Declaration of cultural independence

Lawrence Auster
The Coming War? Feb 11, 2008:

The below story makes me realize that there may be no escape from the coming war within the West:

"AMSTERDAM, 07/02/08 (Netherlands Information Service)--The city of Amsterdam has developed teaching material warning children against the politics of Geert Wilders, newspaper De Telegraaf yesterday reported. Wilders calls the campaign "sickening".

The newspaper quoted from a letter that the city council has sent to three hundred primary and secondary schools in Amsterdam. Primary school heads believe that the letter is intended to anticipate the anti-Islam film that Wilders, MP and leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), intends to release in March.

The letter, which the newspaper claims is intended as teaching material, contains cartoons of Wilders, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and a white family that wants nothing to do with a polite Islamic boy. The text reads: 'If you say bad things about someone, they will feel hurt. They may not dare to say anything in return, because they are afraid of being hurt even more. Then there is not much left of freedom of speech,' according to De Telegraaf. [cont.]"

Here's what this story says to me. Modern Western liberals want the West to surrender to Islam, or, at best, they are unwilling to resist that surrender and oppose Islam. Therefore the moment that any prominent figure such as Geert Wilders takes a serious stand against Islamization, the left will declare open war on him; it will undercut him at the very moment he is seeking to prevent some Muslim power grab. Imagine, then, what the left--which still controls all cultural institutions--would do if an entire political party opposing Islam and seeking the restoration of Western society took power or was close to gaining power in a Western society. Would the left quietly accept the end of the liberal order? No, it would freak out and fight back with everything it had.

I've said many times that for the West, the historic West, to have any chance to live, the rule of modern liberalism must die. I've said that liberalism might die as a result of liberals losing faith in it, or as a result of liberalism being discredited by the disasters it has brought about, or as a result of Islam gaining power in the West and destroying much of liberal society along with its liberalism. But there is one scenario that I have never really discussed, because it is so terrible to contemplate. Liberalism might die--or, the West itself might die--in an all-out civil war within the West, a war to the death between those who believe in the West, and those who seek its destruction.

Have We Lost? Feb 12, 2008:

It's possible I've said things like this before, but there is this feeling over the last week or so that we've passed some threshold, that we've decisively lost, or, rather, that the loss, which has been occurring for a long time, is becoming manifest. It seems to me that the primary thing must cease to be criticism and warning (something perhaps that I've been guilty of), because all the criticism and warning in the world will not stop Western suicide. The West is set on suicide, and nothing we say is going to stop that. We can't stop it from happening. What we can do, or strive to do, is build up something within and among ourselves, build up a real alternative to the liberal insanity, and present it to the world, while constantly warning people where liberalism is leading. And then when the liberal system crashes, people will be looking for something else, and they will turn to this alternative. We cannot defeat or stop liberalism by direct assault. It's too powerful, too ingrained. We can only wait for liberalism to destroy itself.

... it's not enough not to be crazy and self-destructive like the liberals and neoconservatives. We must practice the opposite virtues to their vices.

This is the work that true conservatives need to set for themselves. Do the actual conservatives who are alive today have the ability and knowledge to carry out such a project? I don't know. Do we even know where to start? I don't know.

But we must try.

Declaration of Cultural Independence, Oct 2002:

In June 1999, I was among the participants at Paul Weyrich’s conference on cultural separation held at the headquarters of the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C. Most of the approximately 40 people attending were evangelical Protestants, which gave the discussions a distinctive flavor I hadn't expected beforehand. While the meeting did not result in the initiation of a cultural separation movement, it did produce this interesting document, drafted by Paul Weyrich’s associate William Lind, which lays out the principles and some possible specific goals of a cultural separation movement. The conference also resulted in a Declaration of Cultural Independence—a Declaration for a movement that doesn’t now exist, but may some day. Since it’s often said that traditionalists complain too much and don’t lay out any positive ideas, these two documents may at least serve as a springboard to creative thought and discussion.

