Race, Culture and Nation

Cambria Will Not Yield

by

CWNY

"Incomparable in Its Symmetry"
On the 4th of August, 2007, R. Jamison posted a remarkable speech by John Sharp Williams on the blog Spirit Water Blood. Williams was a U. S. Representative and U. S. Senator whose father was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. The speech was published in the Confederate Veteran magazine in 1904 (Vol. XII, No. 11, November 1904, pp. 517-521).

The speech is magnificent. It is impossible to imagine any U. S. politician of the last fifty years speaking with such depth and insight.
Let me just quote a few passages to illustrate Mr. William's profound insights.

On the subject of fighting --
"Mere fighting is no virtue; far from it. Indeed, the man who is not great enough and brave enough not to fight when he ought not to is a poor excuse for a man. Speaking for myself, I have no admiration of the professional fighter, whether he be a Texas cowboy or a West Point graduate…"
Williams expresses my own feelings about war and fighting. I have no respect for "our troops" because they are not fighting for a cause I respect.

Why did the South fight? -
"But there was something else, and even a greater cause than local self-government, for which we fought. Local self-government temporarily destroyed may be recovered and ultimately retained. The other thing for which we fought is so complex in its composition, so delicate in its breath, so incomparable in its symmetry, that, being once destroyed, it is forever destroyed. This other thing for which we fought was the supremacy of the white man's civilization in the country which he proudly claimed his own; 'in the land which the Lord his God had given him;' founded upon the white man's code of ethics, in sympathy with the white man's traditions and ideals."
Yes, it is the same today. We are not fighting for free trade, capitalism or the U. S. Constitution. We fight for white civilization.

The great struggle during the "Reconstruction Era" -
"There is no grander, no more superb spectacle than that of the white men of the South standing from '65 to '74 quietly, determinedly, solidly, shoulder to shoulder in phalanx, as if the entire race were one man, unintimidated by defeat in war, unawed by adverse power, unbribed by patronage, unbought by the prospect of present material prosperity, waiting and hoping and praying for the opportunity which, in the providence of God, must come to overthrow the supremacy of 'veneered savages,' superficially 'Americanized Africans' - waiting to reassert politically and socially the supremacy of the civilization of the English-speaking white race. But what gave them the capacity to do this sublime thing, to conceive it and to persevere in it to the end? To wait like hounds in the leash - impatient, yet obedient to the call of the huntsman's horn - which came upon the heels of the autumn elections in the Northwestern States in 1874? What gave this capacity to the 'easy-going, indolent, life-enjoying' Southerner? What if not four years of discipline, training, hardship? Four years which taught the consciousness of strength and mutual courage, the consciousness of capacity for working together, the power and the desire of organization, and which gave them, with it all, a capacity for stern action when required by stern events? But for the war - the lessons which it taught, the discipline which it enforced, the capacity for racial organization which was born with it - I, for one, do not believe that conditions in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Mississippi to-day would be very far different from what they are in Hayti, Cuba, or Martinique."
Alas, the fruits of that great victory were squandered. By the 1950's the "veneered savages" were ushered back into white civilization. Yes, it was often at the end of a Northern bayonet, but that doesn't explain the South's capitulation.

In the past, as Williams points out, the white Southerners stood shoulder to shoulder against the racial universalists. What happened? I think the South succumbed to the great seduction. They learned to love Big Brother. It gets rather tiresome to always be contra mundum.

And once the incomparable symmetry of white civilization is destroyed, can it ever be regained? The answer is no, if we think like the walking universalists. There is no system, no magic talisman that will restore white civilization. It's not a question of restoring the Latin Mass or voting for a president who is "born again." The princess in the fairy tale remains in a death-like slumber because no one loves her. She will be restored to life when she is loved. The love that brings even the dead to life comes only from those men and women who are connected, through their spirit and blood, with His civilization. Nothing is impossible to such men and women.

Labels: Confederate Veteran, restoration of White civilization, Southern resistance posted by CWNY | 10:33 AM Sunday, October 07, 2007

Grim Statistics
The statistics that we see in the 'Death of the West' publications are pretty grim. One doesn't have to be a prophet to see that the white race is facing the end of the line. It would be somewhat less grim if it were only the white race in America which was finished, but it is a worldwide racial suicide we are witnessing, not just a national suicide.

The late Malcolm Muggeridge used the term 'the great liberal death wish' to describe the suicide of the European peoples. And at first glance that seems like an apt description, for is not suicide a death wish? Yes, it is. But the white liberal death wish is not your typical death wish. The white liberal wishes for the death of white civilization, but he doesn't wish for his own death. The obvious question to ask the white liberal is, "Don't you realize that the destruction of white civilization will also mean your own personal destruction?" The white liberal's answer to that is, "No." And he answers no because he is delusional. He has an Atticus Finch complex. White is evil, black is good, with the exception of Atticus Finch. He has fought the good fight and defended the good darky, and he will be worshipped by the darkies.[1] Every white liberal would deny that such vain impulses motivate him, but it is the reality. Overweening, egotistical pride is what motivates the white-hating white. And he hates, with satanic fury, any individual and any group of individuals that would challenge his delusional faith in his vision of himself as Atticus Finch.

An image has stayed with me from my freshman year in college. It is an image of a T-shirt with a picture on it of a black youth stabbing a white youth. The lettering on the T-shirt said something about slaying the oppressors. One would think that the T-shirt was worn by a black man, but it was not. A tall, blue-eyed, blonde boy (he could have been a poster boy for Hitler's youth movement) wore the T-shirt wherever he went. The young Aryan had a few black friends who he partied with and introduced to his white girl friends. If one of his black friends had actually stuck a knife in him, he would have been (if he lived) shocked and offended, because he was not the white on the T-shirt. That white deserved to be killed; he was 'thee and me.' But Atticus Finch? He deserves to be worshipped. "Stand up, your father is passing."

The white-hating white has abandoned his race because he has abandoned his faith. It is true there are many white-hating whites in organizations such as the Roman Catholic church or the Methodist church or the Baptist church, etc., that claim to have some connection to Christianity, but we cannot countenance such a claim. And we cannot do so because the entire Christian tradition warns us that pride, the overweening pride displayed by the white-hating, church-going whites, is the mark of Satan.

The great evangelist, St. Paul, and the greatest Christian poet, Shakespeare, speak with one voice about man. Man is a self-deceiver, who piles layer upon layer of falsehood over his heart. If he does not see himself as a self-deceiver who needs to clear away the sludge of deceit from his heart on a daily basis, he will destroy himself and those around him. He will be like King Lear prior to his repentance: he will be a great destroyer of himself, his family, and his countrymen.

It is possible for an occasional King Lear-type conversion, but we should note that Lear's conversion occurs after it is too late to salvage his kingdom. Which, I fear, is the only type of conversion that we are likely to see in the ranks of the white-hating whites. And even that type of conversion is highly unlikely. It is far more likely that the white-hating white will maintain his delusion even as the barbarian knife is piercing his heart.

Because the white-hating white worships the image of himself as a glorified Atticus Finch, he does not respond to a clarion call to arms based on the reality of the barbarian threat to the white race. Tell him what happened in Haiti when blacks actually had power, and he will yawn with indifference or scream "racist" at you. "That happened to bad whites, to oppressive whites. In the new world, organized by white Atticus Finches, there will be no oppression, so there will be no vengeful blacks." If you show him film footage of La Raza screaming for the heads of whites, his response will be the same as it was to the murderous actions of the blacks in Haiti. There is nothing that will alter the delusional mania of the white-hating white.

It is not, as Anthony Jacobs has pointed out, that the colored races are on the march, it is that the white race is on the run. If the white race would stop running, the colored invasion would end. But of course the white race will not turn and fight because the white-hating, white technocrats are the leaders of the colored invasion. They, in their hearts, have said no to the Christian society of the ploughed field and the evening lingerings. Their hearts do not "receive Him still" because they have no hearts.

