by Brett Stevens on January 4, 2017

As we look back over the wreckage of the past two centuries, a time during which Leftist power steadily increased, we have to wonder: why are our conservatives so inept?

The first reason of course is that people love to be on the winning side, and the Left with its policy of social inclusion is always more popular in terms of sheer numbers. However, among groups of the notoriously competent, conservative ideals — or at least unarticulated gut-level instincts — prevail.

Another reason may be that conservatives defeat themselves by misunderstanding conservatism. The root of conservatism, or the Right, has been with us since the dawn of time, but it was formalized in response to the French Revolution: the Right were those who liked the way things were before, and the Left were the egalitarians who wanted a world based on Enlightenment™-era conjectures about equality and universalism.

For the Right, this meant that defeat was a foregone conclusion. The old order had been replaced, and we were trying to carry it forward as a values system, using Leftist methods as a basis for its justification. This perverted what we knew, and created a hybrid which in the nature of all hybrids, defaulted toward the simpler of its two parents: Leftism.

Out of this duality of mindset we got lots of brave and bold posturing about “standing athwart progress, yelling ‘stop'” and other forms of martyrdom. A martyr wins by losing — as opposed to civilizations, which lose by winning and then attracting parasites — and sacrificing himself to his cause.

Only, if the martyr does not die, he might as well enjoy a few well-earned comforts of life…

This leads us to the mentality of conservatives. They have abandoned winning, which would involve restoring civilization as it was in 1788, with aristocrats, strong nationalism and culture, hierarchy and a values system including an inherently but not explicitly transcendental view of life. They have accepted the enemy within their gates, and are looking for a compromise, which causes them to see themselves as martyrs, and so instead of focusing on the hard task of fixing the decline, they rationalize it and instead, focus on enriching themselves and being socially popular.

In a nutshell, this explains why conservatives are both strikingly ineffective and prone to being selfish and focused on business alone. They have given up on changing society. Instead they concentrate on image and money, religion and virtue signaling, and in fact basically everything that makes them comfortable while ignoring what they should be doing, which is reversing decline.

It is hard to find a clearer statement of this than with this apology for selfishness that justifies ignoring the problem, leading to another generation of fat old conservatives obsessed with money and church, but oblivious to the actual problem and committed to never risking their own fortunes to fix it:

And thatâ€™s where the Church must come in. As we go about â€œbeing the churchâ€ as Chuck liked to say, loving God, loving our neighbors as ourselves, letting our light and good deeds shine before men, pointing toward every humanâ€™s true hope in Jesus Christ and God the Father, then weâ€™ll have a greater and greater impact on those around us, and on the culture, and in the end, our local and national politics. And of course, we can do this only by drawing nearer corporately and individually to Jesus, seeking fellowship with Him and with each other.

Naturally, it is followed by a subtle plea for donations. What is interesting about this article is that it borrows an alt right trope for its minimum truth quotient — because all great lies begin with partial truths, selectively omitting that which does not fit the manipulative narrative to come — by acknowledging that culture is upstream of politics:

We talk a lot on BreakPoint about what the French philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul called the â€œpolitical illusionâ€â€”the idea that our problems are primarily political ones with political solutions. …Politics most often is downstream of culture. Culture will shape politics. And as Chuck said during his final speech, the culture is shaped by â€œthe cult,â€ its belief system, what people truly believe and care about.

In other words, they want you to replace cultural awareness with religious fanaticism, repeating the same errors that has made conservatism a failure for decades and are guiding the church to lower attendance across the board. We do not want to replace culture with the cult of Christ. We want culture first, and Christianity to fall in line in support of culture.

One reason to enjoy Bruce Charlton — probably the leading Christian reactionary out there — is that he pairs the practical and the spiritual by calling for conversion to Christianity, but a type of Christianity that emphasizes realistic action:

Your choice is simply whether to surrender, as usual, to go-with-the-flow. Or not-to-surrender. To refuse. That is as much as most people are given to ‘fight’ over. Nothing glamourous – simply saying ‘no, I won’t’. It is enough – it is everything.

He is suggesting that conservatives do the opposite of what they have done for centuries: instead of going along with the flow while enriching ourselves and acting out a martyr syndrome by being right instead of effective — it is always easier to make a few statements and then go back to earning money than it is to change the direction of history — as they have been, conservatives need to change direction and focus on resistance to conformity by demanding conservative change instead.

This is news to all the conservative martyrs and wannabe theocrats out there, most of whom are seeing dollar signs for themselves more than a path to victory for their cultures, who are caught in the narcissism/solipsism/individualism/egotism of “the Me Generation” (Baby Boomers) and the previous generation, the “Greatest Generation,” who serve nothing but their own selfish interests at the expense of their nation, and even their religion.

After all, the lesson of Christ is that it is necessary to become spiritually clear, but also to take action. He did not come in peace, but with a sword, dividing us against each other much like Brexit and the Trump election: realists on one side, individualists on another. He overturned tables of money-changers, drove out Pharisees and sophists, and otherwise said NO in the strongest terms possible.

Sadly for them, most conservatives are on the side of the money-changers. They will talk a good game, but all they do is rant a bit to let off steam, then go back to working “hard” at their jobs, hoarding money, paying taxes to those liberal welfare programs, and in their hearts, rationalizing their selfishness by the very fact that they cannot see a way conservatism can win.

Those on the Alt Right have a different message: conservatism not only can win, but must win. Our civilization, long in decline, now has a chance to turn back from the final death-spiral. It is always darkest just before dawn, and one must hit rock bottom in order to climb back up, and this is what the Alt Right wants to do.

To all conservative martyrs, I suggest a different approach. They must redeem themselves by admitting their hubris, changing their ways, and donating half of their hoarded wealth to the Alt Right. Only then will we respect them as moral people of worth. Only then will Generation X stop kicking over their graves and spitting on their memorials, as it is right to do. Only then do they really become… conservatives.

Tags: alt-right, baby boomers, christianity, conservatism, generation x, greatest generation, martyrdom, me generation, no

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.