The role of Christianity

I write when I find time and inspiration. And when I find inspiration I often write a lot. The week that went I didn't find the time. But a core theme of mine was brought up by two of my favorite discussion partners: the question of the role of Christianity behind liberalism, political correctness and all that.

First Fjordman posted the article A Christian Background for Political Correctness?, both at The Brussels Journal and at Gates of Vienna, referring to me as a source of inspiration for his post:

According to the blogger Conservative Swede, whom I have debated this issue with at some length, Christian ethics is more unfettered in modern liberalism than it is in Christianity itself.

At the same time there is a discussion going on at View from the Right, about liberalism and Christianity, launched by the question by Jeff from England to Lawrence Auster:

Have you addressed the point that Christianity may be inherently liberal, at least in part?

And the two discussions met here, where Lawrence Auster quotes above Fjordman article and discusses it.

I have discussed the role of Christianity behind modern liberalism, etc., with both Fjordman and Lawrence Auster since about a year, but the discussion never entered the cyberspace. But now it's out there, so next time I find time and inspiration I will give you my view about it. There is quite a lot to say.

Traditionalist conservatives focus their criticism on liberalism (modern liberalism including mainstream conservatives, neocons etc.), and do it well. I'm probably more reactionary than them (or more revolutionary?), since I will here, in this blog, put the focus on criticism of Christianity, democracy and American hegemony. These are things much harder to question since they go deeper into who we are and the society we are part of. But I see it as necessary. Liberalism should be criticized, but it is already done well, so I intend to put my focus on the three things I mentioned (which are also all connected to Wilsonian world order).

Give me some time to think about what end I should start from, and I'll be back.

The essence of democracy

At Gates of Vienna, Asger answered my post Democracy favours those who breed faster, by writing "Well this is why we should rejuvenate the ideas of classic Athenian democracy". To which I answer:

The Athenian democracy was a horrible Rousseau style system. Among other things, it sent Socrates to death. There were very good reasons for intelligent people as Plato and Aristotle to oppose this system. There were no elections, officials were appointed by lottery. This is the consequence of the core dogma of democracy. Since everybody is equal, why have a selection procedure to find the most appropriate?

And we see how today's modern democracies are converging towards this point; it's bound to, since this is the nature of democracy. Modern democracy still superficially has the semblance of a traditional republic. The traditional republic being firmly rooted in European political tradition, a tradition that has served us well for so many centuries in creating prosperity and freedom. A system based on elections, elections based on the meritocratic idea of having the best to rule us. The idea of peaceful transition of power, in a way making real political change possible. The "golden era" of modern democracy, up until the '70s, is comparable to the "golden era" of the Islamic empire, in the sense that what was successful and civil was what was still remaining of the previous system and had not yet been steamrolled by the new ideology. But modern democracy, who claims to be a heir of and an improvement upon the traditional republic(1), is constantly converging towards pure democracy. The electoral process is today an empty gesture of symbolism that changes nothing in Western countries. So the peaceful transition of power, providing real political change is no longer possible. Furthermore, it's converging towards lottery. The discussion of whether women, blacks and Muslims have enough representation more and more overshadows the debate of who's the best candidate. The meritocratic aspect of elections is being hollowed out. This is merely one example of how the system of elections, in modern democracy, has been hollowed out and essentially lost its meaning.

In the Athenian democracy, the only time they voted were in the procedure of ostracism. The citizens met to decide who was the most hated citizen. They wrote the name on a piece of broken pottery (ostraka), and he who got the highest number of votes was expelled from Athens for ten years, under the treat of death penalty. We see how this way of providing a platform for demagogues arousing the mob to bully freethinkers, etc., is nothing new, but has been part of democracy since the very beginning.

(1) Not only that. Modern democracy is presumptuous enough to claim that its' the only legitimate form of traditional republic. And that all other forms of traditional European governments amount to dictatorship--the modern word for tyranny.

Am I anti-Wilsonian?

