This week we’re trying a couple new things. Our “This Week in Evolutionist X” subsection has gotten renamed to “This Week in HBD” in the hopes (if not actual execution… yet) of more complete coverage of the wider HBD domain. And a new subsection has emerged: “This Week in Besieged Liberalism”. We’re not thrilled with that, or any other, name, but it’s kind of hard to communicate accurately the purpose of this subsection without prolixity and excessive polysyllabicity. If you’ve got a better suggestion, we’re all ears…
So this week saw the Release of the Memo—a Persuasion Disaster for Anti-Trump. Worse Than Watergate? As well, the State of the Union address.
Over at American Greatness, Brandon Wiechert is not at all happy with AG Jeff Sessions: J’Recuse! The Attorney General Who Wasn’t There. And Roger Kimball finds Trump Restores the ‘We’.
VDH takes us From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies.
Let’s see… what else was going on?
Navigate…
The renaissance of Unamusement Park continues unabated. He examines the alleged sneakiness of Japan’s Sneak Attack at Pearl Harbor 75 years ago. St. FDR is alleged to have steered a “neutral” course in the lead-up to the Day of Infamy.
There are a number of weaknesses in (what we might call) the neutrality narrative, which bears a striking resemblance to American World War II propaganda.
A number too large to count really, but Unamused hits quite a few and snags an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for his efforts.
Also there, Unamused puts “Honest” Abe Lincoln under the lens of Old Books™ on the question of Honesty in politics. History, not hagiography.
He takes note of several ways by which to tell if your shithole country just might be Overcoming the legacy of colonialism. Unamused concludes with a fantastic quotation from Evelyn Waugh, who may have known a thing or two about the eevuls of “colonialism”.
He has a report card on American phenotype groups are Keeping together, getting along
Unamusement Park offers a Survival guide, for a racist grandma near you, concluding with a superb meditation from de Tocqueville.
And finally, he analyzes the Gender revolution. Or may “genderal” revolution, in contrast with the sexual revolution. In case you were wondering…
Men and women are identical. They may appear to be different in a number of ways — indeed, they may appear to have always been different in roughly the same ways — but that is an illusion created by an insufficiently feminist society, which forces us to carry out an arbitrarily selected “gender” role forever.
Here, Unamused answers with a wallop from Lothrop Stoddard.
Up at Northern Dawn, John MacMhuirich has a superb essay on Canadian nationalism: What Is A Nation?
I argue that the most ‘true’ sense of a nation will consist of all three features: biology, society, and state.
On that basis, he finds Quebec, for example, to be a different nation than Canada. Perhaps with an even stronger claim to the status of nation—at least in the present circumstances. This was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Contingent Not Arbitrary continues his path of self-guided, fully-conscious brain surgery in a How To Epistemology. Then he takes a step back to lay some foundational principles of his quest. He considers The Filioque, Reformation Edition.
It’s a good thing Imperial Energy has the… energy… to keep up with the Nork News. His report this week: The North Korean Nuclear Crisis III: Determinism, Diplomacy and Averting Destruction.
Spandrell is enjoying The Jordan Peterson movement, but has legitimate concerns for it’s long-term health. Peterson clearly did not sign up to lead a fascist movement—but that’s pretty much what he’s doing.
Over at GA Blog Adam contrasts “disciplinary spaces” from non-disciplinary in Order and Repetition. As always, it’s very meta.
Attentional spaces, like all spaces, are implicitly absolutist—they want the world held steady while they pursue their interest—but they can’t know themselves to be so, and can easily get distracted by and drawn into schemes of subversion which provide compelling centers of attention. Disciplinary spaces can know themselves to be absolutist because their participants know that only within an ordered state can the activities of the discipline be fully self-generated and therefore genuinely disciplinary. Nothing is more deadly to the disciplinary space than the infusion of power struggles and nothing is more favorable than power resting upon the competent pursuit of a mission.
This too was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Alf outlines the genetic strategies of Rightists, leftists and centrists. And he has a big LOL in explaining Scott Alexander.
