Reader asks: Where’s the beef?

A reader writes:

My how I enjoy your writing. I have a quick question that I can’t seem to find an answer to amongst your writings that I have read. What is the “way” that you believe should be our path instead of classic liberalism? I hope I asked that correctly.

Thank you for your attention to my questions.

God Bless,

LA to reader:

That’s a quick question? :-)

Ok, here’s a quick answer: what we need is traditionalism, by which I mean the rediscovery of those elements of our Western/American tradition that have been thrown overboard by liberalism and that are essential to our flourishing. Among them are:

Traditional religion and morality (not the liberal Christianity/Judaism of today);

Nationhood—the key principle that liberalism rejects;

Constitutionalism (which used to be central to the conservatism movement, and now has been given up).

I touch on these in many articles at VFR, but it’s true I haven’t gathered it all together. But you could read my pamphlet: Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation, in which I focus on two key aspects of our crisis: the racial and the moral.

Reader to LA:

If not individualism, then what? Surely not socialism or a “commune.” What is the “head” of this “way”? What are we to be grouped by? Race, class, religion? Should we be a homogenous society. These questions are in all sincerity. I can’t put my finger on what “it” is that you are advocating. Although, your words most certainly ring true with me on a deep level. I keep coming back to race. I have many conflicts with Christianity due to the fact many churches are the leading forces behind the third world invasion of America. And really what would Jesus have to say. Should we destroy our way of life so as to be on the same pitiful level as the third world?

LA to reader:

But there’s not an “it.” That’s the whole point. Western culture is not an “it,” but a distinctive, multi-layered amalgam involving all the aspects of our being—biological/natural; social/cultural/political; and transcendent/religious. It is modernity and liberalism that reduce man and civilization to an “it,” a single formula, and so exclude and block out most of what we are. That is what is to be resisted.

Also, I’m not at all rejecting individualism. But the true individualism of Western man is, as Samuel Francis put it once, restrained individualism, not the liberated individualism of today.

You have asked important questions, such as “What are we to be grouped by?”, that I cannot go into right now. Other readers have also asked me to spell out more fully the traditionalism I am proposing. I hope to address these questions in the not distant future.

Reader to LA:

Thank you for your time. I’ll purchase your pamphlet. Do you realize that you and I have just given more thought to this in this short exchange than 90 percent of the voting public has in their entire lifetime…

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 29, 2006 11:45 AM | Send
    

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