Ol' Remus's Posts and Thoughts on the Backlash

Even though Ol' Remus is no longer publishing the Wood Pile Report, he does continue to post links to articles that he finds of interest. I don't know how often, but it is worthwhile to continue to stop by his site.

A couple of the articles he posted to today were from a site entitled The Iron Legion. While it appears similar in tone to some of the political/social blogs I follow, it is clearly not libertarian or classical liberal (i.e., how I generally classify myself), but comes across as more purely conservative (perhaps what would be termed "classical conservative") than the lukewarm conservatives with which I am generally familiar. From the site's own description:

The Iron Legion is a movement that encompasses the men and women who wish to see a return to traditional values and preserve the identity of the European people. We are united by our blood, traditions and values.

Some will be laymen who follow and support us. Others will be militant reactionaries and traditionalists who believe in the reshaping of themselves and our world. ...

There is something very wrong with the modern world. A lot of people can feel it, a troubling sensation that something isn’t quite right. It might come to them when they are enduring the commute to work, packed into train carriages like cattle, or tapping their fingers on the steering wheel while they’re staring at the rows of glowing red brake lights in front of them. It comes to them while they are sat at their desk doing the same old things they did yesterday, for eight hours straight, desperately trying to pay off their degree or their mortgage or the credit card debt that they were promised would make them happy. It comes to them when they’re dozing in a room lit up by the television screen, when they are falling asleep in bed with their laptop. They know something is wrong but they don’t know what it is, but they know it is getting worse.

* * * 

Many people at this stage become trivially angry and frustrated with the modern world. Trivially angry people shout, but get no further. We are the men who have become deeply, profoundly angry. Instead of vainly shouting into the wind, we are plotting. We are organising and preparing. We are getting stronger and growing in number.

We are leading men away from the system they built but which has since turned on them in spite. We are building better men. We are building heroes who will shepherd our people through the current dark age and into the dawn of the new golden age. We seek to preserve our people, our communities and the wider Europa.

* * *

We are not a movement based on hatred. We are only concerned for the survival of our own people. We reject the modernist miracle of equality but we do not seek racial animosity or conflict. It is however becoming increasingly apparent that the elites, either by neglect or design, are inflicting this upon us against our wishes. The Iron Legion will be ready to defend and lead our people when this happens.

The Iron Legion has some basic tenets.

We do not believe in democracy. At best it is an unwieldy mob rule that runs contrary to natural law. At its worst it is an easily subverted and well disguised form of slavery and with the changing demographics of the West it will only get worse. Instead we believe in separating from a hostile and failing system. We believe in a hierarchy based on natural law. The Iron Legion refuses to be ruled by foreigners, plebeians and weaklings. We protect the weak in our community, but we will not be subjected to the bullying and implicit violence of minority activists and those who wish to drag our society into the gutters.

We believe that communities have a right to defend themselves just as individuals do. This right is based in natural law and supersedes the laws of men. Natural laws and rights belong only to those who have the strength and will to protect and uphold them. We are the strong.

We will root out leftism, cultural Marxism and other pernicious influences wherever we find it. The Iron Legion does not debate with the left. We destroy it.

However, the group obviously has an attraction to the erstwhile classical liberal, as evidenced from this letter in the Deringer Files explaining the author's advocacy of the group:

I only want a simple uncomplicated life… a little farm near the sea… some sheep… a few dogs… a fine family… that’s all really… I do not ask for much from the world… let me keep what I worked hard for and don’t force me to pay for things I neither want, need or believe in – even better. Don’t take away my beliefs – don’t criminalize me or label me an extremist or a terrorist for not wanting to give up my beliefs and my lifestyle and don’t force me to accept a perverted ideal… and we’ll get along great…

* * *

I am not a NAZI like those who want to take away my beliefs. I am not a fascist like those that want to force their perversions on me. I am not an extremist because I want to live a simple uncomplicated life… and neither are the rest of the men joining our cause. All the men I have spoken to feel the same as I do and are all pretty much as the men Simon has described that he has spoken to… we want the simple things… to live our life on our terms with the morals and values we have chosen to anchor our lives by… to preserve the traditions of our faith and our cultures… to have a family and to create and build something better… the thunder you hear is the sound of men gathering… it is the sound of civilization crumbling… it is the sound of us tearing it down… and building it back up… it is the sound of our Legion.

 Following the pieces, it seems clear why Ol' Remus referenced The Iron Legion site and the article from The Deringer Files, and others (including this one, "greece invented tragedy .... and, probably comedy, too .... the euro union money lenders ...."). The explanation seems to be in another article to which he cited, entitled "America at an Ominous Crossroads," which is a review of the book Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order by James Piereson. From the review:

James Piereson, one of America’s leading public intellectuals, introduces yet another interesting theory of history in his new book, Shattered Consensus. He divides American history into three periods of political consensus in which certain principles were widely agreed upon by the electorate. The first, in his view, was the long period of anti-federalism that began with Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and extended through the presidency of Andrew Jackson. It was shattered when the southern states extended the idea of states rights to an unacceptable limit by claiming a right to secede from the union. A bridge too far.

The second, he argues, was the capitalist-industrial era running from the end of the Civil War to 1930, “when the regime collapsed in the midst of the Great Depression.” The third was the postwar [World War II] welfare state that took shape in the 1930s and 1940s and extends to the present, “but is now in the process of breaking up.”

In the Piereson view, these regimes lasting approximately a lifetime, each accomplished something important and was organized by a dominant political party, the Democrats in the pre-Civil War era, the Republicans in the industrial era, and the Democrats again in the post-World War II era.

The crises that brought down the first two regimes were vastly different. The secession that brought on the Civil War was a constitutional crisis, whereas, in Mr. Piereson’s analysis, “the Great Depression was a crisis of capitalism.” [Actually a very specific form of capitalism--financial capitalism--which has again struck this fair country, but in spades].

His book draws its title from the author’s belief that we are on the cusp of another shift in American opinion equivalent in magnitude to those that occurred in 1800, 1865, and 1930. The consensus that is being shattered, he avers, is the climate of approval for the welfare state and internationalism that has swayed politics since World War II.

I doubt that the reaction will be limited to only the welfare state and internationalism. The cultural Marxists have gone several bridges too far, and the pendulum is beginning to swing back. If the Iron Legion is indicative of attitudes in Europe, the backlash may be even more severe there than here.