What is the outcome of the West? Will we be the one place in the world where “the light lingers longest”? But go down, at last? We are shortly to be revealed, to ourselves. Will the sleeping swain awaken, and see the golden sun shoot forth the truth, “at the close”? At the close, I open.
Philip Reiff (and Carl Trueman) explain the difference between Second and Third World countries.
Third Worlds are characterized by their repudiation of any sacred order. There is nothing in a Third World beyond this world by which culture can be justified. The implications of this are, according to Rieff, comprehensive and catastrophic. First, because of their rejection of a sacred order, Third World cultures face an unprecedented challenge: that of justifying themselves on the basis of themselves. No culture in history, Rieff notes, has ever done this successfully. It is a fool’s errand that ends in cultural collapse: No culture in history has sustained itself merely as a culture, however attractive and authoritative. Cultures are dependent on their predicative sacred orders and break into mere residues whenever their predicates are broken. That is the main reason why our late second cultures and early thirds are increasingly unstable. Rieff also notes that Third Worlds are marked by scorn for the moral codes on which Second Worlds are based. They turn these into matters of scorn, and vice comes to be regarded as virtue, a message pressed with vigor by Third World cultural elites whose dominant attitude to any semblance of a sacred order is one of mockery, cynicism, and irony. Perhaps the Rolling Stones capture the Third World cultural mood best: “Now that every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints.” That neatly summarizes Rieff’s description of a dying society. The name of the song from which those lyrics come? “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Alas, the Kulturkampf has gone quite badly for “us”. As the putative losers in the Culture struggle, we can expect more than our fair share of adversity and stress (reflected in the high suicide rates among our paladins), an inevitable differential between the triumphant (temporarily) victors, and those who are marching to their Appomattox. Did we not perceive that under a Culture of Death, the losing side would be quicker to despair, since, in the end, all will become quick to despair? Losers, first! The winning side, with their short-lived oxytocin and testosterone boosts (and the cultural and ideological equivalents of these), will be bright and shiny for awhile. (Which will increase our losses, and our attrition of despair…). Still, it is a temptation of the Lord’s friends, rather than His enemies. Which is something to hope on.
Yes, Yes, I know: over time, this will affect everyone - They are Doomed, Too, and not in a happy way. Humanity stands or falls, as a group. No Man Is An Island. Yet “Judgement starts with the house of God”, and “whom He loves, He chastens”.
Even a good man like this went in for hating “white culture” and “race”
The Moral Majority is routed. And all for want of a nail..
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
The “nail” that we are missing was the one that pierced Christ’s hands. It is the nail of sacred authority. Numbers and morale was not the problem…we always had enough “hands” to win the Culture Wars. Societies rot from the head down. Dostoevsky knew it, and put it in his novel, The Possessed (H/T Dr. Andrew Eber). Now we know the meaning of Ichabod.
ORLEANS.
We are enough yet living in the field
To smother up the English in our throngs,
If any order might be thought upon. Source
We put too much faith in the civil religion of “Judeo-Christian heritage”, a lip service to the forms of Tradition, and a nod to the archetype of the Father. Too many were willing to acknowledge the Father, but far fewer were willing to tread the path of the Son. Even the baby Jesus in his manger (shades of Francis Assisi and the Cathari!) was too offensive to our civic religion, and had to go. America used her archetypal Father attractions to become more biophobic, and forgot that only in the path of the Son could the Age of the Holy Spirit be reached. We watered down the Theology of Glory and discarded the Theology of the Cross. We decided Science (and Elites) could deliver Utopia. Jesus demures…
And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. - Luke 24:49
There is no other hope left to us but the hope of the “Gray Fool” and that of “Strider” and the lonely Ring-bearers. They are all that is left of Sacred Order, now, and the outcome “is in doubt”. The ranks of Gondor’s watch upon Mordor have slept, and waned, and come to a Sunset. Our “Elites” are officially in charge of supervising the disaster - a total surrender to Sauron. As Richard Weaver once said, they are never happier than when dealing some mortal blow to a central pillar of what remains of our civilization.
So, let the dead bury the dead: the time of Noah and the seed savers, has come. This is our Rainbow Flag.
God’s Rainbow is a Warbow
Most importantly, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.a 4“Where is the promise of His coming?” they will ask. “Ever since our fathers fell asleep, everything continues as it has from the beginning of creation.” 5But they deliberately overlook the fact that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water, 6through whichb the world of that time perished in the flood. 7And by that same word, the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. 2 Peter 3-7
We are still hoping, however, that one of the “seeds” that is saved is The True King, a diamond in the rough, along with the Shire, and maybe Lothlorien, the Lonely Mountain, and a few other people and places. We return to our old thought - The Fellowship is at hand, and is now most important, practically all that is important, at all. It is these “Little People” that are the last, best hope of Earth. To h**l with the Utumno-Ivory Towers and citadels of our so-called civilization, you cannot “make” people repent, or have a vision, or stop self-harming themselves, for that is what the Elite have done - crucified mankind on a Cross of Gold, and themselves with it.
