Time To (JB) Bury The Enlightenment Experiment

Hello, all. Looking back at things I wrote four, ten, or nearly twenty-two years ago, I have mixed feelings. I’ll for now keep those to myself, but with perhaps infrequent exceptions, I will cease writing about practical American political affairs. It’s like being a veterinarian that specializes in dinosaurs—sounds cool and all, but…

Over four years ago, I wrote an article called “Only A Dictator Can Save America.” My (admittedly dangerous) suggestion was highly implausible in the summer of 2019. In the final month of 2023, it’s too late, out of time, and gone with the wind. Back then, I wrote: “the United States Empire … nears its predictable end; it currently collapses at free-fall speed. Even now, wicked useless elites scramble to suck out what value remains while their scavenger hordes descend upon the rotting shell.” That was fifteen years after Vox Day correctly called America an unfixable corpse. And it was before Big Floyd’s summer of love, the COVID hoax, the stolen election and coup, NATO’s suicidal losing war against Russia, Judeo-”Christian” support for genocide for Greater Israel, and all the other signals and signs the United States is well and truly over. And it is. And it should be. American women are now encouraged to practice literal satanism to murder their children—and you know many are doing so. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah 2.0 approaches, though one hopes there are still a lot of Lots around. 

Maybe it’s in that valiant spirit that even now it appears some good people want to try something—anything—to hold the old line. Today I had planned to discuss a new non-political (political) movement in the U.S. I mentally waffled all over the place deciding whether to do it for three reasons. First, I greatly admire this movement’s leader, a truly good man, and my review skews a little realistic. Second, while some of their policy statements are just wrong and others are slightly misguided or misdirected, others are great and I think the group means very well. Third, as futile as I perceive the attempt is, if it gives good people just a little hope, then there is more than a little merit in it. I decided to plow ahead regardless, mindful there are no legal or political solutions to America’s many and generally self-inflicted problems. Here follows a review and macro-assessment, not a condemnation.

OCOC is the acronym for the new semi-political cultural movement Our Country Our Choice. I learned of OCOC the other day via a link from Lew Rockwell or Ron Unz. It is my opinion that while very well-intentioned this movement is potentially destined to go the way of the Tea Party, MAGA, “Q”, and the 1607 Project. The decent-sounding ideas put forward by OCOC and its honest, heroic leader, Col. Douglas MacGregor, would have better served the Peak America of 1965 or earlier. They would have still had some chance of success twenty years later, though by then, the US was in dire need of pull-out-all-the-stops emergency domestic military action. Those of you who were around then know we didn’t get it. And we won’t.

OCOC presents a solution for a society that no longer exists. And it fundamentally misses the very categorization of that society. The key to understanding why is found in OCOC’s founding Statement: “OCOC believes that the three pillars of civilization are equal justice under the law, cheap energy, and freedom of speech.” While not as bad as it could be, that belief is wrong.

The US is no longer observably American or Christian. It was not founded as a Christian country. Rather, it was constructed as an Enlightenment ideological experiment by predominantly pseudo-Christians, neo-pagans, and Freemasons. But it was, upon a time, part of Western Civilization, the heir of the (even back then) failing British tradition. The three pillars of Western Civilization are Christianity, the Greco-Roman legacy, and the heritage(s) of the European nations. Take away one element and the civilization ceases to be Western. Take them all away, as is the case with the postmodern US, and the subject civilization itself fails. 

The US no longer has any semblance of law and order. As such, notions about fairness under what passes for the law are misplaced. Cheap energy is vitally important for any advanced society, but it is not a critical component of the existence of that society. Free speech is an Enlightenment lie and trap designed almost exclusively to weaken and destroy Christian law and culture. To see this explicitly stated by a leading proponent of Enlightenment evil, read A History of Freedom of Thought by J.B. Bury (Cambridge, USA: Henry Holt, 1913) (yes, that J.B. Bury). 

Bury writes: “[F]reedom of thought, in any valuable sense, includes freedom of speech.” He then praises the paganism of ancient Greece as an example of and for the postmodern, anti-Christian future: 

We must remember that the Homeric poems were never supposed to be the word of God. It has been said that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks. The remark exactly misses the truth. The Greeks fortunately had no Bible, and this fact was both an expression and an important condition of their freedom.

