Cargo Cults, Conservative and Otherwise

Why "The Old Ways" Are Never Coming Back

Such is the growth, prosperity, height and decline of empires that the generations which create the success of a society are also the harbingers of its eventual doom. This was obvious in various stages of Greek civilization, in Roman history by the Crisis of the Third Century (where many of the ancestral elites of Rome had already been culled by Emperors) and through the Middle Age and Enlightenment Empires of Europe through to the United States today.

A more popular notion in contemporary conservative discourse is a kind of reversal of identity politics - a rediscovery or redefinition of “whiteness” as a means to recover the ethos of protestant working class settlers from England and repressed progressive-socialist, mostly Lutheran Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians, Swiss and the like. This sort of indulgence in an imagined past where these people were the “same” ethnically disregards, firstly, the cultural politics that were required to incorporate these ethnicities into the “white” majority, and secondly, the inability of alternative orders and cultural mores to form on a continent that was essentially isolated from global trade except on the coasts where materials were exported and some components of the continent’s machine tools were brought in.

Much as Rome ruled the broader Mediterranean, the United States strides the seas, having incorporated many of its allies in imbalanced defense and security arrangements while extracting foreign tribute through foreign direct investment or broader, high-performing corporate profits, enriching domestic elites while the middle class is eroded and turned over by waves of demographic transition.

In this context, the “ancestral whiteness” of the United States no longer exists - Americans of English descent number 46 million, and German Americans - marginally “white” by ancestral American definitions, compose 45 million. Even a century ago, there were concerns of dual-loyalty for German Americans, many having gone off to fight for the Kaiser before direct US involvement in World War I, while when World War II followed, the increased in integration of German, Italian and Eastern European populations was only by then encouraged by the restrictions brought forth in the 1924 Immigration Act.

The mythology of the settler foundations of the United States and Canada, along with the traditional European attitudes towards the leap forward that was represented by the Enlightenment, were seen as powerful and compelling until about the mid-2010s, as so-called “wokeness” became trendy and Ricoeur-style “Master of Suspicion” narratives became pervasive to undermine traditional notions about “whiteness”, “Settler Colonialism”, “Freedom and Liberty” and broader liberal-bourgeois hegemony.

Many in the conservative sphere simply view the shift away from these perspectives as the consequence of the “browning” of America, decaying liberal ideology, mass migration from war-torn countries in Europe and elsewhere, however the idea that some sort of “pre-woke” American or Western identity can be recovered in the modern social, economic, and political context is in fact a cargo cult - an attribution of certain characteristics to outcomes that are not directly correlated - and while the coincident success of both settler colonial and European empires was fostered by both cultural and historical forces, the historical forces which laid the groundwork for this (wars of religion, bifurcation of Europe along North-South axes, the development of financial capitalism in North Europe as a part of ocean-going exports rather than Venice-centric trade through the silk road), the center of this “world-system” has shifted irrevocably East, which means the pre-existing populations of North America and Europe must come to a political and cultural concord with their new collaborators if they have any hope to survive.

And the outcomes are very obvious: what is even the possibility of 130 million white identitarian Americans (at most) and their cohort throughout Canada and Europe to face down the “hordes” of Asia and the Middle East, who are now equipped with most of the modern technology that the West, by comparison, was able to develop and monopolize for centuries? What is the actual expected outcome there except total extermination?

And, by contrast, what is the liberal answer to this same dichotomy? To throw open one’s doors endlessly to every passer by? To imagine peace of love in the hearts of all men? Even Christ himself advised his disciples to carry swords when they travel. There is no limit to the possibility of others willing to do us harm - it is not always the case - but to leave a culture defenseless by default is a liberal cargo cult which imagines that it is simply always more openness, always more generosity, always more newcomers which will somehow infuse life and heal the cultural morass and dislocation that takes cyclical residence at the heart of Western Civilization.

So, just as ancient Empires sought new political consensus to avoid inevitable suffering - but also realize greater prosperity - the old divisions in our culture are gradually falling away to give birth to a new cultural politics. Likely not one racked by identitarianism, likely not one obsessed with individual liberty, likely a compromise, ideologically inconsistent but functional for a time in practice. And what should this be composed of? Firstly, no cargo cults, but some reconciliation of Roosevelt and Reagan - Four Freedoms meets Free Enterprise - the engines of prosperity fueled by the brightest minds, but with respect and equality for the “common” man.

If we look back at the 20th century, this isn’t really a cargo cult, but a sort of “conservative” view of “conservatism” - one that took the new roles of government and used them to affirm the fixed nature of faith, family, community and good works. Even if good works aren’t necessarily a Protestant concept, that’s hardly a harsh compromise for the white identitarians longing for an imagined past - one which they often lack the ruggedness to embody.