They have recently “purged” Sewanee & Kenyon College. The founders of these places are rolling, in their graves, or would be, if they weren’t enjoying the bliss of heaven. What on earth are they thinking? Do historically “black” colleges do this sort of thing?
They are Denethor. Where are the truly degraded specimens of humanity? There are many in the gutters, part of the masses and the mob and the crowd. But they are not the most hopeless cases. The really dark and twisted pieces of work are in the halls of power, presiding over this sad and sorry affair, plotting, scheming, concocting - the activists, and the lobbyists and the culture warriors. They are the dregs of our Society, the ones who have destroyed the likeness of God to the fullest extent in themselves possible. The heroin addicts are practically El Santos, compared to them. Our Elites really need to get out more. They rest of the world (outside the Cordon Sanitaire) no longer thinks we are crazy, they know we are. It’s probably just @That’sEntertainment at this point. Look at the Baizuos! Watch them go! Will they implode, or explode? Or both? Like a fuel-air projectile?
Socrates recruited the intellectuals and the frat boys of Athens. But Jesus called the fishermen. I know that the West was built on the Reason and Order of Greece (Aragorn?), the Learning and Antiquity of Egypt (Gandalf?), and the Holiness of Jerusalem (Frodo!), but of the three, it is the Cornerstone, the latter, that is indispensable, without which the other two cannot endure. Tolkien symbolizes this for us, by having Frodo perform the coup de grace de force de main. Denethor ditched his learning and his wisdom long ago, but before that, pride ate at his cankerous heart, and devoured his Faith. America can not keep the Learning and Wisdom of the Founding Fathers, now that the Faith has departed. The Faith is the heart of the soul, nay the whole soul of a people, a race, a nation, a kingdom. It could even be the heart of an Empire. The Faith had been eroded many times, and threatened, but it departed, especially from Academia and the Halls of Power, in the 1960s.
Deep down, every Leftist digs this! I look like Che!
We will not follow the Ringbearer, because we do not know whom this person is, today. It could be any of us, if we answer the call. In a sense, Frodo is the model for any Christian, since he acts (more so than Gandalf and Strider) out of Faith - he does not know why he must bear the Ring, and is no Loremaster. Still, he goes. He has a will. He wills. He outlasts Evil. They all do, yet for Frodo, he goes farthest into desolation and beyond Hope. He enters into the Dark Night of the Spirit, beyond the Dark Night of the Soul. And Sam goes with him.
"Since the divine extreme strikes in order to renew the soul and divinize it, it so disentangles and dissolved the spiritual substance – absorbing it in a profound darkness – that the soul at the sight of its miseries feels that it is melting away and being undone by a cruel spiritual death. It feels as if it were swallowed by a beast and being digested in the dark belly, and it suffers and anguish comparable to Jonah's in the belly of the whale. But what the sorrowing soul feels most is the conviction that God has rejected it, and with abhorrence cast it into darkness. The afflictions and straights of the will are also immense. Sometimes these afflictions pierce the soul when it suddenly remembers the evils in which it sees itself immersed, and it becomes uncertain of any remedy. To this pain is added the remembrance of past prosperity, because usually persons who enter this night have previously had many consolations in God and rendered him many services. They are now sorrowful in knowing that they are far from such good and can no longer enjoy it. They resemble one who is imprisoned in a dark dungeon, bound hands and feet, and able neither to move nor see nor feel any favor from heaven or earth."
Isn’t this naked strength in the Dark Night of God what Sauron covets and fears?
Ask yourself, if Sauron hates Gondor so much, why is this? Even more so, if Sauron is so overwhelming and fearsome, how comes it that the White Rider (Gandalf) doesn’t seem a little more concerned? For what comes after the inevitable? For his own hide and carcass? How is Good so serenely defiant, against so much Hate, so many odds? Where is its secret Fountain?
The Valar know that the Second Music will be Greater than the First. God is unhurried, and calm - He will lose all His battles, but win the War.
There is nothing equivalent to all of this unexplained persistence of Good, if the Moccasin were on the other foot…if Good were triumphant, Evil would not be so persecuted, harried, and hard pressed, and yet calm. Indeed, that is how “we got here”, to begin with - the “watch” of Good is always more leisurely. Evil would not be so calm, against such great odds. It would “come to terms” as did Sauron in the old days. Evil never can “win the War, and lose the Peace”: Good often, even always, does just that. Evil must bring desolation, even of itself. Also, Evil is (also) never so calm and unperturbed in the face of certain Doom. So which is the greater? There is no Stoic, noble equanimity on the lips or brow of Sauron, or Melkor, just before they go under. When they finally Fall, it’s a doozy, and it isn’t pretty, inside or out. Indeed, even their triumphs, are a desolation, for their own Self.
Sauron & Melkor represent the inner Fire of Creation, when it fails to serve, and desires to rule. It still has a shred or shard of the True Will - this is what makes them so “mighty”. And yet, so pathetic.
In Part Two, we will distinguish what separates Evil from Good, with a needle.