A quiet week around the Reactosphere®… Victor David Hanson was up over at American Greatness with a fresh example of California’s snakes-in-hand handling of its current drought: Fundamentalist Nihilism. Malcolm Pollack ties it back to Moldbug’s observation that nonsense can be a more effective organizing tool than the truth, which, far from being advocacy, instead pretty much nails the way the Prog Clerisy stays coordinated.
@PublicEditor Do you deny that you manufacture consent for the democratic system?https://t.co/NQYrU6HU8I
— Nick B. Steves ♔ (@Nick_B_Steves) April 24, 2017
Still no answer on that one. LOL… “S-s-scary…” Dude, everything’s scary that you don’t understand, and your ideology forces you (and pays you) to not understand legitimate rightist thought. Heck, I’d not understand leftist thought for free… if only such a thing were even possible.
Up at Northern Dawn, Dorin Alexandru has a very deep essay: Without Centre: Charles Taylor and the Fragmented Secular Experience. That’s “secular” in the ideological — divorced from sacredness — sense, not in the “merely in the world” sense (that Catholics still tend to use… “secular priests WTF?!!”).
Let’s see… what else was going on?
Well, Mark Citadel takes a break from his usual fare to offer Quiet Meditations for Easter.
One must sound wise to qualify for a Moron bite. Also: LOL.
Spandrell notices that The Economics of Democracy have Stopped Working, which is the best time to see the Cathedral in action.
So it looks like Moldbug wasn’t wrong after all. There is a Cathedral deep-state running things completely impervious to the power of the presidency. It seems I wasn’t wrong after all either. Leftism is a memeplex evolved precisely in order to achieve and hold power, its content contingent to whatever works to achieve power. As such, we are not supposed to win. Not that easily, at any rate. Being right, having a correct understanding about how the world works is emphatically not the way to achieve power. There is a collection of games that must be played in order to win. Trump was very good at playing the electoral game; but that’s is just the outmost layer of the power onion. The inner parts are what actually gets you power, and nationalism, let alone HBD, patriarchy and neoreaction is just not very good at that game.
So all that said, I say it’s time we stop caring about Trump and we keep on developing theory.
Which he does. An ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀. Nick Land politely applauds.
Alf is inspired by an egregious — but totally par for the course these days — Dutch TV recounting of The Passion to look forward to the day when we’ll Watch it fall down. And he has a few words for that Maine politician guy who chuckled about white men committing suicide: The Enemy. Also the guy says he’s white, but that’s not exactly correct now, is it?
Neocolonial engages in some much needed Deconflation: Bullying. He shows how the progressive linguistic establishment is attempting to conflate informal group policing (a common and necessary social good) with real predation (which is evil, but rare) under the term “bullying” which is supposedly bad. This too was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Grey Enlightenment is claiming a correct prediction as Trump and China Relations Strengthen. Also there: How to Predict, Part 3: HBD, Rationalism, and Trusted Sources. Being correct should (ceteris paribus) be profitable. This too was good: he shows why raw numerical comparison of deaths by murder and terrorism is completely wrong-headed. And some video (and commentary): Jordan Peterson — IQ and The Job Market.
Vincent Hannah has a useful round-up of The “Reactiosphere” (sic.) on Trump: Croakers. And his Path to the Dark Reformation series continues with Part E: Formalism, Islam and the Need for a New Congress of Vienna. A lot there, but this is a nice excerpt:
There are two problems with Islam.
The first is internal, the second external.
The internal problem is that the Islamic religion is anarchic. The theology and the authority which adjudicates theological questions is not formalised; nor does formal authority match real authority in many cases. An imam can argue all he wants, but if men with guns and beards show up to kill him, the imam is toast unless he can bring his own men with guns and beards….
The external problem is with Islam and its relationship to non-Islamic civilisations, in particular Western civilisation.
Muslims can rape, rob and kill with near impunity because there is no mechanism of effective deterrence.
The Islamic world has no competent, secure authority which can negotiate with the West and constrain or eliminate the radicals.
Did I mention Hanna likes paragraph breaks? I do too, so I can’t really blame him. I think this analysis is a good match to Sunni Islam. Shia seems to have a better entrenched authority structure. Probably a good argument for helping Shiite nations genocide Sunni ones. Of course, that might not be good for Israel. So there is that. As for relations with the West, what he says is currently true, but I think if the West decided to… say… act in its own collective interests, Muslim nations would be pretty quick to act in their own, i.e., find ways to bring misbehaving imams and their followers to heel.
