Notes From a Traveler - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Notes From a Traveler
by
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I am writing from a roadside bar. These remote places still exist in the West, on the port or starboard side of a highway, with a frowning owner, and liquor bottles blanketed with dust. They are places that were born aged, like me, when I was born my mother was told “Congratulations madam, you have had a 40 year old child.”

It is in the simplest things that we rediscover our identity.

People park at the door of the bar, perhaps after driving many kilometers, and hurry up to the counter for a coffee or a beer. There are a lot of foreigners. In fact, I think I’m the only Spaniard here. And that makes sense because I am only a few kilometers from Santiago de Compostela, with its cathedral being a world center of Catholic pilgrimage, housing in its crypt the remains of the Apostle Santiago. This place was once the backbone of Europe. Rivers of faith, culture, literature, and wisdom flowed along these roads. Thanks to these roads the West was what it was. Surely, without them, without the Apostle Santiago, without the Virgin of Covadonga — another Marian sanctuary in the north of Spain — without the Virgin of Pilar — in Zaragoza — and without a handful of courageous Europeans, we would not be Christians. And the Christian West would possibly be the Muslim West. That is why when I visit this land I kiss the ground of the road I travel. It is my way of kissing freedom. (READ MORE from Ixtu Diaz: The Left Wants to Build a Climate Wall in Washington)

Every step I take on these old stones of Santiago makes me think of the absurd efforts of the globalist left to destroy everything that made us great. They hide history, deny their ancestors, tear down statues, and taint everything with false multiculturalism, which is nothing more than submitting the ideas of Christian freedom to any foreign slavery, often Islamic, but not only Islamic. What do they gain with all this?

Next to me a couple whispers quietly. They are Americans, but I can hardly understand their English. However, I have time to hear that they are walking the Way of St. James to ask the apostle for something, while acknowledging that they are non-practicing.

There are those who consider it almost esoteric rudeness to go on pilgrimage without faith. Actually, I like it. I like that people walk this Camino without faith, because there is no better way to recover it. Here people are reunited with themselves, first, and later with God. That is what it was made for. For many it is just a journey, an experience, a kind of pagan ritual, simply a cultural connection. But culture can also lead you to God. In these times when our old identity is more threatened than ever, it brings me hope that there are people who, even without religious motives, walk these paths, whether literally or metaphorically, that there are many other Ways of St. James in the world that bring us closer to what we were yesterday, to the Christian roots of the West. Art, culture, like goodness and beauty, are always paths to the Heights.

You’d be amazed at how many people walk this Camino because they lost or won a bet with God. “I’m walking the Way of St. James because I promised God I would do it if I got a good job.” Or, my favorite, which I heard last year: “I’m walking the Way of St. James because I lost a bet at my bachelor party.” The hangover must have been colossal.

I must continue my journey. Sometimes I think these kinds of bars, when you get out and get back in the car, they fade away and disappear forever. Somehow they represent a moment that is gone. Here nobody talks about Artificial Intelligence, nor social networks, nor global warming; except the global warming in my coffee, I think I have lost 60 percent of my tongue by abrasion. (READ MORE: Thank You, Globalist Elites, for This Week’s Display of Talent)

I must go on, as I said, but I wanted to share this little epiphany with you. It is in the simplest things that we rediscover our identity. The high-speed life in big cities, the mirage of political hysteria, and so many other things, distances us slowly from what we are, from what we were, from what we have come here to do. My purpose is simple while I pay the bill: let us gaze back, let us look our ancestors in the eye, and let us not cease in the endeavor to pursue and spread goodness, truth, and beauty.

Buy Itxu Díaz’s new book, I Will Not Eat Crickets: An Angry Satirist Declares War on the Globalist Elitehere today!

Itxu Díaz
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Itxu Díaz is a Spanish journalist, political satirist, and author. He has written 10 books on topics as diverse as politics, music, and smart appliances. He is a contributor to The Daily Beast, The Daily Caller, National Review, American Conservative, and Diario Las Américas in the United States, as well as a columnist at several Spanish magazines and newspapers. He was also an adviser to the Ministry for Education, Culture, and Sports in Spain.
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