Sultan Knish
There is no better outcome that the Democrats could have hoped for than
the demographic despair that has overtaken some sections of the
conservative movement. While the Republican establishment prepares to
accept Obama as the new FDR, the grass roots feels alienated and willing
to write off the whole country.
Demographics is a serious issue, but it's not a done deal either.
Countries are not static. America was created because a large number of
Europeans moved to a place that had formerly been populated by the
descendants of Siberian refugees crossing over the Bering Strait. I have
often said that demographics kind is destiny, but it's a mathematical
destiny. Change the numbers and you change the destiny.
Taking back America demographically is a matter of having enough
children within a cultural structure that passes down the values of
adults to the children, while focusing on limiting immigration as much
as possible. This isn't an impossible task.
The Amish population doubles every 20 years and they retain the majority
of their children within their communities despite the obvious appeals
of the outside world. There are 250,000 Amish in the United States and
Canada now. By 2040 there will be over a million of them.
Utah has the highest fertility rate in the country and 9 out of 10
children are born to married couples. The Mormon Church is slowing down
its expansion, and is having some retention and birth rate issues,
perhaps due to its liberalization and growing investment in overseas
missionary work, but its numbers are still a reminder of what is
possible.
Demographics can be deceptive, because what we are really talking about
are the economic and cultural factors that dissuade large family sizes
and that alienate children from the values of their ancestors. What we
are really talking about is a clash between progressives and
traditionalists.
As an Orthodox Jew, I represent a group that is at the front lines of
the clash. In the last century and a half, Jewish progressives have done
everything possible to destroy Jewish religion, values and even
nationhood. For half that time they were enormously successful, wreaking
havoc across entire communities, using state power to force parents
into their own schools, and building a literary and cultural
infrastructure aimed at ridiculing and destroying traditional values.
They are still at it today, and their tactics and propaganda are as bad
as they ever were, but they also losing. While the progressives embrace
the culture of abortion and gay rights, the traditionalists have
children. Within a decade, a majority of New York Jews will be
traditionalist and the impact of that is already being felt in
elections. The progressives have ramped up their usual hate campaigns
against Orthodox Jews, which is why you see so many negative stories in
the media, but the demographics of their progressive culture doom them
to extinction.
This same outcome would have taken place nationally in the clash between
American traditionalists and progressives, if not for the ace in the
hole of immigration. And yet immigration is only half the picture. The
bigger half of the picture is culture.
Would the Amish be who they are if in between plow breaks they were
watching Reality TV and getting lessons on liberal values? Instead the
Amish segregated themselves from the culture and have thrived because of
it. And that can be done without completely abandoning technology as a
whole.
Orthodox Jews built a cultural infrastructure to convey their values to
our children while cutting them off, as much as possible, from the
cultural programming of progressives. The largest expense of Orthodox
Jewish parents and the community as a whole is on the infrastructure of
private schools that teach traditional values to their children. An
Orthodox Jewish community is defined by its schools and its best and
brightest go into Chinuch or Education.
But schools aren't enough. Orthodox Jews raise their children on their
own books and their own music. Everything that children are exposed to
from the youngest ages is supposed to come from within their own culture
to such an extent that when Oprah visited a Chassidic family they had
no idea who she was, or who Mickey Mouse and Beyonce were. Obviously
this isn't universal and the degree of exposure varies, but retention
rates and birth rates are highest among those with the lowest levels of
progressive cultural exposure.
Modern Orthodox Jews, a group of which I am, obviously, a member, have
the highest levels of cultural exposure, the lowest birth rates and the
highest susceptibility to progressive views. The Modern Orthodox
approach was viable in 1950s America where the outside culture was
healthy, but I have come to question its survival value in an era where
the culture is decaying and hostile to any form of traditional family
values. Chassidic Jews, with the lowest rates of cultural exposure also
have the highest birth rates and, unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, I have
yet to meet a single liberal Chassid.
