Rejectionism

Europe's denial of reality, Part 2

estern societies are in deep trouble. US government finances are financially unsustainable: the Chinese are trying to bypass the dollar and trade in Euros and Yuan (the often predicted Euroyuan still being off the horizon); our corporations are frantically trying to relocate themselves overseas in a process called inversion to escape their crushing tax burden. At our universities totalitarianism reigns supreme. The conditions there are strikingly similar to those that historians have identified as having caused the Chinese Red Guards movement, and as documented here and elsewhere, the parallels are overwhelming.

Perhaps even worse, Europe is in denial that its own multicultural policies are creating a time bomb. Unable to admit the problem is not in Syria but one they created within their own population, France has joined Russia for an overseas adventure. If it works, it will be because it reduces the influx of refugees; and since Europeans dare not consider blocking the refugees directly, perhaps that is the goal.

Our civilization will be profoundly changed by these events.

Government is not the ‘things we do together’ as the statists are so fond of saying. It is the things those in power do to us. Our endless system of political conflict is caused by people trying to be in the position of the doer instead of the doee.

For the average person, there are three possible responses: capitulation, resistance, and rejection. These responses cut through the artificial divisions of liberal / conservative / libertarian. Nonetheless there are patterns.

• Liberals create government—what everyone else calls ‘problems.’ They are the capitulators (though sometimes I find myself wondering when one prominent conservative website surrenders on another important issue).
• Libertarians correctly see government as a problem and resist it, dismantling it wherever possible. They are the resistors.
• Conservatives fix the mess created by liberals and libertarians. They reject.

If conservatives merely resisted change, as some (even some conservatives themselves) believe, our situation would be hopeless. But conservativism cannot be understood without taking rejectionism into account. Rejectionism makes them agents of change, but only after a long period of patient suffering: when the universities become too radicalized, they will cry out “Shut them all down!”, which means to radically restructure them from top to bottom. Or they will say: “Throw Turkey out of NATO!”“Form a third party!” Stuff like that.

These radical solutions, seemingly made for dramatic effect, are never considered on the left, which thrives by undermining existing institutions instead of replacing them. It is one of the main reasons they hate and fear their opponents: undermining existing institutions is one thing, radically changing them is another. Yet that is what conservatives, those who supposedly are old and afraid of change, do.

It is part of the rejectionist mindset to exclude entire groups when they threaten one's ideals. Liberals have dirty names for it, and sociologists call it a need for purity common to all ideologies, which is hardly flattering. But it is an inevitable product of valuing principle over practicality.

Having lived history, conservatives know it, and many of them have seen firsthand what happens to individuals when their society fails them. That is why they struggle to preserve it.

But eventually, when there is nothing left to preserve, resistance becomes pointless. To a man or woman with principles, capitulation is out of the question. So rejection becomes the only option. When the last conservatives start telling you that you deserved your fate, you will know that tipping points are real, and that you have just passed one.