◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

Concerning the Barbarians in America Why this agitation in the square? Why this urgency in speech and broadcast? Why the insistence that something decisive must soon occur? It is said that barbarians approach. They are blamed for decline. They are invoked to explain confusion. They are summoned in debate as proof that we are endangered. We speak of them often. They are immigrants, or elites, or traitors, or conspirators — the category shifts conveniently. But the need remains constant. For the barbarians provide something invaluable: They simplify us. Without them, we would have to admit that our paralysis is our own. That our institutions falter not from invasion but from exhaustion. It is easier to await an enemy than to examine oneself. And there is another possibility — spoken more quietly. Perhaps we do not fear the barbarians. Perhaps we require them. They give us urgency. They justify severity. They allow us to suspend procedures. They make strong speech seem necessary. They render nuance indulgent. A republic burdened by complexity may long for the cleansing clarity of threat. The barbarians are useful in this way. They allow us to believe that our harshness is defensive. That our impatience is patriotic. That our simplifications are survival. Some even imagine a different barbarian — not the invader at the gate but the decisive ruler within. One who will dispense with tiresome deliberation. One who will act. One who will define the nation cleanly. This too is a kind of barbarian. He promises resolution. He offers certainty. He relieves us of the fatigue of doubt. And so we wait. For invasion. For restoration. For rescue. For vindication. But consider: If the barbarians fail to arrive — if no external catastrophe justifies our fever — what then? We will still have hardened our language. We will still have diminished restraint. We will still have practiced contempt. We will still have rehearsed severity. The barbarians were not the danger. They were the explanation. They were the permission. They were, as I once observed in another city, a kind of solution. Without them, we must confront something less dramatic: That what we feared approaching was often only the reflection of what we were becoming. And if one day we discover that no barbarians ever stood at the gates, we may find that the gates have long been opened from within.