"Incomparable in Its Symmetry"

On the 4th of August, 2007, R. Jamison posted a remarkable speech by John Sharp Williams on the blog Spirit Water Blood. Williams was a U. S. Representative and U. S. Senator whose father was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. The speech was published in the Confederate Veteran magazine in 1904 (Vol. XII, No. 11, November 1904, pp. 517-521).

The speech is magnificent. It is impossible to imagine any U. S. politician of the last fifty years speaking with such depth and insight.

Let me just quote a few passages to illustrate Mr. William's profound insights.

On the subject of fighting --

"Mere fighting is no virtue; far from it. Indeed, the man who is not great enough and brave enough not to fight when he ought not to is a poor excuse for a man. Speaking for myself, I have no admiration of the professional fighter, whether he be a Texas cowboy or a West Point graduate…"

Williams expresses my own feelings about war and fighting. I have no respect for "our troops" because they are not fighting for a cause I respect.

Why did the South fight? –

"But there was something else, and even a greater cause than local self-government, for which we fought. Local self-government temporarily destroyed may be recovered and ultimately retained. The other thing for which we fought is so complex in its composition, so delicate in its breath, so incomparable in its symmetry, that, being once destroyed, it is forever destroyed. This other thing for which we fought was the supremacy of the white man’s civilization in the country which he proudly claimed his own; 'in the land which the Lord his God had given him;' founded upon the white man’s code of ethics, in sympathy with the white man’s traditions and ideals."

Yes, it is the same today. We are not fighting for free trade, capitalism or the U. S. Constitution. We fight for white civilization.

The great struggle during the "Reconstruction Era" –

"There is no grander, no more superb spectacle than that of the white men of the South standing from ’65 to ’74 quietly, determinedly, solidly, shoulder to shoulder in phalanx, as if the entire race were one man, unintimidated by defeat in war, unawed by adverse power, unbribed by patronage, unbought by the prospect of present material prosperity, waiting and hoping and praying for the opportunity which, in the providence of God, must come to overthrow the supremacy of 'veneered savages,' superficially 'Americanized Africans' – waiting to reassert politically and socially the supremacy of the civilization of the English-speaking white race. But what gave them the capacity to do this sublime thing, to conceive it and to persevere in it to the end? To wait like hounds in the leash – impatient, yet obedient to the call of the huntsman’s horn – which came upon the heels of the autumn elections in the Northwestern States in 1874? What gave this capacity to the 'easy-going, indolent, life-enjoying' Southerner? What if not four years of discipline, training, hardship? Four years which taught the consciousness of strength and mutual courage, the consciousness of capacity for working together, the power and the desire of organization, and which gave them, with it all, a capacity for stern action when required by stern events? But for the war – the lessons which it taught, the discipline which it enforced, the capacity for racial organization which was born with it – I, for one, do not believe that conditions in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi to-day would be very far different from what they are in Hayti, Cuba, or Martinique."

Alas, the fruits of that great victory were squandered. By the 1950's the "veneered savages" were ushered back into white civilization. Yes, it was often at the end of a Northern bayonet, but that doesn't explain the South's capitulation.

In the past, as Williams points out, the white Southerners stood shoulder to shoulder against the racial universalists. What happened? I think the South succumbed to the great seduction. They learned to love Big Brother. It gets rather tiresome to always be contra mundum.

And once the incomparable symmetry of white civilization is destroyed, can it ever be regained? The answer is no, if we think like the walking universalists. There is no system, no magic talisman that will restore white civilization. It's not a question of restoring the Latin Mass or voting for a president who is "born again." The princess in the fairy tale remains in a death-like slumber because no one loves her. She will be restored to life when she is loved. The love that brings even the dead to life comes only from those men and women who are connected, through their spirit and blood, with His civilization. Nothing is impossible to such men and women.

Eternal Europe

The fairy tales that were collected and recorded by the Brothers Grimm are such an important part of our European heritage. It is no more possible to separate the fairy tales from the European people than it is for a leopard to change its spots.

I often interview the Young Drummer, whose deeds are recorded in the Grimms’ tale called “The Drummer.” In that story, he travels through the forest of Giants and ascends a glass mountain in order to rescue a fair princess. I have always been impressed by the fact that he embarked on his rescue mission in spite of the fact that it is impossible to climb a glass mountain. Integral men of Europe do not live their lives according to the rules of science.

