Western Civ 101

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the culture war the West appears to be embroiled in. The struggle can best be summed up as classic liberalism vs cultural marxism (I am now refusing to capitalize this word. It deserves nothing from me but my disdain). One of the ways to combat marxism is to simply educate the people around you and to destroy the power of their catch phrases, words and meme’s that have developed and that have proliferated in a world where fear of being called names by said marxists has taken precedence over speaking the truth.

So let the truth be told.

Knowing about, speaking openly about and embracing the beauty of your own culture is not a racist, bigoted, sexist or otherwise shameful activity. One can embrace one’s culture while understanding that one’s cultural history is not perfect. One can also embrace one’s culture without denigrating others. The love of one’s own people does not preclude the hatred of others. Logically one does not follow the other. Nor should it.

Moreover, acceptance of historical upheavals and imperfections in our own Euro history does not absolve other cultures of correcting their own deficiencies. Standards of good and bad if applied to one peoples treatment of others or themselves should be applied equally to others. If it is wrong for a drunk Irishman to beat his wife then it should be equally wrong for a Muslim father to have his young daughter’s genitals mutilated based on the same standard of judgement – that it is wrong to use/initiate violence or force on innocent bystanders.

But that is not the purpose of this column or posts. The purpose of the proceeding columns is to reeducate ourselves about our own history, culture and customs and to give the West something back which it is lacking – a sense of purpose and a foundation with roots.

Who are we? Our history and cultures are rich, interesting, dynamic and worth preserving and living. So while this column’s purpose is broad in scope it’s method is small, founded always in truth, wonder and in the spirit of sharing something worth preserving.

I would invite all commenters here to bring their own stories, stories gathered from the web and historical texts and to post under the common heading of “Western Civ 101”. The purpose here is not to rant about marxism, Islam or the deficiencies of others but rather to share what is beautiful and interesting about our own pasts. Big stories or little stories, it doesn’t matter. Our history is much, much more than the history of military conquest, politics and celebrity. Who are we?

Let’s find out…..

One of my favourite sites to visit is Ancient Origins

It’s a treasure trove of interesting historical and archeological information. I came across this yesterday. I am not a linguist and struggle enough with my own native tongue but have always been fascinated with language and its evolution. It is interesting to hear things spoken that are remnants of our past so I thought I would start this column off by posting this here.

The purpose of course is not to suggest you should help save the language but to simply hear it and to know of it. For many of ye (but not for me) this language may have been a part of your ancestral roots. It is interesting if nothing else.

Help Save Elfdalian, the Ancient Viking Forest Language of Sweden

elfdalian

The ancient Viking language of Elfdalian has been almost entirely wiped out, with only 3,000 people in a tiny forest community in Sweden currently keeping it alive. People having been fighting to revive the historic tongue by bringing it back to schools before it vanishes completely. However, the Swedish Government still treats it as a dialect only, and campaigners are pushing for the ancient Viking tongue to be officially recognized as a language. A petition in support of its language status is rapidly gaining momentum.

The Conversation reports that the ancient dialect of Elfdalian ( älvdalska in Swedish and övdalsk in the language itself) was a vigorous language until well into the 20th century. Sounding to listeners like a beautiful and complex language as spoken by the Elven race in fantasy epics, Elfdalian is actually derived from Old Norse, the language of the Vikings. However, it is radically different from Swedish, writes University of Copenhagen linguist Dr. Guus Kroonen.

He explains that it “sounds like something you would more likely encounter in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings rather than in a remote Swedish forest.” It can be heard on the video below.

Elfdalian is unique among Nordic languages, expressing itself with different tones and sounds. Even the grammar and vocabulary are unlike Swedish. So while speakers of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are able to have simple conversations and understand each other, not so with Elfdalian. So far removed from Swedish, (even while originating from the same region,) it is completely unintelligible to non-local Swedes.

woodwork

Viking patterned woodwork. Hans Splinter/ Flickr

The language originated in the forested region of Älvdalen, Sweden, and remained robust for centuries. Elfdalian served the people of Älvdalen as trade and economic networks were mostly local, and no other languages were necessary.