Neovictorian offers an excerpt from his novel Sanity. Compelling stuff. Did I know he was writing a novel? I don’t think so. But I feel like I shoulda. Well… looking forward to its completion. I couldn’t put the excerpt down!
By way of Isegoria The shadow of Enoch Powell looms ever-larger over Britain; related: “Rivers of Blood” 49 years on (prophetic… of course); this looks interesting: the evolution of useful things; and he takes note of Devin Helton’s award-winning article on jobs (mostly not) really requiring college from last week.
Finally, This Week in Cambria Will Not Yield: Ponies, Politics, and the Eternal Romance.
I think the neo-pagans’ and the white nationalists’ disappointment in Trump is rooted in their belief in the false Messiah called the democratic process. They have invested all their faith, which is a ‘this world only’ faith, in democracy. And they have done so despite the fact that the great Christian conservatives, such as Burke, Shakespeare, and Anthony Jacob insisted that no European nation could survive as a democracy.
True repentance happens one soul at a time. Often slowly. Trust not in politics.
This Week in Jim Donald
Jim offers guidelines for Punching unowned women in the face.
If an unowned, unsupervised women, gets beaten by some male, your default presupposition, your prejudgment of the situation absent other evidence, should be that males are generally well behaved, unsupervised and uncontrolled women are frequently badly behaved, therefore chances are that she probably needed a beating.
NAUSWALT is not an argument.
Next, a reminder that our problems are Not the Jews. At least not mostly.
[I]f you point out that antifa is a wholly owned subsidiary of George Soros, well, George Soros is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Permanent Government in the State Department. Native ruling elites have a long history of hiring Jews to do the dirty work against their own people, and then discarding those Jews when things got rough. Started with Jewish tax farmers. Then when the peasants got pissed with the tax farmers, the ruling elite would encourage them to knock over a pawn shop.Matador J. Jose Padilla lived & returned to bullfighting… wearing an eyepatch of course.
Don’t be one of the idiots who gets distracted by the shiny broken glass and the shiny stuff in the pawnshop. That is just the Matador’s flashing cape.
That said, he doesn’t think lack of nuance on the Jewish Question is necessarily a reason to break fellowship. Which he articulates in: Violence, repression, and freedom. He covers a lot of territory. This is a taste.
[O]ur official unofficial state religion has open entry into our officially unofficial inquisition, the social justice warriors, with the result that it is intrusively developing a line on everything — not only race and sex but fatty foods and global warming, so that the necessary restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association have become alarmingly intrusive and aggressive.
The shutdown of conversation between right and left by the left is a manifestation of this. Repression of thought crime has become more heavy handed and less effective, as more and more thoughts become crimes.
The state inherently has the right to suppress falsehood and enforce truth, people will never agree on what is truth and what is falsehood, and so here we are. You always wind up with a state religion, and denying it just makes its power informal and unofficial, which is worse than having an official and formal state religion.
The tour takes us by the dubiously sainted Florence Nightingale and whether warriors will be called “heroes” or “baby-killers”. This was important:
Things are getting violent because the state’s official belief system is getting ever crazier and ever more hurtful, thus the amount of repression needed to make it stick is getting ever greater.
The solution is not freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association. The solution is that the state Church should have saner beliefs that require less repression to make the state Church stick. The solution is Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Assembly, and Freedom of Association for us, but not for them, because our beliefs are sane and reasonable, and their beliefs are crazy and evil, and getting more crazy and evil every day.
… and there’s much more in this ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
This Week in Social Matter
Ryan Landry says the things Joel Kotkin is not allowed to say (and remain in polite company) as he explains: Geographic Apartheid In California Exists To Entrench The One-Party State. Who needs red-lining when ostensibly color-blind housing inflation will do the same trick? But for those who cannot pay the association fees…
The sad situation of the interior of California is entirely due to the progressive dream.Kristin Kreuk, baling some hay.
