Conserving ourselves and our progeny

David Hamilton has a very good piece here which has to do with 'conservatism', or I would say ethnoconservatism. In it, he contrasts ideological outlooks, specificallly 'progressivism',  with the kind of worldview which is not ideology-based. Some refer to this as 'traditionalism', which is apparently Hamilton's preferred term.

Ideological thinking starts with first principles and requires underpinnings to support or justify beliefs.  This Conservatism is not an ideology but a view of the world that grows out of our emotional bonds with our families and expands outwards through neighbourhood and community to the nation.  It emanates out to Europe and the Anglosphere, though weaker.  For example, we feel for the South African Boers in these days of their genocide.  It is stronger at home and a parent who wishes other children to do better than their own is perverse.

We have a responsibility for our kin, and a duty to them.  We have a duty to pass on what we have inherited to our children, as they, in turn, will have a duty to their children.  We owe a debt to our ancestors who bequeathed to us our nation and culture and we must honour that.

A people need the numinous things in life – religion, art, culture, a wholesome countryside.  The numinous is a feeling of, and a need for, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent; not just the material and the hedonistic.''

The conservatism he describes above, I would call ethnoconservatism or ethnopatriotism, as contrasted with the ideological systems like 'progressivism' (leftism, liberalism) and neoconservatism, which is simply another form of progressivism, a more militaristic and paternalistic kind: invade other countries for their own good; give them 'democracy', whether they want it or not.

The approach of many of the younger secular 'right' is also ideological in nature, what with the focus on starting over from scratch if and when they attain the ascendancy: scrap Christianity, re-institute some form of paganism or pantheism, discard everything from the past that does not fit with the rather esoteric ideas of many of the 'new right' proponents. 

In the zeal to erase all that they find personally objectionable about the past, this approach resembles Jacobinism. Reinvent the wheel; nothing from the past is valuable or worth saving, apparently. Those who admire anything about the past, according to this worldview, are old, boring, and have the stench of death about them. 

The idea is to appeal to the younger, intellectual set who are disciples of a few rather obscure intellectuals, many of them European. How likely is it that this kind of thing would ever be appealing to the ordinary man or woman? This is a very rarefied philosophy, that appeals more to the cosmopolitan and the cerebral. What would a society look like that was dominated by this cobbled-together worldview? It would scarcely resemble anything that most of us would recognize. It would be constructed mostly from the imaginations and wishful thoughts of a few people, who look to the pagan or semi-mythical past (Hindu writings, the 'old gods'). In this preference for the novel, the exotic, the esoteric, they resemble the counterculture left, with all their xenomania and the love for change for its own sake.

Such a society would of necessity be ruled by the intellectual elites who are the true believers in their ideological constructs. Such a situation is never tenable, and is not conducive to freedom.

And if this idealized future were geared toward being forward-looking, and youth-oriented, it would be inherently unstable, because youth is always seeking novelty. The 'system', if it is to keep pace with fickle popular culture and the fads that sweep our postmodern society, would have to be in constant flux to keep up with 'youth'. This is the same kind of thinking we see with postmodern Christian churches: bring in pop culture and youth trends; follow rather than lead. The idea that the right, hoping to shun  boring, 'dead' old ways, should tag along behind youth is very much like the ideas adopted by the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, who fear being associated with old fogies. Rather than appear stodgy or irrelevant or un-hip, they resort to 'clown ministries', Christian rap, and other such embarrassments. If the 'new' right fears looking old-fashioned or past-oriented, they risk being as absurd as the Christians who whore after the young crowd.

I suppose the idea, as ever, is that ''youth is the future''. This attitude ignores the value of those who are past their youth. Age brings experience, and ideally, some wisdom. However, respect for age is rarely found in the 21st century; everybody looks up to youth as the exemplar, and the epitome of all that is good and admirable. But youth is fleeting, and above all, youth implies lack of life experience and a certain arrogance. Youth always tends to have the know-it-all attitude, and only with age do we realize that we were not nearly so wise as we imagined ourselves to be while young. Youth tends to be callow and short-sighted. There is a place for older people, or do we want a 'Logan's Run' society?

AltRight attracts a great many people who openly hate Christianity. To reject the faith that was at the heart of European culture and history is to reject the West. Trying to construct a romanticized 'pagan' past based on bits and scraps of evidence is unrealistic. The pagan past of our ancestors was many, many generations ago. Any reconstruction of that past is a forlorn hope. The same people who hope to carry us back to the ways of our distant ancestors are the ones who scoff at restoring the state of things from the 1950s. How, if we can't ''turn the clock back'' to the 1950s, can it be possible to turn it back to, say, 400 A.D.? 

There are likewise those who dream of building a libertarian society, when in fact such a society has not existed, at least within written history. I often ask doctrinaire libertarians to name me a libertarian society of the past. I have never gotten an answer. In any case, Libertarianism is an ideology that was constructed in very recent times, not in our past, and not as an organic, spontaneous way of life. The 'primitive' societies which are idealized by ideologues of various political orientations (left/libertarian) were not characterized by personal liberty. 

Instead of castles in the air, we need to focus on our people and our identity, and on our commonality, the tried-and-true culture of our people,  to extricate ourselves from this dire situation in which our very existence is at stake.

I find myself much more in sympathy with Hamilton's common sense thoughts than with the abstract and intellectualized systems which have been conjured up by those of an ideological bent.