Social Matter

America’s essential tension, going back to the first European settlements, is between a democratic egalitarianism and a heroic-aristocratic sensibility. Americans both expect to be able to advance themselves by going out into the frontier, making their own rules. Once they ‘make it,’ their fellows also expect the right to pull them back down to where they started, usually through legal or political processes, but sometimes by the relentless advance of public opinion. Success, unless it’s attacked or redistributed, will tend to calcify into permanent privilege. Over time, as that becomes more solid, a society that starts off on relatively even […]

The concept of Empire is one many Americans will reject and to which some will only admit as a recent phenomenon. The American education system has done a good job of hiding America’s control of the international scene since World War II. Americans love an underdog, and they desperately want to think of their country as the big supporter to little underdogs everywhere, simply fighting for freedom. But it’s easy to explain the peace established after World War II as Pax Americana, and the world being ours. Even deniers can be persuaded when the masters rip off their masks and examples of imperial moves […]

Among the more educated members of the young middle class, the growing cost of higher education and the lower returns from it for many specialties has resulted in generally diminished life outcomes for those people. Even the most successful members of the rising generation — apart from a few outliers — struggle to buy homes, get married, and otherwise become good ‘consumers’ under the modern model. The older generations — many of whom were among the first in their family lines to attend college — realized stupendous returns from ‘cheap’ subsidized educations which still held some reputational clout. As time […]

There’s a strange pattern among ancient monarchs and their dynasties. There never seems to have been a long series of great kings but a regular and predictable decline. Very rare was the dynasty that managed to last more than three generations. The archetypal example is, of course, the principate in Rome. First we have Augustus, who seized power by force of arms but then created an image for himself as a man of peace. Not everyone liked Augustus or approved of everything he did, but respect and admiration for him was all but universal. Tiberius, on the other hand, started […]

How does anyone overcome an addiction? One has to admit there is a problem. Following that admission, a major stumbling block for many recovering addicts is admitting the problem’s depth, enablers, and root causes. Some addicts think they can fix it by moving, but all they achieve is geographic sobriety. The root causes and broken circuits are not being fixed. We have that nationwide with heroin right now. We are too sick as a nation to admit what the root causes are. Our media cannot even be honest with us because to do so would be to frighten the population. The […]

Before the 20th century in the United States, schooling until early adulthood was largely an optional pursuit, reserved for some portion of the middle classes and better, mostly being a social pursuit that many considered impractical. Because apart from in a few states, schooling was noncompulsory, parents had options about how to prepare their children for the rigors and responsibilities of adulthood. Contrary to feminist cant, women in just about all social classes did need to learn productive pursuits. At a time when the industrial economy had yet to take shape, the household economy was still much more important. Being […]

The greatest crime and the surest proof of the insanity of the democracy in Athens, an outrage that cast a black mark on that city’s glory for two-and-a-half thousand years, was the judicial murder of Socrates in 399 B.C. On trumped up charges of impiety and corruption of the youth, a completely blameless man, in truth more pious and devoted to the education and improvement of young men than anyone else in Athens, was put to death. Spite, spite was the motive of his accusers and judges; spite for his unwavering virtue and pursuit of truth: his inquiries showcased their […]

Egypt’s coup by the military was not greeted with protests. The coup offered a respite from the intense violence between rival Islamist political parties and their street gangs. Bread also became a manageable cost for Egyptians, as well, with the help of Saudi money. The junta did not waste time dealing with rivals, sentencing to death hundreds. Food flowed and the American media got bored. Now, Egypt is sentencing former President Morsi to death along with followers, and the American media is giving Morsi and company the full opportunity to generate global sympathy. Even if Morsi and his cronies are executed, the […]

For a little while now, my responsibilities in real life have been piling up in such a manner that my lavishly compensated position as a Social Matter columnist has had to take a back seat, which is regrettable, I know, to my four or five avid fans here. You know who you are. My plan was to try to coast through June or so, but, in the light of the recent crystallization of neoreaction, I’ve decided that now would be the best time to vacate that position. My neoreactionary colleagues here have been very kind to allow my somewhat vanilla conservative […]