tradition/history/politics
Writing for a cause
I am an environmentalist, and recently I have been proud to witness a sizable shift within the right towards a new and far superior version of environmentalism. Finally, there is an alternative to the environmentalism founded upon eating synthetic meat and throwing orange paint at works of art, one that holds profound respect for our closest contact with the celestial world: nature. Though this new nature-conscious right has often been labeled as reactionary (the current ruling class’ favorite term to immediately dismiss any valid criticism) as well as being equated with sub-cultures glorifying terrorism, both are merely a way for those that fear its power to sensationalize and discredit the most genuinely revolutionary movement of our times. In this regard, I see my environmentalism as less of an empirical sentiment – though there are extensive logical arguments supporting the curtailing of man's exploitation of God’s natural world – but rather on a spiritual plane, where the natural world should be seen as both a gift and a channel in which mankind is able to digest and receive the touch of the creator. The original traditionalists such as Guenon and Evola felt the truth only nature was able to reveal – though they distrusted the matriarchal and ‘base’ religions founded on nature worship – through their propagation of spiritual beliefs that directly view technological progress as a force of further separating man from the esoteric ‘tradition’. I am inclined to share their view, for technology’s crimes are certainly not only severely detrimental in terms of its profound physical effects, but rather because technology serves to sever our tether with spiritual fulfillment (see my story “tethered” on the creative page of the website for more on this idea). Man, in their eyes, is united by many shared qualities, qualities only realized when he understands the metaphysical hierarchy and truth through the theophany of that truth within the physical world. For example, the male and the female are shown to us (in Evola’s view) through the solar and lunar, as well as through the feminine earth and the masculine heavens. His critique of industrial society is direct and pointed, asserting: "In modern man, the consciousness of 'being' is replaced by that of 'having' and especially 'making,' that is, of manipulation and possession. This tendency can be called 'techne,' and it represents a fundamental change in human civilization," (Revolt Against the Modern World). To any who have felt the fall of snow on their reddened cheek or felt the powerful yet benevolent ray of the sun on your pale and sickly back, you have certainly felt the touch of the creator in a form so pure that you must find it hard not to turn away from for fear of tarnishing its idyllic purity. In recent years, such beliefs have skyrocketed in subscription and relevance, ranging from articles fear-mongering about Steve Bannon’s crackpot philosophical ramblings to young men revolting against the world they have inherited through a deep and new-found connection to the natural world and catholicism. King Charles is among this school of thought, and his environmental efforts have always been coupled with his attempts to revive mystical tradition within religion and find alternative medicines, a man truly worthy of his long-awaited kingship! In Evola’s eyes, the natural order would reveal the inner monarchical nature of the universe, so it is fitting that a king finally sits on the throne who knows his worth and seeks to revive his status as a “personification of the ‘life beyond ordinary life,’” (Revolt Against the Modern World, p.7). However, this movement has yet to go mainstream, which can primarily be blamed on two factors. The first is merely the pig-headedness of the modern right and how far they have strayed from truly conservative principles. In the words of the recently deceased Theodore Kaczynski: “The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently, it never occurs to them that you cannot make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and economy of the society as well, and that such rapid changes will inevitably break down traditional values,” (Industrial Society and its Future, p.11). I do not cite Kaczynski as a hero, nor do I endorse his actions, however, his work undoubtedly contained many of the most sober criticisms of both sides of the political spectrum. What made people community-oriented, divinely connected, and virtuous? The answer is nature, to put it simply, for she naturally engenders strength, independence, and a dogged work ethic through rewarding the higher types with plentiful children and survival. It may seem heartless, but it is the very principle that science has established. As a side note, it is important to recognize that modern society is not propelled forward by “logic” or “reason” – both in fact would tell us that the best course of action for man’s development and the earth’s ecosystem would be to act per natural will – rather, modernity is based in fear; it uses man's base instincts and emotions to wrangle and stifle his higher qualities. A living and youthful culture will be held in check by its own vitality and its ability to instill vigor in its cells – the people create its very existence – however, a dying and senile civilization will need to scare, drug, and grip its population firmly in order to hold onto its last shreds of life. That is exactly why rather than seeing society as a living and breathing being, modernity has mechanized and simplified it, requiring it to increasingly strip natural freedoms