The Denaturing of the West
By • 1/29/08 |
They have no capacity for self-criticism. |
In the past week, I have posted two stories about the creeping restrictions on freedom of speech that have been imposed on Westerners because of our fear of offending non-whites. Yesterday, I discussed the case of Frances Semler, who was forced out of her job because she was a Minuteman member and a critic of illegal immigration. Last week, I described the threat of punishment hanging over Canadian critics of Islam. We can all think of a hundred examples of whites who have been punished for their opinions about race, from Brigitte Bardot to Rush Limbaugh. These cases are illustrations of a key principle: integrating non-whites into white societies changes our culture and makes the maintenance of our traditions and our way of life impossible.
One of the distinctive traits of white societies is our capacity for self-criticism. No dogma, religious or otherwise, has been immune from the critical insight of our people. It is for this reason that white societies have been so capable of innovation. Traditional ways went out the window as they were found wanting and replaced with novel ideas and practices.
The West’s self-critical nature is the reason why it invented science. The key idea behind the scientific revolution is that a theory of how the world worked was not justified by its conformity to the teachings of the Bible and other traditional texts, but only by its success in explaining empirical phenomena. Science was only possible because we could admit that if the facts and tradition conflicted, tradition must be wrong. For all other cultures in the world, tradition won out over the facts.
The scientific revolution was one of the major sources of our political revolutions. The scientific spirit debunked the divine right of kings and led to representative government. Self-criticism also corroded our ethnocentrism. While all other races made rigid distinctions between their own ethnic group, who were truly human, and other ethnic groups, who were something else, Westerners were the first to ask themselves whether the difference was so great as all that. Our recognition that all races of man are equally human and that none is a favorite of God undermined traditional justifications of slavery and racial discrimination and led to the end of those practices.
The non-whites whom we have imported into our countries, however, show no such taste for self-criticism, and they react with blind fury whenever one of their core beliefs is challenged. How could anyone possibly believe that 40 million Mexicans aren’t a blessing to America, think Mexicans? Fire the Minuteman! How could anyone be so wicked as to mock the true prophet, Muslims cry? Fine the magazine! Behead the infidel publisher!
And thus, in order to accommodate Hispanics and Muslims, we have had to change the basic nature of our societies and place some ideas outside the reach of criticism. The core values of our society—that the races are equal and that diversity is a strength—can no longer be challenged without the risk of serious consequences to the critic. Importing dogmatic races into our societies has in turn led whites to become dogmatic. The integration of non-whites into our societies has denatured the West.
Race realists think of the loss of the West as a portending disaster, but, in a sense, the West has already been lost because the free-spirited and fearless discussion of our core values is no longer permitted. Today the true spirit of the West survives only in small, isolated, and vulnerable outposts like The Inverted World.
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Ian writes:
In a sense, the West has already been lost because the free-spirited and fearless discussion of our core values is no longer permitted. Today the true spirit of the West survives only in small, isolated, and vulnerable outposts like The Inverted World.
I agree with this. We live in a topsy-turvey world of inverted values, and wishful thinking will not rescue us.
Liberal ideologues who are responsible for creating what, from a conservative point of view, is a world turned upside down, have done so by intellectual legerdemain. The liberal credo has been gradually imposed as the prevailing orthodoxy of ideas - which it is assumed all right thinking people will accept without question.
Those of us who lurk at outposts of dissent (like this one) in blogland, cannot be expected to transform the climate of politically correct opinion in the Western world any more than Greenearthers can affect climatic conditions in the “real world”.
I do not believe that the liberal perspective that characterizes our age will be closed down by its own internal contradictions. The very flexibility of the postmodern standpoint is its strength. Perhaps some kind of social catastrophe - as yet unimagined - will bring Western society to its senses.
By on 1/30/08 at 9:42 am
Civil war is what will bring Western society to its senses. I do not want to appear to advocate war, but I am convinced that that is where we are headed. And that it will be a good thing. Nothing short of violence in the streets will awaken white patriots to the invasion, revolution, and genocide perpetrated on Western societies. This isn’t some far-fetched notion. We are already in a cultural civil war. War has already been declared on whites everywhere. It won’t take much to escalate it, in my view.
As societies in Europe and North America become bogged down in domestic crises, the Multi-Cult will respond with even more force and violence to maintain its grip. This will create its own dynamics, it could be argued, eventually leading to the sort of state collapse we saw recently in the former USSR. To think that the liberal order can be overturned by a few bloggers is naive. It’s going to take more than words.
Conservatives, paleocons, and white nationalists need to adopt a revolutionary mindset, with a view to disrupting and eliminating the present order and erecting a new one. Given the timid nature of so many conservatives today, however, this is probably fantasy (at least in the short term).
