2. Splitting apart (II)

All efforts to save and preserve will lead to disaster. Conservatism is a kind of death, holding what has been gained and then losing that as well. The conservative is smug and secure; he is especially smug and secure in his pessimism. He is domestic and pleased with his domesticity; he did well at school, he enjoyed it even. He rises in every environment, with the Taliban and with the Soviets, and is about as dead with the Devil as he is with us. Preserve me from the deadness of conservative people; preserve me from people who think they know when they have only stopped watching the river. The conservative builds walls; his forefather sent a raiding party over the border. Natural expansion, flowing over the border like a mighty river, is life; it is life that is not conscious of itself, it simply does.

The conservative has known what he is for far too long. He legislates that women must not wear the hijab in Western countries; in his forefather’s day women tore their hijabs off voluntarily, overcome by the smoky romance of the West’s black and white films. The conservative thinks that a few laws, a few pieces of paper, will stop it all. The conservative legislates patriotism, hoping to force leftist ideas from the education system; but everything the state supports, it undoes: defence spending strengthens the enemy; immigration control increases the migrant flow; and when the government promotes patriotism in the schools, the people become unpatriotic. Where does patriotism come from? It comes from the family, the foundation of the state. You cannot teach love of country, love of your extended family, in schools. It comes from the “pateriot”, the father. Restrict divorce and abortion, empower men: then you will have patriotism. Paper is a false legislator.

The great comes about obliquely; we are blind to our real goals and this is why it is futile to announce our actions: we will simply do, and the story we tell about what we are doing conceals another goal that we cannot see. It is like Zen archery; the adherent practices archery until he is perfect, but that is not his goal: he attains enlightenment when he hits the bullseye without conscious thought; if he had announced this goal, he would never have attained it. The conservative has always announced his goal; he has a clear life, and it is clearly dead.

America cannot be saved; no reactionary movement in modernity has succeeded: the Cavaliers failed, the Confederates failed, and, finally, the Axis failed. America’s immediate fate is to die, but, as she dies, she will drop embers; as the Enlightenment’s republic fails there will be men who remember the old ways; the radical ways, the root ways. These are the men who will carry certain principles to the stars. They will not be American, just as Americans are not Englishmen; but there will be some commerce.

So prepare the funeral shroud for America. Every effort to conserve hastens the day of death; every demand for unity cradles factions; and every self-conscious action hardens to brittleness. Splitting apart; only a few can do it, make the departure that is a homecoming. These people are not conservatives; they are those that have made a departure within themselves, to live again as children. The guileless child is the lord of creation and destruction; limitless in creativity, beyond cruelty and kindness. The child is a dweller in eternity; the conservative dwells in the banal realities of life, blind to the etheric milk that binds the cosmos. “Pull your socks up! Make an effort!” Do this and die; make no effort, follow the soft path; this is not the easiest path, just the path that feels easiest: a long walk in the woods tires us, but it is not the tiredness of work. This is life at the root; it is going where it has to go, as water does. This the path that will split us apart.