Looking at a map and census data is revealing. The Left needed to stuff those counties with Mexican immigrants to secure its lock on California’s state government and also electoral votes for presidential elections. Merced county has seen a population growth of 21% since 2000. The Hispanic population of Merced grew at a 47% clip, pushing the Hispanic percentage of Merced county to 55%. Kern county has seen 27% population growth since 2000. The Hispanic population of Kern grew at a 63% rate, increasing the Hispanic percentage of Kern county to 49%. San Bernardino county has seen 19% population growth since 2000. The Hispanic population of San Bernardino grew at a 50% pace, driving up the Hispanic percentage of San Bernardino county to 49%.
These immigrants were imported primarily to vote Democratic. This structure exists by design, as the New Left decades ago made the decision to sacrifice the white working class for the Hart-Cellar immigrants. The Left sacrificed the productive economy and hitched its wagon to the FIRE economy during President Bill Clinton’s administration. These immigrants are dependent on government services and advisers.
Landry takes home an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for his excellent analysis here.
Michael Perilloux graces the pages again outlining The Strategy Of A Thousand Statesmen, which an authoritative outline of the current state of the art in neoreactionary strategy. It rests entirely upon the Menciian maxim:
The key to solving the problem of American political dysfunction problem is a viable replacement for the current political system.
Hard to excerpt, but an awesome piece: A must read, and winner of the ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award☀.
On Tuesday, Mark Christensen was inspired by the Holy Week liturgies and chants to contemplate: The Männerbund Of Christ: An Easter Reflection. St. Thomas Aquinas’ timeless hymn Pange Lingua refers to Christ’s frátribus—”chosen band”.
The Apostles were a band of brothers, sworn to their Lord and Master. For the men of our days seeking manhood, brotherhood, and the transcendent, this is worth meditating on. It is part of the power of the Church’s sanctifying power that it deepens and sacramentalizes our life in the world. The way of men is no exception.
I’m also struck with Jesus choice of Peter — unschooled, earth-bound, irreligious, occasional hothead and fuck-up — as chief of the infant Church. Jesus chose vir manifestly over ostensible godliness. It wasn’t until Pentecost that it began to pay off.
This Week in Weimerica Weekly: Episode 66 — Adult Day Camps. With an foreword on the The Battle of Berkeley and the inherent justice of punching Moldylocks.
Lawrence Glarus drops his fourth and final installment The Real History Of The San Francisco State University Student Strikes From 1968-1969. I’ve simply run out of superlatives to describe this series. It marks a new epoch in neoreactionary studies. Over 22k words in all, it should serve as a major brick in the Antiversity. Glarus’ epilogue really shines as he draws all the sources together.
Looking at San Francisco State University, it is hard to say the BSU [Black Student Union] or its ideological descendants are in power. Besides the hagiographies celebrated yearly, it is hard to see how the ESD [Ethnic Studies Department] has become anything but a side show. The ESU commands no armies, no influence, and has no power. If the ESD had never existed, it is hard to argue that the course of history in the city would have changed much. In everything, the ESD has seemingly become the junior power. Can one seriously argue that in and of themselves these factions and their theories have gained power? If they occupy space in minds, what minds? Are these the theories and sentiments of the elite? One could hardly say so. Have they carved out a space for autarchy? No, if anything they have only become more embroiled in the system. For all its analysis and goals, the BSU accomplished little more than securing sinecure for its ideologues to shout their pieties into the void. That is certainly a fine goal, but it sounds an awful lot like getting away with doing as little as possible.
Did the actors learn any lessons?
Out of the mouths of supposedly distinct persons with no discernible connections we hear the same sentiments. The kids just won’t listen. They’re just going to be violent. I guess we have to listen to them. If this doesn’t hint at the power of coordinated ideology, I don’t know what does. These people didn’t ALL know each other. They didn’t go to the same schools, and they certainly weren’t getting their opinions from the newspapers (at least opinions of this variety). Yet, they all came to a similar conclusion, using similar language.
They didn’t… but we can. And that, in a nutshell, is why this work (and hopefully much more like it to come) is so valuable to our organization. Not merely an ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀, but quite possibly a Best of the Year.
Glarus also joined the “West Coast Guys” for a Myth of the 20th Century podcast: Episode 15: San Francisco State University Strike.
Completing the trifect, Lawrence Glarus has some original poetry for Saturday: Tack. And it is quite good, tho’ that is probably meaningless coming from me.
This Week in 28 Sherman
Fresh off the penitential season of Lent, Landry considers Devalued Forgiveness. He traces it, quite rightly I think, to the Protestant rejection of the Sacrament of Penance.
