If you think this is an exaggeration, just look at how those countries which have emerged from the dreadful ashes of the Soviet Union have sought to reinvigorate those institutions and communities which sought to limit state power. This battle for social stability is very real and you must pick a side — individual responsibility or collective irresponsibility. Instead of burying one’s head in the sand and imagining a Marxist utopia on the one hand, or an equally illusory state which encourages communities full of highly responsible individuals on the other, start taking greater responsibility in your local area and demanding the same of others. Moreover, empowering the Church and other such voluntary institutions which seek to impose greater obligations, but not greater rights, for public offices would be a good start.
Recent books, such as HSH Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein’s The State in the Third Millennium, and Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, present a realisation that the West is in decline and that radical decentralisation is the only way to circle the wagons, as it were, and defend our civilisation in the same manner and for the same reasons as St. Benedict, who established the monastic system across Europe. For further consideration, we can look to the successes of communities such as the Tipi Loschi community of San Benedetto del Tronto in Italy, or the unincorporated community of Ave Maria, Florida, in the US. Even successful micro-states geared towards libertarian values, such as the establishment of Liberland, in Eastern Europe, present examples of what is possible. But this organic growth starts from the bottom-up. Take back responsibility today!
Part Four
Family
Chapter 1
Why Women Are the Unfairer Sex
A study by the well-known Professor Robert Dunbar has shown ‘a very striking sex difference between male and female friendships.’100 In the few days since Dunbar gave a talk on the results, a number of articles have been written of the superficiality of male relationships; they focused on Dunbar’s view that ‘women clearly have much more intense close friendships…very like romantic relationships…if they break, they break catastrophically.’ Men on the other hand are painted as frivolous — ‘With guys it is out of sight out of mind. They just find four more guys to go drinking with.’ But, do the findings really indicate that women are friendlier or more sociable than men?
Now, of course, feminists will tell you that masculinity is inevitably oppressive and abusive, especially of the more supposedly feminine qualities of love, gentleness and empathy. But, this misconception is totally unfair. As Gillette and Moore point out, in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, oppressive forms of patriarchy are simply based on the same juvenile fear depicted in Lord of the Flies; the ‘mature masculine’ psychology, however, is ‘marked by calm, compassion, clarity of vision, and generativity.’101
Indeed, science seems to agree, not only that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but also that women seem predisposed to scorning. For instance, women tend to dominate the judgmental and feelings-based personality types in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tests. Naturally, when it comes to maternity, evolution has favoured those women with greater maternal instincts, but this doesn’t mean women are necessarily the more sociable sex; nor does it mean that men are cold, superficial loners.
Whilst men had to go out hunting and patrolling, working together and trusting each other, women did not. This explains why Dunbar found that men can readily welcome and be welcomed into new groups of males—‘What held up their friendships was doing stuff together.’ Women, however, had to compete with other women over the loyalty of the alphas to their brood. It is easy, therefore, to see how being ‘bitchy’ or ‘catty’ evolved to try to lower the reputation of other women in the group and, thus, level the playing field. Furthermore, it also explains Dunbar’s finding that long-distance female relationships can be maintained simply by gossiping on the phone.
In the real world, oft forgotten by the left, men love spending time with their ‘honour group’, yet the actresses of Sex and the City could barely stand each other’s company long enough to create a fictional replica for women. Certainly, the reason women have such intimate relationships built on deep trust and loyalty has nothing to do with being friendlier or less superficial than men. This doesn’t make one sex better than the other, it just helps us understand what we are and why calling on women to simply be less judgmental of each other is both ignorant and useless.
Another study has concluded that women are ‘more sensitive than men to social exclusion, and when they feel threatened by the prospect of being left out, a woman’s first response may be to socially exclude a third party.’102 So, because ostracism of any kind would have meant certain doom for oneself and one’s progeny, females have evolved to be more cliquey, and those alliances they do form are very high trust and with strong expectations of loyalty. Thus, Dunbar’s conclusion regarding their relationships’ intensity—‘if they break, they break catastrophically.’
Now, I love women. The best relationships in my life have been with women—my grandmother, my mother, my wife, my daughter. I don’t want to imagine a world without mothers and daughters. But, equally, I love manliness. We already face a dearth of true masculinity in our time; twisting the findings of Dunbar’s study to suit commonplace misandry in the mainstream media and academia is beyond unhelpful.
I think the time for apologising about, and even concealing, biological trends must end immediately, and the time for celebrating alpha males must commence. Men are the more social animal and the friendlier sex, but feminists want women to take all the credit, imagining a world of sugar and spice vs. slugs and snails and puppy dogs’ tails.
The fact is that the masculinity deficit we face in the West is due in no short part to a mischaracterisation of men. Feminists have denigrated masculinity for decades and, ironically, produced a generation of men full of fear and shame, who readily descend into the very angry and abusive, Lord of the Flies-esque behaviour the feminists claim to oppose.
