Not so very long ago, commentators used to talk about human evolution. No, not actual, Darwinian evolution. This evolution was more along the lines of wishful thinking. In the 19th century, Marx and his followers rejected so-called “bourgeois morality” (which properly recognized that humans, if freed from all restraints, act horribly) in order to tout the view that humanity was naturally decent. Not long after, science, rather than Christianity, became the new religion of the European left. Unlike either Catholicism or the various denominations of Protestantism, both of which believe in some form of original sin, science offered and continues to offer for some an answer for all social ills. Like the Parisian bank robber-cum-terrorist Raymond Callemin, nicknamed “Raymond-la-Science,” today’s happy-faced progressives’ diatribes go something like “science tells us to . . .” [insert left-wing program here]. This isn’t really liberalism per se; it is instead more akin to H.G. Wells’s “scientific socialism.”
Of course, there’s one nagging problem with all of this: The barbarians are still striking at the doors, and hard. Despite scientific progress, self-protection and self-defense are still necessary. We can wish the bad men away, but unless we have courage, they’ll keep killing us. This is an eternal truth, but hearing it now hurts so many of our ears. The reason? Scientific socialism, which has dominated Western culture for so long, can only offer hollow and unsatisfactory answers. When Islamist gunmen attacked Paris, the French left responded with appreciations for champagne. In America, each new mass shooting is met with a left-wing chorus for “gun control,” or rather gun confiscation. That’s right—in a violent time, our scientific socialists want to ensure that only the barbarians can commit violence.
Fundamentally, the modern left needs a false sense of safety to survive. A perfect populace would be neutered, dependent, and preoccupied with “bread and circuses.” Never mind that Kalashnikov behind the door; the real threat is “toxic masculinity!”
Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, which was released on the same day as the Charlie Hebdo massacre (and which is now out in an English translation), deeply mocks the current state of leftist politics. In fact, in a novel about an Islamo-Socialist takeover of France that is not entirely peaceful, the true antagonist is left-wing secularism. As fellow novelist and enfant terrible Karl Ove Knausgaard has observed, Submission denounces consumerism, false idols, and the type of vacuous lifestyles left-wing and secular politics triumph. Compared to this, Islam seems healthy and better for the average European.
Despite being satire, Submission painfully highlights the weaknesses of the West. The more we sanitize our culture and exclude Orwell’s “rough men” from our political class and our universities, the more vulnerable we will be when challenged by far less polite cultures.
Centuries before Houellebecq, the Roman historian Tacitus recognized that complacent cultures do not have the will to fight, even when their very livelihoods depend on it. Tacitus’s Germania has long been misread as an ethnographic study of an inferior culture by a haughty imperialist. It is in fact a sort of battle cry. While Tacitus was a proud Roman who really did believe in the superiority of his culture, he nevertheless saw in the Germanic tribesman of pre-Christian Europe a worthy example to follow. Even given their “idleness” and their concern for “sleeping” and “eating” when not engaged in combat, Germanic tribesmen believed in honor, courage, and a strict marriage code that embraced monogamy. More importantly, Germanic tribesmen, unlike Romans, were not beholden to vice or other social ills:
Tacitus knew well that the average Roman citizen would laugh at the supposed backwardness of the Germanic tribes, but he also knew that the average Germanic tribesman was braver and more battle-tested than his Roman counterpart. If engaged in a fight, Tacitus’s Germania clearly indicates, German men would likely have the upper hand. Ultimately, it was the Germanic tribes that brought down the avaricious and squabbling Western Roman Empire.
What can all of this tell us about our current situation? First, instead of denigrating our traditions, we should revive them. Second, instead of referring to our poilu class as “white trash,” we should celebrate them. A healthier America would recognize that soldiers, police officers, blue-collar workers, and homemakers are more important to society than athletes, movie stars, and Wall Street brokers. Finally, unless we want domestic enemies leading us into a losing battle with foreign adversaries, we need to stop believing that the “scientific socialists” have anything useful to offer.
Benjamin Welton is a writer in Boston.
