The Post-American Right (AKA the “National Conservative”, “Common Good Conservatives”, “New Right”, &c.) are at it again, dressing up their attack on the fundamental American (and Anglospheric, before that) pillars of our culture and society as defending a purported “heritage” that narrowly is only American in that they and/or some ancestor grew up in America but more broadly isn’t uniquely American at all.
No clearer case of this can be found in recent days than a rather convoluted attack by one John Howting, of the “venomous coalition” rant. And what is the crux of what this fool declares to be antithetical to America itself? Why nothing other than “free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”
You know, those principles that the Heritage Foundation, whose current overlord Howting defends?
Yeah…
But Howting unintentionally reveals himself as being, if not an arsonist of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, than a pyro-by-proxy. If American civilization is burning to the ground, than he cares not about those very pillars that have shaped and made America what it is, the superlative civilization of history, being tokens of his own superficial normalcy at best.
“The best way to understand this rift within Heritage—and in the conservative movement writ large—is to imagine a large manor estate that has been passed down through countless generations of our family, burning down. That burning structure is called Western civilization.”
Note the emphasis on “Western Civilization” and not American civilization! America, and our Anglophere heritage before that, is not synonymous with Western Civilization writ large, though it is part of it, and perhaps is the last outpost thereof. America’s Heritage is what makes it separate and distinct from Western Civilization writ large, and manifestly superior thereto. It is those things that we must preserve above all else from this conflagration Howting is so giddy about.
Even then, Western Civilization was never some mythical unicultural family of togetherness. In linguistic terms, Western Civilization is more of a sprachbund than a urheimat. Itself, it was a wonder confluence of many positive and rarefied things, and from that one such intersection spawned the Anglopheric heritage nearly a millennium ago, and from that America, properly understood.
One of the key differences between America and the rest of the world (and perhaps the rest of Anglosphere in this current day) was a rejection of the “Norman Yoke” and the understanding that there was a separation of people and state, with the yoke being either on the people as controlled by the governmental powers or on the rulers as constraints against machinations against the people.
That Howting thinks of some manor lead by some landed gentry or the like shows where his prejudice lies.
But just what does this person consider ancillary vs. important?
“The first three of those principles are Conservative Inc.talking points in defense of ‘capitalism.’ In other words, he is deeply concerned—so concerned that it comprises the first three items on his list—about preserving tools for earning money. If he were a carpenter, he’d be rushing into the fire to save his toolbox. The fourth—‘traditional American values’—means the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration is an ordinance of secession from the British Empire, and the Constitution is an old list of laws and political compromises. This is akin to running into a fire to grab a drawer full of old legal documents. The fifth thing that concerns Blackman—‘strong national defense’—means military preparedness. So, in a fire, Blackman would run in to save his gun.”
And there’s the canard of some Stonecutters-level conspiracy of “Conservative Inc.”! This entire paragraph demonstrates this fool’s superficiality and ignorance. Free enterprise is the free interaction of free persons. This is far more than just about rich plutocrats getting richer at the expense of the proletariat. Indeed his entire framing is almost comically Marxist and based on foreign ideologies that took root in Europe after American independence—in other words he celebrates foreign ideas of foreign people from foreign lands developed without appreciable shared history.
Rather than freedom, these people want central planning as planned by Nomenklatura such as themselves, with everything subordinated to their superficial whims. Indeed, it is those fundamentals of individual freedom that allowed American to become not only wealthy and powerful, but also retain a morality and cultural heritage increasingly being purged from the rest of what was once Western Civilization.
But his rant gets worse.
He decries the Declaration of of Independence and the Constitution as mere scraps of paper, filled with compromises or dismissed as mere formalities. This is the same person who would grab a family bible (a collection of documents) as something special. It is not the paper and ink itself, but what that Declaration and Constitution embody and encompass. It is an end result of centuries, nearly a millennium or more now, of our cultural heritage and the way of knowing of our people. To dismiss them and not merely irrelevant, but something negative to let burn is to dismiss We the People and our American Heritage.
That Howting dismissed the right to keep and bear arms—the grabbing of the means of self defense and defense of one’s family (and thus way of life) from this civilizational fire, can but demonstrate his clear loathing of America’s Heritage.
“Let the family Bible, the family album, and invaluable family heirlooms go up in flames, so long as we save our tools of wealth-getting, that old lawsuit grandpa filed, and our Saturday night special. None of these things, in any meaningful way, ties one to his heritage. God forbid that an organization named ‘Heritage’ give a hang about the thing!”
It is not the physical objects that matter, but what they encompass and represent. And what those things that are so encompassed and represented is what Howling wants to see burnt. Christianity has been part of the broader Western Civilization and America as well, but it is not unique thereunto. Neither is love of family and community. If “faith, family, community” is all Howting cares about, then he needs not America or even Western Civilization for that, for plenty of people around the world embrace the Christian faith, embrace the primacy of family, and the loyalty to one’s community.
Perhaps, it is not those things Howting, or indeed any of those of his fellow goers, cares about, but rather his superficial sense of normalcy. Family acts a certain way, community interacts in a certain way, and faith is performed and lived in a certain way. That is what he and so many others hold precious. Family is important because it fills that superficial way family is supposed to act because that way is normal; community is important because it reflect the way people are supposed to act in a way that is normal; and faith is an oracular seal of approval to that that way, which to them is normal.