to continue the facade of benefit to the common man. Modern conservatism’s idealization of the nineteen fifties is highly symbolic, for just like their forefathers, their individualistic self-centered nature has stripped them bare, leaving their only goals being temporary financial success and a can of beer in their right hand to sip whilst the world of their children burns to the ground. However, conservatives are not the primary concern of this article, for the second reason relating to the niche nature of this movement can be pinned on those to the left. I want to preface this scathing critique by saying that I have no animosity towards the people whom subscribe to left-wing environmentalism, many close to me do, rather I see them as misguided by the very people spurring on environmental tragedy. These are people of fine intentions, infantile yes, but in an endearing way, and if they were not so damaging I would be inclined to ‘live and let live’. The key word is infantile, for one of the many tragedies of industrial society is that it stunts mental and emotional growth as a means of control. The system makes you fearful of nature, fearful of autonomy, and fearful of others to make the overreaching policies it enforces seem benevolent: a process which began with the likes of Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century. Instead of infantile, Kaczynski in his criticism uses the work ‘over-socialized’, describing how, "The leftist of the over-socialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually, he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society," (Industrial Society and its Future, p.6). To create a helpful analogy, imagine a dog unhappy that its handler has decided not to lead it towards one of his companions. To display his frustration that the owner has not led him to the desired destination, he pulls on his leash, barks, and creates an overall nuisance of himself. However, he knows that if the handler dropped the leash for a second, the German Shepherds, Dobermans, and Malenois of this word would devour him instantaneously. The leftist is a collectivist for the very reason he is over-socialized; he has been broken in by the handler more fully than the Doberman. Because he has been left with so much self-doubt, he resents even the autonomy he does have and wishes to further nestle himself under the government's wing, while at the same time wanting the illusion of freedom. Unfortunately for our little doxen, he cannot have his cake and eat it too, and the second his pulls risk the leash falling from his handler's hand, he will regain his composure and submit himself more fully than before. Once more, we see the inherent contradictions that our little doxen’s existence is brimming with. I would like to circle back to an earlier point about “logic”, “science”, and “reason”. The leftist has stolen the word liberal, and portrays himself as the standard bearer of the enlightenment ideals, but this is merely not the case. I have already displayed the profound juvenile roots of leftist environmentalism – which admittedly do not take a great mind to understand – yet their constant claims to have science behind them do not cease to enrage me. Has man caused unimaginable harm to the natural world? Yes, the leftist and I agree. Unfortunately, that is where all agreements stop. At one point organizations did have a scientific basis, for example: “As is well known, the Sierra Club and other environmentalist organizations used to oppose mass immigration, in part quietly for this reason, but also because population increase will on its own place unacceptable strains on nature,” (Bronze Age Mindset, p.63) yet now that understanding seems as lost as Roman concrete was to the dark-age peasant. Because the left wishes to rebel by opposing all that the conservatives support, they mire themselves in a mountain of contradictions such as the example I just provided. Their solution to this is to propose further technologies, further advances, and further toleration. It should be abundantly clear why injecting more of the Yersinia Pestis bacterium into a plague victim will not cause him to be cured, but once more, the leftist is not interested in a real solution. Their commitment is lukewarm, a cause to get up-in-arms about and discard when it stops serving the same purpose as a confessional. The hard truth is that our Faustian society has been on its deathbed for some time, and rather than preparing to rise once more from the ashes, they wish to hook the dying leviathan to an iron lung and a pacemaker. If they loved, respected, and revered nature, they would revel at the sight of dogs being clawed to pieces by eagles while yipping tragically, but they do not. Nature’s hierarchy and the high standard of greatness that she holds us to is not their goal, rather, they want an outlet akin to a teenage boy wearing a hammer and sickle shirt to annoy his parents without having read a single page of Marx. So is it worthwhile to find common ground with these people? To put it simply, no. The easiest possible way to discredit a genuine environmentalist movement is to associate it with those who do not even hold its core tenets. The reason that they participate in performative acts such as lying in the road and harassing farmers attempting to go about their lives is that they do not care about finding realistic solutions, rather they derive their pleasure from grandiose acts that prove their moral high ground to only themselves. To clarify, many do not actually know this, for it is far easier for a removed viewer to recognize someone's psychological state