Divided We Stand: A Traditionalist Manifesto

By Selwyn Duke

Conservatives are generally very nice people — who never saw a culture war they couldn’t lose. That is to say, we often hear cracks about how Barack Obama and his ilk may “evolve” on issues, but conservatives exhibit that tendency, too, and their evolution goes something like this:

“Marriage is between one man and one woman, period!”

Five years later…

“I can accept civil unions, but marriage shouldn’t be redefined.”

After five years more:

“The states can do whatever they want, just keep the feds out of it.”

And 10 years further on:

“People can do what they want. How does faux marriage affect me, anyway?” (This is the point British “conservatives” have reached.)

And at an even later juncture it’s, “Why shouldn’t homosexuals have the right to ‘marry’? It’s a matter of equality.” (Just ask some “conservatives” in Sweden.)

Oh, this isn’t limited to marriage or anything else some dismiss as “social issues.” Conservatives were against Social Security (in FDR’s time) before they tolerated it before they were for it before they demanded it. And they are against socialized medicine. But should it endure for 15 years, their children will tolerate it and then accept it and then expect it — as today’s conservatives do in Western Europe.

This gets at the only consistent definition of conservatism: a desire to “conserve,” to preserve the status quo. This is why while 1950s conservatives in the US were staunchly anti-communist, conservatives in the USSR were communist. As the status quo changes, so does the nature of the prevailing conservatism. And it is liberals, as the agents of change (without the hope), who shape tomorrow’s status quo.

Here’s how it works: the liberals come to the bargaining table demanding a change. The conservatives don’t like it, but being “reasonable” they give the other side some part of what they want. And it doesn’t matter if it amounts to 50 percent, 30, 15 or just 1 percent.

Because the libs will be back, next year, next election cycle, next decade.

Again and again and again.

And each time the cons will get conned, giving the libs a few more slices, until the left has the whole loaf and those ideological loafers, conservatives, are left with crumbs and a crumbled culture.

In a word, today’s conservatives are generally people who have assimilated into yesterday’s liberals’ culture. And every time we compromise — on civil unions, big-government programs or whatever it may be — we assimilate further. And what is the nature of this evolution?

It is nothing less than a superior culture being subsumed by an inferior one.

Now, all this perhaps sounds hopeless. Are we damned to inexorable and irrevocable movement toward the “left,” at least until the complete collapse of civilization is wrought? Well, there is an alternative to assimilation.

Separation.

There has been some talk of secession lately. But note that there is a prerequisite for political separation: cultural separation. Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Slovenia didn’t become their own nations because they suddenly thought the name Yugoslavia was no longer cool, but because of profound cultural differences. And Catalans in Spain some time back empowered parties that have called for an independence referendum this year because of cultural differences. Make the cultural differences great enough, and separation (assuming you can avoid bondage via a governmental iron fist, which is the other possibility) is a natural by-product.

But a key to increasing that cultural divide is avoiding assimilation. Did you ever hear of an Ainu (Japan’s original people) independence movement in Japan? No, because they’ve been largely absorbed by the wider culture, sort of how traditionalists get absorbed by our modernistic culture and end up having, at best, children who’ll reflect today’s liberals and be called tomorrow’s conservatives. So how can further assimilation be avoided?

We only need to look at how it’s done all over the world. And there are two ways. To illustrate the first, consider how ardent Muslims avoid being subsumed. They don’t view fellow citizens in a host nation as national brothers.

But as the “other.”

Oh, the others may occupy the same borders, but they are as alien as anyone outside them. Their culture is to be rejected not just because it’s decadent and despicable — and our liberal-created variety is certainly those things — but because it is of the other. So it is with the others’ laws, social codes, and traditions, too: they are born of an infidel, alien culture and are to be viewed with extreme suspicion if not hostility.

And this is precisely how leftists should be viewed.

For this to work, our instincts must be thus: If liberals say left, we go right. If they say down, we say up. If they scream “Change!” we shout all the louder “Tradition!” and then push for our own change — tradition’s restoration.

Note here that I’m not speaking of a cold intellectual understanding of the issues, which, don’t get me wrong, is important. But just as it is passion that makes a man fight for a woman, it is passion that makes you fight for a cause. Loathe what the liberals stand for, meet their agenda with animosity, cultivate a visceral desire to wipe it from the face of the Earth. Hate, hate, hate it with the fires of a thousand burning suns.

