Thoughts on Kirk

Read Redeeming the Time at my father's house lately - an interesting thought that occured to me while going over Kirk was that he is something of a man of "Tradition", yet never makes it more than implicit. That is, Kirk (with Burke) thinks that man is not made for absolute liberty. Being magnanimous at heart, Kirk is not willing to say this openly. That is, neither he nor Burke are willing to proscribe man & give definite limits or bounds to what man can or cannot do - for one thing, this is against their ideology - they both believe that man can, under circumstances that are favorable, attain to certain concrete liberties. So, the "conservative" position based on historical "custom" is left in somewhat of a quandary. Having arisen in the prosperous, Christianized countries of the West, & being committed by definition to preserving that benefice and patrimony in the favorable conditions the long process of Christianity created, and being gentlemen, it behooved neither of them to make explicit the idea that is latent within their thought - that Man, at some point, might have to suffer hard constraint of political liberty for the common good. Charles Maurras is more explicit - if (in a crisis) you can command, you are obligated to do so. Also:

All liberty is not suitable in every State; each State depends on its historic antecedents and it geographic position like each man on his ancestors and his country. Salutary and tutelary dependencies, since they gave life, sustain it, and conserve it, and whoever rejects it, dies. Liberty varies with time and place, but this is no State which can last without a sovereign authority.

This is more clear. But I think it could be made more clear even yet. Man is like an electric filament, stretched out between the gap in a divine current. Our politics and history and art, far from being subjective creations, are actually transcendent and divine, and carry this weight and karma. To pull too much power into the filament, or to burn for too long, is to invite destruction, to guarantee it. In fact, some men are incapable of serving as filaments at all. However, by careful re-compositioning over centuries, by learning the current through generations and modifying one's nature and becoming stronger, some filaments can burn almost indefinitely, like a candle that is at the end of the wick, but is only burning the wax, rather than itself.

The flame is liberty and knowledge of God. Very few are capable of having "absolute" anything, let alone absolute God (liberty & God are the same condition). Thus, from a conservative point of view, the idea that man has an abstract, absolute liberty by his nature that is not "latent" but "actualized" by political decree despite the existence of his passions, is sheer madness.

Those who hold this position are therefore, literally, insane. 

Kirk & Burke are too charitable to point this out; in my day and time, I think we have an obligation to do so. Obama and Romney are both equally deluded and mad. The King is not only naked, but mad. True conservatives will look for the man who can burn in the flame of God without being consumed, and will bow the knee to him as their sovereign.

Clearly, circa 1900, it was not obvious that most Americans were incapable of self-government, living as they did in a society still utilizing old instruments of production and adhering to older models of thought and worship. A great many people had what we would call "moral fiber". This is no longer true, and the stakes have risen. Few, if any, Americans are qualified to vote on anything other than the placement of their local street signs.

The Parties are Over

Even the conservatives are waking up to what has happened (when liberals "wake up", they either convert to traditional men, or else go into a deeper dream state worse than the first, so I hold no hope of their "grouping", but this is a promising trend, because conservatives still have some good instincts).

As I explained to my boss recently, I disagree vehemently with either liberals or conservatives - but here is a difference. If the Left lived up to its own standards, I would still be obligated to oppose them, come what may (and I'll note here that I might even include the "classical liberal" of old times in this boat of the Left, as much as I love Lord Acton). However, if the conservative party lived up to its own standards, I would be proud to denote myself a factional party man. Except of course, they can't, because factions and parties are doomed by their false foundation, which is collective, rather than built upon individual enlightenment.

In this vein of thought, I think a reworking of classical liberalism is in order - there is much to be harvested out and explained and kept, but the fundamental idea that "man is born free" is totally skewed. In fact, it is a relatively new propaganda item to even claim that this is what "classical liberals" (even men like John Adams) ever taught to begin with. Jefferson and Paine, maybe & yes, but even the Founding Father revolutionaries knew a mob-man when they saw one, or a vulgar couchpotarian.