[Progs] come from that line that destroyed the idea of ritual confession. “See kids, only God knows if you’re truly remorseful. Going to some silly priest will not absolve you. Silly Papists.” The Prot intention that an individual would wrestle with their act and truly grasp their sin and come to terms with God is admirable. It’s also possibly only good for believers with good cognitive function. It places the focus of dealing with guilt on the individual, which can be a strong feeling and religious test.Dutch-Chinese Canadian actress: Kristin Kreuk
It is also a bad idea for the masses. We have to admit that many individuals barely have agency or awareness of next week. If a church continuously pushes the God loves all despite all shortcomings, that church will be full of those Christians that ‘pray’ on decisions, royally screw over friends, but then wipe away the act with “God loves me”.
Easy grace leads to easy forgiveness leads to pathologizing guilt itself leads to… probably a very large body count.
He takes an Odd Take On China, Trump + the NORKs. But you have to understand the Red vs. Blue Empire thesis first.
One thing [China] could do to deflect Blue Empire’s advances is cooperate with Red Empire right now. China has to see that the Generals and Red Empire have hitched their wagon to the Trump train. In this moment if Trump is of a different feather than normal politicians, China could create a relationship with Red Empire with cooperation on the NORKs.
Cooperation on NORK regime change that is.
This Week in WW1 pics, we have: The Nivelle Offensive. Well, not pics. But an essay. More like Nivelle Disaster. Though, apparently, a tactical success, it came at far too high a cost in blood.
Finally for Friday, SoBL considers the Soy Pacification meme… and the reality the underlies the humor in it.
This Week in Kakistocracy
Porter previews the (then up-coming) French elections in A Frog Unboiled. Just the usual great cask-strength Porter-ness.
First there is the only candidate representing the French, Ms. Le Pen. Whatever her flaws, she is the exclusive option for those with any conception of a nation being something other than market segment, geography, or unrequited values. One would think there would be significant electoral security in having no competition for advocacy of the actual people. But that would be to discount the very large constituencies for multinational margins and native dispossession. In any event, Le Pen is despised by the left for her egregiously inadequate positions on French prostration, as well as her desire to distance her country from the institutions that enforce it. In sum, she is pro-French and anti-EU: could Hitler have asked for more?
Next up: an add from Liberty Mutual Insurance that will make 90% of their customers’ skin crawl. This is Insurance Plus. Is there some new rule in Point-Dog-Make-Horse where you have to do it with such pious seriousness? So tempting to make fart sounds.
In conspicuously embracing such a fringe oddity, Liberty Mutual is wagering that a thin margin of normal (such as they are) liberals will find such unctuous displays of BLT exaltation irresistible. More importantly, they are wagering that that margin of liberals, however thin it may be, will still be broader than the cohort of legacy Americans who bolt their policies out of understandable revulsion. That’s not a compliment to legacy America.White girl in wheatfield you may not have seen yet.
Because if they are right, as industry metrics have surely advised them they are, then traditionalists have made their own bed of indifference. The left screams as the right dreams. Of course that’s a bit harsh since the right is more occupied with earning a living and raising families than it is with monitoring every degradation of the culture schlock. Nonetheless, that culture slides left silently with no oppositional friction. And soon enough conservatives are peering into their magic rectangles to see Mexican transvestites scowling back.
And here I was one-man boycotting Progressive because… “progressive”.
Porter contemplates the state of the “movement” such as it is. He thinks there is A Phalanx Forming. Perhaps. Antifa are reeling, no doubt. But Jeff has a lot of Mutt’s to choose from — quite apart from the fact that Jeff looks so good on camera and in the pulpit.
Finally: Human Trafficking Honcho Flaunts Foreign Philanthropist, wherein we find (once again) the “nationality” of hyphenated-American to be of particularly useful ambiguity.
This Week in Evolutionist X
Evolutionist X is not done with her examination of Polish and German genetics. No sirree! For Monday, she takes a Look at Poland.
That discussion continues here: Let’s Talk Genetics (Polish and German).
Anthropology Friday is back with Robert Hofsinde Gray-Wolf’s Indian Series: Winter Camping
I doubt Hofsinde ever thought of himself as an anthropologist, but this is obviously no strike against him. The 40s and 50s were the golden age of American interest in everything Indian, and Hofsinde’s books are a pleasant example of the genre. I only regret that I only purchased a few of the books from the set in the shop, and now the rest are gone.
