Betrayal.

"Above all," [Suan Hertog, author of Dangerous Ambitions,] writes, "Dorothy [Thompson] was a patriot—a woman who loved America for its constitutional ideals and who attacked anyone who violated its principles and tenets. She could quote the Federalist Papers and Lincoln's speeches by heart." But for all her keen intelligence, Thompson never quite realized, as Rebecca West did, to what degree betrayal both public and private would be a leitmotif of the 20th century—and self-doubt Western man's new vocation.^[1]

There are few people in my life who stand for anything. For millenia, mankind's most cherished idea has been "my people." Today, however, multiculturalism, i.e., "no people at all," seems to be a satisfactory substitute.

Moreover, most Westerners refuse to recognize the vitality of this age-old allegiance in other races and ethnic and national groups. How can they be serious about such nonsense?

Whatever has taken the place among us of "my people" is the thinnest of gruel – justice, equality, fairness, "giving back," inclusion, deprivileging, secularism, xenophilia, triangle power, sweat lodges. Even Maoism. Madison, Mao, what's the difference?

Some feminist wrote of the necessity to dismantle each and every important social or legal proposition and subject it and every building block above it to rigorous scrutiny ab initio. This is an approach well suited to a discovery of bed bugs in the closet or scabies residing along one's waist. The discovery of the least evidence of infestation requires a thoroughgoing fumigation of the whole house and bathing one's entire body in insecticide glop.

It's a ruinous approach to one's own culture, however, if no concept is considered to have any legitimacy conferred by custom and honest reflection. And, if no flaw is readily apparent, that's proof of the existence of a flaw that the patriarchy must conceal.

It's an approach mandated by so-called "critical theory" not feminism necessarily, though the feminist contempt for the idea of male goodwill can be seen to have fallen out of the same seed packet. The connection with betrayal is that much stronger when we see that the existence of one discovered flaw is seen evidence of irredeemable corruption, and clearly the phenomenon of presumed illegitimacy is widespread in "progressive" circles. What is is ipso facto corrupt.

So, is it any surprise that Westerners choose betrayal and countenance their leaders' betrayal with equanimity? What is there to betray?

In their eyes, nothing.

Organic veggies, smoke-free workplaces, and the sanctity of abortion. These are the bedrock formations upon which all waves shall break.

The European, Christian, American republic?

Not so much.

Notes
^[1] "Parallel Lives." By Arthur Herman, Wall Street Journal, 11/10/11.