Classical liberals were generally men of aristocratic leaning (or else they openly sided with revolutionaries like Garibaldi), who believed in the maximum amount of freedom that was possible, feasible, desirable, and useful (in Baron Ledhin's description). In an expanding world of European chivalry with industrial benefits and centuries of Christian education behind it, this may have had a rather artificially large scope. Unless we are willing to go back to the medieval village, our Empire will have to be governed by mandarins. The question is, will we qualify them by forcing them to master virtue and "useless knowledge" (read, metaphysics and a capacity for noetic appreciation of supersensible truths), or will we allow them to be the "bright and shiny calculators and self-made opportunists" which they have evolved of late?

It's quite true to say today that Democracy has become Kakistocracy (as it had to, were we to read the Greeks and Romans). There is no such thing as Large Scale Direct Democracy, except in Hell. Hell is the perfect democracy.

The entire Western process has degraded the spiritual castes (estates or levels of being) and its order into mush, all in the guise of Sweetness and Light. There will be no answer, until the virtuous defeat evil by converting it to good. Then we will have rule by those who are annointed, rather than self-annointed.

Do you want to be ruled by bankers and career opportunists, or a wise man who reluctantly rules "in the path of heaven"?

Modern American Democratic Propagandists

Our picture today is the Iron Crown of the Lombards, which is said to be made of the nails of Christ's cross (the inner band, that is).

American "thinkers" are finally catching up to de Tocqueville - I guess over 150 years is just enough time? Our "perverse yearning for equality" is starting to turn heads, even American ones, at what we've become - a gigantic dysfunctional corporation. Hate your work milieu? Want some time alone to yourself? Well, pretty soon, your work environment will grow to include all civic discourse (which, as Marx taught us, is nothing but economics writ large). Don't worry, "progressives" (name change after "liberal" became a dirty word, thanks to homeward bound roosting chickens) advocate the annihilation of all "intermediate institutions". After all, the reign of the atomized individual (with his sacramental rights to participate in modern dark Satanic rituals, such as after conception "contraception") is more important than anything else, especially benighted religious flim-flam.



Do you still think that Democracy means freedom? Many, maybe most, do. "Think" is the wrong word here. I think it's not so much a "point of view" (let alone a belief or a philosophy) as a reflexive "mindset". Now introducing Bernays & Lippman, two men of impeccable liberal-democratic credentials (and all benefits accruing thereunto) who most emphatically thought that You, the sovereign subject, were anything BUT free.

Here is the alternative, and there is really only one alternative (and not the "halfway house" of "Republicanism" either, although it is always conveniently forgotten that even Thomas Jefferson believed a natural aristoi):

"I reject republicanism. At the head of races, above the elite, there is
Monarchy. Not all monarchs have been good. Monarchy, however, has always been
good. The individual monarch must not be confused with the institution of
Monarchy, the conclusions drawn from this would be false. There can be bad
priests, but this does not mean that we can draw the conclusion that the Church
must be ended and God stoned to death. There are certainly weak or bad monarchs,
but we cannot renounce Monarchy. The race has a line of life. A monarch is great
and good, when he stays on this line ; he is petty and bad, to the extent that
he moves away from this racial line of life or he opposes it. There are many
lines by which a monarch can be tempted. He must set them all aside and follow
the line of the race. Here is the law of Monarchy.” - Codreanu

Now, "race" here must mean something more than pure genetics, after all
Codreanu was half-German, not full blooded Romanian. What Codreanu is defending
is the idea (and ideal) of self-government as expressed through familial ties,
personal loyalties, and cultural "lines of force". All of which find logical
expression in Kingship (one could go on to talk of the King of Kings, or the
Empire, but now we are concerned with the "shields of the earth").

Here is an account of the martyrdom of Charles II:

Far from being an upright quest for justice, the trial of King Charles is seen
by many as perhaps the greatest act of deceit in British history. Author C.V.
Wedgwood wrote that, “Cromwell’s faction was determined to kill the King mainly
because this symbolic act of revolution would satisfy discontents that might
otherwise be directed toward the more fundamental and more farsighted
constitutional changes sought by Lilburne’s Levellers”.Nevertheless, just or
not, King Charles I was taken before what was left of Parliament to stand trial
for his actions.To say that such an act was unprecedented is a vast
understatement. The King was accused of making war against Parliament, not the
actual nation, and no effort was made to show how this “Rump” (which had been
purged by military force) was a true representation of the English people.
Realizing this, His Majesty protested that this left his accusers with no legal
right to judge him saying, “you never asked the question of the tenth man in the
kingdom, and in this way you manifestly wrong even the poorest ploughman, if you
demand not his free consent”.