And Alf’s speculative Orb of Covfefe novella continues with Part VIII—smoking in Ipswich.
Neovictorian checks in with a teaser from his new novel Sanity, which I am now currently reading.
Just beating the buzzer this week, Shylock Holmes passes in an essay on Narcissism and the Rise of Celebrity Culture. Our particular celebrities at any rate.
Malcolm Pollack contemplates Time for a change—after THIRTEEN YEARS(!!) of blogsistence.
Over at Jacobite, Alessandra Bocchi produces A Field Guide to the Italian New Right. The content is just as the title promises: a description of the rising Right wing in Italian politics.
Congratulations are in order for Anatoly Karlin, as he now has his own entry in RationalWiki. Just in case anyone is keeping score, not even Mencius Moldbug has his own individual entry. Yet.
Anatoly Karlin also had a substantive post on superpower demographics. Basically, if your population has an average IQ over a certain value and you want regional or global power, have babies!
Population size doesn’t matter much if your goal is to live as a small, comfy, unambitious Switzerland or Singapore. But a large population, along with a sufficiently high IQ, remains of sine qua non of being a Great Power or superpower.
…
Increasing fertility towards the upper bounds of what was historically observed in the industrialized world – e.g., TFR=4 in the US during the late 1950s – is basically a cheat code for massively augmenting your national power over the course of just a couple of generations.
By way of Isegoria… We have to be able to talk about cars, too, in which it is alleged merely giving every transit user a car would be more cost-effective than transit subsidies. I think that comparison says more about the clowns in charge of transit than it does about anything inherent to American commuting. Of course, it isn’t as though $10 billion worth of extra cars only costs $10 billion. Filed under things that literally never change: Good guys battle bad guys for the moral future of society, A malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete. JBP speaks with Quilette. Thoughts on the actual breakthrough of Bitcoin. Private gun ownership in Kenya, legal and otherwise. And JBP on Joe Rogan’s.
This week in Cambria Will Not Yield: Protecting All That We Hold Dear.
This Week in Jim Donald
Jim is back this week with a couple of timely posts, so away we go.
First up, he reminds us that the science is settled, which is one of those phrases that has become extremely politically charged… I wonder why. But what does it mean to say that “the science is settled”? I’ll let Jim answer.
These days, the way to get ahead in any area of science is to discover that your field has some political relevance that is unlikely to occur to any sane person, and then produce data that supposedly comforts the oppressed and saves the earth from cruel exploitation by white males. For an added bonus, you can destroy the careers of your colleagues as oppressors of the weak and vulnerable, because back in the bad old days they upheld the old evil theory (now refuted by your new data) for no reason other than hatred of some saintly victims and desire to cause harm to those saintly and long suffering victims.
And coming in just before the deadline, cause that’s how he rolls, Jim has some thoughts on the big FISA memo story. If you expected triumphant crowing along the lines of ‘see, I told you so!’, you don’t know Jim very well and probably are insufficiently red pilled.
It has long been known, long before the memo, that the Deep State engaged in illegal spying both with a false warrant, and without a warrant, on behalf of the Democratic Party Presidential Campaign.
…
The memo, with much drama, does a big reveal of one part of this story, one small part of a story that we already know, that they obtained a pretextual warrant on behalf of and in coordination with the Democratic Party Presidential Campaign.
Expect, leading up to the 2018 elections, further big dramatic reveals of the story that we already know, which will provide a legal basis for a political purge of the supposedly non political appointees in the Deep State, and to send Hillary to prison.
Expect a 2018 campaign as referendum on impeaching Trump.
If they get the numbers to impeach Trump, or get away with pretending to have the numbers, he goes to jail, and so do many members of his administration, followed by numerous Republicans, leaving only shadow rump composed of a rapidly diminishing number of the most overtly and loudly cucking Republicans—European politics. If they don’t, Hillary, or key members of her organization, go to jail.
Everyone knows that the Deep State tips the scales in favor of the Inner Party. In order to play in the political sandbox, as it is currently constituted in the Western world, you are required to not know that you know the Deep State tips the scales in favor of the Inner Party. I believe that is what Mr. Orwell identified as doublethink.
