By Willem IV- America is ruled by two parties and mostly around 100 top corporate cartels that have a quasi-monopoly over the cultural and economic life of the entire land. The moral fiber of these leaders is characterized by moral backwardness and an inability to call out bad behavior that leads to the destruction of marriage, the family, the church, and an free market.
Biden, Soros, Gates, McConnel, McCarthy, Schumer, Pelosi, Zuckerberg, you name the mega-corporation or institution, from mid-level to the highest level, these people often tout the worst and most morally primitive ideas which they often present as progress. Which of the most powerful leaders in which major institution, corporation, or agency of government is willing to demand an end to child grooming, burdensome taxes, graft in government, corporate cartels gaming the market, opaque vote counting processes, etcetera?
And of those, like McCarthy, who may verbalize opposition to some of these morally reprehensible practices, there is only the wind from their mouths and no teeth behind anything they say. It is almost certain on any given day, the number of times one may celebrate a victory over something grotesquely immoral as compared to the instances where good is called evil and evil is called good are scant by comparison. One may be excused for having a certain pessimism about everything. A desire to check out and absolve yourself of this entire society.
All of this has deep meaning for any society. A society that produces mostly only reprobate leaders without a sign of any kind of moral true north is a society in terminal decline. A lack of morally strong leaders is substituted with a kind of cronyism peppered with constant manipulation, legerdemain, and internecine conflicts which at times put major institutions in a virtual lockdown, unable to function. The decision-making processes for every major institution become clogged and polluted. The very calculus by which they operate narrows more and more toward serving the parochial interests of topmost shot-callers, some of whom are not even “officially” in legal authority over that institution but whose imprimatur is somehow viewed as important.
When moral backwardness prevails, true leaders stand in front of it, oppose it, confront, expose it, and work to deal with it head-on to put an end to it. Even leaders with large and passionate followings are hit or miss when it comes to opposing moral decline. As an example, Donald Trump would limit or refuse foreign aid to countries that refused to enact something like gay marriage, yet millions of earnest Christians support him still.
It is not just that the most powerful leaders are morally backward, touting ideas about human society that are primitive and animalistic, it is also that among the leaders who espouse a more civilized morality, there is personal weakness and a certain nuttiness. The preachments of people like Marjory Taylor Green, of Jewish space lazers fame, can come across as ill-mannered and unhinged. Even among the church leaders who are appalled at the state of American cultural depravity, many have made wild predictions that did come true and appear to be “hopium”, such as Sid Roth’s constant predictions Trump will be reinstalled as President.
There aren’t many good choices who are strong, have good modicum decorum, are morally upright in word and deed, and are capable of effectively fighting against the flood of primitiveness and animalism surging through our culture like fast-moving cancer. No leaders are perfect. We can look at the Patriarchs, Prophets, and Apostles and find heroic people who also had flaws and failures. But, on balance, we can describe these leaders as good, solid, strong, and, most essentially, morally virtuous outside of the flaws and failures, for which they repented and often paid a price.
It is perhaps a sign of today’s moral depravity that the most virulent accusers of America’s entire history are also touting the most animalistic primitiveness wrapped in a rainbow fascist banner that is choking the spiritual life out of almost every child attending public schools. People are abandoning the Christian faith and turning into anti-Christian bigots all because of the Biblical and multi-milllenia long opposition of the historic Christian faith to the kinds of sexual and marital perversions celebrated under that false rainbow flag.
Influencer and scam artist Logan Paul, with multiple millions of followers, declaims against the Christian faith on purely pro-LGBTQ grounds. He says that because the Christian faith is against any sex outside the marriage of a man and woman who stay together for life then the Christian religion is bad. His litmus test is moral depravity and barbarism. If you oppose that barbarism, in his eyes, then you are bad. Thus, good is bad, and bad is good.
Indecency, oppression, theft of the public purse, moral depravity, attacks on free speech and the whole Bill of Rights, and a growing censoriousness leaning towards outright authoritarianism are the hallmarks of the current cultural milieu. All of these are signs of civilization in mortal collapse, facing its ruin often typified by the rise of caesars coupled with growing rebellion from within and the loss of the borderlands or fringes of that civilization.
Herein lies the hope. The collapse of a civilization’s moral and social fabric is bad, but what emerges during that time is a new inner rebellion, a sort of moral and spiritual secession wherein people whose morals are intact realize that the present civilization and its institutions is their mortal foe. It remains a humor of history that during the decline of old, senile civilizations the people who often feel they are trying to restore the old virtues actually sow the seeds of a new civilization as opposed to reforming the existing civilization.
If we survey the roots of Western Civilization we may find four main ideals, but only one as the predominant ideal, which girded this civilization in the past and made it strong. For the most part, Western Civilization’s ideal has been Unity in diversity translated mostly into a form of individualism that has been unknown in most civilizations since the Sumerian.
From the Germanic civilization of their ancient tribalism, Popular sovereignty. From the Greco-Roman, Democratic equality, at least for citizens within the Polis. And from the Hebrews, Rule of law in the sense of translating the ways of Heaven itself into the laws of the land.
We can take these ideals, which we refer to in a shorthand was a Unum, Populum, Demos, and Regium, and translate them on the basis of Scripture, history, logic, and science and were we to apply them assiduously and in balance with each other to every relationship, association, or governing and decision-making process. Were we to do this, it may be said we were trying both to restore the essence of the West’s core ideal of Unity in diversity but also the core ideals of previous civilizations whose essence was also at least somewhat conveyed to the West.