Look at the white technocrats. They are obsessed with theory: the cleric, damning with joyful glee, the "Anglo-Saxon race"; the capitalist, also damning with glee, the "lazy" whites who will not "work" in his sweatshops as he imports thousands of Aztecs to do his bidding. Behind all of this is the delusional belief of the white technocrats that they can achieve divine status by sacrificing white people to the colored hordes. And for a time they will be successful. The coloreds can be appeased by the sacrificial offering of non-technocratic whites. But eventually, when they have run out of white sacrificial victims, the technocratic Dr. Frankensteins will face the monster they have created. And then, they will face the long night of the knives.

I don't quarrel with the statistics compiled by the 'death of the West' authors. I don't need to see the actual numbers to know that they are correct. Everywhere I go, I see the death of the West. There are Mexican trailer camps where there were once white family farms, and black barbarians on every street corner. However, I do quarrel with the 'death of the West' authors who present only the statistical picture without taking the oath on the sword. No white man worthy of the name should view the demise of the white race with Thomistic-Buddhistic quietude. Take the oath, "To the knife." We do not seek to shun reality. The statistics are quite grim. But white men, real white men, are not driven to despair by grim statistics. All we need is a remnant band who will not yield.
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[1] I, like all school children then and now, was made to read To Kill a Mockingbird when I went to school. I liked the book, but what I liked about the book was the account of Scout and Jem's childhood. The Tom Robinson rape trial was of little interest to me. I accepted as a given that the prejudiced white Southerners were bad and that the only barrier to peace and harmony was white prejudice, but still, the Tom Robinson case did not hold my interest. I think the reason was that that part of the book does not ring true. Harper Lee had to make a choice. She could have written a classic novel about childhood innocence confronting the world outside of childhood innocence. But instead she decided to write politically correct but false social commentary.

The real novel, the true novel that she didn't write, would have told the story of two white children who had to learn, as we all do, about good and evil. They would have discovered that the Boogie Man of the fairy stories had a name and a color. His name was Tom Robinson and his color was black. He was guilty of crimes that defied their father's ability to explain. Finally, their father simply told them the story of God and the devil and the final triumph of the God-Man. And until that final triumph, the non-utopian Atticus Finch told them, never take the wall down between our people and the people of color.

Labels: death of West authors, preservation of our race, white betrayal posted by CWNY | 4:22 PM
Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Sacred Heritage
"It is not much to give to the theme that so long filled my heart."

When a man is healthy, he doesn't spend a lot of time pondering his health, but when he is sick he does think about his health. How sick am I? How did I get sick? What will it take for me to recover?

European civilization is sick, and I have spent the greater part of my adult life contemplating its sickness. I have felt for a number of years now that I know the cause of its sickness. In various articles such as "Only My Blood Speaks," The Poetic Core of Western Civilization, and The Lost Thread, I have attempted to expose the serpent that has entwined itself around Europe. That serpent is philosophical speculation. What the philosophical speculators bring to Christianity is a "hedge your bets" type of strategy: "Christ is risen… maybe, but in case He isn't, let's make sure we have a philosophical system to fall back on."

Christianity, however, is not a faith that permits that kind of dualism. When philosophy and Christianity are joined, there is a diminished sense of man's sin and man's need for a loving savior. Sin becomes something that can be cured by the proper use of man's reason. And when sin can be cured by rationality, there is a loss of the tragic sense of life. If the world is ordered so marvelously with pat answers for every contingency of existence, what need is there for the Suffering Servant?

Christianity is a religion of depth. If the riddle of existence can be solved by an encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world, then we need only consult with the men who possess that knowledge; we do not have to plumb the depths in search of a Savior who speaks to us from the depths.

It is to the Europeans that we must turn for a vision of the true God. Their gods were hero-gods. They couldn't conceive of a god in any other form, and when they were told the story of the ultimate Hero-God, they embraced Him. But unfortunately, the transmission of Christianity via the Romans was a mixed blessing. The Europeans heard the story of the great Hero-God, but with that story came the serpent of philosophical speculation. The Greco-Romans had rejected the vision of their bards, such as Sophocles and Virgil, who saw that only a Hero above the nature gods could save man. Instead the Greco-Romans placed their faith in those men who professed to have found the secret of the universe in the mind, and not the heart, of man. They came as missionaries and teachers, but what their convertites and pupils brought to the faith, a realization that Christ was the Hero-God, was of infinite value. If the intellectual elite of the Roman Church had had the humility to learn from their pupils, the division of Christendom could have been prevented. For what was the Protestant Reformation in essence but an attempt by the Northern Europeans (minus Ireland) to reclaim that vision of the Hero-God free from the serpentine entanglements of the philosophers?

But of course a movement that is only a desperate gasp for life can be easily subverted. The same serpent of philosophical speculation that had entwined itself around the Roman Church entwined itself around the Protestant church as well.

The tragic Christ, the heroic Christ of St. Paul, of Isaiah, was the Christ who the 'primitive' Europeans saw when they embraced Christianity. And we need their dauntless spirits if we are to reclaim the true Europe. Noble hearts must respond directly to His heart. "Now his good sword he has drawn; And he has thrown the sheath away," was the war cry of the old Europeans as they joined their Lord in His battle against Satan. It must once again be our war cry.

The current breed of post-Christians are the bastard children of the illicit union of Christianity and speculative philosophy. They have the outward features of human beings, but they have lost touch with the spiritual wellspring of life. Inside they are dead. So they look for renewal from the barbarian races. "They will provide the blood and spirit we lack." But that will never be. The blood cannot function without the spirit or the spirit without the blood. The barbarians lack the spirit while the post-Christians lack the blood. There is nothing vital in barbarism or post-Christianity. True vitality comes not from the bloodless faith of the philosophical speculators or from the blood-without-spirit faith of the barbarians. True faith comes only from the spirit-infused blood that once belonged to the European.

When the vision is blurred because we attempt to see existence with the eye of the philosopher rather than through the eye of the bard, we kill the blood and eviscerate the spirit. But the eviscerated faith of the modern philosopher is presented to us as a higher faith. All my life I have heard the same propaganda: "There is primitive man who fears lightning and is superstitious. Then there is the man who believes in a human God with a slightly higher ethical code than primitive man. And then there is intellectual man who knows all Gods are just manifestations of the human mind, which is the true God."

The ruling elite in church and society actually believe that they have achieved the highest stage of existence. They worship the great universal mind that is beyond the gods of the pagans and the God of the Christian. Because the fact of modern man's exalted state, by virtue of his elevated "intellectual" notions of God, is such a given to the post-Christian of the 20th and 21st centuries, we need to go back to the 19th century to see a different vision of God.

The great poets and novelists do not just give us their personal visions; they also give us a glimpse of the spiritual under-girding of the society in which they live. And what we see in the late 1700's through the 1800's and into the early 1900's is a titanic struggle for the soul of Europe. The satanic serpent of philosophical speculation finally decided that he no longer needed to slither on his belly and take people by surprise. He could now stand upright and enjoy the fruits of years of slithering, philosophical speculation: Darwinism, capitalism, communism, science and psychology were all creations of the speculating serpent. But there was also a heroic response. European man was not dead yet. An enormous amount of writers saw through the myth of the "higher stage of existence" and threw in their lot with the God-Man. Surely their journeys also reflected the spiritual journeys of many of their countrymen.

With most of the writers, excepting Walter Scott, the post-Christian consciousness was not something they merely observed in others; it was part of their soul. But they, the great ones, fought against it and tried to reclaim the integral vision of the God-Man. Such a vision belongs in the speculators' second stage of existence, but is in reality the only real stage of existence for a truly Christian and truly European man.