This Week in Social Matter
Benjamin Welton kicks off the week at Social Matter with a wonderful history on “Mad” Mike Hoare: White Giant.
Hoare, like Ian Smith of Rhodesia, sincerely believed that white civilization could bring black Africa out of its generational malaise. However, both men believed that native Africans had their limits, and [Hoare’s memoir] Congo Mercenary is unflinching when it comes to detailing the savagery of Afro-Marxists and black nationalists once they recognized that the Europeans had pulled out of Africa.
Meanwhile, Welton manages to cast a lot of reasonable doubt on the Officially Accepted Congo Narrative: King Leopold of Belgium was literally a “butcher”. And trace the rise and ultimate downfall of the once most advanced economic engine in sub-Saharan Africa: Belgian Congo. The Committee were impressed with this one, to the tune of an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
In the essential Myth of the 20th Century podcast, the West Coast Guyz offer: Episode 55: Spanish Civil War—Fascist Uprising.
Our good friend Frederick Franz makes a smashing debut as author at Social Matter look at America As Rome.
America was clearly founded as a new Rome. This was done consciously by the intellectual class and was meant as more than a simple homage. Intellectuals in the new America wanted to create a republic to emulate and surpass the glory of Rome. Any walk down the Washington D.C. Mall will show they were more than moderately successful. Not coincidentally, the first modern historical text about Rome was published in 1776 by Edward Gibbon.
Surprisingly, Franz takes Gibbon’s influential view that Christianity indeed played a significant role in the downfall of Rome. But he thinks the Founders attempts to disestablish Christianity in America fully backfired.
Rome had just won the ancient version of World War II, the Third Punic War. In that war, Rome devastated its rival, Carthage, and remade it in Rome’s image. General Lucius D. Clay, deputy to General Eisenhower and in 1945, the Military Governor of U.S.-Occupied Germany, was the first to compare the events.[1] If anyone was in a position to make the comparison, it would be him. The Punic Wars were defensive in nature, fought to protect Rome from the Carthaginian menace. In the process, Rome conquered the known world in a single generation. Does that ring any bells? Conquering the world in self-defense? The Founding Fathers really had no idea how much their copy of Rome would replay its history.Roman Naval Attack on Carthage
And the parallels are just getting started in Franz’s account. This excellent, even if controversial, work garnered an
☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award☀.
For Saturday Poetry & Prose, long-time contributor Lawrence Glarus pens an epic poem: Pinch.
And speaking of essential podcasts… our own Ascending the Tower podcast made it out on Sunday: Episode XIX—“Reminding The King That He Serves God”. Me and Anthony and Bandleader Antony are joined by my Michael Perilloux and P. T. Carlo for a rousing discussion of monarchical rule in both heaven and on earth.
This Week in HBD
Evolutionist X kicks off the week with another invaluable “Cathedral Round-Up”: #29: Pinker, Truth, and Liars. Besieged liberal Pinker suggested that political correctness just might be playing a role in the radicalization of the right. And the usual suspects went apeshit.
The difference between Pinker and the Left is that Pinker is (trying) to be honest. Pinker believes in truth. He believes in believing true things and discussing true things. He believes that just because you believe a true thing doesn’t mean you have to go down this road to believing other, in his opinion untrue, things. You can believe more than one true thing. You can simultaneously believe “Blacks commit more homicide than whites” and believe “Blacks should not be discriminated against.”
By contrast, the Left is not trying to be honest. It is not looking for truth. It just wants to win.
Indeed.
Next up, one of Mrs. X’s “Favorite Things”… Beringian DNA.
And for Anthropology Friday: Numbers and the Making of Us by Caleb Everett, pt 3.
