Grim Statistics

The statistics that we see in the 'Death of the West' publications are pretty grim. One doesn't have to be a prophet to see that the white race is facing the end of the line. It would be somewhat less grim if it were only the white race in America which was finished, but it is a worldwide racial suicide we are witnessing, not just a national suicide.

The late Malcolm Muggeridge used the term 'the great liberal death wish' to describe the suicide of the European peoples. And at first glance that seems like an apt description, for is not suicide a death wish? Yes, it is. But the white liberal death wish is not your typical death wish. The white liberal wishes for the death of white civilization, but he doesn't wish for his own death. The obvious question to ask the white liberal is, "Don't you realize that the destruction of white civilization will also mean your own personal destruction?" The white liberal's answer to that is, "No." And he answers no because he is delusional. He has an Atticus Finch complex. White is evil, black is good, with the exception of Atticus Finch. He has fought the good fight and defended the good darky, and he will be worshipped by the darkies.[1] Every white liberal would deny that such vain impulses motivate him, but it is the reality. Overweening, egotistical pride is what motivates the white-hating white. And he hates, with satanic fury, any individual and any group of individuals that would challenge his delusional faith in his vision of himself as Atticus Finch.

An image has stayed with me from my freshman year in college. It is an image of a T-shirt with a picture on it of a black youth stabbing a white youth. The lettering on the T-shirt said something about slaying the oppressors. One would think that the T-shirt was worn by a black man, but it was not. A tall, blue-eyed, blonde boy (he could have been a poster boy for Hitler's youth movement) wore the T-shirt wherever he went. The young Aryan had a few black friends who he partied with and introduced to his white girl friends. If one of his black friends had actually stuck a knife in him, he would have been (if he lived) shocked and offended, because he was not the white on the T-shirt. That white deserved to be killed; he was 'thee and me.' But Atticus Finch? He deserves to be worshipped. "Stand up, your father is passing."

The white-hating white has abandoned his race because he has abandoned his faith. It is true there are many white-hating whites in organizations such as the Roman Catholic church or the Methodist church or the Baptist church, etc., that claim to have some connection to Christianity, but we cannot countenance such a claim. And we cannot do so because the entire Christian tradition warns us that pride, the overweening pride displayed by the white-hating, church-going whites, is the mark of Satan.

The great evangelist, St. Paul, and the greatest Christian poet, Shakespeare, speak with one voice about man. Man is a self-deceiver, who piles layer upon layer of falsehood over his heart. If he does not see himself as a self-deceiver who needs to clear away the sludge of deceit from his heart on a daily basis, he will destroy himself and those around him. He will be like King Lear prior to his repentance: he will be a great destroyer of himself, his family, and his countrymen.

It is possible for an occasional King Lear-type conversion, but we should note that Lear's conversion occurs after it is too late to salvage his kingdom. Which, I fear, is the only type of conversion that we are likely to see in the ranks of the white-hating whites. And even that type of conversion is highly unlikely. It is far more likely that the white-hating white will maintain his delusion even as the barbarian knife is piercing his heart.

Because the white-hating white worships the image of himself as a glorified Atticus Finch, he does not respond to a clarion call to arms based on the reality of the barbarian threat to the white race. Tell him what happened in Haiti when blacks actually had power, and he will yawn with indifference or scream "racist" at you. "That happened to bad whites, to oppressive whites. In the new world, organized by white Atticus Finches, there will be no oppression, so there will be no vengeful blacks." If you show him film footage of La Raza screaming for the heads of whites, his response will be the same as it was to the murderous actions of the blacks in Haiti. There is nothing that will alter the delusional mania of the white-hating white.

It is not, as Anthony Jacobs has pointed out, that the colored races are on the march, it is that the white race is on the run. If the white race would stop running, the colored invasion would end. But of course the white race will not turn and fight because the white-hating, white technocrats are the leaders of the colored invasion. They, in their hearts, have said no to the Christian society of the plowed field and the evening lingerings. Their hearts do not "receive Him still" because they have no hearts.

