Fellow Alt-Righter Matthew Parrott was kind enough to offer his thoughts on my response to the recent atrocity in Norway. His criticisms deserve a hearing, and so I would like to provide an answer to them. Mr. Parrott first asserts:

You’ve essentially dichotomized the Greater War and the Lesser War, broadly condemning bold action in defense of the West as inferior to authentic Christianity.

The spiritual combat is indeed the Greater War. Yet if history is our teacher, physical defense is also required for the survival of a people and culture. Pacifism is out of the question. In no way would I condemn ‘bold action in defense of the West’—the action simply must be justified and ethical. Breivik’s deed was certainly bold, and he perceived it in defense of the West. But beyond that, it was the murder of unarmed civilians, no matter their destructive worldview and political program. Were White Russian agents to massacre a Komsomol camp of future apparatchiks in the Stalinist USSR, such an operation also could not be justified. Killing Stalin and attacking the NKVD would be. To cite Ivan Ilyin once more, resistance to evil with force is necessary, and this notion itself derives from the spiritual principle.

In the desperate war for the soul of the West, we witness another atrocity. And this time the perpetrator was neither a Bolshevik nor a disciple of Mahomet. Last week Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian, gunned down 68 unarmed Labor Party youth activists on an island camp outside Oslo after bombing government offices (where eight died). The deed, he announced, had been wrought in the name of traditional Europe. Breivik’s massacre seems designed to inflict maximum damage to the European cause, but at this point it looks to be the well-planned and executed work of a dedicated madman.

Breivik claims to have acted on behalf of Christendom, and so appropriated its heroes and imagery in his propaganda. In this we uncover the tragedy of his recourse to murder, as well as an element of the diabolical. Speaking on the inversion of symbols, the great French traditionalist René Guenon would warn:

“It sometimes so happens that people who imagine that they are fighting the devil, whatever their particular notion of the devil may be, are thus turned, without any suspicion of the fact on their part, into his best servants!”

A time there was when the awarding of a title of nobility in European countries was intended as formal recognition of the recipient's service to the crown, to the country, or to the state. Under the feudal system, the honour was given in exchange for military service and was hereditary; but in modern times it has been given, at least in theory, as a very special life-time award by the state to a tiny handful of individuals deemed by it to have led a singularly meritorious career. That is why the process has been termed 'ennoblement' -- the implication being that these individuals are somehow noble and worthy of such appellation. For this reason, concommittant with the very exclusive privileges they obtain, ennobled citizens have added responsibilities, especially with regards to standards of conduct.

When Tony Blair's Labour regime seized power in 1997, the nobility as a system had long been on the wane, the aristocracy having been progressively stripped of its legal powers through successive reforms. All the same, the majority of the House of Lords prior to 2000 was in the hands of a hereditary aristocracy, which were largely Conservative members. During the late 1990s, Blair undertook his long-threatened 'reform' of the House of Lords with gusto and in a partisan fashion, determined, above all, to increase Labour's representation in the chamber (according to him and his supporters, it needed to be more modern and 'democratic'). While at it, he also undertook to multiculturalise this old institution, as it was too uniformly White and male for his liking.

Two beneficiaries of Blair's policy were foreign-born Muslims: Manzila Pola Uddin (from Bangladesh) and Amir Bhatia (from East Africa), who became Baroness Uddin and Lord Bhatia respectively. They joined Indian-born Swraj Paul, since 1996 Lord Paul, and a wealthy long-standing supporter of the Labour Party and of the man who most diligently ruined the British economy in the decades since World War II, Gordon Brown.

Having been ennobled under such extraordinary circumstances, one would have thought that their Lordships and Ladyship would have gone the extra mile to prove their worth. After all, does not aristocracy mean 'rule by the best'? 

Yet, how did they repay the British state for the honours it bestowed upon them?

By theft.

All three have been found guilty of misappropriating public funds through fraudulent expenses claims. 