_______________________________________

Interviewer: Thank you for consenting to the interview.

Young Drummer: It’s no problem. I enjoy our discussions.

Interviewer: I don’t feel particularly connected to my country on any given date, but I always feel particularly unconnected on the fourth of July.

Young Drummer: It seems to be a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Interviewer: Yes, that’s it exactly. I don’t think that a white man should be celebrating the demise of the white man, do you?

Young Drummer: Of course not. But the white-hating liberals are not celebrating their demise. They believe that they have transcended the barriers of race, sex, and family. What they celebrate when they celebrate cultural diversity on state-sanctioned holidays such as the 4th of July is your demise. They celebrate the death of the old Europe and the men and women who are loyal to it.

Interviewer: Is there any hope of winning the white-hating whites back to the fold?

Young Drummer: No, there isn’t. Their hearts are stone. They are wedded to Satan and the colored races.

Interviewer: Is the final conflict about to begin then?

Young Drummer: That’s more than I know. Many of the signs are there, but it would be presumptuous of me, or anyone, to claim they know the day or the hour.

Interviewer: Europe will never come back then?

Young Drummer: The real Europe, His Europe, is still there, it simply is no longer visible to most Europeans.

Interviewer: It’s almost as if Satan has imposed his vision of Europe over the old Europe.

Young Drummer: That is correct. From my standpoint, the standpoint of eternal Europe, you live in Satandom.

Interviewer: I don’t dispute that. And we must, while residing in Satandom, keep the vision of the old Europe before our eyes. But aren’t we ultimately supposed to turn Satandom back into Christendom? Isn’t having a vision of the old Europe only a first step?

Young Drummer: I wouldn’t put it that way. You are thinking too much like a modern man when you talk about first and second steps. That implies that vision is something passive and separate from the man. Vision is the man. When European man saw Christ, true-God and true-man, he acted on that belief and built a civilization of “incomparable symmetry.” Vision and love are inseparable. We see with the heart, and we act according to what the heart sees.

Interviewer: I don’t quite follow you.

Young Drummer: Let me put it this way – when you first met your wife-to-be, you fell in love because of what you saw in her heart. From that love flowed all those masculine impulses that the liberals sneer at: the desire to protect your love, to raise a family with your love, and to grow old (the best is yet to be) with your love.

It was the same way with the Europeans and Christ. They saw something in Christ that they loved. From that love came Christendom. Imperfect by divine standards, just as our love is imperfect compared to His love, nevertheless it was a love and a civilization as different from your modern Satandom, and every other civilization on the face of the earth, as heaven is from hell.

Interviewer: The modern European has issued divorce papers to Christ?

Young Drummer: Yes, he has ceased to love Him.

Interviewer: Is there someone else?

Young Drummer: Yes, modern man has returned to the second oldest faith, faith in man.

Interviewer: Is there any difference then between the barbarians of color and the post-Christian whites?

Young Drummer: There is a difference in degree, not in kind. The difference in degree consists of the different aspects of the religion of man. The colored races worship the blood. Their deities reflect “virtues” that the barbarians see in themselves. What an antique Christian would call savagery the barbarian calls faith.

The post-Christian white also worships himself. But the post-Christian does not worship his blood, he worships his mind. The reason white liberals get so upset when the people you call Kinists mention things like race, blood, and hearth is that such notions challenge the liberal’s faith. He believes all wisdom comes from the mind of man and not from the blood of European man united to the Spirit of God.

Interviewer: So the white techno-barbarian and the colored barbarian are united in their hatred of the incarnate God but not united in their reasons for the hatred.

Young Drummer: Yes. The white techno-barbarian, as you call him, worships rationality, which of course becomes the worst type of rationality when it is divorced from His spirit and blood. And the colored barbarian worships only the vital power of his blood, which of course becomes inhuman barbarism without the humanizing influence of His spirit and blood.

Interviewer: What is the result of the union of the technocratic white with the barbarians of color?

Young Drummer: Death for one’s civilization and death for the individual souls that adhere to the Christless religions of deified man.

