Standing Against the Long Defeat

Posturing ourselves Contra Mordor is our duty, regardless of outcome guarantees

He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted; for ere the fall of Nargothrond or Gondolin I passed over the mountains, and together through the ages of the world we have fought the Long Defeat.”

    [Galadriel, The Fellowship of the Ring]

As I was considering different titles for the name of this Substack, I first used Reactionary Imperative, and then Tory Anarch. I liked the first, taken from Mel Bradford’s collection of essays, because it was a reminder that to “merely conserve is sometimes to perpetuate what is outrageous.” But I dropped it because I had a sense that, within the American context, reestablishing the sociological framework of our past was at this point impossible.

I then moved, for a few days, to the Tory Anarch, borrowing from Junger’s figure of the man who takes the Forest Passage, who is committed to no regime, who lives on the memory of an aristocratic ideal in a world that is debased, degenerate, and un-reformable. He is a man who finds a certain inner peace, having come to terms with the fact that his world has been lost, that the achievements of his ancestors have been recklessly liquidated in a spirit of hysteria and false triumph.

And yet, while my own lifestyle in the country and on property away from the City reflects the demeanor of the Tory Anarch, it dawned on me that the very fact of raising a family required me to partake in a spirit of higher duty. I can survive in the world around us, but I have to ensure that my children can survive in a world that will be even more hostile to them. And even if “saving America” (the reactionary imperative) is an objective now expired—a short defeat— I still had a duty to participate in the Long Defeat.

Having a catholic, Augustinian, Amillennial view of meta-history I have deeply absorbed Tolkien’s sense of things when he noted that “actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect “history” to be anything but a “long defeat”—though it contains… some samples or glimpses of final victory.”

What stands out to me in the unfolding of his own narrative regarding partakers in the Long Defeat (Celeborn and Galadriel and the Elvish race) is this: there is a sheer refusal to imply in their defeat a justification of inaction. What does duty have to do with victory guarantees?

Like Tolkien, and all orthodox Christians, we believe in Final Victory. But, unlike the Evangelical premillennialism that pervades the American “conservative” religion, I absolutely do not share the attitude that says “we cannot win so we should not partake in political or institutional-cultural conflicts.” These real world battles are reflections of spiritual confrontation. Out of the depths of the spirit world plays out before our eyes tensions and vicious battles that aim to reflect ultimate principles. The world is a mirror that reveals greater realities.

I believe it is my duty to stand strong Contra Mordor, as did the participants in Tolkien’s Long Defeat.

All this has been motivated by a conservative evangelical on Twitter who recently wrote the following:

A pragmatic thought on CN [Christian Nationalism]:

This country has 300M people in it & the majority are given over to wokeness.

But somehow you think that you & your band of merry men are going to swoop in & take over & change it all? Hmm.

We are the "few that find it" & they are the many who don't.

The point here is not a defense of “Christian Nationalism.”

Aside from the misunderstanding of the essence of the political and the implied belief in the myth of democracy, there is here reflected an attitude of the beautiful loser.

Take note, I responded on Twitter, the difference between the New Left minority in the 60s and the Regimevangelical today is that the former was willing to fight against the odds while the latter is smug in his state of political defeat.

Even if you are civilizationally pessimistic, compare with this alternative attitude, expressed by Spengler:

“Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from a man.”

I’ll end with this, since raising children is what motivated my present mentality about the world, and Mordor’s contemporary reinvigoration:

Raise your boys to be manly, to take up the virtue of courage. Teach them that duty is not tied to guarantees of victory. Teach them that Lost Causes can be noble, and that man is not called to act on the basis of odds or the fleeting beliefs of majorities.