The list of knights errant who made the great refusal is very long (see "The Nineteenth Century Way to God"), but I will limit my discussion here to five men: Walter Scott, Thomas Hughes, J. S. Le Fanu, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Ian McClaren.

Walter Scott
With a great many writers it is necessary to forgive much in their personal lives. And that is fair. We are all sinners, and if an author has shown us a glimpse of the eternal through his writings we should mercifully place a veil over his private failings. I know I don't want to hear anything about the personal life of an author I admire unless it is something laudatory. But of course there is always somebody who will take delight in bringing your hero down to earth. "Dickens wrote all those books about happy Victorian families, while he was …." You know that type of debunker. I despise that type of attack even when used against an author I don't like. The E. Michael Jones School of Literary Criticism disgusts me. But such critics we will always have with us. Which is why I take particular delight in their inability to lay a glove on one of my heroes, Sir Walter Scott. H. V. Morton says this about him in his book, In Scotland Again: "It is a commonplace that we who come after must forgive many a man for his sins because he was a great artist. Scott needs no forgiveness. He was a perfect man." Any discussion of a European comeback must begin with Sir Walter Scott.

Scott saw the beginning of the post-Christian stage of European man. But it was never part of his soul. He did not have to fight, like Dostoyevsky, with the demons that were within and without. He was the last thoroughly European writer. Christianity for Scott was not a philosophy from which one could take a few maxims to live by. Christianity was that inextinguishable flame that distinguished the European hearth fire from every other hearth fire. Scott's contempt for the fanatics of every denomination was rooted in a respect, nay a reverence, for the Man of Sorrows. And because of this reverence, Scott loved the continent that nurtured and protected the story of the heroic God-Man. He saw in the new world of industrialism and commerce the victory of the serpent. In all of his literary romances he sets the spirit of European chivalry against the speculative serpent. And it is a chivalry that has been shorn of its medieval formalism. It is not the outward, warlike chivalry of the Knights Templar but is instead a deeper chivalry of the heart. A spindly-legged clergyman such as Reuben Butler can practice it just as intensely as a knight like Quentin Durward.

Scott was a conservative of the blood and spirit. He sensed that the ancient ways were best because they were closer to Him. And he did not equate old Europe with one Christian denomination or one political party or one social structure. In Scott's view, what distinguished the old European man from the new breed of European intellectuals was the old Europeans' disdain for abstract reason divorced from the common experience of the European man of flesh and blood. The European everyman did not need to theorize; he knew in his blood, infused with the blood and spirit of the God-Man, what was the best way to live.
An established system is not to be tried by those tests which may with perfect correctness be applied to a new theory. A civilized nation, long in possession of a code of law, under which, with all its inconveniences, they have found means to flourish, is not to be regarded as an infant colony, on which experiments in legislation may, without much danger of presumption, be hazarded. A philosopher is not entitled to investigate such a system by those ideas which he has fixed in his own mind as the standard of possible excellence. The only unerring test of every old establishment is the effect it has actually produced, for that must be held to be good, from whence good is derived. The people have, by degrees, molded their habits to the law they are compelled to obey; for some of its imperfections remedies have been found, to others they have reconciled themselves; till, at last, they have, from various causes, attained the object which the most sanguine visionary could promise to himself from his own perfect unembodied system.

from Scott's "Essay on Judicial Reform" quoted in John Gibson Lockhart's Memoirs of the Life of Scott

Scott completely rejected the "higher stage of development" theories of the new breed of European intellectuals. In his world there was no such thing as a perfect system that could transcend Christianity. His God was always Christ, the Hero-God of the Europeans.

In the introduction to his masterpiece, Uncle Silas, J. S. LeFanu says that he tried to write in the spirit of Sir Walter Scott. He succeeds. The character for whom LeFanu's novel is named is the embodiment of the post-Christian man. He knows, intellectually, what Christianity is, so he can talk and behave like a Christian. But in reality he is a believer in the "higher" religion. The Hero-God that speaks to human hearts does not inspire him because he has no heart that can be set aflame.
Of my wretched uncle's religion what am I to say? Was it utter hypocrisy, or had it at any time a vein of sincerity in it? I cannot say. I don't believe that he had any heart left for religion, which is the highest form of affection, to take hold of. Perhaps he was a skeptic with misgivings about the future, but past the time for finding anything reliable in it. The devil approached the citadel of his heart by stealth, with many zigzags and parallels. The idea of marrying me to his son by fair means, then by foul, and, when that wicked chance was gone, then the design of seizing all by murder, supervened. I dare say that Uncle Silas thought for a while that he was a righteous man. He wished to have heaven and to escape hell, if there were such places. But there were other things whose existence was not speculative, of which some he coveted, and some he dreaded more, and temptation came. 'Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.' There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down. 'He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.'
The heroine, Maud Ruthyn, seems helpless against the ruthless Uncle Silas. But she is saved, not by her intellect, but by her innocence and the grace of God. In a marvelous denouement, LeFanu depicts the working of grace in a character who we would not have suspected of being receptive to God's grace. But Maud's innocence inspires him. He becomes a hero in spite of himself.
So it was vain: I was trapped, and all was over.

I stood before him on the step, the white moon shining on my face. I was trembling so that I wonder I could stand, my helpless hands raised towards him, and I looked up in his face. A long shuddering moan-'Oh-oh-oh!' was all I uttered.

The man, still holding my arm, looked, I thought frightened, into my white dumb face.

Suddenly he said, in a wild, fierce whisper-

'Never say another word' (I had not uttered one). 'They shan't hurt ye, Miss; git ye in; I don't care a damn!'

It was an uncouth speech. To me it was the voice of an angel. With a burst of gratitude that sounded in my own ears like a laugh, I thanked God for those blessed words.
LeFanu saw that the new Europe of science and rationalism was not going to produce a new golden age; it was going to produce inhuman men like Uncle Silas. Only the God-Man, pure and unadulterated by rationalism and science, could prevail against the Uncle Silases of the new Europe.
It is not easy to recall in calm and happy hours the sensations of an acute sorrow that is past. Nothing, by the merciful ordinance of God, is more difficult to remember than pain. One or two great agonies of that time I do remember, and they remain to testify of the rest, and convince me, though I can see it no more, how terrible all that period was.

Next day was the funeral, that appalling necessity; smuggled away in whispers, by black familiars, unresisting, the beloved one leaves home, without a farewell, to darken those doors no more; henceforward to lie outside, far away, and forsaken, through the drowsy heats of summer, through days of snow and nights of tempest, without light of warmth, without a voice near. Oh, Death, king of terrors! The body quakes and the spirit faints before thee. It is vain, with hands clasped over our eyes, to scream our reclamation; the horrible image will not be excluded. We have just the word spoken eighteen hundred years ago, and our trembling faith. And through the broken vault the gleam of the Star of Bethlehem.
Let me just add before leaving LeFanu that I think his Maud Ruthyn and Scott's Jeanie Deans are the two greatest heroines in English literature.

Thomas Hughes
Thomas Hughes' magnificent work, Tom Brown's School Days, and the sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford, deserve to be placed in the topmost rank of English literature, but they are not placed there because they are so unabashedly Christian. There are three aspects to Hughes' Christianity. The first is charity. In this he is like so many of his 19th century contemporaries. They saw St. Paul's meditation on charity (1 Corinthians 13) as the very essence of Christianity. We know Tom Brown will never go too far astray when we see how he takes care of "little Arthur."
On went the talk and laughter. Arthur finished his washing and undressing, and put on his night-gown. He then looked round more nervously than ever. Two or three of the little boys were already in bed, sitting up with their chins on their knees. The light burned clear, the noise went on. It was a trying moment for the poor little lonely boy; however, this time he didn't ask Tom what he might or might not do, but dropped on his knees by his bedside, as he had done every day from his childhood, to open his heart to him who heareth the cry and beareth the sorrows of the tender child, and the strong man in agony.

