“No cultural conservative could seek to copy the left’s means and create conditioning mechanisms of our own because psychological conditioning leads to a Brave New World regardless of what attitudes it is attempting to impart. That is not where we want to end up.”
William S. Lind
In the article from which this quote comes Lind is warning against the instinct to use the techniques of the cultural Marxists in order to defeat the cultural Marxist. Lind’s point is that if we have to become like our enemy in order to defeat our enemy our enemy has defeated us inasmuch as we have become him.
Any victory that is found against the Cultural Marxists by using their techniques against them will be a victory that is defeat. Success in this way will mean failure as we become the same venomous sons of Belial that the Cultural Marxist already are. Oh, sure, people will be dancing in the streets thinking that they have had great success because the beast of Cultural Marxism has been slain but if that beast is slain by the same tools that it used to slay Biblical Christianity than whoever has won the field of battle it is not the Biblical Christians and it is not Christ.
Jesus himself told us that Satan does not drive out Satan and so we can be sure that if the techniques to drive out Satan are being used by someone else purporting to be ‘good-guys’ but who use the same techniques as Satan than it is not the case that Satan is being driven out. At best he is merely changing uniforms in order to keep ruling.
When you fight someone to win at all costs you will do literally anything to win. You will even take on that person’s vices if that is what it takes to win. You will, in essence, become that person. You become your enemy. And your enemy wins because now there’s another one of him in the world. Oh sure, your cause may well triumph but what profit is it to gain the whole world while losing your own soul? And what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
Another way of saying this is that you cannot accept the presuppositions of your enemy and still expect to defeat your enemy. If you accept the premise of your enemy you lose even if you win. One cannot use the enemies methodologies, techniques, and assumptions as un-reinterpreted through a biblical grid and win without becoming the enemy.
In literature, this has been teased out a couple times that I know of. In C. S. Lewis’ “Prince Caspian,” the character Nikabrik desires to win at any and all costs. Nikabrik makes it clear that he believes in anything or anyone that will rid Narnia of the Telmarines: Aslan OR the White Witch. After the Narnians suffer many defeats at Aslan’s How and Susan’s Horn appears to have failed, Nikabrik concocts his own plan. Nikabrik invites two of his “friends” — a Hag and a Wer-Wolf — to the council, and suggests that they use black sorcery, calling up the White Witch to defeat Miraz. When the Wer-Wolf mentions preparing the blue fire, a fight breaks out between Nikabrik’s group and Caspian, Doctor Cornelius, and Trufflehunter. At that moment, Peter, Edmund, and Trumpkin, who had been listening outside the door, rush in to help. During the fighting in the dark, Nikabrik is killed, though no one knows who killed him. Caspian says,
“I am sorry for Nikabrik, though he hated me from the first moment he saw me. He had gone sour inside from long suffering and hating. If we had won quickly he might have become a good Dwarf in the days of peace.”
One easily sees that Lewis’s “Nikabrik” had no problem becoming the enemy to defeat the enemy. However, even with a White Witch very real victory, there would have been no real victory.
It is possible that many of our people are going “sour inside from the long suffering and hating” that the West has had to endure since the Endarkenment. It’s perfectly understandable that some people, like Nikabrik, want victory so badly they will call on any and all powers to deliver them but at the end of the day victory achieved with these kinds of tools will remain defeat.
The other example is Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” The Fellowship of the Ring refused to wield the ring of power even though the ring of power guaranteed victory. They all understood (except possibly Boromir for a space of time) that victory with the ring meant defeat. The Fellowship refused to use the methodologies, techniques, and tools of the Evil One in order to defeat the Evil One because they understood that victory gained by techniques of darkness means defeat even if you call defeat “victory.”
The German “philosopher” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche also understood well what I’m getting at in this article. Nietzche wrote,
“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”
Monsters defeating Monsters leaves Monsters.
So, what are the means of victory against our enemies?
Well, first we need to realize that it has taken several generations to come to this point and so victory is not likely to come over night or with abrupt suddenness. We need to gird up our loins for a long fight that begins in our homes and with our families and then radiates out from there first into Christian churches and then to different institutions and walks of life. The victory over our Cultural Marxist enemies will only be won if we train up our children in the way of the Lord Christ and His righteousness. A lack of worldview training and catechesis in the home is almost certain to guarantee the loss of the next generation. If the enemy keeps stealing our children than all talk of victory is mere stand up comedy. Of course, this also means not sending our children to Government schools, not letting them be influenced by the Ichabod Church in the West, and not sending them to University. Likewise, this also means our children must see their parents standing for righteousness and opposing wickedness and wicked people. This can happen any number of ways from activism for Biblically righteous causes to standing in public forums contesting for Christ against the wicked. Children must not only learn it between the ears they must see it lived out with their eyes. It must be both caught and taught.
In order to be victorious in the long fight, we must also get out of the cultural current and dare to think differently than the zeitgeist. This means reading, study and research. Lots of it. I’ve known any number of families who have homeschooled and yet remain in the zeitgeist and so part of the problem because they continue to support a Republican “Patrick Henry College” type mindset for their children. These types end up being in league with the enemy that needs to be defeated.
Finally, for this article, I’m going to get out on an edge and insist that this long fight will only be won to the degree that we are Calvinists. Throughout history with the Reformation and since Calvinists have been the particular expression of Christianity that those intent on tyranny most hate. Whether you are talking the Calvinist Dutch against the Catholic Habsburgs of Spain, or the Glorious Revolution of 1689, or the American Counter-Revolution of 1776 Calvinists have always been those who are willing to resist on Biblical grounds. Inasmuch as the steel spined Calvinism (as opposed to R2K “Calvinism” and Cultural Marxist “Calvinsim”) goes into eclipse in just that much any hope for recovery goes into eclipse.
But the victory, however long it might take, begins in the home and if Christians keep routinely losing their children as they currently do all talk of looming victory is just so much happy talk.