One of the biggest stories in the aftermath of the 2016 election was the unexpected revival of the Religious Right, as millions of conservative Christians went to the polls to vote for Donald Trump. After all, Trump was (is) a man that, as the exit polls from the primaries showed, was not initially liked by the Christian Right, instead they preferred the grating Ted Cruz. The Religious Right’s turnout was unexpected, as for the past several years their influence had been largely on the decline. Not only had the Religious Right seen a decline in society at large – where they had gone in just ten years from arguing in favor of a constitutional ban on homosexual marriage to begging state governments to prevent them from being sued for refusing to take part in a gay marriage, but also in the Republican Party.
Yes, the GOP had indeed been backing away from the social issues, the same issues that initially drew the Religious Right to them, beginning with the nomination of the loathsome John McCain in 2008, who was no one’s idea of a culture warrior and had even been critical of the Religious Right back in 2000. Sure, he picked Sarah Palin, but does anyone expect that had McCain been elected president Palin wouldn’t have been marginalized to the point of being the new Dan Quayle? The Tea Party followed, which while made up of many conservative Christians, its focus was always taxes and spending. In 2012, the ticket was made up of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, again empty suits who would rather not be bothered by cultural issues. Trump was seen as a continuation of this trend, despite his label as “Pat Buchanan minus religion,” he voiced his support for abortion and gay marriage in the past, the latter long before even most Democrats would touch that issue with a 10-foot poll.
So, what happened? After the Republican Party started to back off social issues, the Left smelled blood in the water and decided to reveal all of their excesses to the world. Abortion would no longer be “safe, legal, and rare” – it would be celebrated as a positive good. Children would be subjugated to life destroying surgeries so their mothers (and it is almost always the mothers) can get likes from their fellow catladies on Facebook. The monuments to your Confederate ancestors would be destroyed, with the Founders next in the crosshairs. And, if you dear Christians say anything whatsoever, expect either a discrimination lawsuit or a call to your employer. Finally, conservative Christians realized that as bad as things are now, if Trump is defeated in 2020, for all his faults, it’s going to get much worse.
Over the past few years, conservative Christians in the United States have come to a brutal realization, one conservative Christians in continental Europe realized centuries earlier, that the debate between the Right and the Left isn’t a debate over issues that well-meaning people can argue. Rather, it is a battle between Christ and Satan. In the Anglo-American world, the political divisions haven’t been traditionally this stark. There were anti-Christian (Joe Hill) and heretical (Martin Luther King) elements of the Left, but that was balanced out by orthodox (notice the small “o” there) Christians that were men of the Left insofar as they wanted a robust state to protect the little man – men like William Jennings Bryan. And, even in the case of Martin Luther King, he had to downplay his denial of key Christian doctrines to find an audience.
But, that wasn’t the case in continental Europe, those political divisions are much more deeply felt and the contrasts much starker (and darker). Whereas for Anglo-American Christians, the “Left” might mean defending workers, some social rebellion, and battling outsourcing, that wasn’t the case on the Continent. The Left meant something else there. It meant Christians being marched to the guillotine in Revolutionary France. It meant priests being shot in front of their seminarians to teach them a lesson in Soviet Russia. It meant the promotion of transgenderism in Weimar Germany. It meant the rapping of nuns in 1930s Spain. This is why French Christians aren’t really LARPing when they claim to be monarchists, unlike their American counterparts. In the U.S., “republic” can conjure up images of civic virtue, tricorn hats, and liberty, that’s not the case in France. In France, “republic” means a government that wants to overthrow God. France has had five republics and they have all been run by atheists, with the exception of the short-lived Forth Republic. As Fr. Michael Crowdy wrote regarding the Society of St. Pius X founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre:
“We must remember that Lefebvre is writing against the background of France, where ideas are generally more clear‑cut than they are in Great Britain. … Take the word “socialism,” for example; that means to some of us, first and foremost, a social ideal of brotherhood and justice. We have had our Christian socialists. On the Continent, however, Socialism is uncompromisingly anti‑religious, or almost a substitute for religion, and Communism is seen as the natural development from it. This is the Socialism the Archbishop is writing about. And when he rejects Liberalism, he is not thinking of the [British] Liberal Party … but of that religious liberalism that exalts human liberty above the claims of God or of His Church …”
The consequences for losing this battle cannot be overstated. From the end of World War II, and especially since the late 1960s, the European Right was completely neutered outside of Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. The European Right is just now starting to recover. In the meantime, Europe went from being, in the words of Hilaire Belloc, “Europe is the faith and the faith is Europe,” to an atheistic society hellbent on policing free speech, demolishing churches, and replacing their own native population.
The battle Christians in the U.S. now face is one that Europeans have faced for centuries. At one time, the Left had some positive positions: a defense of the little guy, the small farmer, or the factory worker. Hell, even George Wallace was labeled a “country and western Marxist” by the National Review because he was more concerned with the poor farmer in the wiregrass region or the steel worker in Birmingham than he was the Chamber of Commerce’s insistence that Alabama be “open for business.”
Unfortunately, that’s not the case anymore – it now means your daughter having to compete in sports against a mentally ill man. It now means your grandson being shot full of hormones to make him a girl and you’re not able to do anything about it. It now means your great-great-great grandfather, who bravely fought for Dixie, having his grave desecrated and the perpetrators getting off with a slap on the wrist, if that. It is a battle of civilization versus barbarism. It is a battle for everything you love against those that would destroy such things.
Deo Vindice.
– By Dixie Anon
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
Some of the guys on the dissident right have an annoying habit of LARPing as pagans, irritated by the failures of most Christian churches. They seem to think we all agree on the important stuff like helping our people, so mere religious differences can be finessed.
Maybe they’re right in terms of the immediate adversaries, who don’t make too much distinction between us. But the cult is the culture, and Dixie worships the One God; it can never integrate with people who worship idols, especially if those idols are a race of men.
Maybe the optimistic view is that a Christianity reformed to its best, masculine, self can attract these pagans and forge a united community, which, if I recall correctly, is the same word as church.