Tom was sitting at the bottom of this bed unlacing his boots, so that his back was toward Arthur, and he didn't see what happened, and looked up in wonder at the sudden silence. Then two or three boys laughed and sneered, and a big brutal fellow, who was standing in the middle of the room, picked up a slipper, and shied it at the kneeling boy, calling him a snivelling young shaver. Then Tom saw the whole, and the next moment the boot he had just pulled off flew straight at the head of the bully, who had just time to throw up his arm and catch it on his elbow.

"Confound you, Brown, what's that for?" roared he, stamping with pain.

"Never mind what I mean," said Tom, stepping on to the floor, every drop of blood in his body tingling; "if any fellow wants the other boot, he knows how to get it."
The second part of Hughes' vision is implicit in most of the 19th century authors, but Brown makes it explicit, which is unique. Hughes places before us the vital connection between a belief in heroes and faith in the Hero-God. In doing this, he shows us the reason our European ancestors were able to see that Christ the Hero, whose reflection they saw in the faces of their warrior-hero gods, was the true Hero God.
And let us not be hard on him, if at that moment his soul is fuller of the tomb
and him who lies there, than of the altar and Him of whom it speaks. Such stages
have to be gone through, I believe, by all young and brave souls, who must win
their way through hero-worship, to the worship of Him who is the King and Lord
of heroes. For it is only through our mysterious human relationships, through
the love and tenderness and purity of mothers, and sisters, and wives, through
the strength and courage and wisdom of fathers, and brothers, and teachers, that
we can come to the knowledge of Him, in whom alone the love, and the tenderness,
and the purity, and the strength, and the courage, and the wisdom of all these
dwell forever and ever in perfect fullness.
And thirdly, Hughes sees, in contrast to virtually every other European of that era or subsequent eras, the limitations of Greek philosophy:
The result of Hardy's management was that Tom made a clean breast of it, telling everything, down to his night at the ragged school, and what an effect his chance opening of the "Apology" had had on him. Here for the first time Hardy came in with his usual dry, keen voice, "You needn't have gone so far back as Plato for that lesson."

"I don't understand," said Tom.

"Well, there's something about an indwelling spirit which guideth every man, in St. Paul, isn't there?"

"Yes, a great deal," Tom answered, after a pause; "but it isn't the same thing."

"Why not the same thing?"

"Oh, surely, you must feel it. It would be almost blasphemy in us now to talk as St. Paul talked. It is much easier to face the notion, or the fact, of a demon or spirit such as Socrates felt to be in him, than to face what St. Paul seems to be meaning."

"Yes, much easier. The only question is whether we will be heathen or not."

"How do you mean?" said Tom.

"Why, a spirit was speaking to Socrates, and guiding him. He obeyed the guidance, but knew not whence it came. A spirit is striving with us too, and trying to guide us--we feel that just as much as he did. Do we know what spirit it is? Whence it comes? Will we obey it? If we can't name it-know no more of it then he knew about his demon, of course, we are in no better position than he--in fact, heathens."
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson is rightly revered for his A Child's Garden of Verses, Treasure Island, and Kidnapped. But the Stevenson canon contains much more. He was one of the greats, who was brought up to revere the third, 'higher' stage of existence, but who rejected it for the second, Christian-fairy tale stage of existence.

In Ebb Tide, we meet a man who has reconverted. He was a man of the mind, but he returns to Christian orthodoxy. It is significant that in the two movie versions of Ebb Tide, the Christian reconvertite is depicted as a madman. Why, of course. How could a man exposed to the wonders of the 'higher' religion of the mind return to a Crude Fairy Tale? But Attwater does reject the new faith. And his unflinching orthodoxy brings another sinner into the fold: "That's just the one thing wanted; just say, 'Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief! And He'll fold you in His arms. You see, I know! I've been a sinner myself!"

It doesn't matter whether a great poet comes from a Catholic or a Protestant background; he always sees that the Christian faith cannot be made into a philosophy. It must always be a faith, with God and the devil warring for the soul of man. Stevenson, in Thrawn Janet, gives us a wonderful glimpse of the on-going war between God and the devil. And he makes it clear that a man who has one foot in the third stage of the 'higher' religion and one foot in the Christian stage cannot cope with the devil.

The Reverend Murdoch Soulis seemed like a good young man when he first came into Balweary, but he was "fu' o' book learnin' and grand at the exposition, but as was natural in sae young a man, wi' nae leevin' experience in religion… There was no doubt onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been ower lang at the college."

Murdoch is not in the final stage when he comes to Balweary. He has only been flirting with it. When he encounters evil incarnate, he is driven back to orthodoxy.
"Witch, heldame, devil!" he cried, "I charge you by the power of God, begone - if you be dead, to the grave - if you be damned, to hell."
And for the rest of his life, the Rev. Murdoch Soulis never again flirted with the third stage of religion.

Ian Maclaren
In the 1890's two novels appeared that stand as a final testament to the faith of the European peoples. In Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush and its sequel, The Days of Auld Lang Syne, John Watson (pen name, Ian Maclaren) sets before us an image of Christ that is beyond creed, it is pure unadulterated vision. Our hearts burn within us when reading the Drumtochty novels, and we feel with absolute certainty that "this is Christianity and these people are the true Europeans."

Watson places us in the town of Drumtochty where there are two Presbyterian kirks, the Free Kirk and the established Kirk. But it is not Calvinism that dominates the hearts and minds of the people of Drumtochty. It is Christ. Before there was an Aquinas, before there was a Calvin, there was the Saviour.

The town of Drumtochty is a bit of a throwback; there is no one in the town who has completely gone over to the third stage of religion. But there are some who are in danger. And they are brought back to the fold by other Drumtochtians who can see His blood on the bonnie brier bush. One such individual is the local Dominie who has made a whited sepulchre of the Greek classics. As his prize pupil lies dying, he realizes that it was the pupil who was the true teacher:
"Maister Jamieson, ye hae been a gude freend tae me, the best I ever hed aifter my mither and faither. Wull ye tak this buik for a keepsake o' yir grateful scholar? It's a Latin 'Imitation' Dominie, and it's bonnie printin'. Ye mind hoo ye gave me yir ain Virgil, and said he was a kind o' Pagan sanct. Noo here is my sanct, and div ye ken I've often thocht Virgil saw His day afar off, and was glad. Wull ye read it, Dominie, for my sake, and maybe ye 'ill come to see--" and George could not find words for more.

But Domsie understood. "Ma laddie, ma laddie, that I luve better than onythin' on earth, I'll read it till I die, and, George, I'll tell ye what livin' man does na ken. When I was your verra age I had a cruel trial, and ma heart was turned frae faith. The classics hae been my bible, though I said naethin' to ony man against Christ. He aye seemed beyond man, and noo the veesion o' Him has come to me in this gairden. Laddie, ye hae dune far mair for me than I ever did for you. Wull ye mak a prayer for yir auld dominie afore we pairt?"

There was a thrush singing in the birches and a sound of bees in the air, when George prayed in a low, soft voice, with a little break in it.

"Lord Jesus, remember my dear maister, for he's been a kind freend to me and mony a puir laddie in Drumtochty. Bind up his sair heart and give him licht at eventide, and may the maister and his scholars meet some mornin' where the schule never skails, in the kingdom o' oor Father."

Twice Domsie said Amen, and it seemed as the voice of another man, and then he kissed George upon the forehead; but what they said Marget did not wish to hear.

When he passed out at the garden gate, the westering sun was shining golden, and the face of Domsie was like unto that of a little child.
Yes, "like unto that of a little child." When the Europeans bent their knees to Christ they did so with the faith that was like unto that of a little child. It took centuries for them to become too adult and too intelligent to believe in a fairy story about a heroic God who was God and man.