There is a blog called Wilson Revolution Unplugged, by J.K. Baltzersen. By him I got my first warm welcome in my comment section by a fellow blogger. But I objected to his description of me as anti-Wilsonian. Let me explain why.

In my previous entry I strongly criticized the way the concept of democracy is used nowadays. This comes from the dogma of democratism, the idea of democracy as the only way. I believe in particularism and different solutions for different societies, depending on history and context. However, this position doesn't make me anti-democratic. E.g. I see Denmark as a country which democracy serves well. It's the idea of democracy as the only way, that I strongly object to.

Likewise with Wilson. I strongly object to the idea of the Wilsonian world order of a common organized peace as the only way. And more specifically, I see that we have come to a point in history where this world order is doomed and will have to be abandoned. This doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that the Wilsonian world order has been wrong all along the way, and in all major aspects. That's a different discussion, and one that--in spite of being highly interesting--is looking to the past, instead of into the future.

Modern people cannot imagine anything different from democracy or Wilsonian world order. It's ingrained into their mindset at the deepest level. So, my primary intention is to open up a dialog about these things. My primary intention is to encourage them to think; to open their minds to the very rich world of ideas outside of the glass bubble of democratism and Wilsonianism.

Democracy favours those who breed faster

As a comment to Fjordman's post at Gates of Vienna--posing the question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy--I wrote the following:

Democracy favours those who breed faster. So it's certainly a system that suits Islam well.

In a society with Muslim majority the people will vote for living in freedom under the law of Allah, and against the oppression of man-made laws.

But while Islam is compatible with, and greatly favoured by, the system of democracy, it's of course completely incompatible with European political traditions. But, as should be clear at this point, so is the modern democracy of the Wilsonian age.

Democracy is a system that resembles the traditional republic, but it's then a very extreme form of republic. We should remember that the main reason that we have democracy in Europe, is that if we tried to change it, socialists would be all over the streets burning and blowing up things. America has a different history, but this is also the background to why American troops are here in Europe, as a part of the Wilsonian world order, to protect the position of the European socialists.

The way people talk about democracy today is newspeak. The important and valuable properties of the traditional European republic has been transposed upon the concept of democracy, illustrated by the way modern people talk about "democratic values". But the vital foundations of traditional republic has since long been forgotten, and modern Westerners can no longer see it as an option. They are stuck in the child-language of the imposed newspeak, where there is only the choice between the extreme system of democracy, or illegitimate system of dictatorship.

If you lack the words to describe the real world around you, you will be unable to think. And this is where we are at this point of our civilization.

Is America the EU’s Enforcer?

Our discussion entered Paul Belien's site: The Crux of the Matter: Is America the EU’s Enforcer? He quotes Lawrence Auster's comment to my analysis:

A truly horrifying possibility is emerging from this discussion, and it is so awful I have been slow to take it in. As a preface, I have always been utterly aghast at the American elites’ support for the unification of Europe. Why did Americans support the elimination of historic states and nations in this unaccountable, post-national, post-human, air-conditioned nightmare of the EU? It seemed the ultimate betrayal. It was also horrible that there was never any debate in America about this. No major voices in U.S. politics have opposed European unification or even questioned American support for it.

But now a worse possibility – though it is only a possibility - appears on the horizon. It is that America is not merely the friend and cheerleader of the EU project, but its enforcer. Our troops and missiles and tanks are in Europe to prevent any uprising by European patriots and nationalists against the EU tyranny.

To this I answered (in a comment):

First of all, I think it is important to read Lawrence Auster's comment in its context, which is the longer discussion (follow the link!) which was initiated by me. The quote above is his humble reflection after digesting my analysis. It's not a newsflash.

Auster's concluding paragraph is omitted above:
"That's what Conservative Swede has been saying since the beginning of this discussion, but I'm only seeing it now. After all, I said that he is the elephant and I am the blind man."