Interviewer: You seldom mention the Jews or the Jewish conspiracy. Is that because you don’t believe the Jews are the main threat to Christian civilization?

Young Drummer: First of all, there is no longer any Christian civilization. So I take it that you mean to ask, “Are the Jews the major reason for the demise of Christendom, and are they the main obstacle to the rebuilding of Christendom?”

To both questions, I answer, no. The Jews represent an organized body of people who were and are opposed to Christ’s reign of charity. As such they will always be a danger to Christ’s church and His followers. But the Jews could not have undermined Christian civilization nor could they stop the rebuilding of it if it were not for an organized body of post-Christians who have steeled themselves to resist the light even more fiercely and maniacally than the Jews.

Interviewer: The Roman Catholics?

Young Drummer: Not just the Catholics. The Catholic Church is the worst of the anti-Christian churches because it has the most formidable organization, but all the Protestant churches, like the Catholic Church, have institutionalized the idea that God lives only in the mind of man.

Interviewer: He exists or doesn’t exist according to the whims of man?

Young Drummer: Yes, that is their idea.

Interviewer: I grant that there is no reclaiming the techno-barbarians, but isn’t there a small segment of white people who could, if they saw the Christ you see, be brought back to the European fold?

Young Drummer: There are. Although I don’t see how they will get a chance to see Christ. He exists in the European past as chronicled by the European poets. But the poets are not allowed to go directly to the potential converts. Literary critics and psychologists filter out their contents.

And the Gospels suffer the same fate as the poetic chroniclers of the soul. The content of the Gospels is distilled into a faithless vapor by Roman Catholic theologians and Protestant Biblical exegetes.

Interviewer: You don’t paint a very encouraging picture. There seems to be no hope.

Young Drummer: That’s not what I’m saying. Christianity is the religion of “when hope seems nearly gone, God’s relief by us is surely won.” Look to the European forest. Fight your way through the barbarians. And ignore the white rationalists who tell you that you are childish and racist to look for God in a forest. Then venture into the dark woods. You will meet witches and dragons there, but you’ll also find Him, and He will sustain you in all your battles.

Interviewer: You come from the forests of Bavaria and the world of the Brothers Grimm. Aren’t you just a little bit prejudiced in favor of forests?

Young Drummer: Yes, I am prejudiced. And I intend to stay prejudiced in favor of the European forest, in the sure and certain hope that my ‘prejudice’ will lead me to the King, who sanctified that forest with His blood.

Interviewer: Your faith is my faith and your blood is my blood.

Interviewer and Young Drummer (holding up their swords and crossing them): To eternal Europe, and death to Satandom.

“The Love That Once Was There”

I vividly recall a period in the early years of my marriage when my wife was pregnant and I was unemployed. If you’ve ever been in that situation, you know how depressing it can be. So I felt very relieved and very fortunate when I found work before the savings account hit zero.

There was a downside to the job I finally came up with. It was in Academia. Academics are generally to the left of center, and I had views that were to the right of center. But I had been raised in a liberal household and attended liberal schools, so I knew enough about liberals to avoid the types of remarks that would have placed me back in the ranks of the unemployed.

I spent four good years at that job. My children were all below the ages of ten, so their problems were easily solved with a kind word and a cookie, and my wife was quite content with our house and our lives. But the roof caved in on me in the form of a new academic dean in charge of my department. He was, of course, a liberal, but that was not the problem. I knew how to get along, for the sake of my job, with liberals. This man was insane, like Captain Queeg of “who stole the strawberries” fame. You could not adjust to his rhythms, because he had no rhythms; his internal clock was completely out of order. He was truly insane. In his first year, he fired and replaced over half of the employees in his department.

There was nothing you could do to stop the mad dean from firing you. He took a dislike to people without reason. And once you became the focus of his hatred, your days were numbered. I got a reprieve from the governor when, after his second year at the university, his personal life imploded, resulting in his dismissal. But during his two year reign of terror, my life was hell because my family’s subsistence depended on a madman.

There were approximately forty men and women who were at the mercy of that insane dean, but there will be over 400 million people at the mercy of a deranged madman if John McCain becomes President. We don’t know all the evil intentions that lurk in the fiendish soul of John McCain. But we do know some of his intentions already.

1) He plans on continuing and expanding the war in the Middle East, and he has not ruled out a nuclear strike in his expansion plans.