Whether they derive their values from Christianity or use Christianity as a skinsuit for their own invented God is something that neither I nor anyone else except themselves could say.
Ironic, then, that they select those elements from the pre-Christian contributors to Western Civilization as something as sacred as their purportedly professed faith.
“Classical education is akin to those special items that connect one with their heritage—the family Bible, a wedding ring, the family album, heirlooms handed down through many generations. It is composed of signs and symbols that remind Westerners of who they are (their identity).”
Yet again, we see a rejection of those things which made America superior to Western Civilization, or even Western Civilization superior to the rest of the world. Christians who valued their families and their ancestors exist outside Western Civilization (particularly as people like that would define it), so those things can not be the be all end of of Western Civilization let alone America. There is something else… a something else that they’d like to see killed off where no one is looking; they want Ameri-cide.
“The core of our Western identity is not legal documents and tools for making money.”
It isn’t so much the documents as the combined heritage and wisdom that they encompass with all those unique elements that make America something that they despise and wish to kill off. Those “legal documents” are a distillation of our heritage and our culture; those “tools for making money” are a representation of our freedom and our liberty, both of which these people seem to rage against.
“Hilaire Belloc famously said, ‘Europe is the faith, the faith is Europe.’ Belloc explains, in his preface to The Catholic Philosophy by Fr. Vincent McNabb, that the ‘peculiar function’ of Christianity—the faith—in ‘the story of our civilization’ has been to conserve ‘the philosophic conquests of pagan antiquity and to expand them over an even greater range of discovery than the greatest of the ancients had commanded.’
The story of Western civilization—or ‘Europe’ as Belloc calls it—is the story of Christians passing down their faith and the wisdom of the perennial philosophy.
There are, no doubt, other things that compose Western civilization: the great poets, the great ballads, the conquering of the new world, art, architecture, scientific advancement, heroes, and holidays. These are all fine things, but the core of Western civilization lies in our faith and philosophy.”
The faith of Christianity, while an integral part of Western Civilization an America, is also an element of non-Western civilizations and non-American countries. Even then, he admits that “philosophic conquests of pagan antiquity” are part of Western Civilization even after demanding an abandonment of anything other than that faith aside from blood relations. Western Civilization is an intersection of Christianity and many other factors, and those factors which made America unique and superior a very, very unique and rare intersection of events and possibilities. But Western Civilization contributions beyond Christianity go beyond mere “ballads”, “conquering”, or “art”; but without those other elements Western Civilization would be no different than other Christian countries, as any Abyssinian maid on her dulcimer might sing about.
Ah, and then there is a recall to Pagan roots that are not Judaeo-Christian:
“Roberts makes several references to the Trojan hero Aeneas in his book. When Aeneas fled during the sacking of Troy, he did not take legal documents or tools. He took his father, his son, and the household gods.
“When the house is on fire, a true conservative saves his family, and he reaches for special items that connect him to his heritage long before he even thinks about legal documents.”
No, what he took wasn’t some physical object, but his culture and civilization with him. Not just a self-serving version of faith or persons with coincidental similar enough coils of DNA. It was the remnants that he could use to build that house he had lost again, and that knowledge of the very foundations that Howting would so readily abandon and let burn.
As a slight aside, he seems to also dismiss those “rules” that preserve the “nonutilitarian” ethos he champions (despite that ethos being totally utilitarian to his vision of what ought to be.
“Friendship, much like classical education, is nonutilitarian.”
James FitzJames Stephen write an entire book against utilitarianism, yet still managed to defend fundamental rights that were “independent of, and antecedent to, government itself”. But then, would these fantasists care about the rule of law? It is, after all, all about control and imposition for them.
But even then, their vision of America isn’t about faith, family, or community, but rather blut und boden. The author in question blindly defended Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and defended the Heritage Foundation’s chairman’s support for them, by attacking, specifically, the criticism of Jewish critics and then dismissed them as not being real Americans (i.e. “native-born Americans”):
“Indeed, if native-born Americans cannot have frank discussions about what constitutes America’s national interests, then America is no longer a sovereign country.
“Furthermore, if anyone objects to us—native-born Americans—discussing or debating what constitutes our national interests, they are not one of us. Just as Bruce Jenner will never be a real woman, they will never be a real American. You may consider that hurtful or racist or sexist or anti-Semitic or whatever, but guess what?”
Oh, your humble author doesn’t need to guess. I know is not real American, not truly at heart. Both the Know-Nothings and the Confederates had no problem with Jewish people. This is a prejudice from Europe—a foreign prejudice of a foreign people from a foreign land without appreciable shared history. As someone who can claim the mantle of “Heritage American”, this is your humble author’s “frank discussion” about America’s national interests, and that furthermore, they are not one of us.
Some, though try to invoke ecumenical protection and oracular defenses. As already noted, Christianity is an integral part of the history of Western Civilization… and of other civilizations and cultures that these people would recognize as “the other” in their tribal throes. The Constitution isn’t just based on some reading of the Bible, but of a culture that was separate and superior to the rest of Western Civilization and indeed the world. By hyper-focusing on that one element, they hope to blind people from that uniqueness they seek to destroy via societal arson.
tl;dr Some people’s idea of what America is based not on what America is, was, or could be, but on their own superficial notions.