He puts the focus on the "EU tyranny", as the blind man's description of the elephant, if I may say so. But the elephant is much bigger: it's the "Wilsonian world order". So, American troops and missiles and tanks are in Europe to prevent any uprising by European patriots and nationalists against the Wilsonian world order. A world order which, in Wilson's own words, means "an organized, common peace", instead of as before "a balance of power".

And the greatest threat to this has ever since been considered potent European powers. The quest to render European states impotent has gone through many stages, starting with the slaughtering of the Habsburg empire. The European Union is merely the last stage of this development.

In the EU referendum in Sweden in 1994, a favorite argument for the EU was that it had created peace in Europe. Such a laugh! We all know it's been the American troops stationed here that created the peace ..."an organized, common peace". A peace based on the idea that the European powers must stay put, that European nationalism is bad, will only lead to unnecessary wars and bloodshed, and that we should be friends and focus on trade etc., under the protective wings of America.

This idea is since long internalized among Europe’s ruling elites; the ruling classes of the old days are long gone. And it made things easy-going and comfortable for us for many decades. So there is no need for America to be directly responsible for imposing EU tyranny. Quite as the American troops obviously needn't be directly involved in stifling uprising from European patriots and nationalists. The Eurocrats do it so well themselves. But the American troops here are the ultimate guarantor of this order, this “organized, common peace”. This is what becomes clear to us when unwinding the historical layers, as we have just done now.

Comment by Carl Simpson

A first positive reply to what I wrote, I got from Carl Simpson, one of the regulars at VFR, who gets it completely. It's kind of ironic, but just as well warmly welcomed, that it's from Americans that I get the first positive feedback to this description, considering how critical I am of what constitutes a core part of contemporary American pride. But if we think for a moment there is no surprise here, Europeans have much more a blind spot for the most basic assumption behind this description: that the good, free and peaceful society that we live in is ultimately protected by military power.

Carl Simpson wrote at VFR: (more comments by me below)

I think our Conservative Swede has really hit upon something here. The European elites are at least partially kept there by the power of the US military--which still has numerous bases throughout Europe 15 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Note also that (despite the Mahdi from West Texas' comments about not indulging in nation-building like his predecessor) the United States still has troops on the ground in both Bosnia and the Serbian province of Kosovo. I agree with Conservative Swede that the electoral process is an empty gesture of symbolism that changes nothing in Western countries. Filling the voting rolls with enough welfare recipients, aliens, and feminist-indoctrinated women guarantees a de-facto one-party system even if there are multiple parties who squabble over inconsequential details of how to implement more liberalism and sovereignty-destroying treaties. Any political movement which presented a serious challenge to the established order in Europe would be rapidly marginalized. It's scarcely different here in the USA. There's a reason all the funding and media attention is going to Romney, McCain and Giuliani, while Tancredo, Ron Paul or anyone who might upset the apple cart is summarily painted as "unelectable" by the conservatariat.

The drive for globalism and one-world-government received a great boost from Woodrow Wilson's administration. It was complemented at home by a drive for the consolidation of federal power over both the states and individuals. Three disastrous amendments to the US Constitution: popular election of senators, effectively destroying the representation of the different states as states in the congress; the Federal Income Tax; and women's suffrage were all ratified during the Wilson administration. There are serious questions about the legitimacy of the ratification of all three. The same period saw the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act, whereby Congress turned over its fiscal policy-making authority to a cartel of bankers. Likewise, Federal police powers were vastly expanded thanks to another (subsequently repealed) amendment--Prohibition. The federal police force created during the prohibition--whose powers were not removed with Prohibition's repeal--morphed into today's BATFE and FBI.

Lots of food for thought. Thanks, CS, for giving a view with a different angle. I quite agree with CS's assessment that Bush would attack any European country that refused to acquiesce to the universalist, utopian ideology of those who yank his chain just as Clinton attacked Serbia. It's fairly obvious that Bush and his neo-Jacobin pals have no problem with the establishment of an Independent Islamic Jihadistan of Kosovo, despite all the empty nonsense about "global wars on terr-r-r-r-r." Hey, it's "democracy," isn't it?