than it is for the individual themselves, which has been evident in conversations I have had with such people. After they finish explaining basic views of ‘companies are bad’ and such, I present them with an – albeit watered down – version of traditionalist environmentalism. They are resistant and put off, but they have yet to succeed in finding how they can effectively argue against it; usually, they opt merely to half-heartedly agree or say “That’s interesting” and change the subject. Their mind tells them that they must agree with me wholeheartedly, but at their core, they know that they revile my words. Again, this is not intended to slander my opponents, but simply display that our opposition has to do some serious soul-searching to find what they truly value before an effort of reconciliation can be made. A true traditionalist movement would neither participate in the performative statements nor the reprehensible (not to mention futile) terrorist campaigns of Theodore Kaczynski. For a long time, the goal of traditionalists as a whole has been to stay quiet about their beliefs (something I seem to have utterly failed at) and slowly influence academia and politics to gradually ready the solid for a new season of planting. Our environmental aims should be much the same. The end of Faustian civilization is not the end of mankind, and we should be enveloped by a wave of excitement rather than moping about. We can imagine what great virile and youthful civilization will arise out of the West in the coming decades, a light at the end of the dark tunnel in which we are about to embark. In our excited and forward-looking state, our goal should be to make our own sputtering Leviathan comfortable in his last days, while simultaneously cutting his life support. To avoid the inevitable, he lashes out, he seeks to drain the earth and the population of their life force to preserve his own, so we must consciously put a stop to this. We are the caretakers of a dying, senile old man, and for our own safety and future survival, we must take his weapons so he cannot lash out in his decrepit and clouded state. -E.S.
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Last week, Vladimir Putin took part in his first interview with a Western journalist in years. The significant gap is anything but surprising considering the multiple journalists currently detained in Russian prisons as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine, but Tucker Carlson was seemingly undeterred. After losing his position at Fox News, an agency that skyrocketed him to fame and infamy, he has been looking forward to a large story—a welcome change from his participation in “zyn” ads—and this was certainly that breakthrough moment. Over various platforms, the two-hour interview has been viewed many millions of times over. None of the previous interviews with Putin done by Western journalists—Christiane Amanpour (2019), Megyn Kelly (2017, also a Fox News host before Tucker Carlson), and Oliver Stone (2017)—attracted as much attention as the current one. Yet, there has been no consensus as to what it all means. Journalists and citizens alike have taken to the internet to express their reactions, and it seems the interview has once more further divided Americans; this time whether the interview was a groundbreaking success or merely a rehashing of the same old Russian propaganda. On the one hand, it has been labeled a conservative victory over the corrupt Western nations, while also labeled as a great opportunity for the West to galvanize support against Russia led by a deranged leader. To most, creating a well-formed view is near impossible given the countless directions the media have taken this story, so today a Ukrainian friend of mine and I seek to create a nuanced analysis of what the world witnessed last week. One of the most commonly ‘memed’ moments took place within the initial half-hour of the interview, which saw Putin take the roots of a question about Western aggression back nearly millennia. As someone who closely watched the full half-hour (not to mention the full two-hour interview), I too found it quite comedic, but it certainly raises interesting debates. Foremost, Putin has chosen the wrong direction for the attack. Bringing the ancient history of Russia-Ukraine relations is a mistake. Not only does an average American probably not seriously take historical arguments that took place somewhere in Eastern Europe in 1612 (the Bohdan Khemlnitskyi reference), but they also lack a national understanding of monarch politics due to the democratic nature of the U.S. Looking at this interview as a conversation between a prominent American and prominent Russian, I imagine that a person like Tucker might be able to carefully listen and, perhaps, even engage a little bit in a conversation about medieval Eastern Europe, but let's be honest there, on the following day there isn't much left in his head anymore. In fact, there wasn't even much left in his head before the interview even started. Tucker accurately represents his audience because he doesn't have an elementary knowledge of modern Russia, not even talking about history. He asked only a few questions during the interview, and despite not having much, it took only one of his statements to sign his illiteracy: "Russia is a Christian country." Quite a failure from Tucker's side. