The Origin Of Western Decay

The Great Schism

The term “reactionary”, in the context of Political Theory, refers primarily to counter-enlightenment ideologues. It was used as a slur by the Bolsheviks to describe the White Russians who remained loyal to the Tsar, but it has since been used to describe even counter-enlightenment contemporaries such as Thomas Carlyle. Modern reactionaries, the dorkiest of whom call themselves Neo-Reactionaries, typically look to the enlightenment as the root of the problems of modernity. There are, however, few who analyze the historical periods preceding it with the same degree of blame. Most are satisfied to say that the seeds of modernity were planted there during the dark enlightenment. By the time the Enlightenment arrived, most of Europe was fractured, no longer unified by the Christian Emperium. In the year 312 AD, Saint Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor, converted to Christianity. The capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople, which became the center of the Christian Roman Empire, known in modern times as the Byzantine Empire. The relationship of co-operation between the Emperor and the pre-schism Church, forged the Orthodox Tradition of Symphonia. The spiritual union between the Western portion of the Empire and the Eastern would last until The Great Schism of 1054 AD. It was this breaking of spiritual unity between the West and East that created the conditions in the West that would lead to the Protestant reformation, the Enlightenment, and ultimately the degenerative condition of Western Society today.