However, in the last century the dynamic shifted. As mobility, mass communication, and even mass media increased, the Swedish language became more widespread, crowding out Elfdalian. Soon it was actively suppressed. Today, only 60 children under the age of 18 are estimated to currently speak the language.

“Speakers of the language were stigmatized, and children were actively discouraged to use it at school. As a result, speakers of Elfdalian shifted to Swedish in droves, especially in the past couple of decades. At present, only half of the inhabitants of Älvdalen speak it,” Dr. Kroonen writes.

In order to save the swiftly-disappearing language, activists started a campaign of awareness and preservation. The group of language activists, called Ulum Dalska (“We need to speak Elfdalian”) have seen some success in attempts to revitalize the language. Several children’s books have been translated into Elfdalian, and programs have been introduced in schools encouraging and incentivizing the learning of the language, reports news site The New Daily .

However, campaigners are fighting and losing battle. TheLocal.Se reports that while the Swedish Government still considers it a dialect and not a language, children who speak Elfdalian feel a sense of inferiority about their mother tongue.

“Once Elfdalian is recognized as a language the community would have the chance to apply for financial support to help it. The state would feel more obliged than now to fulfill its duty and see that Elfdalian speaking children could develop their language in preschool and school,” Yair Sapir, an associate professor of Swedish language at Kristianstad University, told The Local.

A petition in support of a motion handed in by the Green Party asking parliament to reconsider Elfdalian’s language status is beginning to attract widespread attention. If you’d like to help save the Viking language of Sweden, you can sign the petition HERE. [English translation is provided. Click ‘ Skriv på listan ’ at the bottom of the page to sign your name.]

Featured Image: The forests of Sweden. Activists fight to preserve the ancient forest language of Elfdalian. Daniel Sjöström/ Flickr
By Liz Leafloor


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Token Whitey
Token Whitey

The letter written to President Eisenhower by Carleton Putnam, on Oct 13, 1958, in which he details his opposition to the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision. His letter, in part, forms the basis for his book, Race and Reason: A Yankee’s View, which is available for free download at https://archive.org/details/RaceAndReason. Here is his letter:

A few days ago I was reading over Justice Frankfurter’ s opinion in the recent Little Rock case. Three sentences in it tempt me to write you this letter. I am a Northerner, but I have spent a large part of my life as a business executive in the South. I have a law degree, but I am now engaged in historical writing. From this observation post I risk the presumption of a comment.

The sentences I wish to examine are these: “Local customs, however hardened by time, are not decreed in heaven. Habits and feelings they engender may be counteracted and moderated. Experience attests that such local habits and feelings will yield, gradually though this be, to law and education.”

It is my personal conviction that the local customs in this case were “hardened by time” for a very good reason, and that while they may not, as Frankfurter says, have been decreed in heaven, they come closer to it than the current view of the Supreme Court. I was particularly puzzled by Frankfurter’s remark that “the Constitution is not the formulation of the merely personal views of the members of this court.” Five minutes before the court’s desegregation decision, the Constitution meant one thing; five minutes later, it meant something else. Only one thing intervened, namely, an expression of the personal views of the members of the court.

It is not my purpose to dispute the point with which the greater part of Frankfurter’ s opinion is concerned. The law must be obeyed. But I think the original desegregation decision was wrong, that it ought to be reversed, and that meanwhile every legal means should be found, not to disobey it, but to avoid it. Failing this, the situation should be corrected by constitutional amendment.

I cannot agree that this is a matter involving “a few states” as Frankfurter suggests. The picture in reality is of a court, by one sudden edict, forcing upon the entire South a view, and a way of life, with which the great majority of the population are in complete disagreement. Although not from the legal, in fact from the practical, standpoint the North, which does not have the problem, is presuming to tell the South, which does have the problem, what to do.