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism are four acknowledged religions in Russia. Furthermore, Russia's imperialistic intentions in Georgia and Chechnya show that this country doesn't care about preserving its spiritual identity anymore. Various sources say that Russia has from 6% to 18% of the Muslim population, with some regions being primarily Muslim. Tucker wanted to start talking about general topics that are close to the American right-wing public. Perhaps he planned to idealize Putin's image for U.S. right-wing groups. It's easy to fantasize that Russia is a white, traditional haven full of beautiful blonde women and strong Slavic men. What a contrast and a relief to a culturally shifted United States; a goal to strive for, right? That would be an excellent opportunity for Putin to spin his propaganda propeller on alt-right American viewers. However, this is one of the few moments where Putin does indeed give an honest answer. He says Russia has many religious groups and that being Christian is "not about going to Church every day or banging your head on the floor." It's a terrible answer for the Christian American audience. There are so many ways to gain support from right-wing groups in the U.S., especially if you are Putin and everything you say is taken for granted. Imagine a fat Drew from Alabama. He hates Mexicans, Muslims, abortions, furries, gays, rainbow flags, and everything that starts with homo. He wants to hear how wonderful Russia is. There are no ABCDEFG+ people, no migrants, nothing is imported, and taxes are minimal. I say, take all of these values, slap them on Russia (most of them will work if you try hard enough!), and achieve the support from republican Americans with minimal effort. Don't forget to criticize Biden, NATO, bureaucracy, and Western media on the way. Each method would lead to positive results. However, Drew hears some crazy stories about Kyiv Rus and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, receives some letters from Bohdan Khemlnytskyi to the Moscow Empire, and realizes that Russia decided to conquer Ukraine because of some bullshit from the 9th century. After attentively listening, Drew tosses his finished can of root beer into the trash bin and asks himself, "Hm... Isn’t Lithuania a city in Munich?" Putin and his media team did a terrible job, but Tucker also wasn't able to show off his favorite minion. His questions were too complicated and confusing for Putin, so he couldn't ride the same message he does in the inner politics of Russia. Hence, Putin struggled to identify the audience he was working for because, ultimately, his argument did not appeal to every single side of the issue. Slightly more specific and straightforward questions could have moved the interview into a more casual flow, where Putin would be comfortable contrasting the ideals of the U.S. to those of Russia and downplaying other factors. The intimidated Carlson must have been afraid to change the subject of Ruriks and territorial wars, and Putin must have really enjoyed talking about his dearest topic in history and decided to continue like that until the end of the interview. Additionally, Putin’s baffling claim surrounding Poland’s supposed collaboration with the Nazi regime quickly squashed any sentiments of respect that may have taken root in the audience during the first few minutes of the interview. For years the right has tried desperately to frame Putin as the strong antithesis to the West to highlight the West’s own decrepit and pitiful ruling class, and while this criticism is valid, Putin is certainly not a correct role model for a traditionalist nation. To summarize, his history lesson was not intended to answer the question provided by Carlson, but rather an attempt to drag the conversation into waters far out of Carlson’s depth in order to dominate the narrative. Carlson is no genius or historian, and this proved to be an easy task. Ultimately, just like Putin’s various “Are we having a serious conversation?” comments, the lecture was nothing more than a way for the leader to assert total dominance over his interviewer. Additionally, Putin is somewhat disappointed by the direction of the interview, seemingly expecting more engagement and follow-up questions from Carlson. However, there's a subtle acknowledgment, perhaps even by Putin himself, that his propaganda tactics may have fallen short. Therefore, Putin downplays the interview's significance to minimize attention and drive away from vulnerabilities in his narrative. Putin’s assertion of control leads cleanly into the next point, which is the unjust criticism of Carlson’s conduct. The media have been quick to lambast him for not ‘pushing’ Putin enough, which is laughable considering where he is. Do they forget he is literally in the heart of the Kremlin? On a personal level, I find that Carlson exhibited remarkable bravery in even suggesting the release of Russia’s American journalist prisoners. However, Carlson certainly understood this balance of power going in, and that is where much of his genuine criticism is drawn from. The main argument states: Carlson knew Putin would have total control over the conversation, so why would he even allow Putin the opportunity to speak through the interview? Of course, it was a foreseeable conclusion that Putin would simply rehash his nation's meticulously crafted propaganda for two hours, but does that mean he should not have the opportunity to do so? Similar to the points made in my last article about the death of liberalism, free media is essential to a nation that claims to be ‘liberal’, and that involves giving a voice to stories with weight. Most Westerners have no idea what Russian propaganda truly professes because it is not targeted at them, and now for the first time, it is. Putin planned to use this as an opportunity to sell himself to the West, and he did so. On