Drumtochty gets into a man's soul. Once he's been exposed to the town, he can never really leave it. There is something about that town that is antithetical to those who stand poised between Christianity and the 'higher' stage. One young minister is in danger, when his dead Mother's words come back to him.
He had finished its last page with honest pride that afternoon, and had declaimed it, facing the southern window, with a success that amazed himself. His hope was that he might be kept humble, and not called to Edinburgh for at least two years; and now he lifted the sheets with fear. The brilliant opening, with its historical parallel, this review of modern thought reinforced by telling quotations, that trenchant criticism of old-fashioned views, would not deliver. For the audience had vanished, and left one careworn, but ever beautiful face, whose gentle eyes were waiting with a yearning look. Twice he crushed the sermon in his hands, and turned to the fire his aunt's care had kindled, and twice he repented and smoothed it out. What else could he say now to the people? and then in the stillness of the room he heard a voice, "Speak a
gude word for Jesus Christ."

Next minute he was kneeling on the hearth, and pressing the magnum opus, that was to shake Drumtochty, into the heart of the red fire, and he saw, half-smiling and half-weeping, the impressive words, "Semitic environment," shrivel up and disappear.

As the last black flake fluttered out of sight, the face looked at him again, but this time the sweet brown eyes were full of peace.

It was no masterpiece, but only the crude production of a lad who knew little of letters and nothing of the world. Very likely it would have done neither harm nor good, but it was his best, and he gave it for love's sake, and I suppose that there is nothing in a human life so precious to God, neither clever words nor famous deeds, as the sacrifices of love.

The moon flooded his bedroom with silver light, and he felt the presence of his mother. His bed stood ghostly with its white curtains, and he remembered how every night his mother knelt by its side in prayer for him. He is a boy once more, and repeats the Lord's Prayer, then he cries again, "My mother! my mother!" and an indescribable contentment fills his heart.
These short glimpses of the 19th century counterattack do not do justice to the depth and breadth of the resistance. But they do reveal to us the essential touchstone of reality: Men and women of depth, when faced with the tragedy of existence (often brought home to them by satanic 'isms' such as capitalism and communism), return to a Christ-center Christianity. The philosophical Christ, the theological Christ, is not sufficient. They instinctively know that they need a hero, not a sage. They need the God-Man. They knew it; we don't. That's why there is a chasm between our culture and the 19th century European culture. However, the chasm is not impassable. We simply need to recapture the same spirit as the early Europeans:
The Son of God goes forth to war
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood red banner streams afar:
Who follows in His train?

Labels: 19th century authors, Christianity is neither a theory nor a philosophy, European hero culture, Ian Maclaren, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Hughes posted by CWNY | 7:35AM
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Black Hell Continued…
Let's contrast two recent events: After the torture murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, we saw a few whites protest the torture-murders, and we saw a much larger group of blacks and whites protest the protest of the torture-murders. "Cry me a river," was the black response," and "We must understand black rage" was the white, post-Christian response. I even think the Pope and Billy Graham immediately called for the pardon of the black torture-murderers. (They didn't? How did they miss that one?)

Now let's segue to the conviction of one (of seven, not six) black "youth" for the attempted murder of a white boy. The rough-tough black boys picked the smallest white boy in the school, knocked him unconscious (from behind, of course), and kicked and beat him in an attempt to kill him.

When an all-white jury convicted one of the angelic blacks of attempted murder, the barbarians of color were outraged, so of course a higher court overturned the conviction. But that cowardly, immoral capitulation was not enough for the black barbarians. They still marched because the black "youth" was still in custody (the only one not out on bail) and also because they wanted to "send a message." And they marched in the thousands while white commentators spewed yellow spinal fluid all over the streets of Jena and the newsrooms of America in their rush to present, with professional acumen and sterling integrity, the heartfelt anger of the black barbarians. One crowning moment of white cowardice came when someone who appeared to be a white clergyman (who else?) screamed, "Please send this boy home to his family."

No, that can never happen, because spawn of Satan do not have 'family.' Only the race of people whom the post-Christian whites have betrayed have a sense of family. All other races have tribal members.

This Haitian-style darkness descending (not so slowly) over Europe and America makes all the blood-splattering horror pictures look tame. White people should drive a stake through the heart of the collective legions of Satan. However, in order to do that, white people would have to believe in good and evil, and unfortunately they have gone 'beyond' good and evil; they have entered that land of pure mind, devoid of spirit and blood.

But what if evil is an objective reality? Will their denial of it make evil non-existent? The white post-Christians' flight from reality has created a virtual kingdom of Satan on earth. It appears that nothing will make the anti-white white see that he lives in Hell. And those "friends" of his, greedily encircling him with cannibalistic glee, are not little black angels, but Satan's minions.

Labels: barbarian nation, post-Christian, white betrayal posted by CWNY | 5:00 PM
Sunday, September 16, 2007

Why the White Man Can Go Home Again
It is clear that white Europeans no longer believe what white European pagans once believed, nor what white European Christians once believed. This is why they are helpless in the face of the "passionate intensity" of the barbarians of colour. The barbarians still believe in barbarism.

The white man's history includes three cultures: the pagan Greco-Roman culture, the Christian culture, and the post-Christian culture. If he were totally pagan or totally Christian, the white man could easily resist the coloured hordes. But the post-Christian has taken parts of paganism and parts of Christianity and welded them into a faithless faith inferior to paganism and infinitely inferior to Christianity. Let us look at the three faiths.

Neither the pagan nor the Christian share the post-Christian's notion of progress. The post-Christian, having jettisoned his belief in the Second Coming, looks forward to a secular, earthly, democratic kingdom of God without God. Each successive generation progresses until the final generation achieves… What do they achieve? They have progressed. Isn't that enough?

In contrast, the Greek pagan looks not to the future but to the past. In the past is the Golden Age, which will come again because of the natural cycle of history: birth, youth, maturity, and death. Spengler, despite his encyclopedic knowledge (or maybe because of it), shares the pagan view of history with the Greeks.

The Christian, like the post-Christian, also looks to the future, but the Christian does not believe in the generic perfectibility of mankind. He believes in the personal sanctification of individuals acting within history, but his faith in the future is based on his belief in the Second Coming of the Lord of History.

The Greek-pagan view of history requires the least amount of faith, which is probably why it appealed so much to Spengler. The elements of birth, youth, maturity, and death can be seen in every civilization, while the idea that mankind is becoming perfect is ludicrous to anyone with the slightest touch of objectivity, and the Second Coming of Christ has not yet occurred. I stand with the Christians, but there is no sense in denying that from a purely Spenglerian, Greek perspective, the Christian view of history is nonsense.

As we might suspect, cultures that differ so widely in their views of history also differ on the subject of God. The Greek pagan gods are cruel (and Prometheus defies them in the name of humanity), but the Greeks found an escape valve in philosophy. If the human mind can systematize and categorize the entire natural world, from which, according to the Greek mind, God emanates, has not the mind of man become God, since that mind can encompass God?

It is this aspect of paganism, which limits God to the confines of the natural world and deifies the mind of man, that the post-Christian has adopted as his own philosophy. And he has grafted that philosophy onto a secularized, eschatological system which measures man's progress by the amount of knowledge he has accumulated about the natural world. This is why scientific thinking is considered the only real thinking in our post-Christian society.

Of course, the profound difference between the Greek and the Christian is their view of God's humanity. The incarnate Christian God is Promethean in that He loves mankind. But instead of stealing fire from the cruel nature gods, He frees us from the nature gods by triumphing over them. Through His birth, death, and resurrection, He defeats the cyclic nature of the pagan system.