Free Congress Foundation, June 1999
Declaration of Cultural Independence:

Our 18th century forefathers declared political independence in order to maintain their liberties, liberties they saw threatened by an increasingly assertive government in London. Today, an increasingly assertive ideology, the cultural Marxism known as "multiculturalism" or Political Correctness, coupled with general moral decadence threaten our historic Western culture. In order to preserve that culture, should we emulate our ancestors and formally declare our cultural Independence? ...

All these are classic, age-old signs of a culture that is self-destructing. A growing number of Americans know how to read these signs. They realize that, despite economic prosperity, America is becoming a foreign country, foreign to everything that once defined Americans as a people. Indeed, as Political Correctness demands, we are no longer one people. "Multiculturalism" has changed our national motto into ex uno, plura: from one, many.

What is to be done? When a man finds himself in a sewer, his first objective is to get out of it. In a culture that has become a sewer, our first objective must be the same: to get out of that culture, and to create an alternative to it.

Until recently, the objective of cultural conservatives ... was to retake existing cultural institutions ... primarily through politics ...

Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that this strategy has not been successful. Despite some political successes, the culture has continued to deteriorate. In part, this is because some of the people we elected abandoned their principles once they were in office. But the larger reason is that culture is more powerful than politics. The tide of cultural degradation and decay is simply too strong for any political barrier to stem.

When one strategy fails, the proper response is not to surrender but to adopt a different strategy. We, the undersigned, therefore pledge ourselves to a strategy of cultural Independence. We hereby declare our Independence from the decayed, modern or post-modern culture and pledge our efforts toward creating new institutions built upon the values of our traditional, inherited Western culture.

We seek nothing less than the creation of a complete, alternate structure of parallel cultural institutions ...

The task is a vast one. But the talents and energies of Americans who still adhere to our traditional culture are also vast. When mobilized effectively, in the late 1970s and 1980s, they had profound if temporary effects on our nation's politics. Now, the challenge is to mobilize them again, not in hopes of evanescent gains in politics, but in service of a more solid goal, the goal of creating our own institutions and through them recovering our identity as a people.

To that task we pledge our talents, our treasure, and our abilities, to work on scales small or great as our circumstances allow. Out of the wreckage of the country once called America we will build a new, moral and pleasant land.

Free Congress Foundation, June 1999
Independents' Forum:

Who are we? We are Independents -- individuals and families that have declared Independence from the dominant, decadent culture. Most of us are Christians, some are Jews, some accept the Ten Commandments and the traditional morals of Western culture from a non-religious viewpoint. Our objective is to build new institutions of every variety where we and others who share our beliefs can secure what remains of our traditional culture and, through the power of example, restore that which is good ...

What are our objectives? We seek to create a wide network of institutions that are supportive of traditional Judeo-Christian culture, institutions where people who want to live according to the old rules of our civilization can find comfort. We intend to build that network to the point where it constitutes an alternative society, still part of the United States of America physically, economically and politically, but culturally separate. Our vision includes providing Judeo--Christian alternative institutions in the areas of government services, education, news and other media, books and libraries, entertainment, arts and music, health care, conflict resolution, and everyday family life. It is possible that a growing cultural Independence movement might see the development of neighborhoods, towns, even small cities where people who adhere to traditional morals and culture might live among others like themselves ...

Letter to Conservatives
by Paul M. Weyrich, Feb 1999:

I am very concerned, as I go around the country and speak and talk to young people, when I find how much of the decadent culture they have absorbed without even understanding that they are a part of it. And while I'm not suggesting that we all become Amish or move to Idaho, I do think that we have to look at what we can do to separate ourselves from this hostile culture. What steps can we take to make sure that we and our children are not infected? We need some sort of quarantine ...

Again, I don't have all the answers or even all the questions. But I know that what we have been doing for thirty years hasn't worked, that while we have been fighting and winning in politics, our culture has decayed into something approaching barbarism. We need to take another tack, find a different strategy.

That seems to be the road ahead. To borrow a misdirected quote from Andrew Bolt: we've got work to do folks, all of us. That is the challenge, to build up a real alternative.

What is the best way to warn people of an impending flood? Start building an ark. Then they might take notice.

UPDATE:
- Lawrence Auster has a list of related posts on the Western Crisis.
- Needed: A new conservative apologetics By Alan Roebuck
- comments over at A Western Heart