To me there is a frightening arrogance in this performance. Neither the North, nor the court, has any holy mandate inherent in the trend of the times or the progress of liberalism to reform society in the South. In the matter of schools, rights to equal education are inseparably bound up with rights to freedom of association and, in the South at least, may require that both be considered simultaneously. (In using the word “association” here, I mean the right to associate with whom you please, and the right not to associate with whom you please.) Moreover, am I not correct in my recollection that it was the social stigma of segregation and its effect upon the Negro’s “mind and heart” to which the court objected as much as to any other, and thus that the court, in forcing the black man’s right to equal education was actually determined to violate the white man’s right to
freedom of association?

In any case the crux of this issue would seem obvious: social status has to be earned. Or, to put it another way, equality of association has to be mutually agreed to and mutually desired. It cannot be achieved by legal fiat. Personally, I feel only affection for the Negro. But there are facts that have to be faced. Any man with two eyes in his head can observe a Negro settlement in the Congo, can study the pure-blooded African in his native habitat as he exists when left on his own resources,
can compare this settlement with London or Paris, and can draw his own conclusions regarding relative levels of character and intelligence— or that combination of character and intelligence which is civilization. Finally, he can inquire as to the number of pure-blooded blacks who have made contributions to great literature or engineering or medicine or philosophy or abstract
science. (I do not include singing or athletics as these are not primarily matters of character and intelligence.) Nor is there any validity to the argument that the Negro “hasn’ t been given a chance.” We were all in caves or trees originally. The progress which the pure-blooded black has made when left to himself, with a minimum of white help or hindrance, genetically or
otherwise, can be measured today in the Congo.

Lord Bryce, a distinguished and impartial foreign observer, presented the situation accurately in his American Commonwealth when he wrote in 1880: “History is a record of the progress towards civilization of races originally barbarous. But that progress has in all cases been
slow and gradual … Utterly dissimilar is the case of the African Negro, caught up in and whirled along with the swift movement of the American democracy. In it we have a singular juxtaposition of the most primitive and the most recent, the most rudimentary and the most highly developed types of culture … A body of savages is violently carried across the ocean and set to work as slaves on the plantations of masters who are three or four thousand years in advance of them in mental capacity
and moral force … Suddenly, even more suddenly than they were torn from Africa, they find themselves, not only freed, but made full citizens and active members of the most popular government the world has seen, treated as fit to bear an equal part in ruling, not only themselves, but also their recent masters.”

One does not telescope three or four thousand years into the 70 years since Bryce wrote. One may change the terms of the problem by mixed breeding, but if ever there was a matter that ought to be left to local option it would seem to be the decision as to when the mixture has produced an acceptable amalgam in the schools. And I see no reason for penalizing a locality that does not choose to mix.

I would emphatically support improvement of education in Negro schools, if and where it is inferior. Equality of opportunity and equality before the law, when not strained to cover other situations, are acceptable ideals because they provide the chance to earn and to progress— and consequently should be enforced by legal fiat as far as is humanly possible. But equality of
association, which desegregation in Southern schools involves, pre-supposes a status which in the South the average Negro has not earned. To force it upon the Southern white will, I think, meet with as much opposition as the prohibition amendment encountered in the wet states.

Throughout this controversy there has been frequent mention of the equality of man as a broad social objective. No proposition in recent years has been clouded by more loose thinking. Not many of us would care to enter a poetry contest with Keats, nor play chess with the national champion, nor set our character beside Albert Schweitzer’ s. When we see the doctrine of equality contradicted everywhere around us in fact, it remains a mystery why so many of us continue to give it lip service in theory, and why we tolerate the vicious notion that status in any field need not be earned.

Pin down the man who uses the word “equality,” and at once the evasions and qualifications begin. As I recall, you, yourself, in a recent statement used some phrase to the effect that men were “equal in the sight of God.” I would be interested to know where in the Bible you get your authority for this conception. There is doubtless authority in Scripture for the concept of potential equality in the sight of God— after earning that status, and with various further qualifications— but where is the
authority for the sort of ipso facto equality suggested by your context? The whole idea contradicts the basic tenet of the Christian and Jewish religions that status is earned through righteousness and is not an automatic matter. What is true of religion and righteousness is just as true of achievement in other fields. And what is true among individuals is just as true of averages among races.