So why, we need to ask, do we need the Greek philosophical escape valve if Christ has defeated the cruel gods of nature? The answer is that post-Christians do not believe Christ has defeated the nature gods. They find it too difficult to believe that all human history could hinge on something that cannot be known with certainty by any empirical, scientific test.

The entire European philosophical and theological system is, in my judgment, an attempt to give mankind the scientific certainty that Christ is the Promethean conqueror of the cruel nature gods. That effort reaches its zenith with St. Thomas's historic separation of nature from grace, which paved the way for Teilhard de Chardin and the post-Christian epoch of the white man's history.

The attempt to scientize God, to make Him subservient to a naturalized system that can be controlled by man, is the original temptation to which Adam and Eve succumbed. And the Europeans' descent from Christianity to a pagan-Christian mix was equivalent to a second fall. European civilization was not paradise in the literal sense, but it was paradise in that the incarnate God made Himself available to every European willing to abandon the search for the magic, scientific talisman and walk through the mystic wardrobe door.

The second fall, the Europeans' fall, seems to be irrevocable. But it is only irrevocable if we look at history through the eyes of the Greek, and if we look at God through the eyes of the post-Christian. If we look at history and at God with the eyes of a Christian, we will know there is no distinction between the practical world of nature and the world of grace. There is only His realm of charity and the realm of Satan. Every act that supports His reign of charity, no matter how quixotic it seems, is of vital importance. Europeans used to believe this. That is why they were able to defeat barbarians time and time again, and why they are so helpless before them now. It is not science, that false messiah, which will save European man, it is the suffering servant who cannot be seen, heard, or comprehended by the scientific, theological, or philosophical mind.

There are no white men, no women, no children and no nations in the hybrid, pagan-Christian world of pure mind. But that world does not have to be our world. We can reject it.

Let me speak now with the privilege of anger that Kent claimed in King Lear. Why should we countenance and even revere those who have offered us a magic Greek talisman instead of Christ? By what right does Augustine, Aquinas, or any of those deceivers speak to a man of flesh and blood, a man who must die? Revelation ends with Christ and theology with St. Paul. St. Paul's way, the way of charity, the way of sympathetic communion with the God who speaks to the hearts of men, is the European way, the only way to God.

European man was distinct because he was foolish. He believed a fairy tale about a heroic God Man rather than the meditations of the great philosophers. And every Christian heretic since that glorious rejection has been trying to convince European man that the fairy tale is simply too foolish to be believed. But in many fairy tales there is some kind of magic cloak which the hero places over himself that confers invisibility or invincibility or something else that is beneficial to him yet baffling to his enemies. So let us put on Christ's burial shroud with the sure and certain hope that it will not stink of death and decay but smell like the flowers growing in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Oh, to be young and foolish again. To believe, not as the pagans believed, nor as the post-Christians now believe, but as St. John believed, as St. Paul believed, and the European Everyman believed. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Labels: fairy tale of European civilization, Greek philosophical tradition, post-Christian posted by CWNY | 3:59 PM
Sunday, September 09, 2007

Fairy Tale Apologetics
"What I am concerned with is our apologetics, and that great work of apologetic, some day to be written, which shall suggest to the reader that in approaching
Christian theology he is approaching something that is alive, not a series of diagrams. The hardest part of the author's task, as I see it, will be to introduce some human element into natural theology; to prove that God is, and what God is, not merely with the effect of intellectual satisfaction, but with a glow of assent that springs from the whole being: "Did not our hearts burn within us when He talked to us by the way?"

- Ronald Knox
I quote Knox because I think his assessment is correct. I have had further proof of his correctness after seeing a book by Peter Kreeft, called Handbook of Christian Apologetics, which is lousy with charts and diagrams. Ugh. That type of apologetics, also championed by F. J. Sheed and Arnold Lunn, must be kept on a small shelf in the church basement. When given too prominent a place, such over-intellectualizing of Christianity can send the potential convert into a downward spiral, ending in the Slough of Despair.

I think Knox would have approved of a new apologetics that is a very old form of apologetics: the apologetics of our Lord. His apologetics consisted of a story about a hero (our Lord was the star of His story), woven around dogmas that were illustrated by stories.

Why does the use of stories and parables mark a work as inferior apologetics and lacking in serious moral purpose? In Catholic circles such a work is labeled "natural" and thus inferior to the supernatural works of the Doctors of Theology. But by such a standard, the Gospels would be considered inferior apologetics, and Christ a second-rate theologian.

The false assumption of the Catholic apologist is that reason alone stands unpolluted by original sin. This is false. Our reasoning faculty is not less tainted than our intuitive or our imaginative faculties. It is by incorporating all our faculties into a vision that we can overcome the taint of original sin enough to say that now we at least "see through a glass darkly."

The new apologetics then must be like the old apologetics, showing us a vision of the true God through the use of parable, story, and the image of the hero. When the central dogma of Christ incarnate, Christ crucified, Christ risen is still strongly present in the consciousness of the reader, the story of the Christ-like hero (such as Zorro or the Scarlet Pimpernel) is sufficient without the dogma. But when the central dogma of Western civilization has receded from the consciousness of men, the dogma must be more explicit. C. S. Lewis, in his Chronicles of Narnia series, gives us the new-old apologetics for the 21st century. He makes explicit what writers such as Kenneth Grahame, Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, and John Buchan had said implicitly.

There will be many who will quarrel over the artistic merits of a work of literature that makes such an explicit case for the Christian Faith. But such individuals do not understand that all art is religious. There is no such thing as a work of art without a religious vision. The vision is the work of art. What makes a work of art didactic in the pejorative sense is the nature of the religious vision conveyed. Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel, The Secret Garden, isn't offensive because she writes about God; her novel is offensive because her god is a pantheistic, Buddha-type god.

Catholics are particularly hostile to the new apologetics. The reason Tolkien thought Narnia childish and vulgar was because he was raised in the "old" Catholic school (which was, of course, really a very modern school), which taught that art and religion were in separate categories, the one in the natural order and the other in the supernatural order. But that is a false division. God does not only exist on the Mt. Sinai of the theologians, nor should apologetics be left only to the professionals.

C. S. Lewis was a pioneer in the field of apologetics. After discovering the limitations of the more traditional apologetics, which he did quite well, he wrote his great of work of apologetics in Narnia. He broke through the Thomistic separation of the natural and the supernatural and told us a really true fairy tale, of how we can learn to love God in this world and live happily ever after with Him in the next. He kept it simple for the peasants like me, without compromising the dogma.

There is nothing written in stone that says apologetics must be dull, mathematical, unmetaphorical, unimaginative, and unintelligible. The use of parables and stories in one's apologetics should not disqualify a work from the ranks of "serious" apologetics. In fact, it is my contention that a really effective apologia for the Faith should incorporate the heroic fairy-tale traditions of Europe and the Gospels. And because our current anti-civilization does not consciously recognize the central dogma of our old civilization, the new apologetics will make it clear for whom the cross on the knight's breastplate stands.
Labels: apolgetics, fairy tale mode
posted by CWNY | 3:35 PM
The American Dichotomy
America is the only country, formed by Europeans, which was founded on a false utopian idea. Other countries, like France, sought to replace a traditional government with a utopian one, but they did have traditions and customs prior to their new order.

But even Americans, despite their ignoble, godless constitution, could not eradicate all European beliefs and customs from their lives in one short generation or even in one hundred years. Thus, there is always a great dichotomy in the American people. There are many great individuals walking through our history, individuals like Nathan Bedford Forrest and Robert E. Lee, men who responded to the European in their souls. And there are many demonic individuals, such as Lincoln and FDR, who responded to the utopian ideals of our false nation.

The American writers whom I would label 'great' all follow Melville's lead when he said in Redburn, "All Americans are spiritually European."

