What does it mean to be Western?

VENICE—Night scene in Cannaregio quarter, Venice, with the Church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in the background. (Photo by: Felipe Rodriguez/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

By Ryan Augustine
November 11, 2024 Anno Domini

The time we live in now is one dominated by online sensationalism of the Left vs. the Right. It is a theater of the absurd where the characters engage in the most provocative charade, actors of the lowest order who grab at our base impulses to goad the mind into beliefs and fantasies as farcical as they are defeating.

Agents and actors both Left and Right “debate” their “principles” against each other in diabolical dialects. Both arguing over Left and Right with the ideological flavors of Communism either feminine or masculine, respectively. For the Left, this is to be expected as the Left is the embodiment of all things gay, weak, and evil—formal communism if you like. For the agents of self-proclaimed Right, it is nothing less than treacherous debasement of the lowest order.

They preach things so self defeating and absurd I would never have believed it possible well meaning conservative folk could buy into it, but alas, we live in strange times, and I believe that God permits us to live out the fulness of our bad philosophy so as to prove its error beyond all doubt. Alas there is a spirit of comic irony which permeates the air of our time, so that notorious agents like E. Michael Jones, who call themselves men of the Right, preach to us the virtues of socialism, foreign dominance, and racial dilution. It is the same with anyone of the balloon men inflated above us as the banner we must rally to. Different airheads of diverse colors who all preach the same destruction to be taken on different paths of socialistic principles. They are as vapid as their vacuous reasoning and as organic as McDonalds.

These people, the likes of Trump, Vance, Eugene Jones, Alex Jones, Fuentes, or any and all of the influential so-called conservatives who steal the headlines, all disagree in a cacophony of catfighting, yet the ensemble of characters all work towards a common cause, and it is not conservatism. For it is false to claim these are men of the West, or that these things are Western, for what do men such as these preach whose essence does not come from the utmost East?

Transhumanism, evolution of man, technocracy, universality, utilitarianism, debasement, immorality, New Age mysticism, racial dissolution, and socialism are at the principles of their arguments when the rhetorical layers are stripped away.

Perhaps the allure of the illusory is because we have forgotten what the West is, which raises the question: what does it mean to be Western?

Does to say one is of the West mean only that one lives in a Western country? What does it matter where one lives if they are judged by their conduct? Are you Western if your home is in England yet you do not live by the customs of the English? Is Westernism nothing more than the coalition of our ruling class, and the status quo of our current culture? That would be a transitory and fleeting thing to be the foundation of our social governance. For, what is trendy today is forgotten tomorrow and the time of the powerful is a river which takes us all to the sea. One would be Western today and not Western tomorrow unless he daily changed his behavior, and only a dead fish moves with the current.

Or perhaps to be of the West is something more, something deeper—a philosophy, an esprit de vide, which echoes from the deep past throughout our history and people and whose faint sounds can be heard in the old buildings when one is quiet enough to listen. The wisdom of our forefathers, faintly heard in the old books, told to their sons for thousands of years, guided by the Holy Ghost and shepherded by holy mother church. Whispers of truth and contradiction to the eastern mysticism of kabbalah and Freemasonry, which one can still hear clearly if he silences the chattering and chirping meant to drown it out.

To be Western is to embrace the wisdom of our progenitors: their Christian faith, customs, ethos, language, and culture—the soil they spilled their blood for and the blood of their people entrenched upon it. These things, taken as a whole, are what we call tradition. Yet, the time in which tradition was created and our time now are radically different. Gone are the landed lords, the agrarian economy of the past, the kings, peasants, and gallant heroes of old. In their place are men of high finance, instant communication, and global industry at scale. Like the agora, the manorial community whereby everyone lived and worked with their neighbor is gone and in its place is a planned community of strangers and aliens and transitory sterilized digital labor. Surely, tradition has no place today? We must have a new order for a new man.

Yet, if tradition is both the wisdom of our people and the guidance of God mixed into one, then it is surely foolishness to cast it aside, for who has the experience of a hundred generations? Who is wiser than the Lord? Just as the principles of tradition were adapted to their times, then the principles of tradition must be kept whole and adapted to our times as well. This we call conservatism. True conservatism proper.