Our forefathers had it right. We need a return of honourable masculinity; we should be celebrating masculinity and femininity for what they are and pursuing their ideal forms. Bashing male relationships and exaggerating female ones is completely unfair — especially if women want a reputation as the fairer sex.
Chapter 2
Four Reasons My Housewife is Awesome
Yes, I wrote ‘awesome’. I know the word is misused but I’m not exaggerating the excellence of having a housewife. The typical complaint today, of course, would have nothing to do with the superlative I used; rather, the fact that I had anything nice to say about motherhood and home-making at all. This pseudo-feminism, which currently strangles our beloved Western civilisation with a dead fallopian tube, preaches: move to the city; have a career; and screw around until your ovaries are borderline useless, because kids are yucky.
Most, whose biological clocks continue ticking, eventually realise they’ve aged worse than the men, and the only men still unmarried are either too nutty or too fruity, like the rejects from a box of chocolates. These women have lost a depressing amount of sexual marketplace value.
In short, modern women have been defrauded of the enjoyment of their natural impulses and greatest ability.
Yes, greatest! The stigma seeded by the state and propagated by the media is against the ‘stay at home’ mother who doesn’t pursue the empty and unrealistic Sex and the City ‘adventure’. ‘Staying at home’ is the last way I’d describe how bloody difficult it is; but the West is increasingly void of real men to stick up for the women who choose this path.
Today, the state can just pull up, milk their taxes from two cash-cows in every family (to prop up the runaway, Keynesian, consumerist economy), and no one is there to protect or lead. Moreover, all the women who must now work in order to get a mortgage help to enforce the taboo. They speak of our beloved housewives with such disdain and ca
tty jealousy. All this is killing the West in no uncertain terms; in my father’s generation, an average working class family could get a decent mortgage on a single wage and have hope for their children’s future.
Thankfully, my wife and I decided to have our children in our 20s and pursue other ambitions later.
She is intelligent, qualified and capable of higher-earning, professional work. Furthermore, when it comes to housework she is not so much a domestic goddess as a lonely rural priest, riddled with doubt and hitting the sauce. So why on earth do I defend and even venerate my housewife?
1. She produced my babies.
Don’t recoil at this cliché. Yes, even women in comas have popped out offspring. Furthermore, there are plenty of sub-intelligent Untermenschen giving breeding a bad name. But, unless you have children, you’re probably still focused on finding your next lay, not understanding what your genetic programming is trying to do. Children are not only the greatest joy you can have, but they give you some investment in the tribe, a reason to behave with honour and maybe even pride in one’s culture.
Baby-makers are super-precious and in need of defending and celebrating. If you love Western Civilisation and remain unaffected as you stand at the cliff-side of our dropping middle-class birth rates, don’t stop to read A Farewell to Alms, just befriend and commit to a good woman, who respects men, and make some sweet love. Nature will take care of the rest. ‘I can’t find such a woman,’ you say? When was the last time you went to church?
2. She is an emotional port in the storm of life.
Whereas I try to toughen up my kids by describing the harsher truths of reality, simply wiping away the tears and telling them they’re fine, my wife is soft, and home-making keeps her that way. Even when the children aren’t really crying, they know they can get affection from mother dearest. They know a mother’s love — always affectionate and warm, even if there isn’t perfect understanding or even if it’s not entirely deserved. That maternal instinct is hugely powerful and important from an evolutionary perspective.
As well as ensuring that my son knows how to identify maternal care in a potential mate and to steer clear of the ice queens, this also provides us chaps with a friend who knows how to listen. Of course, women want their men to be strong, just as the whole world expects men to be tough; but if they have that maternal instinct, they become an occasional confidant to whom we can open up about our misgivings. This strengthens a marriage/pair-bond and keeps families together through the long human childhood. Most importantly, however, as a housewife, she is always around. If she’s coming home late, exhausted and stressed out by work, the right moment never comes to have that supportive chat.
3. Her looks will fade, but her cooking will only get better.
The way to a man’s heart is not just through his stomach; his penis is obviously the highway. But, as that road gets old, the traffic lights don’t work so well and…potholes. Let’s be honest: women worry that when their looks fade, the man will leave and (aside from the revenge, money and state welfare resulting from the modern divorce case) they’re not going to lure another man with ease, even with the benefit of an ex’s money. But, when she devotes more of her time to creating the joys of a home for us, this relieves any worries for the future. My wife makes some of my favourite meals and is getting better all the time. That’s leverage! I am always making more of an emotional investment in the family environment. And she happily knows that I couldn’t get the same anywhere else and that, even though we pass through rough patches, I’ll stay.