2) In addition, he plans on bringing back the cannon-fodder draft, democratic capitalism’s solution for unemployment and ‘overpopulation.’

3) He will reintroduce his ‘amnesty for barbarians’ legislation.

4) He will establish hostile, adversarial relations with two of the last great white countries, Serbia and Russia.

And that is only what we know he will try to do. We do not know the rest of the evil that lurks in the heart of John McCain.

Of course the presence of a devil-man such as John McCain is the long-term result of centuries of inroads, by the devil, into Western civilization. But the more immediate cause for the rise of John McCain is the moral failure of conservatism.

When William F. Buckley founded National Review in the 1950’s, he claimed the magazine’s purpose was to “stand athwart history, yelling ‘stop’…” And in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, National Review had some people writing for them such as Whittaker Chambers, Richard Weaver, Donald Davidson, and Russell Kirk, who actually saw America as an extension of Christian Europe and not a ‘grand’ experiment in democratic capitalism. There were also lunatic democratic capitalists within the magazine (Buckley was one) even in the early years, but they maintained an alliance with the cultural conservatives against the communists. But the democratic capitalists were against the communists for different reasons than the cultural conservatives; the capitalists and the communists were battling, twin brothers. Both had materialistic, Utopian visions of a people’s republic ruled by an elite few. They simply differed on the means to achieve their vision. The cultural conservatives, on the other hand, opposed communism because they saw it as a threat to Christian, European civilization.

When the threat of Russian communism died, the cultural conservatives such as Patrick Buchanan, Samuel Francis, and Russell Kirk were purged from the ranks of conservatism. Twenty-two year old economic gurus and radio talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh became the leaders of the ‘conservative’ movement. Those same leaders are now wringing their hands over a John McCain candidacy, but when you create a moral vacuum the devil feels quite free to step in.

The death of the Republican party, which used to provide a small space for cultural conservatives, would not be tragic if the Democratic party provided a moral alternative to the Republicans. But the Democratic party abandoned, many years in advance of the Republican party, their moral core. It was the Democratic party that had stood for the rights of the poor. But they turned their attentions away from charitable outreach to the needy in order to focus on special entitlements for politically fashionable ethnic groups.

I cannot say with an air of existential fortitude, when looking at the possibility of a McCain presidency, I “know the merriment that men know when events have ended in utter disaster.” I can’t say that, because I have children I want to see grow up “clean and straight” in a world that still has some respect for the evening lingerings of Western civilization. What is to leave betimes? A vision of a civilization connected to Him.

The obstacles the modern white man faces seem insignificant compared to those obstacles that men such as Charles Martel, Alfred the Great, and Hernando Cortes had to overcome. But those men and the men who fought with them had something the modern man lacks: faith. And that type of faith, the faith that inspires men to keep fighting when everything seems hopeless, comes from love. Nothing dies if you love it enough. Isn’t that belief at the heart of our faith: “For God so loved the world…” He loved us so much that He refused to let us die. And we don’t have a legal, judicial arrangement with Him that says we must pay Him back for His love. His love was freely given; He won’t compel us to return it.

The Christ-haters are always looking at Christian Europe -- and commanding us to do the same -- from the outside. And when viewed from the outside, Christian Europe seems no different from any other civilization. There is violence, lust, greed… the usual suspects. But if we look at European civilization from within, as Walter Scott and the European poets do, then we see that European civilization is the Little Welsh Home in which “nothing can compare with the love that once was there.”

The neocons, the barbarians, and the liberals all view Western civilization from the outside. The barbarians see it from the outside, because it is not their civilization. And the neocons and the liberals see it from the outside, because they no longer are capable of seeing anything from the inside. They have lost the capacity to love. Life has meaning to them only in the abstract. That is why they must have an impersonal system to sustain them, whether it be democracy, communism, or scholasticism.

All is cheerless, dark and deadly if we look on the democratic process as the final resting point for European man. But if we look on the democratic process as a hideous aberration which we can, and should, walk away from, there is hope. That “incomparable symmetry” of European civilization stemmed from the freely given love of the European people to their Savior. It is not impractical or unrealistic to expect that if their love returns, so will the civilization that was born of their love.