That was, of course, during the Fifth Century BC, which Bury calls the “age of Illumination.” He extolls the luciferian concept of the “supremacy of the individual conscience, as we should say, over human law.” He goes on to slander the Christian Church as well as the “reforms” inflicted by Luthor and Calvin, going so far as to lie and blaspheme:

The truth is that Sacred Books are an obstacle to moral and intellectual progress, because they consecrate the ideas of a given epoch, and its customs, as divinely appointed. Christianity, by adopting books of a long past age, placed in the path of human development a particularly nasty stumbling-block.

In discussing the Christianization of Imperial Rome, he stupidly asserts: “in a State where Christians had the power there would be no tolerance…” And he wraps up with a few moaning examples of how, even as the devil’s progress progresses in the early 20th Century, vestiges of Christian culture still linger in Europe. One such bemoaning: “The recent rather alarming inflictions of penalties for blasphemy in England illustrate this point. It was commonly supposed that the Blasphemy laws, though unrepealed, were a dead letter. But since December 1911, half a dozen persons have been imprisoned for this offence.”

Over 100 years later, the empirical truth is plain to see. Freed of their oppressive blasphemy laws and Christianity in general, how well do England, Germany, France, and the United States fare? The truth is that in the absence of Christian control, there is no tolerance. 

I didn’t mean for this to turn into a mini-review of Bury, but doing so illustrates the point of the danger of “free speech” and of making the same a pillar of any civilization. And I do not think Macgregor and his fellows are Freemasons, Enlightenment-mongers, or in any way evil. In fact, elsewhere in OCOC’s various statements and propositions, there is hard evidence to the contrary. For example, in decrying the persecution of Christians today, OCOC amazingly condemns the IDF for murdering Christians in Occupied Palestine. And under their “Defend Our Children” section they dare state a great if terrible truth: “Be aware that pedophilia is being normalized and inducted into the [SIC?] Stand your ground! (When a gay chorus sings “we are coming for your kids,” we should believe them. Some law makers are even trying to make pedophilia legal.)” Either of those honest statements is enough to make the ADL scream, “Anti-satanic!” That’s good.

With other matters, the views, beliefs, and approaches are a little muddled. For instance, OCOC is 100% correct that the Federal Reserve should be abolished. It will be, and hopefully soon, by monetary gravity and nature. But whether legally or naturally destroyed, its elimination erases, mitigates, or changes some of OCOC’s other stated goals concerning things like debt levels, federal spending, and taxation. All of these issues are moot points at this extremely late hour.

It’s good and very well that MacGregor says OCOC is not overtly political and does not support or try to curry favor with any Democrats or Republicans. No side of the Uniparty would have anything to do with the movement other than to try to subvert it or maybe have it prosecuted for hate crimes. Really, everyone knows that. It’s because the entirety of the American political structure is dead. And that is because the entirety of American and Western-American culture is dead, a product of the death of the prevailing Western identity of Americans. As such, there is no reason to try to influence the dead politics of a dead country.

What OCOC should instead foster—and I think they have a good chance to do so—is the redevelopment of the concepts of God, family, and Christian community that MacGregor champions. Christian men and women should deeply consider how America fell and who led the demise. The answer to all related questions, whether concerning debt, pedophilia, or open borders, is the same. At a certain time and place a notion of vengeance inserts itself.

OCOC should also accept that as America is no longer American, Western, or Christian, the otherwise valid solutions they suggest will not be accepted by all US residents or occupants nor will they work universally. Whether or not anyone understands or likes that the US is done and is breaking apart is immaterial. It is, it should, and no human endeavor can stop the process. Everyone’s ultimate focus should be on rebuilding something new and better in the rump states that will form over the next decade-plus. There’s great potential beyond the great upheavals and I suspect all good people will want to participate in the grand developments. 

On a personal note, I am happy to reveal I have completed my Thorongil Testing of the American people. I have the results and will, by my actions over the next year or so, make them and my related decisions public. Great news! Going forward, marching steadily toward 2024, we’ll have some more excellent fiction in this space. That will—or should—include another Tom Ironsides Christmas special. Don’t miss it.

Deo vindice.