Needless to say that they are not the only ones in Parliament who have been found guilty of misconduct. The Parliamentary Expenses Scandal of 2009 provided a most unedifying spectacle, with many of these peers' 'blood-and-soil' British colleagues also caught with their arms elbow-deep in the cookie jar -- essentially pickpocketing me and all other taxpayers.

All the same, it is still especially galling when individuals who were not even born in the country and who have been awarded high honours instead of worthier citizens, behave in such corrupt and dishonourable fashion.

All now face suspension from the House of Lords and have been asked to return the £200,000 ($300,000) they stole. But in a just world, they would be stripped of their peerages altogether: these are not individuals deserving to be called 'noble'.

From the New York Times...

Is Jousting the Next Extreme Sport?

The problem is that Andrews and Adams joust in a style they call “full contact,” which, while popular in North America, is considered by the rest of the world to be unnecessarily dangerous. It’s a reputation that isn’t helped by the video on YouTube showing the two men describing their many injuries, including the time a lance bruised Andrews’s heart and he nearly died from a pulmonary embolism. (He was back jousting five days after his release from the hospital.)

...

North American- and European-style jousters can spend all day criticizing one another’s style of competition, and they frequently do. The “full contact” jousters find the I.J.L. style froufrou and weak, dismissing their combat as “a sorority pillow fight.” I.J.L. jousters, for their part, portray the full-contact jousters as a bunch of ego-driven braggarts who have substituted brute force for safety, elegance and finesse. They dismiss the Americans’ lumberyard lances as “closet poles,” their armor as looking “like a trash can” and their draft horses as “tractors with four legs.” (Both Hedgecock and the Europeans use swifter draft crosses rather than the full-blooded drafts used by American jousters.)

...

“The sport of jousting is only going to survive in the United States if there is that ferocity in it,” Adams says. “If it’s just a bunch of guys hitting each other with balsa-wood lances, the only people going will be the Renaissance crowd.”

Lurking under the surface of the debate over jousting styles are deeper questions about masculinity itself. “American culture is a certain way,” Nowrick says. “The hubris and the braggadocio about how tough I am, the whole Rocky Balboa thing. But when you go to Europe, there’s a different yardstick by which men are measured.”

And in related news...

Historians locate King Arthur's Round Table

Legend has it that his Knights would gather before battle at a round table where they would receive instructions from their King.

But rather than it being a piece of furniture, historians believe it would have been a vast wood and stone structure which would have allowed more than 1,000 of his followers to gather.

Historians believe regional noblemen would have sat in the front row of a circular meeting place, with lower ranked subjects on stone benches grouped around the outside.

Our civilization rots toward final collapse, and there is scant reason to conserve the ideas and institutions that brought us to this point. Since its inception in the age of Enlightenment and Revolution, the modern West has been on a suicide mission. The current era might very well be its terminal phase as global-scale crises multiply, a factor which only seems to heighten the sense of impending catastrophe. From the grand pyramid schemes wrought by the financial class to far-flung wars for universal democracy, multiculturalism and demographic displacement by masses from alien lands, our power elites are hastening the rush to Judgment Day.

This trajectory to dissolution is driven above all by a profound arrogance. Contemporary society is assured in its faith that humanity can transform the world in service to its desires. This mentality extends as well to “lifestyle choices”, where carnal materialism is propagated as the guide to successful living. Under the ideology of individual liberation, man tears away from the Transcendent and careens through death toward a state much worse than nothingness. Spiritual suicide, whether collective or individual, precedes the physical action.

A recent piece here at Alternative Right advocating suicide as a supposedly “honorable” way out of life casts in stark relief the ultimate choice we must make: shall we serve God, out of love and then duty, or do we rebel? For Truth, beauty and the Good are opposed by the incoherence, absurdity and darkness of rebellion. The oath “non serviam” brings with it a finality and gravity incomprehensible to those still living, a spiritual peril one can dismiss for now- but not forever.

This essay, invoking knightly virtue, the Fall of the Roman Empire and the tale of Parzival from Tom Hoffman at The American Thinker should be of interest to readers of Virtus.