Look at the white technocrats. They are obsessed with theory: the cleric, damning with joyful glee, the "Anglo-Saxon race"; the capitalist, also damning with glee, the "lazy" whites who will not "work" in his sweatshops as he imports thousands of Aztecs to do his bidding. Behind all of this is the delusional belief of the white technocrats that they can achieve divine status by sacrificing white people to the colored hordes. And for a time they will be successful. The coloreds can be appeased by the sacrificial offering of non-technocratic whites. But eventually, when they have run out of white sacrificial victims, the technocratic Dr. Frankensteins will face the monster they have created. And then, they will face the long night of the knives.

I don't quarrel with the statistics compiled by the 'death of the West' authors. I don't need to see the actual numbers to know that they are correct. Everywhere I go, I see the death of the West. There are Mexican trailer camps where there were once white family farms, and black barbarians on every street corner. However, I do quarrel with the 'death of the West' authors who present only the statistical picture without taking the oath on the sword. No white man worthy of the name should view the demise of the white race with Thomistic-Buddhistic quietude. Take the oath, "To the knife." We do not seek to shun reality. The statistics are quite grim. But white men, real white men, are not driven to despair by grim statistics. All we need is a remnant band who will not yield.
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[1] I, like all school children then and now, was made to read To Kill a Mockingbird when I went to school. I liked the book, but what I liked about the book was the account of Scout and Jem's childhood. The Tom Robinson rape trial was of little interest to me. I accepted as a given that the prejudiced white Southerners were bad and that the only barrier to peace and harmony was white prejudice, but still, the Tom Robinson case did not hold my interest. I think the reason was that that part of the book does not ring true. Harper Lee had to make a choice. She could have written a classic novel about childhood innocence confronting the world outside of childhood innocence. But instead she decided to write politically correct but false social commentary.

The real novel, the true novel that she didn't write, would have told the story of two white children who had to learn, as we all do, about good and evil. They would have discovered that the Boogie Man of the fairy stories had a name and a color. His name was Tom Robinson and his color was black. He was guilty of crimes that defied their father's ability to explain. Finally, their father simply told them the story of God and the devil and the final triumph of the God-Man. And until that final triumph, the non-utopian Atticus Finch told them, never take the wall down between our people and the people of color.

The 19th Century Counter-Attack, Continued

Since Oswald Spengler wrote his epic book, The Decline of the West, there has been enough 'decline-of-the-West' books written to fill up the rooms in which the miller's daughter was required to turn straw into gold. Books by Thomas Molnar, Plinio Correa de Oliveira, James Burnham, Richard Weaver, Romano Guardini, Max Picard, and Hilaire Bello come to mind, but there are countless more. Although none of the death-of-the-West authors cockeyed optimists -- after all, they are writing about a death -- they are still more optimistic about the prospects for a revival of the West than subsequent events warrant. Why -- despite no lack of men willing and able to delineate the causes and the cures for the West's decline -- has the West continued to decline? Is it simply that the prophetic voices have gone unheeded? Yes, to a certain extent. But there is also something missing in the analyses of the death-of-the-West authors. What is missing is a sufficient comprehension of the limits of rational analysis. Dostoyevsky wisely depicts Stavrogin in The Devils as "rational to the end" as he hangs himself. And the 20th century death-of-the-West authors with their overly analytic and rational examinations of the West's decline simply tighten the noose around the gasping-for-breath throat of the West.

The Christians of the last Christian century -- the 19th -- knew something that eluded the 20th century death-of-the-West authors; they knew that we are created and sustained by God's love. Outside that love, we cease to exist in a form that is even remotely human. We become ugly caricatures of human beings. The culture that Western man created in response to Christ's love was sustained because we loved it, as a parent loves a child created from a marriage of love. But when the marriage became a marriage of convenience, we ceased to care about the child of that marriage. The child didn’t die, but it became, deprived of love, an ugly, depraved monster.

The decline of the West then is at once a simpler issue than the death-of-the-West authors perceived and a more complex issue. It is simpler in that the West’s decline can be easily summed up: We ceased to love it. But the problem is also more complex because it is much easier to analyze the death of a culture than it is to rekindle a love for that culture, which is why I once suggested that we look at the 19th century Christians. They faced the same cold, scientistic, Godless void that we now face, but they reacted to it differently. They responded to modernity by going deeper, by living the Pauline Christianity of “if I have not charity.” Our century, on the other hand, went cosmic, caving in to the old Greek notion which Christians of every century have had to fight, namely, that the more non-human and cosmic our concept of God is, the more religious we are.

