We like Prof
Riley’s idea of a King’s Week to atone somewhat for the regicidal,
revolutionary violence that has made its home in the West:
. . . The implied and frequently explicit
claim of MLK celebrations is that the only social regime that could be opposed
to the multiculturalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-traditionalist value system
of the MLK cult is racist, fascist, and evil. This is false. The social order
preceding the age of revolutions in the West was known in French as the Ancien
Régime. It was founded on traditional authority, centered ultimately
on God, and then here on earth on the political sovereign, the King, and the
body of law that descended from God and relied on the King for its
implementation and protection. It was overthrown by a variety of
revolutions—English, French, American—and evolved into further elaborations
through the years, including the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s.
January marks the striking of the two
most significant and earliest blows against that Old Order by the
revolutionaries. We might do well to mark those days to remind ourselves what
was lost and what tragedies have befallen us because of these outrages. These
holidays would be opportunities to celebrate traditional order and authority
but still more they would be days of mourning, not only for the nations most
directly affected, but for all in the Western world who understand the
fundamental values that have been stripped away from us and not yet effectively
replaced.
On Jan. 30, 1649, the English monarch
Charles I was beheaded by English revolutionaries and sent to the incorruptible
throne he was certain awaited him in heaven. The brutality of Cromwell and his
regime followed. On Jan. 21, 1793, the French revolutionaries performed the
same monstrous act against their King Louis XVI, and later in the same year, to
their Queen Marie Antoinette. The descent into the demonic savagery of the
Committee of Public Safety’s reign of terror would begin before the year
expired.
In these two abominable moments, the
murderous designs of the revolutions now dominating American, British, and French
societies were realized, and the already established trajectory of the assault
on authority was given still greater velocity. This was the consequence of the
foolish utopianism of those who, in the words of the Comte de Ségur, “without
regret for the past, without misgiving for the future… trod gaily on a carpet
of flowers that hid the abyss beneath [them].”
Celebrating Kings Week (I suggest the
last week in the month) would not require that one literally be a monarchist.
It would simply be a collective opportunity to recall the extreme dangers and
violence of revolution, and to recognize the splendors and majesty of the
Western tradition even prior to the emergence of the political institutions
that most contemporary Westerners, in their ahistorical ignorance of the vast
expanse of their own civilization, mistakenly believe to be the only ones
possible.
On the campus where I teach, this
year’s MLK Week events have been, apparently unironically, given the title
“Lessons in Resistance.” Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows
that adherence to the radical principles articulated under its aegis hasn’t the
slightest thing to do with resistance to anything except the traditional
American political principles that the Civil Rights Movement assaulted and that
nearly the entirety of American elite culture now opposes. It’s a rather long
way from courageous “resistance” to standing on the side of those who dominate
the entirety of American culture and society. The real resistance in our times
is in recognizing what a tremendous loss this revolution that is now orthodoxy
produced, and to acknowledge the beauty of what it trampled underfoot.
--https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/mlk-and-a-modest-proposal-for-real-resistance/
But it is
far more important to understand why this revolutionary madness has descended
on the West, and remains rooted there (for a modern ensample of this madness in
Texas, from one who wishes to remain nameless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMLwlvL4Nu0). As we have said before, it must be traced
back to the West’s first overthrow of legitimate Christian authority, when the
Roman bishop (the Pope) rose up against the Orthodox Church (Europe’s first
Church, the Church of the Holy Apostles), proclaimed himself the vicar of
Christ, and made himself a divine figure, a man-god. From this point, the decay of the West sets
in. And it is such a terrible fall that St
Justin Popovich of Serbia (+1979) links the lineage of Antichrist with her
cataclysmic falling away, that lineage being from Judas to Arius to the Pope to
the Antichrist. Everything from the
Roman Catholic Pope (the Infallible Man) onwards - Luther and the Protestant
Reformation, the secular Enlightenment, the singularity and transhumanism - all
of these are about mankind deifying himself, are an attempt to realize the
promise of Satan that ‘ye shall be as gods’ apart from the Holy Trinity.
But God is
merciful and will allow the West to repent and return to her original Church
home if she will only bend her stiff neck in humility. In this respect, St Macarius the Roman is an
important figure for her. Living in Rome
during the time of the upheavals surrounding the Protestant Reformation, he longed
to know where the Truth lay, and the Merciful Lord led him into the Orthodox
Church:
Saint Macarius the Roman was born at
the end of the fifteenth century into a wealthy family of Rome. His parents
raised him in piety and gave him an excellent education. He might have expected
a successful career in public service, but he did not desire honors or earthly
glory. Instead, he focused on how to save his soul.
He lived in an age when the Christian
West was shaken by the Protestant Reformation. While others around him were
pursuing luxury and lascivious pleasures, he studied the Holy Scriptures and
the writings of the Fathers. Saint Macarius was grieved to see so many darkened
by sin and worldly vanity, and was disturbed by the rebellions and conflicts
within the Western Church. With tears, he asked God to show him the path of
salvation, and his prayer did not go unanswered. He came to realize that he
would find the safe harbor of salvation in the Orthodox Church.
Saint Macarius left Rome secretly, and
set out for Russia without money, and wearing an old garment. After many
sufferings on his journey, he arrived in Novgorod, where he rejoiced to see so
many churches and monasteries. One of these monasteries had been founded three
centuries before by his fellow countryman, Saint Anthony the Roman (August 3).
Saint Macarius came to the banks of the
River Svir, where Saint Alexander of Svir (April 17 and August 30) had founded
the monastery of the Holy Trinity. Saint Alexander received Macarius into the
Orthodox Church and tonsured him as a monk. Macarius, however longed for the
solitary life. He moved to an island on the River Lezna, forty-five miles from
Novgorod, where he engaged in ascetical struggles and unceasing prayer.
. .
.
--https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2021/01/19/100233-venerable-macarius-the-roman-of-novgorod
May the
South and the rest of the Western European peoples find their way home, through
the prayers of St Macarius.
--
Holy Ælfred
the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to
the Union!