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying, but let us live well, and times will be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.”  —Saint Augustine

Conservatism is simply the conservation of the principles of the West in changing times. It stands in opposition to the false dialect of Communist principles embodied by the so-called Right and Left. Just as it is opposed to racial dissolution, welfare, and degeneracy, it is likewised opposed to technocracy, digital isolation, and libertarianism—all of which are flavors of the same poison drink.

Conservatism does not believe in the evolution of man, that man by his own power can rise above his nature. For, if man exists naturally, then by what natural thing may he rise above himself? In all the philosophy of the mystical East; whereby, man can become god, who of that tradition has conquered death? Conservatism professes belief in Jesus Christ, who not only conquered death but founded Holy Mother Church to lead souls to everlasting life. Conservatism believes in the morals and dogmas of the Church in contrast to the degeneracies of the thralls of Kabbalah, like Trump and Musk, who for all their proclaimed godhood lead and promote godless lives.

Conservatism does not believe in the atheistic abstractions of the rights of man; it declares that rights come from God as well as their corresponding duties. If man can give man rights, then man may take any so-called right away. For what does a right become then, if it is no longer judged as right by man? If man is evil and calls evil right, then does not man have a right to evil? Yet, if rights come from God, how then can a right be evil? Conservatism believes that rights are given to man to pursue the good; therefore, a right comes with a duty for the good which is proper to the right. For instance, the right to free speech is not the right to lie, for it comes from God. How can God give man the right to lie, which is sin? The right to property, likewise, comes from God, and are we not accountable to him for the use of the things which are given to us? Woe to those who vainly cry: “only God may judge me!” They will have the judgement they ask for, but will it be the one they want?

Conservatism does not profess socialism; whereby, man is stripped of his rights and only his duty to the state is enhanced, nor does it profess libertarianism; whereby, man has no duty. It does not adhere to these twin Jewish philosophies, which inexorably lead to the same thing—control of all property by the money power. Rather, conservatism believes that all things should be directed to their proper ends. It professes that the right to property, which comes from God, is therefore good, and thus, it is meant to be owned by as many as possible so that it can be put to good use by those who own it. Conservatism does not believe in an economic theory, while economic principles and axioms are most certainly true economics, as a science, in the atheistic study of human behavior under conditions of scarcity. Human beings, however, are not governed by theoretical atheistic abstractions but by the moral law. Thus, conservatism believes that an economy and a society cannot be separated. Therefore, it is the moral good which should be pursued. So that as no two people are the same and every man has different gifts and abilities, both a society and an economy should be as free as possible to let every man pursue his God-given abilities with his God-given rights.

These are some of the principles of the Western tradition. There are many others which conservatism seeks to apply in our times. The use of conservatism to maintain and grow our societies and countries is what we call Westernism. Therefore, a Western country is one which is guided by the principles of tradition. A Western elite pursues a culture of beauty and an economy of ownership and freedom. A Western society is one which is moral and pursues goodness; it uses its power to create new and good things; whereby man, who makes up the society, is lifted up, not by himself, but by the calling of supernatural things higher than himself.

When the enemy calls our rulers Western and, therefore, the works of the countries going back to their founding evil, he plays a game of malice. For are our rulers indeed men of the West? Or are they men of the East? Are our countries now de facto Western? Or are they Eastern? When the enemy speaking for the Right eschews our tradition, are they likewise men of the West? Or are they men of the East? Can a man who claims to be Western, Catholic, and traditional profess a hatred for maintaining the race of the West? A love for socialism? A fidelity with Eastern religions? Manipulation of people through digital technocracy? He is a man of the East and is not a man of the West.

To be a Western man is to embrace tradition, to believe in God, and to do good works. It is to take the gifts which God has granted us and use them to a good end. It is courage in the face of danger, humility when praised, fortitude when tried, perseverance in persecution, hope, charity, and love in evil times.

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