Of course, it is not written in stone that European civilization will be restored. But it is also not written in stone that our modern, racial Babylon is the final destiny for the European people. Love is a fire that can spread, maybe not as quickly as hate, but it can be more lasting. If we, the Europeans, pit our love of European civilization against the neocon, liberal, barbarian hatred of it, who’s to say that love won’t finally prevail?

Addendum: Saint Paul said, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” And if our hope is only in the democratic process, aren’t we also of all men most miserable?

In Defiance of Ruin and Death

“We are in God’s hand, brother, not in theirs.”

I begin with a quote from John Sharp Williams (whose speech from 1904 was posted on Spirit Water Blood in 2007):

But there was something else, and even a greater cause than local self-government, for which we fought. Local self-government temporarily destroyed may be recovered and ultimately retained. The other thing for which we fought is so complex in its composition, so delicate in its breath, so incomparable in its symmetry, that, being once destroyed, it is forever destroyed. This other thing for which we fought was the supremacy of the white man’s civilization in the country which he proudly claimed his own; 'in the land which the Lord his God had given him;' founded upon the white man’s code of ethics, in sympathy with the white man’s traditions and ideals.

Mr. Williams maintains that the white man’s civilization once destroyed is forever destroyed. What would he say today? Let us not delude ourselves and say that white civilization has not been destroyed; it has. And every white man with a heart that still “indignant breaks” is trying to come to terms with the fact of the destruction of white civilization. Is it really, now that it has been destroyed, gone forever? That is more than we can know or should seek to know. Mr. Williams, who was a white man back when white males were men, would be the last man, when viewing the ruins of Western civilization, to advise us to remain content with its destruction.

The European civilization was “complex in its composition.” And that complexity makes it impossible to rebuild it as if it were a cathedral or a statue, but I wonder if the reason for the complexity of European civilization might be the smoking ember that could rekindle a fire? The white man’s civilization was complex because it was the only fully human civilization. Certainly there have been fully developed human beings in non-white civilizations, but those individuals became fully human because they adhered to the ethics and values of the white man’s civilization. Kipling’s “Gunga Din” is an example:

An' for all 'is dirty 'ide,
'E was white, clear white, inside

The keystone of the distinctively human civilization was the faith of the European people, as a people, in Jesus Christ. Their link to Him, as evidenced by their culture, was sacramental; the incarnate Lord was all around them, in their churches, in their architecture, in their stories and in their traditions. It is indeed tragic that the Protestants who were once committed to a strict adherence to the Bible have rejected the notion that God became incarnate through His people. And it is doubly tragic that Roman Catholics who were once committed, prior to the revolt of the scholastics, to a sacramental view of the holy Eucharist should have joined the Protestants in their denial of the incarnational aspects of the faith. The unspoken, implicit creed of both the modern Protestant and Roman Catholic is that Christ’s thoughts became incarnate of the Holy Ghost through the virgin Mary and were made manifest to a select few who were capable of understanding great thought. Modern Christianity is Socratic, not Christian.

In order to fill the void in their souls that cannot be filled by Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, the modern European Christian has gone a-whoring after new Gods who can fulfill his need for an incarnational faith. The evangelical’s blasphemous attempt to make non-believing Jews into the people of God is one manifestation of the European’s need to see his faith embodied in a people. But what type of faith is it that can only be held by rejecting the central role of Christ as the one and only mediator between God and Man? And what type of faith is represented by the ecumenical conferences at Assisi where every faith and every people are glorified except the antique European and the Christ of the antique European? The end result, fast approaching, of the modern Europeans' desire to replace their lost faith in a European people connected to the Living God, is to elevate the Negro to the status of God’s people. They are the true evidence, to the modern white man, of God’s grace. Look around you. Is that smug, conceited look on the faces of whites with black children and black grandchildren merely the after-effects of a good bowel movement? No, the white European is all aglow because he or she has become connected to the people of God. It is a terrible thing to lack a living embodiment of God’s grace. The New Age Catholic and Protestant think they have found that embodiment in the black man.

Things spiritual cannot be proven by the dialectical. That is why Philip does not respond to Nathaniel’s question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” with a Socratic dialogue. He says, “Come and see.”

