The first time I ever heard of the Indo-European Caste System wasn’t from Julius Evola. 

It wasn’t in Plato’s Republic or in the old Bhagavad Gita. 

No…it was at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Committee Convention on the outskirts of Washington DC.

And I didn’t hear about it from a top-billed speaker, either!

No, it was from a crazed, wizened old prophet on a damned fool idealistic Crusade… 

BETTING AGAINST THE ALMA MATER 

It was March of 2016, and I was wrapping up two years in Postmodernist Hell called the University of Mary Washington. 

I had come to CPAC, as the convention is abbreviated, in order to find some people who were not Postmodernists to hopefully connect with, and share my passion with for all things Middle East, National Security, and Humanitarian Intervention. 

I sure as heck couldn’t get any of that at my then-alma mater…if you didn’t believe that Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, and the Muslim Brotherhood were heroes in a valiant anti-Colonial Jihad, there was gonna be no Middle East discussion for you there. 

So there I was at CPAC 2016, hoping against hope that I could find some more of my kind there. 

I was to be sadly disappointed…

ALONE IN A CROWDED ROOM 

All the young people at CPAC cared about was fighting “Socialism” and “Big Government”…the only National Security event on the Middle East threat was held in the corner of the fourth floor, hidden like a bastard step-child. 

Security Scholar Frank Gaffney and ex-CIA Agent Claire Lopez hosted the event, and everyone crammed in the back room was over the age of 60…white hairs and all. 

Everyone save three people, that is…me, and two Lebanese women in their early 40s, who I am convinced were Iranian spies. 

This was not an uncommon thing: Iranian spies ran around all over DC at the time going to Conservative National Security events like this to keep tabs on things. I’d seen this routine before at a Hudson Institute event I attended in Spring of 2013 three years before. 

It was very disheartening to see all of this…and consequently, I was left very disgruntled, a man in a gray flannel suit, alone in a crowded room. 

Suddenly from out of nowhere, he came to me…

GAME RECOGNIZES GAME 

He was an old Evangelical type, the kind I had seen at Homeschool Conventions, Co-Ops, and Speech and Debate Tournaments alike. If you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all.

You know the type: a conscientious, intelligent, accountant type of guy. Pencil necked and suited in the 1980s style, a cut too large for his skinny-fat body, and the thick windsor-knotted Patriot novelty tie to bring it all together. 

It was clear he was rigorous in his attention to detail, a finely honed mind for minutiae, the right way of doing things. Dogmatic and lock-step in his ways…but with an incisive brain full of razor sharp logic that could be missed at a first glance. 

He was feverish in his devotion, his bright eyes shining. He flagged me down, glossy pamphlets waving in hand…he desperately wanted to tell me something. 

I don’t care who you are: I love passion and loyalty. If you have something that you sincerely care deeply about, that you’ll die in a last stand for, then guess what: even if it is silly, even if I don’t agree, I will give you the time of day. 

It’s the honorable thing to do, as a passionate, loyal kinda guy myself. 

Game recognizes game, so they say.

NO LONGER THE CAUSE-DE-CELEBRE

The wizened old prophet was up in arms that the Log Cabin Republicans were taking part in this year’s CPAC event. They were a Gay Republican group, trying to mainstream the new LGBTQ into the old GOP-U. 

As an old Evangelical, he didn’t like it one bit…said it was the beginning of the end for the Conservative movement as a whole. 

Now you could tell right away from this guy’s demeanor…he had been shut down at every turn of this event by everybody in sight. To know why, you gotta know some context of the times. 

You see, it was March 2016…way back in June of 2013 the Supreme Court had legalized Gay Marriage, and no Conservative wanted to run afoul of Obama’s Justice Department and get the “baker’s dozen” treatment, if you know what I mean. 

It wasn’t 2006 anymore…times had changed. And my wizened old friend was feeling it. 

Now his crusade was not mine…I wasn’t ready to die on his hill. But as he talked, I felt a great pain for the man. 

I knew the rapid, jerky body language and the pleading, fire-hydrant tonality well…any time your passion project, once a cause-de-celebre,  gets sidelined as unimportant or downright offensive, you can’t contain your excitement when somebody is kind enough to listen. 

So I continued to listen. 

And what he said next blew me away…

THE THREE-LEGGED STOOL  

“You see,” my wizened old friend intoned, “The Conservative Movement is like a Three-Legged Stool. It has been since the days of Ronald Reagan. This is what has made us great.” 

Now up until this point, my attention had been out of pity and kindness. But with these words, my eyes slitted and my brow raised. 

That last sentence had none of the rambling, bombastic qualities of dogma that so often accompany the old Evangelical set as my wizened old friend typified. 

This was something new I had never heard before… 

“You see,” he went on, “The three legs of the stool are National Security, Free Market Economics, and the Church.

“If you remove any of these legs, the stool falls over. Right now, we are removing the leg of the Church. And as we remove this leg, the stool will fall.” 

MANY THINGS EXPLAINED  

This phrase hit me like a brick through a plate glass window. 

I continued talking to him for some time, listening politely to his grievances and accepting some of his literature to add to my already voluminous collection picked up at the event. 

But my mind was already elsewhere, hovering intently over this new idea, the Three-Legged stool. 

As I walked away, continuing my wanderings, his words echoed in my mind, rattling around through my brain like a pinball machine… 

“If you remove any of these legs, the stool falls over.” 

That was the first week of March 2016. Today, it’s October 11, 2023. 

Seven long years. 

And while I’ve forgotten everything else all the other big name speakers said up there on the main stage, I’ve thought about his words every day. 

Because they explain many things I saw that week at CPAC. And many other things in my life, for that matter. 

THE BACKBONE OF THIS GREAT COUNTRY

Whether you like it or not, my wizened old friend was right…right in ways he didn’t truly understand, as all prophets are. 

The Church in America throughout the 17th to the early 21st Century was America’s Spiritual Caste. 

The National Security Apparatus in America, whether the GIs and the G-Men of this century and the last, the Cavalrymen or Lawmen of the old Frontier, or Militiamen and Constabulary of Colonial days past, those guys have been America’s Warrior Caste.

The Free Market Economics in America, whether you hate them as Robber Barons or love them as Captains of Industry, they’ve been the Merchant Caste. 

But of course, there was one other Caste he forgot, and that’s the Worker Caste…the Blue Collar Average Joes and Janes who keep the trucks on the road and the trains on the tracks, immortalized in Country Music Ballads for decades over. 

The Cowboys. The Pioneers. The Sodbusters and the Wobblies and the Barnacles alike. 

And they’re often the most Spiritually-inclined, Warrior-souled, Businesses-minded SOBs you can find. 

The backbone of this great country. 

THE STOOL HAS FALLEN OVER!

But things are changing now. 

And whether you believe the change is good, or you believe the change is bad, one thing is for sure: 

The change is coming…

Heck, the change is here! 

The stool has fallen over! 

Sincerely,

Richard Barrett

10-11-2023 

Written at 6:19 PM, somewhere in the USA…

Sources Cited

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