The confusion here is not unlike the confusion created by some left-wing writers between the doctrine of equality and the doctrine of Christian love. The command to love your neighbor is not a command either to consider your neighbor your equal, or yourself his equal; perhaps the purest example of great love without equality is the love between parent and child. In fact the equality doctrine as a whole, except when surrounded by a plethora of qualifications, is so untenable that it falls to pieces at the slightest thoughtful examination.

Frankfurter closes his opinion with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln, to whom the Negro owes more than to any other man. I, too, would like to quote from Lincoln. At Charleston, Illinois, in September 1858 in a debate with Douglas, Lincoln said: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office … I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior
position assigned to the white race.”

The extent to which Lincoln would have modified these views today, or may have modified them before his death, is a moot question, but it is clear on its face that he would not have been in sympathy with the Supreme Court’s position on desegregation. Many historians have felt that when Lincoln died the South lost the best friend it had. This also may be moot, but again it seems clear that for 94 years— from the horrors of Reconstruction through the Supreme Court’s desegregation
decision— the North has been trying to force the black man down the white Southerner’s throat, and it is a miracle that relations between the races in the South have progressed as well as they have.

Perhaps the most discouraging spectacle is the spectacle of Northern newspapers dwelling with pleasure upon the predicament of the Southern parent who is forced to choose between desegregation and no school at all for his child. It does not seem to occur to these papers that this is the cruelest sort of blackmail; that the North is virtually putting a pistol at the head of the Southern parent in a gesture which every Northerner must contemplate with shame.

Indeed, there now seems little doubt that the court’s recent decision has set back the cause of the Negro in the South by a generation. He may force his way into white schools, but he will not force his way into white hearts nor earn the respect he seeks. What evolution was slowly and wisely achieving, revolution has now arrested, and the trail of bitterness will lead far.

Lysander The Deplorable
Lysander The Deplorable

Excellent. Truer words were never spoken.

The saddest part is that our ancestors brought these creatures here, and I’m sure that they could’ve never imagined their descendants would be facing the horror that we all are today.

Homo Erectus is not going to evolve into a modern human. Through inter breeding they will look similar to us, but at their core they will always be the African Negroes who are savage and stupid.

IndenturedServant

Here is an excellent way to explore the answer to your question right here:

Home

They have about 900 letters in their archives link on the left side and a list of most read on the right.

SaamiJim.
SaamiJim.

Francis,
Your story of the Elfdalian language brings to mind the story of my people, the Saami, people of the north country, northern Norway, Sweden, Finland & Russia. Our languages (there are perhaps 19 distinct dialects), customs, beliefs were taken for the most part, and most of our ancestors “forgot” who we were. Ellen Marie Jensen wrote a spot on book of our people, “We Stopped Forgetting “. We were assimilated into western civilization, all but a few of the “reindeer Saami”. Speaking for my direct ancestors who I knew, we did contribute to western civilization, bringing a strong work ethic, and willingness to work hard and save for the future.
One of the traditions that was lost to all but a very few is the “joik”. Although I do not have a joik of my own, I will try to link this most beautiful joik for your enjoyment.

Walt
Walt

Keeping alive the ancient Viking language of Elfdalian is the least of Sweden’s challenges. Sweden, as a White Western Nation, is history.

See this and weep (Length 1:15):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LAwJDA_DB0

..That’s official gov. propaganda, BTW.

kokoda - Les Deplorables
kokoda - Les Deplorables

Walt….even though your comment is not what the poster was hoping for, I had the same exact thought as you.

What is even more disgusting are the morons in the vid that agree with loss of Swedish ethnicity.

There will be a day when most of Europe’s historical buildings and monuments will be destroyed. Some of the old Cathedrals will be converted to Mosques, but most will be destroyed. Europe will become a land of filth and death.

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