In other words, the King was made a scapegoat for usurpers who had a radical base to appease. Sound familiar? It should - this always happens in Democracies. Yet many Christians believe that we make an idol of the "king", a teaky-wood god which we crave for vanity and because of our desire to vicariously live out life as an "alpha-male". This suspicion is deep-rooted in Christianity, particularly in the West:

Source
"According to St. Jerome, however (in Matt., c. xxiii), some of the faithful in his day attached a superstitious importance to these aids to piety; he censures certain classes of women who seem to have, in some degree, identified sanctity with an exaggerated veneration for sacred relics: "Hoc quod apud nos superstitiosae mulierculae in parvulis evangeliis et in crucis ligno et istiusmodi rebus, quae habent quidem zelum Dei, sed non secundum scientiam, factitant" (That which superstitious women amongst us, who have a certain zeal for God but not of right knowledge, do in regard to little copies of the Gospels, the wood of the cross, and things of that kind)...."

No doubt, it is possible to overdo things and to worship the Encolpion instead of the relic inside it or the transcendent reality beyond it. It is also possible to forget (in a secular world) that man was made for worship, that he must worship, and that if he cannot have his king, a dark father figure will come in by the back door as the real Father is ejected out the front.

Forthcoming posts will deal more directly with these objections, and others (such as the idea that human nature is basically evil, and cannot be trusted with "absolute power").

For now, we simply note that America is descending into a "soft totalitarianism".

More arguments in favor of monarchy.

Here is Kaiser Wilhelm's opinion of Hitler. It must not be forgotten that the monarchies presided over the suicide of Europe, but that the republican elements (nationalism) and the new mass democracies were even more enthusiastically in support of it than they were (the monarchies were all "kindred"), and in fact, in many instances, pushed their thrones into war as a pawn.

Here is an excerpt from a 1938 interview of Kaiser Willhelm II Ken magazine. In
this interview Kaiser Willhelm II expresses a very harsh opinion of then German
leader, Adolf Hitler. Kaiser WIllhelm II was known to have a strong
disliking of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist movement in general. However some modern historians try to convince us that he was a staunch National Socialist sympathizer. However as you can read his own words, you can see that nothing is farther from the truth. Here is what Kaiser Willhelm II had to say about Hitler and the National Socialist movement.

“There is a man alone, without family, without children, without God....He builds legions but he doesn’t build a nation. A nation is created by families, a religion, tradition: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children. [Of Germany under Hitler he says]....an
all-swallowing State, disdainful of human dignities and the ancient structure of
our race, sets itself up in place of everything else. And the man who, alone,
incorporates in himself this whole State, has neither a God to honour nor a
dynasty to conserve, nor a past to consult....

For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism. I thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were, associated with it for a
time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans. But these, one by one, he
has got rid of or even killed....He has left nothing but a bunch of shirted
gangsters....

This man could bring home victories to our people each
year without bringing them...glory....But of our Germany, which was a nation of
poets and musicians and artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics
and hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics....”

How ironic that the Catholic Church chose to move against monarchism within
its spiritual organization exactly as the outer world tired of liberalism
and bourgeoise!

Certainly Vatican II was also a Council of protest and contradiction, so to speak, a reaction of the liberal Church against the remnants of feudalism and monarchy inside the Church. Hence, the emphasis on collegiality in the government of the Church. Only by means of this Council did the Church officially accept the great conquests of the French Revolution and the liberation of the bourgeoisie: tolerance, liberty of religion and conscience, ecumenical openness, etc.However, the irony of History, she did so just when society was prepared to criticize the new forms of slavery produced by the liberal bourgeoisie.

Also ironic - continued arguments as to why American hegemony is a good thing take a monarchical turn: There Can Be Only One!

But why should this be? Unless, indeed, Monarchy is the actual pattern of real Nature? Sovereignty itself is derived from the unifying principle of monarchy.