One drawback to this tactic for division, however, is that it constitutes a blind defiance that could conceivably reject virtue along with vice. An example of this is when elements of the black community dismiss education, Christianity and higher culture because they view embracing them as “acting white.” Yet since liberals are right only about 0.4 percent of the time (and I’m perhaps being generous), this isn’t the greatest of dangers at the moment. Nonetheless, this brings us to the ideal method for separation.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” A good example of love-driven separation is the Amish. They do try to avoid hating anyone (although I suspect they hate certain ideas), yet their love for their culture is so great that they remain a people apart. Of course, where they fall short is that they won’t fight at all, even politically. And this philosophy will not yield separation on a wide scale because the left simply won’t allow millions of people to live “off the grid.” Someone has to fund the nanny state, after all.  

But the proper combination is obvious. We need sort of an Amish jihad, a deep love of the good and hatred of the evil that translates into action. But there is a prerequisite for this, and it brings us to something both the Amish and Muslim jihadists have in common.

They believe in Truth.

Sure, the Muslims may call it the will of Allah; the Amish, God’s law. But the point is that they aren’t awash in a relativism that, amounting to the Protagorean notion that “man is the measure of all things,” is unduly influenced by man. They don’t see a large number of people lobbying for some loony social innovation and figure that, with man as arbiter, they have to “get with the times.” Rooted to what they see as eternal, they don’t bend to the ephemeral.

Quite the opposite of G.W. Bush, I’m a divider — not a uniter. If this sounds bad, note that Jesus himself said He had not come to unite the world but as a sword to divide brother against brother. And while I certainly don’t claim to be God or even godly, I do know that tolerance of evil in unity’s name is a vice — and blessed division a virtue.

We can hate what is in front of us, love what is behind us, or both. But if we’re sheep and not soldiers, compromisers and not crusaders, Western civilization’s days will be behind us — and in front, perhaps, a thousand years of darkness.

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                                               © 2014 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

Comments

[plus.google.com/106572914527743437857]

A thousand years of darkness? No.

Eternal darkness.

But fortunately there really is a God. And Jesus Christ really is his son. We've got this.

[Philip France]

Selwyn,

I largely agree with your column. However, what I do protest is your reference to modern "liberals" as liberals. Liberalism died a quick death beginning roughly with the assassination of JFK and concluding during the year 1968 (in the United States, anyway.

Since then the only issues that modern "liberals" are truly liberal about are perverted sex, illegal (and in some cases even legal) drugs and violent crime. In every other respect they leftist fascists who seek to impose their decadent proclivities and absurd worldviews on the rest of us.

They live in such darkness that they are abhorred by light. How can one associate the hint of the word "liberty" with this?

[Philip France]

Selwyn,

I largely agree with your column. However, what I do protest is your reference to modern "liberals" as liberals. Liberalism died a quick death beginning roughly with the assassination of JFK and concluding during the year 1968 (in the United States, anyway.

Since then the only issues that modern "liberals" are truly liberal about are perverted sex, illegal (and in some cases even legal) drugs and violent crime. In every other respect they leftist fascists who seek to impose their decadent proclivities and absurd worldviews on the rest of us.

They live in such darkness that they are abhorred by light. How can one associate the hint of the word "liberty" with this?

[Dmitry Chernikov]

Selwyn, you are correct that the conservatives conserve the past victories of the left (and the state, given that the left is statist).

But if you -- thank goodness -- have a positive program, other than rejection of every innovation, then you need to enunciate it. When you say you want a "restoration" of "tradition," I have no idea what you are talking about. What tradition? The tradition of the 1950s? The Articles of Confederation? The feudal tradition? Are you talking about traditional methods of production, for example? Are you a Luddite, imagining every novel machine to be an evil?

Why look to the past as your guide? Was the past really that great? On the contrary, it stands to reason that the past was more primitive and less happy (at least in some ways) than the present is and than the future will be. You are a smart man; pick an actual ideology, as in "coherent set of ideas" as opposed to "whatever used to be," improve it, and advocate it.

Again, I do not know what "tradition" you have in mind, so your passionate articles are uninstructive.

[Dmitry Chernikov]

Again, if you have a vision of a good society or aspects thereof, then we can have an intelligent conversation.

I can even acquiesce in the fact that this vision may be inspired by some past experience or lived wisdom, though I insist that it must be progressive, as in promising a future that is better than things have been so far in all time periods.

Otherwise, in posting these few little comments here, I have wasted my breath.

(Notice how you are a reactionary, literally; in your own words: "If liberals say left, we go right. If they say down, we say up." You do not act to achieve your own goals, you react to the actions of the liberals. You are being a puppet.)

[Dmitry Chernikov]

Another question: are you a relativist regarding "tradition"? Is any tradition as good as any other, as long as it's tradition?