Daniel Szewc | Poland

One of the most common mistakes made by political enthusiasts across the political spectrum, is the false notion that traditionalism can only exist and flourish under a market mutilated by many regulations, as well as at least basic forms of state redistribution. To best expose the problem with this idea at large, it’s worth viewing the subject from a broader perspective.

In the most basic sense, value systems compete between each other, and have done so since the beginning of civilization itself. This can be expressed by the fact that societies with good values turn out to out perform and take over societies with lesser values. All is well and fair with this, as long as deceit and force aren’t involved in the process of internal value changes. These occur in cases of revolutions installed by external powers (such as the Bolshevik Revolution, started thanks to German funding of Lenin), or when the tyranny of the majority (i.e democratic rule) takes control of societal values, as well as regulates the market, especially when it comes to the right to discriminate, or through redistribution. For it is because of the last two, that traditionalism has been abandoned in the West. Since tradition is the result of constant rivalry between moral values, and mutual discrimination is the tool by which the power of each competing world view is expressed, not letting competition happen creates a lack of clashes between the two. The older a tradition/value is, (for example the long for truth), the more, according to probability, enemies it had to face in the past, making it more likely to win with new competitors on the market of ideas. A good example of this happening in history, is the high quality of the press in the past, during an era when no failing businesses were saved, which systematically prevented the press from spreading, what we now call “fake news”- if any newspaper decided to publish false information, it would go bankrupt- starting a business was extremely simple in the past, and their market competition would therefore destroy them- not to mention the boycotts of their good, otherwise known as market discrimination.

The other problem causing the fail of traditional values in modern times, is the welfare state. If we look at history, the only people to die of hunger (excluding times of famine, and extremely rare exceptions), were units who were asocial and wouldn’t receive any help, because nobody in society wanted to help them. How much of a bad human being do you have to be, for literally nobody to help you? In contrast, the modern era allows people to completely detach themselves from society, dismiss the idea of having children (why would they, if they’ll get state help when they are old or sick?), and in general become parasites of the system. The same holds for representatives of ALL inferior value systems, and ones that are purely against Western interpretations of personal freedom.

Those who favor tradition often note, from the depths of their hearts, that single mothers and poor people must be helped! There are two problems with this. For one, the innocence attributed to poor people, is the result of poor people, historically having to appeal to society as good, or else nobody would help them. In the case of the help being state organized, and therefore ending the risk of not receiving any help, laziness and egoism may kick in in poor people. The second problem with is, is that the less dangerous a societal position is, (“Oh no! How will I feed my children!”), the less likely people are to fight off becoming part of it.

A typical example of a situation like this is of a man who leaves his woman and children alone, without funds to live. In the past, this meant uncertainty and extreme stress caused by financial risk for the mother, which caused the man to be seen as a monster, and people discriminated against him, because of what tradition would consider to be poor character. Nowadays, even though leaving your family is still frowned upon, people are less sharp against such deeds, as the mother isn’t in a position as bad as she would have been under a free market, which is precisely why more men leave their wives/partners with their children, than ever before.

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