The Red Light of a Bellicose Brothel on a Hill

Bill Vallicella links to a long post by his friend Edward W. Farrell, in which the latter tells us that Americans are today divided by their view of the United States.  These views are:

1) The traditionalist view: America is exceptional and a beacon to the rest of the world

2) The progressive view: America is thoroughly racist and needs to be purged top to bottom

These two views certainly exist, but the list is incomplete and the names are entirely wrong.  What Farrell calls the “traditionalist view” is, in fact, the old progressive view that one nowadays most often finds in that strange and confused creature, the conservative admirer of Abraham Lincoln.  I will come back to this ideological Minotaur—part man and mostly bull—but will begin by saying that an “exceptional” country could not be a “beacon” because its exceptional status would make its example irrelevant to “the rest of the world.”

In any event, everyone should know that this “beacon to the world” business goes back to the Puritan fanatic John Winthrop’s claim that Puritan New England was a “city on a hill,” and that Winthrop’s words are nothing but the slogan and war-cry of violent Puritan fanaticism.

Exclusion or Extinction, You Choose

“Those who council waiting, or remaining in the Union until some overt act is committed so glaring as to warm up those whose blood courses at present so slowly through their veins, will find, when that time arrives, that through the great patronage and insidious workings of a Black Republicans administration, there will have been mustered into existence, in our own midst, a hoard of unsound men, of sufficient numbers in some localities of the south to bring on civil war and bloodshed among ourselves.  These results I would avoid, and I believe secession is the remedy.”

Francis Richard Lubbock, Letter to The Houston Telegraph (October 29, 1860)*

Francis Richard Lubbock had been Lieutenant Governor of Texas, and would shortly be Governor, when he wrote this line in answer to the question, “what should Texans do if Abraham Lincoln is elected President and a Black Republican administration takes control of the Federal Government.”   His answer, as you see, was that Texas should immediately secede from the Union because, under a Black Republican administration, a “hoard of unsound men” would be “mustered into existence” within the very confines of Texas, and because the resulting multicultural Texans would one day fall together by the ears and tear each other to pieces.

A Toy for Religious Dandies and a Tool for Designing Men

“I love religion, with all my soul, where it is sincere; but abhor, above all things, the pretense or abuse of it, to advance any purpose but those that regard the other world.” 

Letter of Sir Charles Wogan to Jonathan Swift (February 27, 1732) [1]

The pretense of religion is a false claim to piety in one’s self.  The abuse of religion is a false appeal to piety in others.  The former is the hypocrisy of vain men who covet praise.  The later is the hypocrisy of vulpine men who covet power.   The common mark of both, as Wogan says, is that their purposes lie in this world, the one in outward shows and the other in secret stratagems.  This is the essence of Christ’s criticism of the decadent religion of his day.  It had degraded into a toy for religious dandies and a tool for designing men.

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The Reality of the Great Replacement

“Evolution needs room but finds the earth’s surface limited.  Everywhere old and new forms of life live side by side in deadly competition; but the later improved variety multiplies and spreads at the cost of less favored types.  The struggle for existence means a struggle for space.  This is true of man and the lower animals.” 

Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment (1911)

Recent events have stirred the great and good to once again denounce and deny what they call the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement.  The Great Replacement is, in fact, the reality that, as the egregious Wikipedia puts it, “a ‘global elite’ is colluding against the white population of Europe [and elsewhere] to replace them with non-European peoples.”

I do not see a factual error in this statement, although it might be more accurately written as, the global elite is colluding to subject white populations to more rigorous competition by importing non-European rivals into their historic homelands.

Savage and Modern Superstition

“Anyone who has once penetrated into the imaginary world of primitive men, and knows something of the state of fear in which people may live when they believe in taboos, unavoidable curses, and active jujus, can no longer doubt that it is our duty to endeavor to liberate them from these superstitions.”

“Cannot much in the mentality of modern man that gives us ground for reflection be explicable by the fact that he no longer discriminates between the real and the artificial.”  

   Albert Schweitzer, African Notebook  (1939) [1]

The human mind makes a superstition when it treats the imaginary as real.  The work of the imagination may be conscious or unconscious, but the essence of superstition is that the mind treats a work of man as if it were a work of God.  This is why an important variety of superstition is the idol, and why the God of the Israel was so forceful in his condemnation of these “graven images.”

Two Cracks in a Twilit Cave, Video Version

Two Cracks in a Twilit Cave

“Heatherlegh is the dearest doctor that ever was, and his invariable prescription to all his patients is ‘lie low, go slow, and keep cool’ . . . . He maintains that overwork slew Pansay, who died under his hand about three years ago . . . and he laughs at my theory that there was a crack in Pansay’s head and a little bit of the Dark World came through and pressed him to death.” 

Rudyard Kipling, The Phantom Rickshaw (1888)

“So long as he is attached with his will to the external, and regards this world’s good as his treasure . . . he gives his body to the world or to the earth, and his soul to the abyss of the Dark World.” 

Jacob Böhme, The Six Theosophical Points (1620)

Being sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, we are each of us born with a “crack” in our head.  This crack is the original sin that connects us to the Dark World below.  Many of us spend our lives enlarging this crack with the chisel and crowbar of  personal sins.   If we chisel hard and pry without ceasing, this crack will at last be wide enough for us to fall through it and into the Dark World below.  But until that astonishing plunge, our chiseling and prying will be invigorated by the exciting aromas and intoxicating fumes that seep up through this crack.

Mexican Mayo Day

“Thus countenanced and stimulated, and largely supplied with arms and ammunition, which we left at convenient places on our side of the river to fall into their hands, the Liberals . . . were enabled in northern Mexico to place the affairs of the Republic on a substantial basis.”

General Philip Sheridan, Personal Memoirs  (1888)

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, the great American holiday between Earth Day and Juneteenth.  Some stick-in-the-muds say that Cinco de Mayo is a new American holiday, but it is unAmerican to make the mistake of Winston Smith and fail to keep our memories “satisfactorily under control.”

Revolution Comes for the Revolutionaries

“I had long remarked that the only way to bring a Conservative and a Radical together was to attack the power of the central government . . . . When, therefore, people assert that nothing is safe from revolutionaries, I tell them they are wrong, and that centralization is one of those things . . . . The enemies of government love it, and those who govern cherish it.” 

Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections (1893)

The mind-control machine is spreading despondency and alarm at the prospect that Roe v. Wade will be “overturned” when the Supreme Court returns abortion legislation to the states.  One fretting gargoyle in a televised coven suggested that there is a sinister resemblance between this judicial overturning and the howling mob of murderous sans culotte that attempted to overturn the last election.

The Disease of Decadent Christianity

“Christianity is a revolt of all that creeps on the ground against what is elevated: the gospel of the lowly makes low . . .”

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (1895)

“An old man wet with tobacco juice and furtive-eyed summed up the result: ‘Wal, the bottom rail’s on top and it’s gwiner stay there’ . . . . The herd is on the march, and when it stampedes, there’s blood galore and beauty is china under its feet.” 

William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son (1941)

New commenter Vlad has raised the old charge that Christianity is what Nietzsche called a “slave morality” that must ultimately destroy all true value.  Thus, the gross value inversions of today are the fruits of Christianity, and not, as we say here, of its rejection.  The charge is old, but it is not silly, and it deserves a serious answer.  And this serious answer is not only intended for non-believers like Vlad, but is also intended, and intended more urgently, for Christians.  The reason is that history has shown that Christianity is subject to two fatal perversions, antinomianism and what Nietzsche called ressentiment.