Melville
For me Melville's greatness lies in his discomfort with unbelief. He is not Ishmael, who sells out Christianity for thirty pieces of silver and then sleeps quite well. Melville is more akin to Ahab, uncomfortable with unbelief but unable to reconcile the concept of a loving god with the unloving, created world. Ahab goes mad, but Melville keeps nobly on. Although thoroughly versed in the classics, it is the Biblical that inspires Melville. His work is full of fiery prophets with the mark of the Old Testament on them. And in the early and middle works, such as Mardi, Moby Dick, Pierre, The Confidence Man, and Bartleby, Melville is very much the raging, angry prophet. But his jeremiads give way to Isaiah in "Clarel" and in Billy Budd.

Read Melville's work. Was ever a man more organically steeped in Old Testament lore? And were did that Old Testament take him? To the New Testament and to Him.
Billy in the Darbies

Good of the Chaplain to enter Lone Bay
And down on his marrow-bones here and pray
For the likes just o' me, Billy Budd.--But look:
Through the port comes the moon-shine astray!
It tips the guard's cutlass and silvers this nook;
But 'twill die in the dawning of Billy's last day.
A jewel-block they'll make of me to-morrow,
Pendant pearl from the yard-arm-end
Like the ear-drop I gave to Bristol Molly--
O, 'tis me, not the sentence they'll suspend.
Ay, Ay, Ay, all is up; and I must up to
Early in the morning, aloft from alow.
On an empty stomach, now, never it would do.
They'll give me a nibble--bit o' biscuit ere I go.
Sure, a messmate will reach me the last parting cup;
But, turning heads away from the hoist and the belay,
Heaven knows who will have the running of me up!
No pipe to those halyards .--But aren't it all sham?
A blur's in my eyes; it is dreaming that I am.
A hatchet to my hawser? all adrift to go?
The drum roll to grog, and Billy never know?
But Donald he has promised to stand by the plank;
So I'll shake a friendly hand ere I sink.
But--no! It is dead then I'll be, come to think.
I remember Taff the Welshman when he sank.
And his cheek it was like the budding pink.
But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.
And in "Clarel":

But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns)
With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust,
Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns
The sign o' the cross -- the spirit above the dust!

Yea, ape and angel, strife and old debate--
The harps of heaven and dreary gongs of hell;
Science the feud can only aggravate--
No umpire she betwixt the chimes and knell:
The running battle of the star and clod
Shall run forever--if there be no God.

Degrees we know, unknown in days before;
The light is greater, hence the shadow more;
And tantalized and apprehensive Man
Appealing--Wherefore ripen us to pain?
Seems there the spokesman of dumb Nature's train.

But through such strange illusions have they passed
Who in life's pilgrimage have baffled striven--
Even death may prove unreal at the last,
And stoics be astounded into heaven.

Then keep thy heart, though yet but ill-resigned--
Clarel, thy heart, the issues there but mind;
That like the crocus budding through the snow--
That like a swimmer rising from the deep--
That like a burning secret which doth go
Even from the bosom that would hoard and keep;
Emerge thou mayst from the last whelming sea,
And prove that death but routs life into victory.
Melville's work is a rich tapestry that must be studied and looked at in its entirety. If you only have read Moby Dick, you will not see the whole vision. Moby Dick leads to "Clarel" and to Billy Budd.

Hawthorne
Some writers write in affirmation of their countries' values and traditions. And if one's country's traditions and values are good, a writer should write in affirmation of them. Hawthorne lived in Puritan New England, and he wrote in opposition. But the man was gentle. He wrote with love of his people, while condemning the excesses of their creed.

The House of the Seven Gables is my favorite Hawthorne novel, but it is the short stories, in their totality, that make me a Hawthorne devotee. In these stories, "Rappaccini's Daughter," "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," and "Ethan Brand" being representative, Hawthorne masterfully lies bare the anti-Christian heresy that can so easily co-opt Christian societies - the pride of intellect, no less subversive or benign when it is pride of one's knowledge of heavenly things. The Puritans, in imitation of the Pharisees who were so proud of their knowledge of the sacred laws that they couldn't recognize the Author of the laws, cut themselves off from God by severing their link with His sacred humanity. With confidence in their own election, they felt free to ignore the human heart, their link to His sacred heart.

Hawthorne didn't realize it at the time, but he also described the process by which the Catholic Church was divesting itself from God. "We have the documents, we have the correct theology, what need have we of humanity?"

Pulp Westerns
The pulp Westerns of the early 1900's, up through the 1950's, were generally not what one would describe as literature; they were formulaic and repetitive like the B-Western movies, but like the B-Western movies, the Western pulp novels were better than the pretentious, artsy literature of moral eunuchs like Flaubert and Sinclair Lewis. I read a great deal of the pulp Westerns as a boy, and I expected and wanted to read basically the same story over and over again: A tough, rugged cowboy fights successfully for the good against the miserable, bad guys.

Some Western writers took the basic pulp novel formula and elevated it to a higher level. Jack Schaefer's novel Shane is an example. Schaefer's work stands as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. Johnston McCulley, the bulk of whose work could be classified as first class pulp, wrote one novel that stands, like Shane, as a great work of literature. That novel is, of course, Zorro.

Then there is Owen Wister. His novel, The Virginian, is certainly a great work of literature, even though he follows the pulp novel formula.

And finally I should mention Zane Grey. Until Louis L'Amour, whose early novels are decent pulp, came along, Zane Grey was the undisputed King of the Western novel. His work is much better than L'Amour's. Grey's heroes are Christian knights, while L'Amour's are virtuous Romans. My favorite Grey novels (although I certainly haven't read all of them) are Riders of the Purple Sage and The Mysterious Rider. In both, Grey very convincingly displays male heroes whose fierceness stems from an overwhelming gentleness. They fight because they love much. And such chivalry! Grey's counterpart in England, P. C. Wren, would have approved.
"Collie, listen," said the old rancher, in deep and trembling tones. "When a man's dead, what he's been comes to us with startlin' truth. Wade was the whitest man I ever knew. He had a queer idee-a twist in his mind-an' it was thet his steps were bent toward hell. He imagined thet everywhere he traveled there he fetched hell. But he was wrong. His own trouble led him to the trouble of others. He saw through life. An' he was as big in his hope for the good as he was terrible in his dealin' with the bad. I never saw his like… He loved you, Collie, better than you ever knew. Better than Jack, or Wils, or me! You know what the Bible says about him who gives his life fer his friend. Wal, Wade was my friend, an' Jack's, only we never could see!... An' he was Wils's friend. An' to you he must have been more than words can tell…

--from The Mysterious Rider
The Southern Writers
The winners write history and also determine what the "good books" are. So outside of Faulkner, I did not have much exposure to the Southern novelists until I was in my twenties, and then I got a chance to read Stark Young, Caroline Gordon, and some of the other lesser known Southern writers. I like the so-called (but not in my estimation) lesser writers better than Faulkner. He, like Conrad, has one foot in the modern world and one foot in the old. I prefer the writers who are thoroughly in the old world, in writing style as well as in spirit.

Which is why my favorite Southern novel is Stark Young's So Red the Rose. The novel's theme is unabashedly anti-modern.
A strong and definite professor from a New Jersey foundation for girls in the handicrafts (who had struck Natchez, Agnes McGehee said, only because he had read of the Mississippi steamboats and the fantastic scene of them) was at pains one day to explain to them-he had been brought out to Montrose by Colonel Harrod-how false the reality was compared to the ideal that Southern people claimed for their way of life. "The fact is," said the professor, "it never existed, but Southerners are already busy creating a romantic Old South."

"But," Hugh said, "the point does not turn on whether some old fool of a colonel-or some scatter-brained old lady-is what we think he is-or she is. No, no. The point turns on what we believe in and desire, and want to find embodied somewhere, even in them."