By on 1/30/08 at 1:15 pm
William writes:
Conservatives, paleocons, and white nationalists need to adopt a revolutionary mindset, with a view to disrupting and eliminating the present order and erecting a new one. Given the timid nature of so many conservatives today, however, this is probably fantasy (at least in the short term).
In my view, the “fantasy” isn’t just short term, but indefinite. Those capable of adopting a revolutionary mindset are a tiny élite minority in any society, and they indoctrinate and animate the masses with an insurrectionary message.
But the passivity and apathy of the masses is almost proverbial in our age of affluence - and they have been thoroughly brainwashed by the political correctness of their liberal masters.
By on 1/30/08 at 3:03 pm
William of OC is correct when he says,
>Civil war is what will bring Western society to its senses. I do not want to appear to advocate war, but I am convinced that that is where we are headed. It is hard to agree that this will be a good thing, but it appears that it going to be a necessary thing. All other attempts to awaken the West appear to be failing.
William further says,
>I think most whites today are constrained by a vestigial Christianity or sense of (misplaced) decency that prevents them from fighting back. As things worsen, and as our families and children are continually assaulted, raped, and killed, I think this outdated Christianity will wither away. Perhaps we will rediscover the pagan virtues of our ancestors.
If Western society loses sight of Christianity, then it will be a matter of starting over from the very beginning. It has been Christianity that provided the guidance for the development of Western society to its highest form, and without Christianity and sliding all the way back to paganism, the West would be no better off than the Huns. This is not the desired outcome at all.
Christianity is not outdated in the least. What is outdated is humanism and rationalism that grew out of the Enlightenment. These are ideas that have not served us well and need to be abandoned. Mankind as a whole cannot live without faith in the Living God, but the rationalism that has allowed so many to think they can is what has gotten us into the dangerous position we are in today.
By on 1/30/08 at 3:52 pm
I know it’s far more complicated, but let’s say for the sake of simplicity, that Western societies have been denatured by the triumph of liberal secularism. The question is, will it be renatured by a Christian renaissance?
I don’t think that’s likely for the following reason: we cannot go back to a pre-Enlightenment mindset. As Roger Scruton observes, “The Enlightenment made explicit what had long been implicit in the intellectual life of Europe: the belief that rational inquiry leads to objective truth.” Rational or scientific inquiry has been the scourge of religious belief. We cannot return to time of unquestioning obedience to religious authority. We cannot unlearn the knowledge, and we won’t abandon the scientific attitude which inform the spirit of our age.
That’s why I speculated that only a social catastrophe - if it were destructive enough but as yet unimagined - might succeed in giving our civilization a chance to rediscover its core values.
However, my unmitigated skepticism urges me to scoff at such an apocalyptic scenario.
By on 1/31/08 at 4:46 am
Christianity has guided the West straight towards the abyss. The West is the only civilization in the history of the world to commit suicide. It was Jesus who taught Westerners to reject their own kin; to lionize the meek, the poor, the downtrodden, the race alien. No one else thinks this way. The current state of the West is inconceivable outside of a Christian context.
By on 1/31/08 at 9:16 am
Charlie Prince has completely misconstrued the words of Jesus when he says, “It was Jesus who taught Westerners to reject their own kin; to lionize the meek, the poor, the downtrodden, the race alien.”
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” That is not quite the same thing as lionizing the meek. It is encouragement to the meek, but it is definitely not what Charlie has said.
Jesus always spoke with compassion for the poor, but he recognized that there are other considerations in life as well. When the woman poured the expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet and this act was criticized by some, they said, “this could have been sold for much money and that money given to the poor.” Jesus replied that poor you have with you always but that he would not always be with them, recognizing that there are priorities in life.
Jesus did speak out in favor of the law of hospitality, the need to treat all men as brothers, so that people passing through the country were not seen as potential victims to be robbed or slain. Life in the Middle East (and elsewhere) at that time was intensely tribal, and the idea of even allowing a foreigner to pass peacefully through your country on a journey was not well accepted.
Nowhere did Jesus advocate the idea that we should bring in and accept invaders who would take away our homes and our lands. This would have been completely foreign to Jesus; it was not even on the table at all. In St. Matt 25, Jesus says: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in…. and continues a discourse on the treatment of strangers. Jesus is talking about how we should deal with individual strangers, not with invading armies. Now the objection will be raised that the mexicans come in one-by-one, not in organized armies, so doesn’t Jesus says we have to take them each in. It seems clear that Jesus says we must care for their immediate needs (we cannot leave them to die of thirst in the desert, for example), but we have no obligation to allow them to stay in the USA because we are aware of the bigger picture as well. The Lord God created nations and national boundaries long before Jesus came to earth, but Jesus did not come to take away any of the old law. That would include the idea of nation states with boundaries. Those who say that Jesus requires us to accept and support all aliens do not know the Bible.