These are children’s books, but still informative.
Seeing as just about every anthropologist for the last 150 years has been a Marxist, I’d say never counting oneself an anthropologist would count very much in his favor.
It annoys me when people claim that back in the fifties, books/media about Indians were just a mish-mash of stereotypes without respect for the differences of individual tribes. They talk about fifties books/media as though it were all terrible and insulting, with no regard for the quality works nor the value of popular interest in Indian cultures.
Indeed, there was probably more real and heartfelt respect for strange (in many ways obviously lesser) cultures in a sincere 1950s parochialist than in the modern diversicrat who spends most of her time being offended on behalf of other cultures — which (paradoxically) is the whitest thing in the universe.
This Week in Quas Lacrimas
Quincy T. Latham looks at ground up architecture of a new political order in You Can’t Get There From Here. This may have been stewing a while: It is really really good. First…
[C]an we not say that in the final analysis, the whole field of architecture (including the political subdivision) reduces to the art of elevation? Architects elevate things until they are in their proper positions. Political architects elevate sovereigns high above all their subjects and, more generally, superior above inferior. Other varieties of architect elevate spire above belfry, or pediment above architrave, and in any event upper above lower.
Elevation, Yes. But it needs to stay up. And that requires a strong foundation. Sandcastles make an excellent counter-example. In the question of sovereign deployment of resources, I found this part particularly well-put:
[T]here are two ways to
a resource: at will, or by influencing the consensus among all people with an interest in the resource and an ability to move/use/manipulate it. The latter is just influence, and requires a further question about how that consensus is generated and what one must give up to maintain that influence. To mobilize a resource at will, on the other hand, one must be able to intervene and determine its use regardless of whether other people like that use, or like you.White mom in wheatfield you may not have seen yet.
One way to express this distinction is to say that to mobilize a resource at will, one needs not just influence but formal power: the power that will be at your personal disposal in any conflict over the resource is so great that no ambiguity about who controls the resource can arise.
Mere influence, in contrast, is much shiftier sand…
Doubling the number of people over whom one has influence increases one’s ability to resolve conflicts only within tight constraints, because one accumulates influence over an audience by appealing to its interests and preconceptions. By repeated doublings one could gain influence over an extraordinary number of people, but would simultaneously lose more and more freedom to maneuver without alienating one’s “followers”. The same logic extends to financing, to equipment, to talent; if you double the sum of money you can raise in a certain period, or the quantity of supplies you can stockpile, but these resources are provided courtesy of an audience on whose goodwill you depend, you are heaping more and more sand onto the sandpile. Their money and their supplies may be nice to have, but you will always be their employee — never their sovereign.
Anyways, I’ve quoted enough of this ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award☀ winner. Go RTWT!
Next up a Minor Note on Gramsci. Of course, you must know by now when Latham says “minor note”, it’s time to pull up your reading chair and fill your pipe. He had not been disposed to read Gramsci…
Where I went wrong was in assuming that what people have said about Gramsci must be substantially related to what Gramsci has said. How often do I say this to people? To the texts, to the texts! What most people mean when they say “Platonic” or “Hobbesian” or “Nietzschean” has nothing to do with the writings of Plato, Hobbes, or Nietzsche. We read old books because what older writers wrote was better than what our contemporaries write: less subject to the whims of passing fads, less distorted by the demotist deception. This general principle also extends to new books about old books! I know it in principle, and I remind people of it often myself; but somehow I failed to apply the logic to Gramsci.
He’s making amends now.
Clearly I was too much of a glassy-eyed universalist to realize that the Left does not fetishize the prison letters and prison scribblings of every white, straight male who was imprisoned during Bolshevism’s openly-violent phase. Gramsci had to earn the right to be misinterpreted by cat-ladies with tenure. My aversion to writers connected with the phrase “prison notebooks” ought not to have extended to him.
Latham explains why. This was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ in its own right.
Latham finished up the week with an April 2017 Lightning Round: Reasonable Doubt—poking great gobs of fun at Slatestar Codex; driving a stake through the heart of right-wing (mis)appropriation of r/K-selection theory; Science-tastic Sciency Science March (of Science) edition.
