The “forces of reaction” lose their reactivity.
Brave or foolhardy are those who would stand for “The Permanent Things”
By Fisher Ames
We live in dark times, for what remains of Western civilization. It is not a good time to be counted among those who would stand at the gates of civilization and cry “Halt!” to the advancing barbarian horde bent on eradicating whatever remains of our heritage.
A case in point – recently the State of New York in the US recognised so called “gay marriage.” What was the reaction of the Church you might ask? Feeble at best. A few statements of condemnation and then back to work overseeing the Springtime of Vatican II.
What about the supposedly powerful right-wing establishment in the US? What about that vast right wing propaganda machine we hear so much about at the Fox News Network? What about the rest of the influential Murdoch media empire, which is bent, we are told, on subverting progressive policies – like the Gillard Government’s wholly unnecessary Carbon Tax – and brain washing the masses into numbing conformity? They were nowhere to be found.
Indeed, the forces of reaction hardly reacted at all. The left-wing pundits proclaimed New York’s move a great victory for common sense and compassion. They condemned all who opposed (few though there were) as benighted and bigoted and not worth listening to.
The melancholy truth is that there are precious few prepared to stand up for the traditional values and beliefs of Western civilization and what the late great American conservative philosopher Russell Kirk referred to as “The Permanent Things”. Brave (or foolhardy) is the man (or woman) who stands for these Permanent Things and opposes the disintegration of our once great civilization and its collapse into neo-paganism and moral relativism.
One has to be almost crazy-brave to oppose the forces ranged against our cultural tradition. However, there are some who are prepared to fight, some who won’t go quietly, some who won’t keep silent and pretend that all will be well. They don’t necessarily believe that they will win the fight. But they do believe that battle must be given.
So, what motivates them? Who knows for sure? Maybe it’s simply the instinctive desire not to join the herd as it heads off blindly toward the brink. All of us enjoy the gratifications of the moment rather than the hard business of considering the future and shaping the world we shall leave our children. But it has always been the business of civilisation to give building the future priority over present pleasures. As things stand today, this basic orientation has been reversed.
Perhaps then Scarra Blog has come along at a good time: to put the case for Order, Tradition and True Freedom against those who would consign these things to the dust bin of history. This is a work that must be undertaken without illusions. As we explain on this site,
So, there is no running away from reality here. No hankering for an idealised past – a dangerous, alluring temptation that! No pretending that the answers to our cultural problems are simple or easily apprehended.
In one sense, however, the times are propitious for small media projects like Scarra Blog. As the mainstream media declines in influence with the rise of “new media”, and what remains of the “old” becomes more supine before corporate interests and political authority (as we saw recently in Canberra with the supposedly independent Parliamentary press gallery begging the Prime Minister to tell them how they could do their jobs better!), now is the time for truly independent media fractions, like this one, to stand up for what is true and good.
Who knows what they might achieve?