But if anyone applied all four core ideals, we use the term “UPDR Ideals”, on a mostly Judeo-Christian moral basis to our lives, relationships, associations, and collaborative communities formed through free association, the result would seem like reform and restoration of the present civilization but in truth, it would equal the emergence of a new Christian civilization.
It is always the case: AS the old civilization declines a sort of lumpenproletariat of rebels who often are inspired by the idea of restoring the old virtues begins to withdraw and establish its own parallel society of sorts. This withdrawal leads eventually to a return and as the old order collapses into ruin, more and more the leaders and guides of the new paradigm, which even its practitioners may feel isn’t as new as it really is, are looked to as champions by the populace whose own lives have become dark and hopeless.
But we are a far way off from all of this. We are in the period wherein most of the disaffected who decry the moral decline still think the corpse is alive and able to be reformed and returned to health. The inflection point wherein the disaffected turn from reform to withdrawal, which eventually leads to a return, has not been reached yet, but some are beginning a grieving process. This grieving of the loss of hope in reform and renewal eventually leads the mind that refuses to yield to the tide along this path of withdrawal.
From Unum, Populum, Demos, and Regium we arrive at a new term and new ideology, or a new civilizational paradigm that, while rooted in the ancient and sacred essence of previous civilizations, is in fact entirely novel in its own right. Thus from UPDR, the first letter of these ideals, we use the word UPaDaRia, or just Upadaria, to name the new civilization and Upadarianism is the new civilizational paradigm.
The old declines and falls, taking its own good time to die, while, here and there within the lands still dominated by the old, and outside those lands, more and more erstwhile souls find the courage to embrace the new civilizational paradigm and build new lives, relationships, and communities around those ideals. Efforts to restore a social fabric and moral order that promotes human flourishing will increasingly require their adherents to essentially withdraw from any dependency upon the institutions and structures polluted by a dying civilizational paradigm that can only produce suffering and destruction.
It may be questioned whether these lumpenproletariat are the harbingers of destruction or merely the consequences of a dying process that can play out over centuries. But as old civilizations decline the lumpenproletariat emerges to rebel and withdraw and as their numbers grow the decline can appear to accelerate.
We have seen the first phases of this searching. Organizations devoted to trying to save the West and others openly talking about a Benedict Option for creating alternative parallel structures have arisen, but their voices are discordant and there is neither unity nor a cogent message.
At a fundamental level, out of the conscious awareness of almost everyone, is the heart of civilization itself, a form of nationhood felt at the level of personal identity which translates into a shared lifeway governed by the new civilizational paradigm. The Germanic but Romanized nations of Franks, Vandals, and Goths emerged well before Charlemagne essentially coronated Western Civilization from within the reaches of his empire.
Even as President Biden bragged that there is no sociocultural or spiritual meaning to the American identity, a typical late civilization denouement which exposes the paucity of its culture, we foresee the emergence of an alternative nationhood endowed both with the mantle of the old nationhood which was basically betrayed and yet also wholly new in its own right.
It is from UPDR and the Upadarian civilizational paradigm that we also see the potential for the new nationhood, from American as a nationhood now devoid of its original spirit to Upadarian as the inheritors of that original spirit with its mantle of authority and purpose. The number of Americans who remain anchored to our original spirit and intent as the vanguard people of a new Christian civilization has dwindled, but a strong core, the seeds-bearers of the new civilization which was meant to emerge first here and then here and there all over the world, remains and will never disappear en toto.
What does it mean today to be an American? Our very President brags that it means almost nothing or, bizarrely, he seems to have replaced our banner of freedom with the rainbow fascist banner that represents the forceful imposition of authoritarian decadence. The new Upadarian identity both invokes the original spirit of our ancient Americana and the searching hopefulness of going beyond the grand achievements of the past toward new achievements beyond anything America’s Founder could perceive, though many felt this would be the case.
While the future of Western Civilization and every country governed by its latter-day moral depravity and Caesarism can be seen to look bleak and the tasks of our lumpenproletariat in terms of merely surviving the deluge are immense and difficult, the emergence of a new Christian civilization is inevitable, should the Lord tarry!
It should be noted that the emergence of a new Christian civilizational paradigm is good news for anyone of any faith or no faith who desires to be free and prosperous as well as secure and at peace. Tolerance and pluralism are as essential to a Christian civilization as are the guarantees that public policy will never wage war on or impede those who practice the historic Christian faith within and through their life-ways.
As the screws turn and authoritarianism rises along with an anti-Christian bias and intolerance, the lumpenproletariat grows, the armies of the disaffected emerge here and there, inchoate and disjointed. This will continue until a new consensus takes shape and a new identity takes root among them. We propose and foresee this will likely take the form of the Upadarian identity both in terms of a parallel nationhood and a new civilizational paradigm.
It is not that these new Upadarians will not also be Americans nor that they will not love and honor what American nationhood once meant, but no longer does for most who call themselves Americans today.
As we survey the land and its leaders, it is clear we lack strong and morally upright leaders with self-control whose interests represent the whole people. Instead, we have morally reprobate leaders whose parochial interests are served at the very real expense of most everyone else who are treated as wage slaves, vote slaves, consumers, and essentially cattle.
From this emerges the new, and we propose to call it the Upadarian nationood and the Upadarian civilizational paradigm.
Note: Willem IV is the official pen name of William R Collier Jr when writing or speaking of the new civilization and of the new nationhood which he believes will emerge from within the West and here and there around the world during these times of decline and ruination among the world’s major civilizations. See www.upadara.com