"Whether it is or not," said the professor.

"That's incidental."

"It's romance," said the professor.

"Very well. Then the point is: not what the colonel is, being Southern, but what he would be if he were not Southern."

The professor regarded this remark as mere bombast. He had not been invited to Montrose, but had felt free to call because he was collecting statistics. Collecting statistics was already a new kind of entre. Nobody in the county had heard of statistics, before, but the Negroes were very much impressed. They welcomed investigation so heartily that what had at first seemed to the professor a gold mine of data began to irk him as excessively African detail, as communicative as it was imagined.

-- from So Red the Rose
I should also quote a passage from Caroline Gordon's None Shall Look Back - it is one of my favorite 'white' moments:
Rives looked and saw that the door of one of the red-brick houses on the square had opened. A slender woman dressed in black was coming down the path. She had a
handkerchief in one hand. A silver spoon glinted in the other. She was coming straight up to the General. Rives heard her voice, low but distinct: "General Forrest, will you back your horse for me?"

The cavalry commander looked down, startled, then lifted his hat and obediently pulled on the reins. The horse, a powerful gray, took two steps backward. The women bent over and with the silver spoon scooped up some of the earth on which the charger's hoof had rested and put it in the handkerchief, then without a word to the General she walked back up the path, the laden handkerchief clutched in her hand.

The crowd cheered tumultuously and cried, "Forrest! Forrest!"

Forrest was riding toward them. His hat was still off, a lock of black hair had fallen across his forehead. His expression was stern then as if he had just realized what the woman's action meant; he smiled and held up his hand for quiet. The people, he said, must go to their homes. The town was safe, the Yankees would not get it again but the soldiers still had work to do; the detachment of infantry across Stone's River was yet to be dealt with. He let his hand sink to his side. His face resumed its usual stern expression. He was riding off through the crowd, his escort pressing close behind.

The crowd began to disperse. Here and there torches were extinguished. Those that were left flickered palely as the morning light grew. People started and looked at one another when from behind the courthouse a single shot rang out.

Rives, standing with the others, drew in deep breaths of the cool air. He had seen a man led off to die, had just heard the shot that killed him. He knew that he himself would not be standing here in this fresh morning light if the Confederates had not captured the town and his eyes followed the towering figure on the gray horse till it was lost in the crowd.

Labels: European cultural heritage, Hawthorne, Melville, pulp Westerns, Southern writers posted by CWNY | 3:10 PM

Uncle Wiggly: An Appreciation
Uncle Wiggly is a rabbit gentleman obsessed with adventure, but he has peculiar ideas about what an adventure entails. In Uncle Wiggly's mind, adventure means charity. He is always looking for some human or some animal who needs his help. And help is what Uncle Wiggly almost always provides.

In the story of "Uncle Wiggly and the Poor Dog," he finds a place for a poor dog to live, and in the story of "Uncle Wiggly's Christmas," he helps two human boys have a merry Christmas. He is truly Pickwickian in his indefatigable efforts on behalf of those who need a champion, which makes me suspect the old rabbit gentleman and Mr. Pickwick were acquainted.

In fact, I know they were acquainted, through a mutual friend, the same friend who made blind men see and cripples walk. And that is really what distinguishes the great literature of the West (almost all of which in the 20th century is confined to the category of "children's literature") from the literature of the rest of the world. There is that unmistakable and unique presence in the truly European stories which makes one appreciate the sacredness of the European hearth.

Labels: charity posted by CWNY | 3:06 PM
The Flaw in the "Tragic Flaw" Theory
Flannery O'Connor once remarked that literary critics were the ones who most often failed to understand her works. That goes double for Shakespeare's works.

One of the critics' biggest errors, as regards Shakespeare, is their attempt to apply Aristotle's 'tragic flaw' theory to his plays. The 'tragic flaw' theory, simply put, is that the protagonist in a tragedy always brings on his own downfall by some tragic flaw.

Using that criterion, the critic can assume an elevated height above the protagonist, psychoanalyze him, and thus avoid any meaningful reaction to the play or to existence.

But the tragic flaw theory is pure rot. Yes, many of Shakespeare's protagonists have tragic flaws, such as Timon and Lear, but others, such as Antony, Hamlet, and Coriolanus, are the noblest characters in the play. It is their nobility, rather than their flaws, that bring them down. And even in the play of King Lear, when the title character does possess that Aristotleian tragic flaw, one can find no tragic flaw in Cordelia; one finds only sublime beauty and nobility of soul in her.

Literary critics and Catholic theologians love to use the Greek structures because things are a lot simpler when using the Greek syllogisms. But even the Greek poets are too complex for the Greek structures. So how can one expect to fit the even more complex Christian poets, like Shakespeare, into the Greek molds? Well, I suppose you can do anything you want, if you want merely to be an academic bystander and not enter the real playing field of existence, but then, please stick to potted plants and computers and leave Shakespeare alone.

Labels: literary critics posted by CWNY | 3:02 PM Sunday, September 02, 2007

Never the Twain Shall Meet
The Michael Vick dog-fighting scandal highlights the extreme differences between the barbarian cultures of color and the white post-Christian culture. The white post-Christians have, for the last fifty years or so, been the criminally indulgent parents of their adopted black man-child. If Blacky got in trouble for raping white women and murdering white men, the indulgent parents excused Blacky, because they understood the horrible nightmares, caused by white people, that made Blacky commit the wayward acts. So, Blacky grows up believing that whatever he does, no matter how heinous, will be, if not countenanced, then at least tolerated by his white parents.

"So why," the confused, angry Blacky asks, "Are my parents so harsh with me over this dog-fighting nonsense?" And of course Blacky cannot be expected to understand the white post-Christian; their world is not his world. Blacky does not feel any need for a humane God; he needs only a powerful God. Whether he professes Christianity, Islam, or Vodoo, the god he worships is always a god of power who can be propitiated through sacrifice. There is no God of mercy in his racial memory bank.

The white post-Christian, however, does have a God of mercy in his racial memory bank, although his mind will not accept the preposterous notion of an incarnate God. And yet the post-Christian retains an incredible longing for a merciful God, so he soothes his longing for that God by making a religion out of some of the merciful derivatives of the antique faith. Such a derivative is a respect and affection for God's creatures. It is very touching to read about how fond that most Christian of authors, Walter Scott, was of his pet cat and pet dog. He loved them in a way no barbarian could possibly understand. But Scott's love for animals was not an unacknowledged derivative of his love for the God-Man; he understood the connection. The modern post-Christian does not.

So of course Blacky is confused, hurt, and angry. His white parents are behaving, as he sees it, irrationally. And Blacky is right about that. It is irrational to hold on to the derivatives of a faith once you have rejected the main tenets of that faith. But Blacky's failure to understand his post-Christian parents' abhorrence of dog-fighting is just one more example of why blacks and whites should not mix.

Labels: barbarians, post-Christian, segregation posted by CWNY | 11:22 AM

War Means Fighting and Fighting Means Killing
When reading the proclamations of La Raza and viewing their demonstrations in which they display severed heads, in effigy, of whites, I think of the words of the old B-Western cowboy hero, Wild Bill Elliot: "I'm normally a peaceable man, but…"

And of course that "but" meant "there are some things a man can't ride around."

I love the real Walt Disney. He cast a wonderful bouquet of flowers on my childhood, but his generous white soul cast a false picture, in The Three Caballeros, of fun-loving Mexicans south of the border. They are not so fun-loving, unless you call carving up white people "fun."

One thinks of the old ditty, which I'll paraphrase:
Whitey thinks it wrong to fight,
But La Raza thinks it's fun and right.

If only one side fights a war, I don't think we need a military strategist to tell us who the winner will be.

Labels: Aztec invasion posted by CWNY | 11:17 AM