4. She embraces her biological role, which makes me want to be manlier.
When a woman strives to be more feminine, it highlights the degree of masculinity in the man. Furthermore, when she finds joy in being a woman, making the nest and producing offspring, it makes me want to find joy in being a better man. But, what is a man? The more I discovered about this, the more I wanted of it. I came to realise that our masculine culture of honour has been replaced with one in which the state manages everything for us, including fatherhood. It was the veneration of the mother which brought me to venerate patriarchy and to recognise the instability of the foundations upon which Western Civilisation currently rests. As Fulton Sheen put it, ‘To a great extent, the level of any civilization is the level of its womanhood.’ The more we learn about ourselves, the better-equipped we will be to make lasting repairs to those loose foundations.
Chapter 3
How to Be a Good Father
At a time when many Western men don’t even want to be a father, it may be considered out of touch to discuss the importance of pursuing its excellence. Moreover, my eldest of three children is still only five, so I must also contend with the accusation of pretence. But, I am an early years professional and the facts paint a clear picture that we can all recognise: we need the return of traditional families and patriarchy.
Now, don’t expect the culturally Marxist establishment to help you out. The glue which holds the suicidal fragments of today’s status quo together is their hatred of straight white men; you think they want more of you? Yet, the demographic Winter is coming, the signs are all there — Europeans breeding way below replacement levels, a runaway Keynesian economy, the ageing of the higher spending generation etc. etc. Your example as a father could stave off the worst of it for Western civilisation.
So, now that I have your attention, how can you be a good dad? Before we begin, self-reflection has been a precursor for obtaining wisdom in the rationalistic West since the age of heroes. Remember, the ancient Greeks had inscribed ‘Know thyself’ at the forecourt of their temples. What are your strengths and weaknesses? Are you cold and unempathetic around children and teens? Would you be exhausted after five minutes alone with them? None of these are impediments to fatherhood but you need to know what you can offer and what will take more practice.
You may likely have children that are similar to you or your wife and who are perfectly happy engaging in the activities you are, but they might be different, very different to anyone else. Once you know the tools you are working with and the nature of the child you are working on, reaching the level of gong fu in the art of fatherhood only requires good planning and flexibility. I would advise using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a mainstay for early years educators, to create an action plan.
1. Physiological Needs
You remember the film Gremlins? There were three rules. Children are much easier — don’t feed them after midnight is the only one of the three that applies. Air, food, water, clothing and shelter; if you’re unable to provide these things in a developed country, that’s probably because you are a child. Make sure everyone gets enough time outdoors, fruit and veg, and sleep — job done.
2. Safety Needs
Just keep everything up to waist height safe for their first three years (especially plug sockets and furniture corners). After that, accidents become a healthy part of their development; let them learn to risk assess for themselves. If they don’t graze those knees and bump those heads, nature won’t go easy on their retarded sense of caution.
On a serious note, don’t harm your little ones out of anger. Punishment must always be handled as a matter of justice. As a father, you are the judge and the majority of studies have shown that disproportionate punishment, physical aggression and angry emotional outbursts have very damaging effects on human development. Not only will the child not learn about honour and justice, they will be much less able to control their temper and handle emotional situations with rationale for the rest of their lives. They will also pass on the same IQ-depleting, animalistic behaviour to their children, and so the vicious cycle continues. Revenge is a dish best served cold.
But, be warned! Children will drive you up the wall sometimes, just as the weaker sex often resorts to hurtful words, emotionally bullying us to do their will. Children have little to no baggage and are raw human emotion and instinct; as such, they can intuit and manipulate yours with ease, if you are sugges
tible enough, pointing out hypocrisies and pressing all the right buttons. You have to be as steel with them, cold and immovable, but when they genuinely need comfort, recognise it and open your heart to them. This way, they learn what good parenting looks like and the importance of being earnest, not just how to become a better liar for next time.
What’s the best way to keep your own temper at bay? Financial security is the biggest cause of arguments and divorces etc., and the pressure is placed on the shoulders of men first, as the traditional hunter of the hunter-gatherers. Live within your means and try not to worry. Contrary to popular belief, children don’t really need a lot and their education doesn’t have to be too expensive if you’re willing and able to spend more time with them yourself. Also, not every single person has to go to university and come out with debt and a useless degree.
3. Love and Belonging
Not to speak ill of homeschoolers, but letting your child out of the home to develop their own social groupings is just as important as the love they receive in the home. It is the other edge to the sword that is your child’s social ability. If both are not kept sharp, then your child will be at a disadvantage in the real world.
Yes, out there, there are meanies who do not love and understand your child the way mumsy does, but that’s the whole point. Iron sharpeneth iron and your child will need to learn the different characters and personalities out there, whom they want to befriend, whom they want to avoid and why.
The Uniqueness of Western Law Page 11