Never Say Die J.R. Nyquist: 02.20.02

[kabud]

Never Say Die
J.R. Nyquist: 02.20.02
http://web.archive.org/web/20030210062334/www.sierratimes.com/02/02/20/nyquist.htm
In Patrick Buchanan's new book, "The Death of the West," we find a
simple pessimistic argument. "Candor compels one to admit the
prognosis is not good," says Buchanan, who asks if the West can
survive the death of Christianity (what Friedrich Nietzsche called
"the death of God"). "If faith is dying," writes Buchanan, "what is
the belief system, what is the unifying principle, what is the source
of moral authority that holds the West together?"

Friedrich Nietzsche's grim answer, set down in 1887, anticipated
Buchanan's dismay. Nietzsche wrote: "What I relate is the history of
the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer
come differently: the advent of nihilism." Such is the collapse of all
belief, of all moral and intellectual orderliness. It is a collapse
that produces the following effect: "When Americans recall their
history," explains Buchanan, "some find it glorious; others find it
villainous and shameful."

Buchanan writes about "taking the country back." He means taking the
country back from liberals. Of course, one would also have to take the
country back to an earlier time. Nietzsche commented on this idea in
Twilight of the Idols, where he wrote that "even today there are
parties whose goal is a dream of the crabwise retrogression of all
things. But no one is free to be a crab. There is nothing for it: one
has to go forward, which is to say step by step further into
decadence."

Buchanan's presidential bid demonstrated the truth of Nietzsche's
observation. We cannot go back but only forward into decadence and
crisis. "So it may be," writes Buchanan, "that the Death of the West
is ordained, and that there is no sense in prescribing new drugs or
recommending painful new treatments, for the patient is dying and
nothing can be done."

The conservative Buchanan finds, at this twilight hour, that there is
nothing left to conserve. Tradition has collapsed along with mores,
rules, manners and beliefs. The conservative looks about and finds
that a great spiritual catastrophe has leveled our interior landscape.
Imagine the chaos in the heavens when every star and planet breaks
free of its path and orbit. What galaxy, then? What crashing and
blasting of worlds then?

In this process we have lost that most conservative word, that most
constricting word - the first serious word a human being can learn,
which is the word "no." We liberals, we decadents, do not want to
acknowledge limitation. We do not want to accept what is fatal, what
is necessary, what is inescapable. Here we find a thing that has
disciplined all of humanity heretofore. But we don't want it.

The conservative (without anything to conserve) analyzes the various
forms that nihilism now takes: for example, why do some people want to
change from a man into a woman (or from a woman into a man)? Perhaps
it is because self-loathing and self-disintegration bubble up when the
word "no" falls into disuse. Shape and consistency being absent,
shapeless obstinacy and arbitrariness take the disintegrated soul
directly to Hell.

There are other questions along this same line: Why do so many
Americans hate America? Why does the Christian no longer defend his
beliefs? Why does the government adopt suicidal policies? In fact, our
schools have given us "education to make stupid"; our welfare state
has encouraged poverty; our state-funded science has given us
intellectual gangsterism; our CIA has given us three famous monkeys -
See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil; our courts have become a
mockery; our media is biased and our superpower status no longer
protects us.

This is nihilism in action. It is the self-destructive course of those
who have lost their way. It is inevitable because we no longer adhere
to transcendental values. Instead, the nihilistic instrumentalism of
science has displaced our faith in higher things. In other words,
"scientism" has become the decisive idea of our time (as the point of
departure for modern communism and liberalism).

"Once an ideology takes hold of a society," writes Buchanan, "only a
superior force or ideology can exorcise it. To defeat faith you must
have faith. What, other than Christianity, is the West's alternative
faith?"

The anti-Christian Nietzsche, who called himself "the first perfect
nihilist of Europe who … has even now lived through the whole of
nihilism, to the end, leaving it behind, outside himself," forecast a
coming age of dictatorship and war. Buchanan essentially agrees that,
"if Christianity has lost its appeal and Christianity 'is not an
option,' the revolution will accelerate until we hit the retaining
wall of reality."

And what do we suppose that retaining wall is made of in the nuclear
age?

It is my contention that destructive warfare, distress and disorder
will inevitably occur. But this is no reason to despair. If we are
faithful and determined we can persevere and become stronger. Buchanan
says, at the end of his book, that we must continue to fight for the
country. "This is a beautiful country," he writes. "And that is why we
must never stop trying to take her back."