Is It Time To Become ‘Anti-American?’

Taki Theodoracopulos, the venerable paleoconservative writer with a penchant for addressing race and culture, spoke heresy to the minds of anyone hopeful of making America great again:

“Suddenly I’m anti-American.”

Theodoracopulos (we’ll just use “Taki” from here onward) described in Chronicles Magazine a meeting to his old school a few years ago, where he met a couple that soured his view on his fellow countrymen. She, a Texan, was convinced that Robert E. Lee was a traitor. He relayed an unlikely and spurious tale of antisemitism in the tennis tournament circuits of the 1960s.

Taki relayed his fears of sounding like Jane Fonda following that encounter. He criticized the media culture and the professional D.C. political class as the primary drivers of the culture rot he saw at his alma mater, not the heart and soul of the country. Taki wrote:

“It wasn’t shopkeepers or bus drivers who thought the best way to deal with America’s out-of-control crime was to defund the police and release criminals without bail. It wasn’t America’s normal working-class folks who championed the notion that children should make irreversible surgical choices about their genitals. And it’s not average, ordinary, hardworking Americans who insist the way to promote free speech is by censoring speech, or that the way to end racism is by classifying everyone by race and treating each race differently.”

He made note of the media’s about-face on the Supreme Court (now that the Left no longer controls SCOTUS), especially when it comes to rulings that race-based college admissions are, technically and actually, racist.

Taki lamented the “woke” culture as no longer a niche cult of brainwashed followers, but an entire career path. “[Severe Italian friar Girolamo] Savonarola and [Spanish Inquisitor Thomas of] Torquemada have nothing on these worms.”

(Since Taki brought up religious figures, we’ll hit that dimension here in a bit.)

Even Vladmir Putin, he said, often refers to America as spiritually depraved — “a country of sex changes, drag queens, transgenderism, and LGBTQ.” Ouch.

“Abnormality,” he said, is the new normal on the East and West coasts alike. When it comes to addiction, obesity, gender dysphoria, and you name it., disorder is the order of the day. Even kleptomania. He posited that an alien from Mars might observe life in America and balk. If they were to be taken to our leaders, they might find that our elect are chosen based on demographics alone, rather than intelligence, reputation, and competence. That we punish rather than promote our best. And if our hypothetical interplanetary visitors see “people who shoplift, loot, and steal are generally not arrested or punished, while the police who attempt to stop them are depicted in the country’s media as the real villains” they might even pass our little third rock altogether.

But being from the third coast (which is much like Mars to East Coast pundits), this writer has a little more to be optimistic about. Texas as one of the last hopes for America has been written about many times. A Texan need not brag nor bloviate about “texceptionalism.” But he or she would be right in pointing out a steady flow of new residents via a “Texodus” and that there is no path to the White House in 2024 without winning Texas.

A fellow Texan, in the same publication, suggested a “Middle American Resistance” as an antidote. Relaying writings from a recent symposium:

“Indeed, the seeds of a full-blown counter revolution are scattered around the country … in the police officers who came down with the “blue flu” in Atlanta … in the truckers who have declared they won’t deliver to cities that defund the police … in county sheriffs who have defied gun-grabbing state governments … in the popular resistance to draconian gubernatorial “mask” decrees … in rumblings of counties from Virginia to California about secession from tyrannical metropolitan areas … in numerous individual acts of self-defense or the men who defended the Alamo. A leader, or group of leaders, must organize these scattered resisters and counter the Blob through coordinated and purposeful action. The strategic objective is defending our people by carving out havens for Middle Americans to live their lives as they see fit.”

Now for the spiritual component Taki breached, but did not follow up on. We’re seeing a return to neo-paganism in our rural communities. Our urban and suburban communities are struggling with rising numbers of “Nones” and Eastern Mysticism. Even Satanism is making a comeback in the form of Atheists using it as a ramrod against Judeo-Christianity in schools and public places.

Yet that also means religious curiosity is at a high. We’ve seen it from Asbury to Auburn. Spontaneous baptisms and weeks-long revival services. Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox are all noticing a shift. While churches of all stripes are still recovering from COVID-19 closures (or attempts to close them) the growth is in the aisles, not the seats. Yet Christian identification remains historically low.

Scripture reminds us time and time again to be a “faithful remnant,” regardless of popularity. Consider Daniel: did he become “anti-Israel” when his captured countrymen all bowed a knee to Baal? What about Shadrach, Meschach, and Abed-Nego, as they were thrown into the firey furnace?

No, and rather Daniel was God’s prophet to change the age, as the writing was on the wall of King Darius‘s advance. Daniel stood firm as perhaps none other has. Like the trio in the furnace he was given a Babylonian name and identity, but “he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank.” God showed his power through their intransigence.

To Taki’s (perhaps sarcastic) suggestion that it may be time to adopt a Fonda-like sympathy for whatever the present-day equivalent of the Viet Cong may be, we’d better turn to what got us out of British rule to begin with. Before we adopt a Jeremiah Wright-ish disdain for America as we know it, or even a Michelle Obama-esque embarrassment of our heritage, let’s try first a dogged determination to preserve the American ideal. That’s how we got this country in the first place. Even if nine out of 10 of your neighbors are rotten to the core, be a voice of dissent. Be an effective insurgency.

If we expect a revival of Americanism, we must be its prophets, not mere collateral for America’s captors.