alt-Right: Things are Getting Better in So Many Ways

The alt-right is dystopian fantasy for adolescent boys of any chronological age. Sadly, unlike Hunger Games or other young adult literature, the message of the alt-Right seems eager to bring on rather than avoid the dystopian future.  I love the West, because it is my home, but the West has no monopoly on good ideas or interesting history. Say “China” and that is enough to prove the point, but even the tiniest ethnic group has something to teach us.

Pity the man so dull he cannot learn from groups that are different, but fear the man who would not save his family if they were in danger.  The alt-Right thinks that “White” civilization is in peril and they must save “it.”  If they meant Western culture, then they might have a point, but they do not. A person does not need to be White to read, understand, and embrace John Locke’s Second Treatise. A person does not need to be White to enjoy Shakespeare.

Ideas are the common property of humankind, and Christians, belonging to a universal faith, believe truth is the heritage of every human.

I was once asked why I wished to save “the West” given that God’s children are found everywhere. The answer seemed obvious to me: what person does not wish to save his home from destruction. I was born speaking English, a Western language, in a nation (mostly) shaped by Western ideas.

Of course, mainly the West needs saving from herself, because no external threat faces us. We have spread our ideas everywhere. The scientific method that found fulfillment in the West is embraced everywhere. John Locke’s ideas about revolution and the rights of humans has spread globally. Ideas have no race or nationality and nobody ever gave Platonism a passport.

Anybody can read Western greats and many people do. Instead, the West needs saving from her success. The West of the world has managed to spread her good ideas and her bad ideas simultaneously. Colonialism was a great evil, the scientific method and democratic forms of government great goods. There is nothing wrong with an American, whatever their ethnicity, glorying in the ideas of people that formed American.

We are not racialists so we do not care about skin color . . . unless it is to note when the Founders’ own racialism made them fall short of their ideals. Some (maybe most) thought that being male or being White made them better . . . and that was a heresy. No Christian could believe in racialism and be a consistent Christian: in the image of God all humankind was created. 

Like all racists, the alt-Right reminds us that “color blind” is a goal and not a reality. We must think about racism, because racism still exists. Intellectually, the deepest racism is saying one must be “White” to teach, live by, or enjoy the Gospel of Saint John, Plato’s Republic, and the Constitution of 1789.

What threatens the West?

First, the pride that allowed the evils of colonialism.

Second, the racism that tried to justify that colonialism with the veneer of science and mutterings about “inferior races.”

Third, our wealth which tempts us to indulgence that we can afford financially, but not morally.

Finally, our own racism that associates good ideas the West has had with “majority Western” culture. No Western society could exist without the work, intellect, and virtue of non-White people.

The alt-Right asks us to double down on our errors and ignore our virtues. The West has given the world great ideas, art, and culture. We should (if we happen to be Western people) preserve those good things, but we must never indulge our vanity by presuming they are ideas we alone can hold. Say “India” and know that non-Western democracy, the largest in the world, is not only possible, but actual.

If the alt-Right has a virtue, then it is a desire to speak the truth to power. Attacking race is attacking establishment opinion, but in the place where it is correct. 

If you want to be politically incorrect, say “no” to the sexual indulgence of the age and support the sexual morals of traditional Western civilization.

If you want to be politically incorrect, join a group like the Orthodox Church or the Southern Baptists. You can be loathed by the elites without being a racist!

If you wish to defy the folly of our age, say: “Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord.” and even Jerry Falwell Jr. will demure.

The alt-Right is not brave, merely stupid. Christianity is brave and wise. Things around us are getting better in so many ways. Let’s not contribute to apocalyptic fever. The End may come, but if it comes, then I wish to be found in a jolly class reading Plato and thinking about the sublime. Let’s build civilization, even when the barbarians keep sacking the city!