Democratic politics provides a venue for recurring conflict and runs a very grave risk for it.

Not a venue for it so much as a permanent mandate for conflict. It creates perverse and permanent incentives to win by playing negative sum strategies.

This is particularly bizarre because it flies in the face of historical trends.

Rationalism is associated with good-feeling things – reason, science, medicine, health, sanity, etc.

Superstition is associated with bad-feeling things – fear of black cats, mirrors, and ladders, black magic, human sacrifice, etc.

Which is all that “Reality” Doug is doing: putting bad-feeling words next to things he wants you to feel bad about.

So zeal is “the problem”. A problem for what, is not indicated. Doug makes no argument. He rebuts nothing David Grant wrote above. He applies a bad-feelings word to the word zeal, in the hopes to make you feel bad about it.

What counts as ‘rational’ to Doug seems to be whatever he feels is right. Superstitious, what he feels is wrong. He doesn’t give any criteria beyond that. That’s how it is with moderns.

“The trick will be channeling the superstitious to a population decline.”

Keep living up to the stereotypes we have of atheists. You make our job easier.

However, I think there is an exception, and that may be chaotic civil war. Military technology today has essentially outgrown its application for civil war (See Assad’s discovery of this as he bombs his own country to smithereens while the rebels multiply like roaches.) This is where I think ideological commitment matters, and yes, zealotry to an extent (although one has to be careful to avoid a fundamentalist holiness spiral, and I have a post on this very topic coming up in response to something Nick Land wrote).

In a civil war, especially one that could potentially be as far-reaching and devastating as the most pessimistic of prophets presume when it comes to our declining civilization, you need warriors, not just soldiers or goons. Warriors do not fight for rationality. I think just the last ten years shows very clearly from Norway to Paris, zealots actually do things. Rationalists wait for the next compromise. To build a large, actionable cadre of zealots however, you need some things.

1) Economic deprivation
2) A clearly painted enemy
3) High quality leaders to move the pieces
4) Justification through Divine forces

We’re not there yet, but coalesce these factors, and the necessary force will be there for Liberalism’s final rout.