the blood of the white man, and should never be diluted or supplanted by the blood of other races, even if they are actually Christian, or, as is more likely, if they merely call themselves Christian. The white blood is an essential support for Christianity. Without it there would still be Christian churches, but there would be no Faith left on earth.