Democratic Patriotic Popular Movement NIKI
Photos: The historic Orthodox Church of Saint George in Old Cairo (Patriarchate of Alexandria)
In the contemporary West, an interesting and revealing phenomenon is unfolding.
After decades of radical liberalism, individualism, and the dismantling
of every tradition, a new current of thought is beginning to emerge —
one described as “post-liberalism.” Among its principal exponents are
Patrick Deneen, John Milbank, and Alasdair MacIntyre.
Western thinkers themselves now openly acknowledge that a society
without moral bonds, without community, without a sacred center,
collapses. When man deifies the individual, he loses all meaning.
Freedom cannot survive in a society that has dissolved every moral tie,
every tradition, and every sacred cell — such as the family. Liberalism,
in attempting to liberate man from his roots, has left him defenseless,
stranded in a life devoid of substantive meaning.
What the West (Europe and the broader Euro-descended world) today
baptizes as “post-liberalism” is not a new wisdom. It is the awkward
admission of its failure. Having dismantled community, family, and
faith, it now seeks — even unconsciously — the very Romeike roots it
lost through the centuries, primarily under the weight first of Frankish
domination and subsequently of Papalism. It seeks the roots that we
have known for centuries as Romeosyne.
Romeosyne is neither an ideology nor a political current. It is the
living mode of existence of our Genos (sic) — our historic peoplehood.
For Romeosyne, freedom is not license but virtue and purification of
the heart. It is liberation from the passions. It is the fruit of
ascetic life and divine Grace. It is not the removal of every limit, but
the voluntary self-binding of man to the good. What Western thinkers
today rediscover as the need for a “moral framework” and self-restraint,
our tradition has lived for centuries as philotimo — the inner impulse
to do what is right not out of fear of the law, but out of love for God,
for one’s neighbor, and for the Genos.
Romeosyne has never known the isolated individual, the autonomous
self of modernity. It knows only the Person — and the Person exists only
in relationship: in the family, the parish, the ecclesial community,
the Genos. There, man does not merely “connect” sociologically; he
communes existentially. What the West now calls “the search for
community” is simply a belated discovery of a truth we have lived for
centuries. The freedom of the Romeos is a freedom of love, service, and
sacrifice — not of selfish isolation.
The economy must serve the needs of the community, not the reverse.
What some Western thinkers today formulate as a “new principle,” the
Romeike tradition always regarded as self-evident. Production and wealth
exist to sustain the family, the parish, and the Genos — not to
subjugate them. A contemporary, realistic patriotism must translate this
principle into action. Thus, for example, the complete tax exemption of
large families and the stable support of households with many children
are not mere social policy; they are elementary justice. The Romeike
tradition understands the family as the foundation of society, and the
economy must protect it, not crush it. The economy exists to safeguard
the hearth, not to liquidate it.Our homeland [and the whole world] today needs a true return to its roots. It needs a
Romeike rebirth — a spiritual and ecclesial awakening that will first
free us ourselves from the dead ends of modernity’s ideology and, at the
same time, illuminate the path for the West, which increasingly finds
itself searching.
Romeosyne does not propose theories. It generates a way of life. From
this way of life, the necessary political orientations naturally
emerge, structured around four main axes:
a) Economy as service to need, grounded in the Gospel and in the
example of our Saints — men and women who lived love and communion in
practice. Not accumulation, but sharing. Not treasures on earth, but
treasure in heaven.
“He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none…” and “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth…”
b) Education with roots — not mere transmission of information, but
initiation into truth, the cultivation of ethos, faith, and living
historical memory.
c) Productive self-sufficiency — for a people is free only when it
can feed itself, shelter itself, and create by its own labor, without
dependence on foreign powers. The economy serves man and community, not
the reverse.
d) Sovereignty and dignity — the protection of the homeland, of
borders, and of strategic structures is not a technical administrative
matter but a sacred trust and a duty toward both our ancestors and our
children.
The West, exhausted by its spiritual and social decay, gropes
awkwardly for a way out. Yet we have no new ideology to offer it. What
we offer is the witness of our way of life — our Romeosyne: our faith,
our philotimo, the love and the freedom born of communion with God,
which unites the Genos.
This inheritance must once again become the ground upon which not
only tomorrow’s Greece, but all those — personally or collectively — who
seek truth already lived and embodied in practice, may stand.
Christodoulos Molyvas
Head of the Development and Investment Policy Department of NIKI
Ioannis Kon. Neonakis
Head of the Romeosyne Policy Department of NIKI
Articles on the tag Romeosyne
Notes: (a) The term “Romeosyne” was preferred over “Romanitas”, as it
better expresses the culture of the Roman Empire after the prevalence
of Christianity.
(b) For reasons of more accurate phonological rendering and
simplification, the term “Romeos” was preferred over “Rhomaios” and
“Romeoi” over “Rhomaioi”
(c) romeike (adjective): of the Romeos/Romeoi