Greetings to Carl Simpson who gets completely what I wrote. As he said it's "giving a view with a different angle." And this is my first motivation—that virtually no one else provides this angle—which call for me to stress it.

In any other historical situation we would start our analysis with identifying who's the empire and who are the vassal states. But when talking about our own age, this rarely enters the picture. The left is not interested in admitting that America is the "good empire" protecting Europe by its military might. While the right, who supports the American hegemony, denies that America is really an empire. The nature of America is that it is an empire-in-denial. You have to be, if what you are promoting is democratic imperialism.

What I provide is the fundamental structure of the power relations in our Wilsonian age. But there is much more to it, to complicate the picture. But I have made it into my quest to stress this side of the situation.

The power configuration of the Wilsonian West

Yesterday I sent a comment to View from the Right as well as to Gates of Vienna. Since it was well received in both places and generated interesting replies, it inspired me to open this blog. I somehow managed to get my whole overall view into that piece of text. But in a very condensed format, so there is reason to expound upon it, and hopefully it can lead to an interesting dialog. Here is the text I wrote:

It’s a Wilsonian delusion that political change happens through voting. Real political change never does. Real political power is not represented by a plurality of votes. It’s represented by having the greatest means to apply violence. It’s only when living under the protective wings of an empire—such as Europe has been living under the protective wings of Pax Americana the last 60 years—that peaceful political procedures make sense. The means to apply violence here represented by the mighty American army, providing the protective shield for the Europeans (however, and apple with a worm in it).

But it’s when this is seen clearly that we can also see why the system of modern democracy—a Wilsonian invention—can never allow real political change, but is only of ceremonial value. You will not be allowed to transgress the (over)ideology imposed by the guarantor of your protective shield. Or you will be given the “Serbian” treatment.

The point is not that the Europeans lack the will to fight. They are, just as the Americans, lulled into a false sense of security. Westerners truly think that we still dominate the world (including our own countries), and have an unmoved sense of invincibility. They generally think that we are steamrolling the rest of the world to adapt Western values, and that there is just some friction on the way.

Just look at Sweden. Sweden is often brought up as the worst Western country in many ways. I invite everyone to come here and visit. You’ll find the most idyllic place, where you’ll feel safe walking in the streets after dark, etc. Do you remember the VFR reader who wanted to escape California and said he “felt more at home in smaller towns in Sweden”. This picture is not at all untrue. It takes many decades for the destruction of a country to come in effect.

It’s only if you’re a thinker, or you had bad personal experiences, that you will already now see how the current incarnation of the West is terminally ill. It doesn’t show, not in the ordinary life of common people. We are past the point of no return, but it still doesn’t show. It’s like that George Washington quote, that in a democracy people have to feel it before they can see it. And it doesn’t feel quite yet.

But we are headed for the moment when the perception of the idyllic order will break apart in Europe, followed by the illusion of the imperial protective shield along with the system of modern democracy. This will be a truly revolutionary moment. The awakened Europeans will not only have the Muslims against them, in this fight, but their own political elites, leftist storm troopers, and a Wilsonian Uncle Sam. Bush II would have reacted just like Clinton, had there been another Serbia in Europe. And so will Giuliani or Hillary (let’s hope for Tom Tancredo in 2012).

It will start with street wars, then civil wars in one or two European countries—maybe in England and Holland, where we have already seen unrest caused by “white hooligans”. It will spread like wildfire over most of Western Europe. Next we will see extensive migrations within Europe. White people will flee to countries such as Poland, while the Muslims will escape to countries such as France. Mid 21st century, Europe will look like a chess board, now in a situation of more conventional warfare. We will see Europeans building city walls around their traditional cities, but for the first time in history to protect the country side from the cities.

Please keep up with your good efforts at VFR (and in similar places). I hope and pray there’s not another Wilsonian president in office when this get started.