Why traditionalism is important and why so much work remains to be done

Modern liberalism is the belief that cultural and other differences between human groups don’t matter politically, because at bottom everyone is the same. This liberalism is everywhere confronting its ultimate refutation, in the form of the upsurge of non-Western groups (Muslims in Europe, Mexicans in the U.S.) whose beliefs and behavior make it undeniable that differences between human groups matter very much indeed. Yet, in a kind of last gasp, the more liberalism confronts its nemesis, the more it ignores it and holds on to the only truth it knows. Thus as hundreds of thousands of Mexican illegal aliens march in Los Angeles threatening a Mexican takeover of parts of America, the U.S. Senate passes a bill opening America’s doors to millions more Mexicans. As Muslims riot against white students in Paris, the French authorities and media disdain to notice that the rioters are Muslims, instead referring to them as “youths,” “gangs,” and “young people from the suburbs.”

We are, nevertheless, steadiliy approaching the point where this liberalism is going to break down. In Richard Cohen’s column and the Investor’s Business Daily editorial discussed below, we see radically non-liberal truths being forthrightly expressed in the American mainstream media. When liberalism finally crashes (and it will crash), when Western society comes to realize it must take action against the unassimilables and hostiles among us, the reaction against liberalism—which has been the unquestioned ruling force in our society for so long and has suppressed any Western self-defense for so long—will be violent, passionate, and destructive. Therefore, when it happens, there must already be in place a rational and moral alternative to the rejected liberalism. Providing that alternative is the work of traditionalism.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 28, 2006 06:57 PM | Send