The Myth That Made the Modern World
Every civilization is built upon a myth. Not a fiction, but a frame—a sacred narrative that defines the borders of good and evil, maps the structure of the world, and carves meaning into the chaos of time. For the modern West, that myth is the Second World War.
We do not merely study that war; we worship it. It is the holy text of the present order, the last moral certainty in an otherwise relativistic age. The world we inhabit was birthed in its ashes, and our institutions, both supranational and domestic, trace their legitimacy to its outcome. Our moral reflexes, our political taboos, and our cultural self-image each flow from the narrative established in the aftermath of that conflict. It is the one story every schoolchild knows by heart, the one event in which history is always taught with the verdict already rendered, where objectivity is not merely discouraged but actively punished. Above all, it is a moral fable: a tale of Good overcoming Evil, of light prevailing over darkness, of universal brotherhood triumphing over the tribal instincts of blood and soil.
But it is not history; it is myth in the most destructive sense of the word, not a noble fiction that elevates a people, but a sacred distortion that imprisons them. It has become, in effect, a new religion. And like all true religions, it governs not only belief, but morality, identity, and destiny.
Nietzsche wrote that God is dead, not as provocation but as diagnosis. He did not mean that the divine had vanished, but that the metaphysical architecture which once upheld Western life, the shared horizon of meaning and the sacred order of value, had collapsed. What followed was not freedom but vacancy. The Second World War did not reverse this decline; it cemented it. In its aftermath, modern Western man, cut off from tradition and denied transcendence, became vulnerable to new idols. As Heidegger warned, the loss of Being would drive man toward technics, abstraction, and collective illusions, giving rise to an age in which truth is displaced by narrative and destiny is reduced to
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