When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men. The virtues of manhood which had been extolled and celebrated throughout the middle ages right up to the 1950s have been completely expunged from academia and pop culture. The baby boom generation was the last to be taught the values of rugged individualism, risk-taking, courage, bravery, loyalty, and reverence for tradition. John Wayne epitomized the rugged individual who was committed to fighting "the bad guy," but he was only one of a whole host of competing figures cut out of the same cloth. What happened?

Read the rest at The American Thinker.

 

Meanwhile, the left debates whether or not it should "explode" masculinity.Just in case you thought for a moment that Hoffman took it over-the-top.

Washington City Paper - Sexist Comments of the Week: Exploding Masculinity Edition

Also, Carrie Lukas notes that feminism is no longer about equality (golf clap) at National Review Online.

Lady Marian in Sir Ridley Scott's new Robin Hood is faithful, truthful, honorable, and compassionate -- character traits in women that seldom are promoted by the our media and entertainment industry. The website of Cosmopolitan magazine, for example, has seven features on the new film Sex and the City 2, a franchise that promotes vastly different values to today's women. In the film, there is a gay marriage, the main character cheats on her husband by kissing an ex-boyfriend, and the women continue to focus on fashion, this time in Abu Dhabi rather than New York City. The franchise's TV show dealt with abortion, massive consumerism, and promiscuity, culminating in the most conservative cast member, Charlotte, converting to Judaism to marry Harry Goldenblatt, then adopting a Chinese girl.

Lady Marion comes as a breath of fresh air in movies dominated by such portrayals of women, which are destructive to European Americans.

Truthfulness often is declared to be the primary value of Indo-European peoples. For example, the philosopher Julius Evola recounts that a lie was punishable by death in ancient Iran. This is in part because our ancestors were bound by a Truth that was higher than personal whims and material gains -- Duty was first to the gods and the folk.

Another reader suggestion, part one of a ten part documentary on historical European fighting arts from the Iron Door Studio.



From the same source, here are some articles on historical fencing by the director of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA).

• Viking Fighting Notes from 23 Sagas

Badass.

A few more links of interest...

• Western Martial Arts Illustrated
• Journal of Western Martial Arts
• Journal of Manly Arts (This one includes one of my all-time favorite articles: "The Social Significance of Eye-Gouging in Southern Backcountry")
• Martinez Academy of Arms

Under Discussion: Geoffroi de Charny's Book of Chivalry

A Western Hagakure

The Hagakure is a collection of commentaries on the Way of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, recorded between 1709 and 1716. Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a samurai during a period of peace who was not permitted to commit seppuku following the death of his retainer, Nabeshima Mitsushige. He retired to the mountains and lived as a hermit, frustrated by what he saw as a collapse of Traditional samurai culture into decadence and weakness. The Hagakure is often contradictory and curmudgeonly, and it is characterized by dark humor and what Yukio Mishima, who wrote his own commentary on the book, referred to as a "manly nihilism." Whereas Musashi's Book of Five Rings focuses more on swordsmanship and strategy, the Hagakure is more directly about a Way of living and dying.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a trained samurai, but he never saw combat. Geoffroi de Charny did.

Charny died heroically in battle, still clutching the oriflamme, a sacred banner charged to him in 1355 by Jean II, King of France. The bearer of the oriflamme was to be "the most worthy and adept warrior," a knight "noble in intention and deed, unwavering, virtuous, loyal, adept, and chivalrous." Charny had proved himself thus again and again in battle. When Jean II feared that French knights were becoming decadent, weak and cowardly, he formed the Order of the Star, a group of virtuous knights meant to reform French knighthood. Charny was an exemplary member, and it is likely that he produced The Book of Chivalry at Jean II's request.

The Book of Chivalry is not a manual on tactics or technique, it is a treatise on how to live -- and die -- like a knight. It describes "The Way of the Knight." And, importantly, it was written --likely dictated aloud to a scribe as the Hagakure was -- by an actual knight. Charny was not a monk or a poet or a politician or a novelist or a Victorian or a modern historian. He was a battle tested knight held in high regard as an exemplar of chivalry by his king and his peers. Chivalry was his Way.