This Week at Thermidor Mag
Over at our sister publication Thermidor, Stephen Paul Foster looks at the way mainstream progs play on the feelings of guilt and natural sympathy to achieve dastardly ends: From Moral Blackmail To Political Conquest.
[T]he BPT [Big Powerful Tribesmen] have submitted to the lobotomy and the great power (now deemed “White Privilege”) that the BPT supposedly enjoy is a bad joke. Too many of them for too long have imbibed Karl’s Kool-Aid, initially an elixir of German provenance intended to stir to action the “oppressed workers of the world” who were going to “expropriate the expropriators” (the capitalists). It is now a much headier brew that fuels the entire enterprise of identity politics. Today’s identity politics is applied Marxism with many enhancements. Stripping away the au courant sexy lingo of post-modern grievance mongering, Marxist theorizing inevitably cuts to the chase and descends to the cynical rock bottom of all social reality — a struggle between two irreconcilable moral forces — oppressors and those they oppress.Apparently very young, un-madeup, white girl in wheatfield you may not have seen yet.
Filed under Reactionary Art… Richard Carroll, who’s becoming a bit of a regular there, has a generally positive review Samuel Stevens’ Lone Crusader.
Paolo Ingrassia makes a debut, with the (well re-appropriated) words of William F. Buckley: Mater Si, Magistra No: A Call For A Renewal Of Tradition In The Catholic Church.
P. T. Carlo, who is the world’s leading expert on the subject, scientifically ranks The Top 10 Most Loathsome Neocon Bugmen. Well, bugpersons I guess. LOL. The results really are quite surprising. For example…
However, while Kristol is undoubtedly high profile and well known, the reason why he ranks at a modest #7 is that his intellectual capability is noticeably lacking. In an ironic twist of fate, it seems as though his father’s remarkable command of a formidable array of sophistries was not passed on to the second generation. His writing (and thinking) tends toward the bland, predictable and unimaginative. He possesses neither the wit and cleverness of a good polemicist nor the charm and glibness of a good salesman. Thus he ends up as a kind of bland cheerleader for that small group of imbeciles who are already convinced of the virtue of his positions.
Kristol… at #7!! I hope that didn’t spoil too much for ye… Go RTWT! Carlo is a veritable Mt. Piunatubo of literate insults.
Finally, Nigel T. Carsbad and Thermidor acknowledge an anniversary of which we probably should have taken note here at SM (if we weren’t all overworked and un-paid): Moldbug 10 Years On: A Critical Retrospective. This really is one of the better and more complete synopses on Moldbug out there.
This Week Around The Orthosphere
Mark Richardson is running with a strong meme: Diversity as weaponised politics. Of course it is. Of Course! And this was funny: Now even The Simpsons is mocking SJWs. Trouble is that everyone’s always mocked the Leftist Zeitgeist, and it just keeps moving lefter.
Bonald muses on Making peace with death: the ideal human lifespan—substantially less than ∞, and indeed possibly lower than it currently is in the West. He is also there with an RFP: Homework assignment: reassigning babies. He gives out a few grades the following day.
Bertonneau has an answer: They Already Take Our Children. Well, sorta.
Kristor is sounding very #NRx again: Owned Government Would Tend to Good Government. Transparently owned government, that is.
Also there: J. M. Smith has a humorous (I think fictional as he offers no links not fictional) anecdote: A Rift in the Lute. Dindus gonna dindu.
Smith also has a superb personal reflection woven between lines of verse: A Barefoot Boy on Earth Day, 1970. An ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Over on the home blog, Bonald wonders How could the Alt Right have misjudged Trump so badly? The verdict is, at least officially still out, but we cannot expect mass political movements of any kind to have much predictive ability. Also there: Some thoughts on Jackie Robinson and Eliminating white spaces… and George Weigel’s apparent incuriosity toward the reasoning of the now defunct segregationists.
Matt Briggs is over in The Stream with Union of Concerned Scientists Hates Truth About Global Warming. Make that two-fer there: The March for Politics, Scientism and Scidolatry (But not for Science). Who’s against science, exactly? Exactly no one: “Nothing burns as brightly as a Straw Man.” No. Make that a three-fer… March for Science a Dud. Probably the bad hats again. Briggs has the (pretty funny) lowlights.
Courtesy Architect of the New Past.