The Christian faith, the following of Jesus Christ, is absolutely essential to the rebuilding of the USA.
By on 1/31/08 at 12:21 pm
Your argument is easy to refute. There is no evidence that “white” societies are particularly receptive to change, or that “non-white” societies are not. Otherwise American Indians would refuse to ride horses, Chinese food wouldn’t have hot peppers in it, the Japanese wouldn’t manufacture electronics, South Americans wouldn’t speak spanish, and cell phones wouldn’t be so prevalent in western Africa.
The fact is, every culture has changed drastically over the last few centuries as cultures came into contact with each other. There are plenty of places in Hertfordshire that look much the same today as they did fifty or a hundred or two hundred years ago, thatched roofs and all. And there are plenty of places in Japan, South America, and Africa where the culture has changed so radically that their ancestors wouldn’t recognize them.
Bad premises breed bad arguments.
By on 1/31/08 at 1:35 pm
The West doesn’t need Christianity to be modern. We already have a working model that has successfully reconciled modernity with tradition, race with religion, public interest with private profit. I share Jared Taylor’s view that Japan is superior in almost every way to the decomposing United States. That’s who we should be imitating. More later.
By on 1/31/08 at 3:37 pm
Chapka,
I beg to differ. Almost all of the technological innovation produced by the human race has been produced by the West. All modern political philosophies, from liberal democracy to communism, were produced by the West. The West underwent a number of fundamental intellectual and social revolutions, such as the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, on its way to modernity.
The world outside the West did not produce such transformations indigenously. Rather, it adopted modernity by necessity after the West created it. So, it is plain that whites have a greater capacity to bring about change than non-whites do.
By on 1/31/08 at 7:20 pm
“The West doesn’t need Christianity to be modern. We already have a working model that has successfully reconciled modernity with tradition, race with religion, public interest with private profit. I share Jared Taylor’s view that Japan is superior in almost every way to the decomposing United States. That’s who we should be imitating. More later.”
Enough with this over-praising of Asians. I thought this was a disease that only existed on Amren. Asians aren’t us and we aren’t them and nor should we want to be them. We have many qualities that they lack and visa versa. They may be more on the ball than us when it comes to preserving their people and culture but to say that they are superior to us in every way is naive, suicidal and liberal-sounding. And that wasn’t what Jared Taylor was necessarily saying. Instead, that is what a lot of “race realists” over on Amren interpreted him to say.
Seriously, I am getting fed up with this “oh those Asians are better than us in every way” garbage. Guess what? They also had to do a lot of copying from us just a few decades ago before they could even compete with us. No, I would prefer not to be like Asians in many ways (actually in most ways). I am happy being white.
By on 2/1/08 at 1:02 am
Can someone tell me where Jared Taylor (might have) said that whites should imitate the Japanese?
I agree with Courtney. Asians create smug, conformist, and often despotic cultures that are fundamentally at odds with whites’ individualism and need for autonomy. See my last article and Humility and the West.
White activists should learn to appeal to whites’ core values, rather than trying to transform whites into something they are not.
By on 2/1/08 at 11:56 am
Sure. I was referring to this wonderful essay by Jared Taylor, In Praise of Homogeneity. The Japanese have learned a lot from the West. I think we have much to learn from them.
By on 2/1/08 at 1:30 pm
Just an observation here. What is interesting about Asians is their sense of racial unity. It’s real. It exists. Living in an area with increasing numbers of Asian colonists, I see it every day. Asians are just not as vocal about it as mestizos and blacks. I find it interesting because racial unity is often perceived by white people as something only low-class (“white trash”), wicked, ignorant people would advocate. And yet, it exists amongst industrious, high-IQ Asians.
By on 2/1/08 at 5:21 pm
Charlie Prince,
Saying we should learn a lot from them is different than saying they are superior to us in every way (disgusting). And Jared Taylor wasn’t even saying that. He was basically praising their homogeneity and showing how it has made their society more productive than ours in many ways. He wasn’t saying that they as a people are superior.
By on 2/1/08 at 5:34 pm
The West today has been lost, yes, but the West will be regained. The ruling Multi-Cult consists of a thin web of lies and absurdities. It won’t take much to shred it. Indeed the shredding has begun. Simply speaking the truth is enough to send our enemies into fits of rage and violence. What we should understand, however, is that increasingly repression and violence will be used against us and our people. Things are going to get worse. When that happens, I suspect, the gloves come off. I think most whites today are constrained by a vestigial Christianity or sense of (misplaced) decency that prevents them from fighting back. As things worsen, and as our families and childen are continually assaulted, raped, and killed, I think this outdated Christianity will wither away. Perhaps we will rediscover the pagan virtues of our ancestors. Whites need to rediscover our taste for power.
By William of OC on 1/30/08 at 12:53 am