The Death of You
Try to imagine yourself alive during the early middle ages in Britain. It is not an easy thing, of course, as the world of 7th century Britain may as well have happened on another planet, compared to our age. The largest city at the time, for example, was probably Winchester. This was a city of a few thousand people, not tens or hundreds of thousands of people. By modern standards, it was a small village or what developers in America call a town center. Of course, it would have smelled like a restroom at a truck stop.
The Romans tried to recreate the cosmopolitan life they associated with civilization, but it never really took hold in Britain. After the Romans left, things quickly fell back to their natural order. People lived in rural villages. They spent most of their time working the land and tending to the things that agrarian life required. Britain was a tribal society and people lived among their kin, ruled by men who were their kin, or by men who had ruled over their kin for longer than anyone remembered.
Anyway, there you are, covered in dirt and filth, smelling like cabbage, when some weirdos show up and meet with the rulers. Maybe you saw them come down the road or maybe you heard about them. All you know is that foreign weirdos have shown up and the people in charge are entertaining them for some reason. Eventually, you and everyone else is rounded up and marched down to the local river where you witness the weirdos dunking the lord in the river, while making weird sounds and pointing toward the sky.
Then, the king’s men force all of the people, including you, to do the same. You are marched out into the river, you are dunked under the water by the weirdos. To your surprise, your family and neighbors seem to be OK with it. They enthusiastically go along with this strange new ritual, even though you know they have no idea what’s happening either. Their confusion is due to fear and their fear tells them to follow along, even though they have no idea what is happening. You do the same. You have been Christianized.
That’s not an unrealistic portrayal of how Britain went from being a pagan land to being a Christian one. The Church set about converting Europe by first converting the kings, nobles and tribal leaders. It could then be the duty and interest of the rulers to force the new religion on their people, which they mostly did. In Britain, Æthelberht of Kent was the first king to accept baptism, around 601. The final kingdom to join the winning team was The Isle of Wright in 686, but the death of Penda in 655 ended paganism in Britain.
Just because the king adopted this new weird religion, did not mean the people fully embraced it. In fact, the ruling class was not entirely on board with Christianity. In order to make the transition easier, the Church gave the early Christians of Britain broad authority to practice Christianity. The goal was to get them on board first and then later enforce theological discipline. The Church was playing the long game so many pagan practices were Christianized to make it easier for the people to convert to the new faith.
Another way that made the conversion smother was for the legends and stories of the old gods carried on with the peasants. That’s where we got English folklore. All of those old legends told in the pagan era were a form of entertainment for the common people. After conversion, they still told stories about magical creatures and heroes, but they left out Woden and Loki, at least as real gods on the same level as the Christian God. They became children’s stories and fairy tales, rather than foundation myths for the people.
The removal of a people’s religion, cuts them off from their past and effectively ends their identity as a people. It was so much more effective to adapt the new religion to the culture and customs of the people being converted. It allowed the people to hold onto their identity by holding onto their past. This is also why the Americans allowed the Japanese Emperor to remain in place after the war. He was more than just a political figure. He was a defining feature of the Japanese people. Liberal democracy was modified for post-imperial Japan.
The point of all this is as it relates to what we see going on in America with the slow removal of Christianity from the culture. The ruling class long ago converted to the new religion of multiculturalism. They have been slowly erasing the old religions from the public institutions and replacing it with their own. Now they have moved into private institutions by forcing Christians to worship at the altar of multiculturalism. The next step, and there are already rumblings, is to force churches to adopt gay marriage or face sanction.
Christianity is not the only religion under assault. The soft, civil religion of Americans, based on equality before the law, individual liberty and the right to be left alone is being erased. The tearing down of Confederate statues is one example. The elimination of freedom of association is another. The rule of law, of course, has been eliminated long ago when the Talmudic parsers cooked up the idea of a living Constitution. The law is now just an endless round of hairsplitting and a morality of convenience.
The toppling over of confederate statues is often seen as a final sweeping up after the Civil War. First they came for the Confederate flags and now they are coming for the statues. Next they will be digging up the graveyards. That’s all true, but it is also an effort to erase America’s past. There are calls to topple over the statue of Jefferson at the University of Virginia. It will not be long before Washington, Franklin, and the rest of those evil pale penis people, who founded the nation, are ruled out of bounds on moral grounds.
The whole point of the exercise is to cut the people off from their past, by taking away their religion and civil institutions. It’s tempting to think of globalism in purely economic terms, but it is more than that. It is a war on the people who make up nations. It is a direct assault on the very idea of a people. If they can destroy the civil institutions and erase the past, they will destroy the identity of the people and the very rationale for countries. The post-national paradise, therefore, is the post-you world. It is the death of you.
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