the other hand, now the Western citizenry has more knowledge of the ideology and worldview they are up against, so it is certainly a double-edged sword for Russia. After the history lesson, Putin moved to the real meat and potatoes of the interview. Of all the topics spoken about, the most interesting points made by Putin were surrounding geopolitics and ‘how things are really run’. As an outsider to the West with a valuable first-hand understanding of the inner workings of a modern state, his points around the effectiveness of elected leaders were quite poignant. Though these facts were not new to me, I find that it is an ultimate net positive that the average American—especially with an election looming—once more has the depressing reality of modern democracy hammered through their skull. Of course, all his points surrounding these matters had an underlying goal of reaffirming the Russian Crusade against the West, yet a broken clock is right twice a day. Once more, however, the moment I began to have a spark of respect for the points made, that spark was just as quickly pinched out. For years, the most baffling part of Russian propaganda has been the idea of ‘de-Nazification’. I understand why this may work for many Russians—seeing as the ‘great patriotic war’ still stirs up fervent nationalism—yet watching Putin attempt to make the idea applicable to a Western audience was quite entertaining. His main issue is he has to appeal to the West, while also accusing them of supporting Nazism or even being Nazis themselves; a ravine in his argument that is never once bridged. His only two comprehensible points on the matter were the invocation of the Canadian parliament giving a standing ovation to an SS officer and the infamous AZOV battalion, yet the AZOV is a small extreme sect reviled by most Ukrainians, and the Canadian parliament debacle is nothing more than a lack of due diligence in research. The obvious counter comes with the fact Zelensky is Jewish, however, Putin foresees this counter-argument and offers a vaguely recalled conversation between the two leaders about how Zelensky was forced into compromising with the extreme right to hold power. Once more, knowledge is power, and a Western audience will be deterred by statements as ludicrous as these, no matter how watered down to meet their palate they become. So by this point, we understand what Putin was actually saying and what he intended to achieve, but what will be the outcome? In all honesty, nothing groundbreaking. It will certainly help the Trump campaign, for Americans have seen what they are up against in regard to foreign policy, and for all his faults, Putin certainly maintained a strong presence during the interview. This presence and mere ability to speak for an extended amount of time—a shallow bar I know however one that Biden has created through his own inability—certainly once more struck the jagged nail of reality into the American psyche. In truth, this interview coupled with his press conference fiasco has effectively sealed the Biden campaign's defeat this November; no longer can Americans sit back and allow themselves to be humiliated on the world stage. Besides the electoral impact, it achieved little else of substance. Americans already have a lukewarm view of the war, and Putin offered a lukewarm interview that many Westerners will find an utter bore or at best mildly interesting. On the one hand, Putin has not made himself any more likable and his small but vocal following in the West has suffered a serious blow from his utter unremarkably, however, Putin came across as little more than an average politician, not the fantastical villain he is usually made out to be. Effectively, this has led to the current balance of views on the conflict as well as Russia in their pre-interview trenches, which is increasingly staid and unlikely to shift. In short, I found the interview to be an interesting watch, but I highly doubt it will lead to any revelations in the West or breakthroughs in the ongoing war. Western Democracy is no longer liberal. I do not allude to the liberalism thrown around by American conservatives who simply have not discovered the word ‘progressive’, but rather the liberalism coined by the founders of the United States; a philosophy I have foundational issues with, but still one I hold a level of respect for. Though many within my audience are European – as will I be shortly when I fully relocate to that continent – this topic is of the utmost importance to all in the Western world. I call it supremely important for two reasons: the values of the original United States are fundamentally European, and a later beast masquerading as the original United States created the Western World we reside in today.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" (Benjamin Franklin). Franklin’s famous line is not only at the heart of the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment – even though that is where most cite its influence – but is representative of fundamental European values taken to an extreme. Since the dawn of time, Europe has been characterized by its freedom and vitality. The Greeks, whom commented on an expansive range of civilizations, showed disdain for nearly all other cultures; from the overly ordered and neutered city dwellers of the far and near east to the Africans they knew too little about to speak of definitively. The one true exception to their sense of pride in their own superiority was the civilization that lay to their north and west: Europe. Feared tribesmen with streaming red and gold hair streaking behind them coupled with wild whoops