Part of the attraction of libertarianism for contemporary conservatives is that it functions as a defensive strategy. One some level, very deep down, they subtly understand that capture of the state and its regulatory agencies is an impossible task—at least as things now stand. There’s a subconscious acknowledgment of the pervasiveness of the Cathedral. When your comprehensive doctrine has no chance at mimetically infiltrating institutions of governance, the strategy shifts to advocating the removal of comprehensive doctrines from institutions of governance. In reality, there technically can be no absence of comprehensive doctrines—all I mean by that is that loosely conceived […]

To at once again become whole As we once were whole, but perhaps It is not as I have said it, the lapse Between the now and then-soul Is too much even for my pretense To make a show of present tense; But dear ones, do consider this In your quite air-conditioned mind Did you at least once escape find Hurtling into an all-present bliss Of terror, love, grief and rage If only by falling into a page? But we are more than what we are And so buffered in our padded cell Do indeed find each other hell A […]

I remember reading somewhere that grandmaster chess players have a hard time articulating why they make the moves that they do in competitive, tournament play. They make brilliant moves, obviously, so it’s not like they’re just shuffling pieces across the board at random. Nevertheless, if you asked them, as a virtuoso of their craft, to chart up a “If X happens, then do Y” protocol for their world-class play, they couldn’t do it. No matter how many branches you granted them for their flowchart. No matter how many pages or illustrations you allotted for their how-to manual. I tried to […]

On July 8th, 2005, less than six months after the movement lost Sam Francis, the unauthorized right lost another figure we are forever indebted to – Wilmot Robertson. As the editor of Instauration and author of The Dispossessed Majority, few did more to keep the torch going between the collapse of organized Southern resistance in the early ‘70s, and rise of American Renaissance and paleoconservatism in the ‘90s. Kevin MacDonald, F. Roger Devlin, and the editors of The Occidental Quarterly have all written impressive praises of the man, but Robertson’s work speaks for itself—specifically one of the most impressive chapters […]

Conservatism does not care about the past.  Well that’s a very odd thing to say.  Individual conservatives certainly care deeply about the past, what their forebears did, how things have always been done, and so forth.  But conservatism itself does not care. Let’s first consider an obvious objection.  Conservative thinkers have long lauded the wisdom of the ages embodied in tradition and been wary of innovation precisely because it attempts to substitute for long experience what people in the mere present think best.  Better to endure some hardships preserving the old ways than to cast aside their unrecognized, and so […]

Until the last few centuries, religion, and particularly shared religion, was seen as critical to the maintenance of civilized society. Bringing up the mystical element that pervades religion tends to turn off the ability of secular readers to think about it, so this short essay will stick towards the strictly secular benefits of religion. The first advantage of most religions is that they are easy to understand and based in symbolism and ritual. This makes them accessible to people who are not literate, or who are literate but only in the basic sense of the term. All religions provide some […]

In honor of the inaugural celebration of Annual Write About Religion Week here at our internationally renown e-magazine, I thought I’d do just that: sit here and type up some of my thoughts on faith and identity. The problem with that plan, though, is that I have neither the expertise nor the vocation to preach on such topics with any sort of authority. But I hope you won’t hold that against me. Instead, for your part, you just take whatever haphazard theological propositions this post includes with the necessary grains of salt. I, for my part, will try to stick […]

Pluralism works in the event that you’ve secured cooperation among groups. That is, no one particular group attempts to force the comprehensiveness of that group’s religion on other religions. It’s difficult to find a group that finds the milquetoast state of affairs brought on by pluralism to be acceptable. There’s an internal sense of fulfillment when Muslims are allowed to govern themselves according to Sharia. But because all groups with almost no exceptions have comprehensive doctrines, we arrive at a very familiar scenario. Cooperation brings utility, but the dominant strategy is to seize higher utility by defecting from cooperation and […]