Another Desperate Attempt to Redefine Democracy

This time the basis is terror. The difficulty seems to be with attempting to adjust Reality to democracy. I will go with Thomas Carlyle on this and define the French Revolution as a potentially good event which lost the potential (early on) to properly define, contain, discipline, and achieve itself. It was a primal eruption which interpreted itself in terms of hate, rather than the opportunity to effect a primal Revolution, or "last Revolution":

Ernst Jünger has characterised this peculiar connection in his book Der Weltstaat (1960): “The anarchist in his purest form is he, whose memory goes back the farthest: to pre-historical, even pre-mythical times; and who believes, that man at that time fulfilled his true purpose . . . In this sense the anarchist is the Ur-conservative, who traces the health and the disease of society back to the root.” Jünger later called this kind of “Prussian” . . . or “conservative anarchist” the “Anarch,” and referred his own “désinvolture” as agreeing therewith: an extreme aloofness, which nourishes itself and risks itself in the borderline situations, but only stands in an observational relationship to the world, as all instances of true order are dissolving and an “organic construction” is not yet, or no longer, possible."

What Must Be Done?

In the words of Chernechevsky, What Must Be Done? In some other immortal's words, in times like these, what is the difference between treason & stupidity? If any? America is now entering (congratulations to all all and sundry!) the interregnum between decay & collapse/chaos. Everyone has contributed; this was a team effort. Republicans supported gigantic corporations who outsourced our livelihoods & decimated the environment, not to mention suborning private property and the rule of law. They are the plutocrats. The Democrats supported factionalism and minorities who were out for themselves, and not in an enlightened manner. They are the oligarchs. Both factions support(ed) the burgeoning size of our cancerous federal government.

It is clear that something must be done. It is not clear exactly what, nor by whom, nor if this is "for all the marbles". But the general outline is taking shape out of the mists.

It has been known (at least by those who cared to know) that there was always a rather fine and subtle line between liberal-democracies and tyrannies. Particularly as we witness the 20th century in retrospect, or more so, as lived. Going back and forth in contemplation, we see that Freedom itself must be a relative concept. Even when we think we are most Free, and precisely then, and exactly because we think this, we are the most unfree, or at least, are progressing the fastest towards such a state. This is the story, or will be the story, of America in the late 19oos. A story of a State which was allowed to die with a whimper, and which found no spirits worthy of her founding to echo back and sustain her in the hour of need and challenge.

Where is the gratitude of freed slaves? Of new found immigrants? Of old settlers? Where is loyalty at all? It is gone. For the most part. People want their piece of the action and their slice of the pie. It is gone at least as part of the civic life. We had assumed that Progress meant an infinite increase in standards of consumption (I won't say "living") for all. The earth's ecology will no longer support this idea. And the extension of such to all has eroded the hopes of the white middle class in their own country, which they have (arguably) sustained and built (and destroyed).

So now we are back into the stream of history, the Wheel of Fate, the "course of human events", out of which we had perilously and laboriously and luckily raised ourselves. We are now off holiday from history. Soon, will come the return of the Gods and the punishment of Nemesis.

"You don’t hear the word usurpation in Congress for the same reason you don’t hear the word fornication in Las Vegas. When a vice becomes popular and profitable, it loses its proper name."

The only hope is to embrace what opportunity to rebuild that we find, as things fold in upon themselves. This current state of emergency (Notstand/justitium) is nothing new, it is the logical outcome of a century of liberal-democracy, its "fruit" (if you will). In the halcyon days of the 19th century, it was easy to believe that the extension of the franchise & the unleashing of economic "miracles" & the de-censoring of Enlightenment agit-prop was responsible for all the good one saw around one's self, or hoped to see. It was easy, in short, to think that the growing technology & wealth, as exhibited in the Great Exhibitions which shook Victorian England and Puritanical France and which colored the world of Sherlock Holmes with the tint of gaslight, that this was an infinite world which could be steam-punked across the face of the planet, and which would itself herald an even greater miracle, perhaps a city-world like Coruscant.

This is increasingly bizarre & hopeless. All but the most radical realize that the forces tearing apart society are so strong now that it is impossible, and that they garner strength from the very vision which is proposed, namely that of a universal despotism in which the globe would become Hamlet's prison, Panopticon.

Far away, come the sounds of Thunder. The lightning strikes the earth. The Wheel of Fate turns. Hubris & Nemesis are coming together.