of war captured the Greek imagination so thoroughly that their markedly un-greek features were adopted into the depictions of their Gods. Though barbaric, there was respect for the freedom exhibited and the values that kept their lifestyle raw and warlike as well as keeping their bodies muscular and beautiful. I – and many other scholars from Nietzsche to Costin Vlad Alamariu – believe it is this example from the northwest that made Greece great in thought as well as aesthetics; as Aristotle described, Greek civilization toed the line between civility and barbarity to create true greatness. The Greek system of aristocracy became enthralled with these primal values, adopting them in the realms of physical fitness and thought, the two areas in which the original liberal notions of freedom and democracy were coined. Of course, the foundation of ancient Greek values is a nuanced topic, but the foundational principles of freedom, vitality, and individualism are innate to European aristocracy. One may argue that these values are anything but unique, but that could not be farther from the truth. East Asian cultures have always viewed order and security as the primary hallmarks of a great civilization, and do not cultivate the same connection with nature and the primal. Natural disconnection is a logical result of a civilization that orbited around huge and sprawling urban centers for over five thousand years; providing more than enough time for the physical and cultural effects of urbanism to set in and create a population with urban values and a markedly urban outlook. Lacking an agreement with nature can be cited as why these cultures – primarily India and China – do not have the same relationship with animals and are the largest exploiters of natural resources. In truth, no environmental progress can truly be made while these cultures remain as they are or retain their industrial capabilities, but that topic will be delved into in a later article. Additionally, arranged marriages and cultures that fear the physical are all too common in the third world, yet neither were the standards for (most) periods of European civilization. These two practices aid in stability, but do not heighten the population and cause it to inevitably fall into a vicious cycle of oppression and stagnation on a cultural level. The point of this comparison is merely that Europe created a new covenant with nature, one separate from the urbanism of Asia and the unpleasant customs of other parts of the globe, and liberalism was merely another step (though certainly an overstep) to the realization of those values. Europe's Faustian foundation made it great, but additionally sewed the seeds of its own demise through the introduction of liberalism and the enlightenment, which represented the foundational cracks that eventually expanded to see us modern folk reside in nothing more than a ruin. Because Europe gave herself so completely to freedom and threw off her necessary stable institutions of a well-founded aristocracy, monarchy, and powerful church, she set herself up to become even more constrained than the civilizations of Asia that the Greeks so disdained. To be clear, I am not denouncing Asian civilization as inherently evil or degraded, but rather one that works for Asia’s cultural base rather than Europe’s. Despite Europe’s fall into modern decadence and prey mentality, Europe had made a conscious attempt to resist some of the less pleasant symptoms of civilized life. I have read and written extensively about the survival of the British monarchy and aristocracy, and all my research has reaffirmed the central idea that the aristocracy actively resisted modernity by attempting to implement traditional European natural and free values into their rapidly deteriorating nations. A conscious resistance is clearly demonstrated in the British obsession with ‘good quality stock’ of their blood, their detachment from urban centers, along with their perpetual battle to preserve English rural lands. These attempts are admirable and in good faith, however, the constant pressures of modernity have cracked the last pillar of traditional Europe that remained standing in the UK. The effects of this great battle for Europeans to ‘have their cake and eat it too’ are clear in our cities, which have tried to reflect natural beauty and cultivate some simulated semblances of freedom. We must realize, “...that the West along with a couple of others has attempted, since its beginnings, to try to mitigate the evils of ‘pure civilization’ and to bring the benefits of free life within civilization, as far as was possible” (Bronze Age Mindset, p.62). However, as I am sure you have guessed, this was always destined to fail. As I alluded to in the introduction to this article, the United States of America is a complete aberration of what it once was, and only continues to mock the founding fathers with its laughably poor application of their revolutionary ideals. The Bill of Rights, for example, was intended to enshrine freedoms for United States citizens, and in the eyes of the government it does, but in taking these rights for their specific meanings, we lost the foundational values underlying them. These ideals were intended for a free, libertarian, and pre-industrial society, not an oligarchic state that deludes and drugs its own population to its overall detriment while squeezing its hard-working middle-class dry. Many jokingly reflect on this with comparisons of taxes that the British imposed to taxes in the United States now, but I regard this as anything but a laughing matter. We gave up key liberty, as Franklin says, for