It seems to me, when I read an author such as Walter Scott or George MacDonald, that the 19th century Christians were the last Christians to believe unashamedly in Christ’s humanity. And I say this because they were not ashamed of the ideals, such as chivalry and the cult of the Christian hero, which sprang from a belief in Christ’s sacred humanity. Therein, I think is the reason for the gulf between us and the 19th century Christians. We are ashamed of Christ’s humanity and therefore embarrassed by the older European culture which reflected that sacred humanity. It is more than just a slight fault, this turning away from the human Christ toward a more cosmic Christ. It is a sickness that leads to the death of the soul. Christ warns us about it in Mark 8:38:

Whosever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

And again in Luke 9:26:

For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s and of the holy angels.

In both passages Christ refers to himself as the Son of Man. Why the emphasis on His humanity? And why the Incarnation if not to emphasize that it was through humanity that one touched the living God.

The 21st century Christian responds to criticism of modern Christianity by saying nothing has changed. “It all goes on as before. People regularly watch the Christmas Carol and read the old fairy tales to their children.” But things are not the same. The 19th century Christians read Grimm and Dickens because they loved the stories; they didn’t study them for psychological insights. They believed in the One who inspired the stories. We study the stories along with the stories of the non-European countries just as we study the other religions along with His religion, but we have no personal connection to the stories of the European culture or to the divine Person who inspired the stories. Our approach is more cosmic and cosmopolitan than the old provincial approach of the 19th century Christians, but is it more Christian? Well, if to be more inhumane and devoid of passion is to be more Christian, then it is more Christian.

And it is the Catholic old guard, those great defenders of the Faith in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who remain the greatest obstacle to a full-blooded Christianity and, hence, a restoration of the West. The great defenders were all, so they claimed, great despisers of modernity and great advocates for the ‘Thing,” which was, of course, Catholicism. But the great defenders were also modernists. Their jeremiads against modernism were merely against the results of modernism. They were like liberal parents who draw back, appalled, when their children put into practice the principles they had been espousing but not practicing.

What is the essence of modernism? The poets and the folk, before the folk became intellectualized, have always known what the essence of modernity is. It is the disembodied brain, the angelic, satanic presence standing aloof from humanity and sneering at humanity. The old guard modernists didn’t sneer as openly as their children, but the sneer was there. They were infected with the notion that the reasoning power of the mind was pure, and the heart was defiled. They believed this despite the fact that the reality of life and the Old Testament prophets as well as Christ Himself all testified to the fact that it was the wisdom of the blood and of the heart that counted.

Most of the old guard are dead now; why not let them rest in peace? After all, they meant well. Whether they meant well or ill is more than I know. What I do know is that their heirs in the Platonic Novus Ordo and the Aristotleian traditionalist ranks still live and still perpetuate the lie that Christianity is merely a transmutation of Greek philosophy. Christianity didn’t die out because people no longer yearned for a personal savior; it died out because people yearned for a personal savior whom they could not find in the Church. When the 20th century Church ceased to resist the Greek separatist heresy, their church became a Christ-less church. And the old guard was so intent on defending the Greco-Roman walls of the Church that they neglected to check if Christ was still within those walls. It would sound nicer, but it would be a lie, if I said I harbored no resentment against the Catholic old guard. I resent them because I and countless others followed the path that they had laid out and yet never followed themselves, ending up in a dark dungeon with no light, no air, no anything.

Permanently etched in my mind is a conversation I once had with one of the Catholic old guard. I had asked the great man why he quoted St. Thomas so much and what he actually thought of St. Thomas. “Personally,” I told him, “he leaves me cold.”

The gist of his reply was that the great thinker did not think very much of St. Thomas, and he would not read him if he was trying to learn about the Christian Faith, but he quoted from St. Thomas all the time because St. Thomas was the reigning king in conservative and traditionalist Catholic intellectual circles, the main audience for the great man’s books and articles. So much for the old guard.

At the end of the day there is only one, absurd, archaic hope left for the West, and that hope is the Christian hero. He is a man so blinded by love for the old European culture and the One who inspired it that he doesn’t pay any heed to the new, false, Christless versions of Christianity and the new, emerging cultures of darkness. He is not a Nietzscheian Übermensch, a man of the future; he is a man of the past, the European past. And he endureth all things and hopeth all things because he has that burning flame in his heart that the 19th century Christians and St. Paul called charity.