For those in the West who have lost their way, no longer sure of whether to believe in their traditions or believe at all, it is useful to recall that liberty is our overarching concern.  Liberty, as Edmund Burke counsels, "must inhere in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which ... becomes the criterion of happiness."

Existentialists demur.  For them, the past is a dream from which they wish to awaken.  They refuse to accept the "tyranny of the dead."  However, it is the history of self-government and the unique spirit and energy emerging from the Judeo-Christian tradition that offer a communion of liberty that sets the West apart from others.

Liberty now inheres in – or so we are told – the technique of administration, a liberty created and perfected by a remote class of specialists.  This technique applies rationality and technology in order to annul one's national inheritance.  Yet however successful the specialists are in redrafting history as the efflorescence of gender, race, and class, the past and present are being sacrificed for a future of group rights and a diminished sense of liberty.

Tradition affirms the existence of beliefs and practices distilled from human experience shaping the meaning of who we are.  To force that experience into an ideological Procrustean bed is to mislead and misjudge.  Only in traditional society can a democratic republic serve the ethical ends of the populace.  This is possible because each person is seen as having his own peculiar and essential function.  For example, the family is central in the succession of culture since it can encourage reverence for the past and future.  It is, after all, love for the living tradition of one's culture and the ballast it establishes that leads society's members to reproduce.

To reject the past and doubt everything as many modern progressives do affirms nothing but nihilism – a condition that breeds the below-replacement birth rate of many nations in Europe and Japan.  Under the veil of a new order, the system of managers finds ways to make its positions permanent.  These managers govern inscrutably, striking down challengers as enemies of Progress.  But if standards of truth are found only in the general description of phenomena, as qualified by science, then how is one to address intimate longings to know the truth about ourselves?  The corollary case of a language that cannot speak authentically about human experiences, because of scientific dogma, also militates against the pursuit of truth.

Words, culture, and symbols that compose the Western tradition should be invited into our lives through religion and ancestral origins.  What has been lost under scientism can be regained through tradition.  This is a call not for nostalgia, but for a full conception of combining the past, present, and future into a defense of our way of life.  Denying the accumulation of inheritances from our past leaves us in a quandary.

What do existentialists ultimately want?  What good are complacency and building of confidence in the face of hardened opposition?  The West has been attacked internally and exogenously.  It is time to strike back, to assert the principles on which the West rests.  Leaders from Wales to Kosovo are now organizing for retribution against extremism.  It didn't work before, and I am not sanguine that it will work this time.  But what are the alternatives?  Doing nothing is not an option.  So grab a shield and shout the politically incorrect statement that "the West is best," and be prepared to defend that position.