temporary security provided through an overreaching medical industry and a freedom-quashing police force. In the modern day according to the founders, we are undeserving of the freedom we hold so dear. However, this transition from a truly liberal state to one of a modern technological juggernaut bogged down by corruption and bureaucracy was slow enough to allow the population to be easily distracted by their perceived liberties under the guise of liberalism and democracy. Absolute democracy was never intended by the founders; rather, they were aristocratic on a level that would even make me blush. Thomas Jefferson’s famous quote: “…there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents” (Thomas Jefferson), was not ‘egalitarian’ in a modern sense, but rather represents a view of natural aristocracy similar to that of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. He did not mean every man could be an aristocrat, blood and natural intelligence were still at the forefront, but rather that his sentiments were based in a resentful depiction of European aristocracy finding it had become too far detached from natural aristocracy requiring a new one to form. Technology and governmental overreach are nothing new, and beginning with Woodrow Wilson the United States reached its tendrils out to Europe. Through their efforts, one after another European monarchies were toppled, constituting the systematic neutering of European potential. Now, under these new false governments, Europe was forced to face the same afflictions as their master, and today we see the results of this un-severed umbilical cord. Europe, just as the United States, has operated under the guise of Liberalism since its drastic shift from monarchy to democracy. By feigning public ownership of the government, the population had no single group to pin their very real gripes on and were forced to be complacent in their own subjugation. If a monarch had instituted taxes on this level or police forces of modern strength, they would be replaced within a day by hordes of free citizens. The great mistake of modern man is pinning true freedom on the inflated institution of a government, when in fact, true freedom is better protected by a small, centralized, and stable hereditary government that allows individuals to operate and solve property disputes without constantly dividing them with meaningless political matters. However, as I mentioned in my last article, the people were duped. Intellectuals solidified this false view of freedom, and justified the systematic stripping of public rights to preserve a ‘free democracy’. For decades, the government has been somewhat careful to continue its guise of liberalism in order to quell the people. If the entire Western cultural foundation of freedom was blatantly ignored by their governments, the population may be incentivized to open their eyes and see the reality of their situation. However, the people have begun to awaken and the elite is scrambling for a cork to jam into this fizzling bottle. Voter turnouts have been increasingly low, for now, the common man understands that he has no real choice. American conservatives are not conservative, nor are the progressives truly empathetic to the working man, and only in the last decade has this become abundantly clear. The people – somewhat misguidedly – have turned to populism as a solution; a phenomenon I empathize with but also look upon with pity in its simplicity. Recently, both the German AFD political party and the American presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, have faced stiff resistance from legal systems and political establishments. Neither the AFD nor Trump are traditional by any means, but it is what they represent that scares the current ruling elite so thoroughly. Now, many on the progressive end of the spectrum seek to ban both, completely disregarding the liberal principles they formerly claimed to embody! Along with these two examples, sweeping cuts to free speech in the UK, Ireland, and all across the continent have shattered any attempt to mask the reality of the modern West. What has been proved is that these political establishments are not only anti-freedom but anti-western. For decades the left has sought to tear down the foundations of Western culture, in their own words for freedom’s sake, yet I hope I have succeeded in showing that their justification is nothing more than a flimsy paper mask. For over a century the West has been controlled by a political class that has no respect for the values of the people they rule, and by extension, has no respect for freedom. They, like Xerxes in Persia, cannot understand why we Greeks cannot accept their ‘stability’, their ‘life-span extension’, or their ‘quality of life’. They coerced us into seeing them as a civilizing force, one that respected our traditions, but they are against us and have been since the start. They are scared of nature, scared of freedom, and scared of beauty: they are weak. Following the example of the noble Spartans, I believe we can look forward to another Thermopylae. When the few that have awoken from their drugged vegetative state stand tall at a great mountain pass and are martyred by the brutal leviathan, I believe once more we can rouse the other city-states and realize the truly magnificent structure that our ancestors nobly provided us the foundation for. Just as Hobbes outlined in the 17th century, fear is the driving factor in creating this Leviathan, and primal European freedom will be the harpoon driven into its unworthy heart. -E.S.
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