I’m pretty sure this is satire: Archbishop Denounces Church For Harshness Toward NOWM Community, but it’s getting harder and harder to tell. This is somewhat sad, if not entirely unexpected, news: Briggs is No Longer At Cornell, for never terribly large values of “at” to begin with. Fortunately, he has his millions from shilling for Big Oil and Anti-Science Institutes. Unfortunately, those checks are still somewhere in the mail.
Cato the Younger has started a new tumblr: Architect Of The New Past that has some pretty cool aesthetics. Tumblr!!… I know, I know. But we have one too.
Chris Gale runs some back o’ the envelope numbers on The direct costs of virtue signalling. Refugee resettlement is a bourgeois game that’s gotten so expensive, the bourgeoisie now have to tax the working class to pay for it. And speaking of the “Science” March… Gale picks at some bones, and finds no meat.
Over at Sydney Trads, M. W. Davis names the real culprit behind gay pseudogamy: Equal & Opposite — Much Ado About Marriage.
We like to think that ‘social issues’ are one-off, localised phenomena. We prefer not to notice that our society is built on hundreds of these legal fictions. Most of them are the result of our desire to maintain a veneer of rootedness and respectability while embracing an egocentric, deracinated worldview. And the descent of marriage into pure idiocy began long before gays decided they’d like a slice.
More on that subject here: Cecil Landsdowne wonders: Why Exemptions only for the Religious? The framing of gay pseudogamy has consistently been one where the “right to marry” whomever one wishes is beat up against the “right to religious conscience” (e.g., not to have to perform such “marriages” or bake gay pseudogamy cakes). Landsdowne shows brilliantly why this frame should be unacceptable for proponents of traditional marriage, not least because it plays directly into progressive hands. Traditional marriage is not a uniquely Christian concept, nor even a uniquely religious concept…
[T]he traditional model is quite frankly an expression of natural law applied to human relations, and specifically applied to the individual relationship between men and women living together in society. This paradigm is simply an expression of reality, and its reinforcement in law it is no more or less a form of “institutional” or “structural” “discrimination” than gravity.
But — the objection naturally is raised — not all cultures are monogamous and same-sex relationships have been recorded in history for literally millennia. That is true, but such fatuous objections ignore the second major reason why one-man and one-woman family arrangements are a social structure that ought to be protected and encouraged by secular law and government: the formation and proliferation of monogamous relationships has provided an incentive for the largest number of both men and women to invest in each other, and the future (through child raising). In other words, the traditional model of family and marriage is one of the major driving forces behind the process of civilisation because it provides an incentive to both men and women to work together for a common goal while also creating a framework within which their energies and labour are motivated towards the collective public good in the long term.Young white girl in wheatfield you may not have seen yet.
This really needed saying. This was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀. “Religious freedom” is exactly the wrong tack to take, and that is why (apparently) the Catholic Bishops have chosen it. They choose to play on the Left’s turf: legitimizing the false belief in abstract rights. I just cringe when, each week in the Prayers of the Faithful, we pray that “conscience rights” might be “protected”… “Oh God, please let our special pleading in constitutional legalese be accepted by our unrighteous rulers… we pray to the Lord”… Lord do not hear our prayer.
Also at Sydney Trads a pretty good analysis of the Syria controversy: Against FrontPage’s Neocon Interventionism.
This Week in Arts & Letters
At City Journal, Steven Malanga outlines the woes of America’s third world rail system: Off the Rails, Again and Again: How Washington ensures that rail travel in the Northeast Corridor remains a nightmare. Heather Mac Donald reads the riot act to the dimwits (blacks apparently unaware of the concept of irony) who morally signaled this into existence: We Few, We Miserable Few. Mac Donald notes:
“We, few of the Black students here at Pomona, etc.” have it exactly backward. Free speech is the best tool for challenging hegemonic power. Absolute rulers seek to crush non-conforming opinion; the censor is the essential bulwark of tyrants.
White (ish) girl in wheatfield you may not have seen yet.
True enough, I suppose. Which, of course, doesn’t add up to an argument in favor of free speech (or any other abstract “right”). What Mac Donald has exactly backward is: “We, few (barely literate) blacks” are the hegemonic power… or client thereof.
This was interesting a review of David Callahan’s The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, which book A) I didn’t know existed; and B) seems to take a hard left tack against philanthropy — as in “Who dafuk elected these guys to fix the world?” This seems to be almost indistinguishable from the hard right tack of “Who dafuk elected these guys to fix the world?” Hey, Hard Left, you get the philanthropists you deserve.
