Each day, more people wake up to the fact that, “How can we save America?” is a pointless question. America is already a corpse. Many of us have finally noticed that it’s stopped twitching.
A better question is, “When did America die?”
Was it at the start of this year when Trump signed the spending bill?
What about George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan, allegedly a response to 9/11, which kicked off US involvement in the Forever War?
Was it in 1998, when Bill Clinton was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate?
How about Reagan’s 1986 amnesty?
For that matter, what about the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965?
Or all the excesses of FDR’s imperial style presidency?
1920 was the year when American men inexplicably gave women the franchise.
What about Wilson involving America in World War I?
Was it in 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, which gave Congress the power to tax incomes without apportionment?
Many mark America’s time of death as 1861, when the Civil War killed the understanding of the United States as a voluntary union and facilitated her transformation into an international empire.
Was it in 1794, when the US government under the fledgling Constitution deployed an army against its own citizens, many of whom were Revolutionary War veterans–for protesting a tax similar to those they’d rebelled against Britain over?
Was it in 1789, when that same Constitution based not on eternal truth but on worldly compromise, took effect?
Taking a long view of history shows that America’s death was not a single, violent event. It was the work of slow poison corroding the national fabric over years, even centuries.
And the poison was baked into the cake from the start–at least from the start of the United States as a political entity.
Most of you will have heard by now that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested yesterday. Those who support his arrest decry him as an enemy of the United States. Meanwhile, his supporters lament his incarceration as a blow against free speech.
But America was already long dead before Assange leaked any secrets.
More so freedom of speech, which was devised by practitioners of Enlightenment realpolitik to hoodwink Christians into unilaterally disarming themselves.
What we’re seeing are the inevitable wages of Liberalism. A political system based on an attempt to replace absolute good with absolute freedom can last a while in a society with a largely homogeneous demographic, cultural, and religious makeup. We have not inhabited such a society for a while.
There is no putting Humpty Dumpty back together. Nor should we want to. Recreating America ca. 1955 would eventually land us right back in Clown World.
Providence will soon give us the chance to start again and avoid the mistakes of the past. We can build a new, sane order founded on immutable truth. But first enough of us must let go of the homeland where we grew up, and which is just as lost as Atlantis.
If we let go of the past, we can build a future where the rhythm of life harmonizes with human nature, where the state and the market exist to serve man, and where the common good is upheld.
The last black pill has turned out to be the ultimate white pill after all.
For a look at a brutal post-future based on current events, buy my hit military thriller!
Brian,
So fractal localism that existed in early modern Europe before the rise of the state? I think that's feasible.
Nissam Nicholas Taleb's little article Multiscale localism:Politic and ethics under uncertainty:
Point 14
All institutions should come with an expiration date. If they're still useful, they'll be renewed
is particularly relevant.
xavier
More people should know about the whiskey rebellions, shame it's not taught in schools.
It was at my Catholic high school, but these days schools teach students only how to hate themselves.
America died when she allied with the secularists to address relatively minor grievances.
1776, then?
Things could have gone differently, if for instance there had been a separation from the secularists after the War for Independence, history might then view them as co-belligerents, rather than allies. As history stands however, pious American men made common cause with the secularists, and while we benefit from quite a deal of hindsight, they should have had all of the information they needed to leave men like Thomas Paine outside of their fellowship. Only a few years later, after the close of the war, Paine’s obituary read "He had lived long, did some good, and much harm”. If that is how his contemporaries viewed him after the war, surely they had some indication before the war who they were rubbing elbows with.
America’s tombstone might best read “1606 – 1789, Father and provider to many, blessed with many years, suffered violent madness at the end. America is survived by his bastard, America US. While it was hoped the younger America might carry on the legacy of his sire, he has instead repudiated God and lives as a Covenant-breaker.”
Was the Enlightenment the exact point where western culture made that fatal wrong turn for which we were unwilling to look back? It certainly is an idol as it is the one thing you cannot criticize in the modern world whether anarchist, humanist, nihilist, or misanthropist.
Just like questioning what happened with the war of the Vendee in France if it was truly such a great triumph of humanity then we surely should be able to talk calmly and rationally about it. But we can't.
After centuries of going with the flow and letting the current carry our dead weight it's going to take a very long time to turn back and reorient ourselves. We're in for a very rough ride.
"…if it was truly such a great triumph of humanity then we surely should be able to talk calmly and rationally about it. But we can't."
This is because the Liberal worldview triumphed in the West. The Overton Window accommodates the full range of viewpoints from Liberal Party A to Somewhat Slower Liberal Party B. Trying to discuss anything even slightly outside these bounds gets you REEEEE'd out of polite society.
Did Western Civilization take a wrong turn at the Enlightenment, or a century earlier, when the Protestant schisms started?
In order to question the glories of the War in the Vendee, you'd have to explain what the War in the Vendee was. I learned about the French Revolution in High School, but I never heard of a place called the Vendee or the genocide there, not in even my European History class. It would not surprise me if a good 85% of intelligent, college-educated folks turned out to be wholly ignorant of those events. I learned about them no more than ten years ago, from a former cattle broker in Colorado.
A reader,
There's no excuse since the publication of Secher's seminal Le Vendee Vengee in the 80s and the subsequent English translation.
However, you can't imagine just how brutal the reaction was when he first publishe it All of the SJW playbook practically started from that time period .and with state sanction.
TL;DR he's been vindicated and there's an admission that revolution wasn't all that benevolent
xavier
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I'm a Liberalist at heart and by inclination, but it's getting impossible to deny.
Part of me keeps saying: this wasn't what was supposed to happen.
America was supposed to be different. She was supposed to be special and different from everything before. The melting pot was supposed to give us the best of everything and leave the worst to the detritus. We were supposed to be…not this.
The aim of the American experiment was to avoid the hazards of a hereditary elite by giving everyone, in theory, the chance to earn his way into the elite through intelligence, hard work, and leadership.
Fast forward to the Kennedys, Clintons, and Bushes.
It turns out giving everybody total freedom doesn't make the cream rise to the top. The ancients were right. Some people are only fit to be slaves. Lacking any other master, they'll willingly enslave themselves to Facebook and Disney.
So much for building a future where the state exists to serve man, then, eh? The best you can hope for on Earth is that those in power possess actual ideals in addition to being prone to corruption.
Durant said it best: men who can manage men will always manage men who can only manage things. Hierarchy is inevitable and the State will never serve its citizens except for short periods in which the men who govern choose to be servants as well as leaders. Christ, as the Son of God, told His followers that this is what we should do if we would lead. Pagans may argue that it is virtuous for a leader to care for his servants, but none argue that he should do other than rule.
As for cream rising to the top, it does happen. Unfortunately, cream does not beget cream, and competent, virtuous men too often beget rakes and scoundrels. Unfortunately, they also do a great job of cementing their family's power before passing it on to those same miscreants. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus are the all too perfect examples from antiquity. Man, sadly, does not change.
Arguably the largest factor here is the fact that the founders failed to put measures in place to protect against finance capitalism, which they had no excuse for since even by their own time the British East India Company had already taken over parliament and was functioning as a shadow government. Further as we've all observed from our time international finance capitalism is the primary vector through which poz is spread. Then again I don't think it's possible to have a liberal state / political order and put in safe guards against finance capitalism which is why it's all the liberal states that get taken over by their own bankers.