So is cultural secession the solution? For traditional Jews it might be,
but for traditionalists as a whole, who have the demographic reach to
turn the national numbers around, it can be a temporary solution until
the numbers and the political power that goes with them are theirs. As
with Orthodox Jews, there is a Christian culture industry, but it isn't
enough to have positive messages as an alternative, it's equally
important to cut out as many negative messages as possible.
Above all else, education is the future. Traditionalists who fail to
understand this will allow the educational system and the entertainment
industry to transform their children into progressives. Progressives
know that control of the educational system means control of the future.
Without the educational system and immigration, progressives are doomed
to be cafe radicals. With them, they can count the generations until
they control everything.
The progressives have few children of their own. Your children are their
children. If they can corrupt your children, then they have a future.
If they cannot, then they will go off and die in a corner. The
progressives have three strengths, class warfare, cultural programming
and immigration. America had prosperity that negated class warfare, but
it neglected to safeguard its culture from the left and did not consider
the consequences of Third World immigration. With their political and
culture power, the left destroyed prosperity and now with all three
cards in their hand, the progressives are rising high.
But too many conservatives have despaired because they have fallen prey
to the myth of a perfect America that once was and can never be again.
But America was never perfect, like every person, it was a work in
progress. It was a struggle between ideas and ideologies and that
struggle did not end because the progressives have worked and plotted to
get this far. Defeating them is a matter of exploiting their weaknesses
and firming up our strengths.
Most of the Republican Party remains unwilling to acknowledge that this
is a cultural war. And it is. Culture is one of the things that the left
is good at. It's an easy and profitable way for the left to pursue its
ends. And it's fun. But it only works with captive audiences.
The left's cultural infrastructure is wired to feed its programming to
an audience that sits there waiting to receive it and is willing to even
pay top dollar for the privilege. Like every Iago, it has no idea what
to do if Othello not only doesn't pay for the privilege of going to its
schools and movies, but actively tunes it out and forms a community that
makes its own entertainment and education.
Forget physical secession for the moment and think cultural secession.
Physical secession, even if it were achieved, would do little good
without putting cultural secession first. And if you cannot manage
cultural secession, then how will you ever achieve physical secession?
Cultural secession means cutting away the educational and entertainment
culture of the left out of your home. It means creating your own
alternative education and entertainment and grouping in communities that
act as a support structure for traditional values. Is it easy? No. It
involves sacrifice. But groups such as the Amish and Orthodox Jews have
done it and have thrived doing it.
Some wars are settled by guns, but cultural wars are settled by the schoolbook and the movie. They are settled by the family.
The progressive agenda is to destroy the family, to undermine it,
ridicule it, economically disadvantage it and burden it until it falls
apart and is replaced by the Big Brother of the State. The traditional
agenda is to maintain the family and pass along traditional values
across the generations. That is what this cultural war is really about;
whether the family or the state will the defining unit of human
experience.
The progressives are out to break the family, to slice it up in a
thousand ways from the ghetto to the Castro. Everything they do is aimed
at eliminating any rival to the state. The traditionalist goal has to
be to form communities that are capable of preserving the family despite
the power of the state. This is not easy and will become harder as time
goes on. But it is what has to be done to reclaim the country.
Raising children within a traditional community is a revolutionary
activity. It is an act of cultural and demographic defiance against the
progressive state. The traditional community is becoming the new
underground of progressive countries. It is the place where parents pass
on subversive ideas to their children and teach them to pass on those
same subversive ideas to their children.
Progressives want every child to grow up to be a slave of the state,
thinking the same empty thoughts, laughing at the same things and
trotting tamely along to the slaughterhouse. What they fear most is a
future where the majority of children do not worship the state, do not
accept their premises or parrot their propaganda. What they fear most is
a demographic revolution.
Can American traditionalists quadruple their numbers in 40 years the way
that the Amish will? Doing that will require taking lessons from the
Amish, from Orthodox Jews and from other traditionalist groups that have
found ways to build tight knit communities that protect their values
and preserve their children. Building those structures is the hardest
part. But once the structures are there, then the future is yours.
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