Over at Imaginative Conservative, The Reaction’s most beloved Whig Edmund Burke and the Totalitarianism of Democracy. (But he was still a Whig!) Also there the poetry of (early) Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Concord Hymn”. The transcendentalists were the enemy, but they made some good art. This too was pretty good: Europe in Eclipse? — a meditation on what Europe means and how it might be salvaged.
Chris Gale has Three quotes and a poem… by G. K. Chesterton… and a nice Peter Frampton (senior citizen edition) video. And for Divine Mercy Sunday (the Octave of Easter in the Western Church), the poetry of John Donne: a Sunday Holy Sonnet.
This Week… Elsewhere
AMK has a plan for implementing a white ethnostate.
This Week in Dangerous Children (of potentially all ages), here’s: How to Learn About Everything.
Lue-Yee has a nice find: Lenin Against Free Love as ‘Bourgeois’. He was biting the Anglo-commie hands that fed him.
White girl in wheatfield you may not have seen yet.
TUJ has some pretty startling analysis: China is the Last Diplomatic Obstacle in the Way of a Second Korean War.
Fred Reed offers Notes for a White Kid in University: An Introduction to the Blindingly Obvious. Hopefully, the White Kid really needed to go to university in the first place.
Knight of Númenor asks: What kind of Tory are you? Also Why democracy does not work, part 2: “The people” does not exist. In America, there is no one people. Pretending there is can only mean one people is assimilating the others.
Heartiste scores some good points here in Freak Acceptance As Pressure Release Valve For Striver White Moms. “Am I a good mom?” applied far across the Dunbar Barrier.
Greg Cochran has some snark for economists of the regime (which they have more than earned): O Canada! Also a thumbnail sketch on Dysgenics — General.
By way of American Dad: building a 105-acre homestead in Montana sure must be nice.
The Talented Tenth really has their work cut out for them, if they actually want to help their people. (Truly Disturbing, Stomach-Churning Photo Alert on that link, BTW.)
Once you see the evil-white-cishet-patriarchy ruining literally everything, you can’t unsee it I guess… or something like that. Also: Did you know they have a Gender Diversity SPDR? The mean ol’ Patriarchy sure has her beaten down. LOL. This too: why the death of Fox News should be welcomed by the Dissident Right. Agreed.
Moose Norseman points out just how low the bar of “Old-Fashioned” is to clear these days.
This Week in Avant Garde Reaction: bit-nations and sovereign services. (Yes, he doesn’t capitalize, and I think it’s just to annoy you.)
Over at Colony of Commodus, Giovanni Dannato has musings upon the White Undertow: The Cause of SWPL Hate?
Zach Kraine sounds a hopeful note here: The changing political paradigm of the West. I do hope he’s right. But I’ve seen smelt many winds of changing political paradigms, all of which have thus far turned out to be yesterday’s poorly digested tomato and artichoke pizza.
Well, that’s all I had time fer. It’s ~6400 words and ~130 links… so it’ll have to do. Keep on liftin’! And keep on reactin! Til next week: NBS… Over and out!!
“Nigel T. Carsbad.” [sic] I had no idea that the “N” I picked was supposed to stand for that, but I just might end up using it, Nick.
It was a private joke. The N can stand for anything ya want… except “Nick”. We have far too many of them ’round yere.
Nick – I look forward to Wednesdays because of TWIR. Just wanted to say thanks and keep up the great work.
Thank you. I could use some minions if ya know anyone.
Discussions of the “problems” of meritocracy are meaningless as there is simply no credible replacement for meritocracy. The only possible option for reducing the potential of any kind of monopoly power and is dangers is radical decentralization, political and economic. This would allow the competent who are not a part of the existing power structure to go out and create their own systems and lives completely independent of any existing power structure. There is NO other possible approach to dealing with the problems of contemporary society.
The problem with any proposed “aristocracy” is whether any intelligent, competent, self-starter type individual would automatically be assumed to be a part of the “aristocracy”. If not, why the hell should they be expected to “knuckle under” a presumed “superiors” when in fact such “superiors” are not superior in any functional capabilities?
I was most surprised to learn that ‘white girl in a wheat field’ is a thing.
https://www.google.com.tw/search?q=white+girl+in+wheatfield
I didn’t check alfalfa.