If a man truly has eyes to see and ears to hear can he fail to see the difference between old Europe and modern Europe? The incarnate Christ is present in the former, and Satan is incarnate in the latter. The children of antique Europe danced and mourned to the Divine Piper’s tune, and they became fully human as a result. The children of modernity have not danced or mourned to the Piper’s tune, and they have become inhuman as a result.

The Shakespearean tragedies and the Bible share one central theme: the words we use to frame our laws and worship come from an “abundance of the heart.” It is evident that the post-Christian European has given his heart to the false gods; otherwise he would not worship the Negro and seek to blend Christianity, Judaism, and liberalism.

The great poet Miguel de Unamuno was right to write about the “agony of Christianity.” The Christian must face the tragedy of existence with only his faith in Christ to comfort him. When that faith wavers, and the Christian asks himself, “Suppose He is not really who He claims to be?”, then the previously fervent devotee becomes first a lukewarm adherent, and finally a full scale apostate, whoring after any God that can comfort him in the here and now. And the hereafter? “Best to blot that from my consciousness.”

The love for Christ is no longer in the European’s heart because he no longer believes Christ died on the cross for our sins and rose from the dead in order to assure us of eternal life. If the European doesn’t think he needs forgiveness for his sins and he doesn’t believe that Christ conquered death, he will not feel any filial love for Christ, and as a corollary he will feel no love for the civilization that was built by a people who loved Christ.

The European people from the days of Alfred the Great to the last days of Queen Victoria’s reign felt that they were a people with a special destiny. They were Christian when the word meant something. Their faith in Christ gave them a respect for their culture which had been created out of love for Him. That type of faith makes a people determined to survive as a people. They have something to pass on to their children, and they know that they serve as a beacon light to the nations still shrouded in the dark night of heathenism.

We have seen the result of the European’s flight from the “agony of Christianity.” He no longer sees the European people as a distinct people with a special destiny. He no longer sees the need to keep faith with the past. Not only does he no longer want to keep separate from the heathens and show them the light emanating from His culture, he wants to be absorbed by the darkness of heathenism. The European’s headlong rush to the black abyss all stems from the transfer of his affections from Christ to the barbaric 'isms, technological and primitive, that Satan has created for the ruin of souls.

There has not been nor will be any manly Christian response to Satan’s bold conquest of the Europeans coming from the ranks of the halfway-house Christians. They are content to rummage around the ruins of Christian Europe and call the ruins an improvement. The Christian’s answer to Satan’s destruction of Europe will come, as it always has come in the past, from the Europeans who never ceased loving Christ as the warrior God who came down from heaven to lead them in battle against the forces of evil. The first Europeans got it right: Christ the Hero, Christ our Brother, not Christ the endpoint of evolution or the founder of a philosophy, is the source of the spiritual force that enables a man to hurl his defiant ‘no’ at Satan and all the forces of hell. The Christ story was accepted and believed by the Europeans because they had not completely forgotten the source of their being. The twilight of the gods was not the end of the gods:

Deep in the wood two of human kind were left; the fire of Surtur did not touch them; they slept, and when they wakened the world was green and beautiful again. These two fed on the dews of the morning; a woman and a man they were, Lif and Lifthrasir. They walked abroad in the world, and from them and from their children came the men and women who spread themselves over the earth.

The neo-pagans are a disgrace to the world ‘pagan.’ Our pagan ancestors bent their knees to Christ because they recognized Him; He was the God above the Gods who would fight for and with them against Satan. They had hearts to love, and then when they heard of the coming of the Christ, they had a God worthy to love. From that love came the European people.

Tricks and gimmicks from the halfway-house Christians will not restore the civilization that has been burned to ashes. Only the love, which passeth all understanding, that Christ has for His people can rekindle a fire in a civilization that has turned to ashes. The Great Heart is waiting to set our hearts on fire. The European hero of old, who we are all called to be, was not afraid to approach the living God, because he knew with the unerring instinct of love that he would not be consumed by the divine fire; he would become a man strengthened and nurtured by divine charity.

The European civilization is not like any other civilization, and its destruction is not like any other destruction. “So long as the blood endures” -- and it does endure in some European hearts -- there is hope that Europeans will see the God of Europe which the antique Europeans saw, then fall in love once again, and rebuild Europe over the ashes of Europe. +