You see, the Piraha really can’t count. Line up 3 spools of thread and ask them to make an identical line, and they can do it. Line up 4 spools of thread, and they start getting the wrong number of spools. Line up 10 spools of thread, and it’s obvious that they’re just guessing and you’re wasting your time. Put five nuts in a can, then take two out and ask how many nuts are left: you get a response on the order of “some.”*
And this is not for lack of trying. The Piraha know other people have these things called “numbers.” They once asked Everett’s parents, the missionaries, to teach them numbers so they wouldn’t get cheated in trade deals. The missionaries tried for 8 months to teach them to count to ten and add small sums like 1 + 1. It didn’t work and the Piraha gave up.
Despite these difficulties, Everett insists that the Piraha are not dumb. After all, they survive in a very complex and demanding environment….
Mr. Everett may have neglected one of the more parsimonious explanations:
… that the Piraha are otherwise normal people who are innately bad at math.
Doesn’t hurt them too much where they are, but they’d have a devil of a time getting along in the moderns society.
Gregory Cochran reviews Bryan Caplan’s new book The Case Against Education. Cochran mostly agrees with Caplan, but argues that Caplan understates the ideological effect of college on students…just because Cthulhu’s swimming slowly doesn’t mean he isn’t swimming. The review is short, so RTWT.
This Week at Thermidor Mag
It was a busy week over at our sister publication Thermidor with a lot of new faces. From the tail end of the previous week is Jake Bowyer’s proposal: Let’s Scare the Oligarchs to Death. Bowyer comments on the Steele Dossier fiasco and expresses hopes for a general “awakening” to the corruption in D. C. That would be nice, of course, but we shouldn’t be holding our breath.
Newcomer Peter B. Miller offers up a meandering meditation in The Soul in Torment. Miller ponders the changes that modernity has wrought on the formation of identity and summarizes well-worn reactionary conclusions.
Before modernity, identity was a given. It was provided by the family and region one was born into and the work that one did. Family names reflected this. As the first industrial revolution took hold, identity became more fluid and uncertain. It gave birth to romanticism and nationalism where the former elements of identity were slowly replaced by myth, nature, and ethnicity (perfectly exemplified by the operas of Richard Wagner). The recent explosion of identity politics is a weak substitute for the more grounded forms of the pre-modern world. Race, sexual orientation, and gender are desperately clung to by people who have lost the more natural components of identity.
Next up, N. T. Carlsbad reviews some forgotten American history in the Czechoslovak Lobby in America. Carlsbad describes the role of Czech agitators and emigres to bring about the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Eternal Czech!!
This year’s March for Life gets two articles of commentary, neither positive. Walter Devereux gives An Anti-Abortion Ally’s Account of the Embarrassing Failure that was the 2018 March for Life. Devereux chronicles the day’s activities and focuses his attention on the rhetoric of the speakers.
There was an adopted mulatto speaker who even took a moment to aside about how race is merely “a human construct”; it was a needless non-sequitur in the middle of a rhetorically effective (if intellectually barren) argument for adoption. This is representative of a pointless and morally ineffectual rhetorical approach adopted by the Pro-Life movement from conservative commentators who think they’re clever because they can poke logical holes in the arguments made by the likes of Black Lives Matter—oblivious, as conservatives usually are, that the principal rhetorical tool employed by such groups is violence.
Devereux also contrasts the speeches of President Trump and Congressman Ryan. Naturally, Trump comes out on top.
Trump and Ryan did essentially the same thing, taking the themes and slogans of Pro-Life and adapting them into a speech aimed to court the Pro-Life movement into supporting them. The difference is that Trump went for substance while Ryan went for style, and Trump delivered a better speech as a result. It was the perfect contrast between the Congressional Outer Party and the Trump movement.
Richard Greenhorn makes his debut with Devilís Bargain: The March for Life and the Novus Ordo Church. Greenhorn reviews the troubled history of the Catholic Church in American on the issues of abortion, contraceptives, and sexual morality in general. As for the March itself, Greenhorn is unimpressed.
Remember the hubbub of Candidate Trump suggesting women who murder their children should be criminally prosecuted? Poor Candidate Trump was only saying what he thought was logically necessary. But pro-lifers said this was off limits. Perhaps some of this was realpolitik—there’s no reason to ask for blood when you have no power, after all. But you got the impression that wasn’t the case. It’s like pro-lifers wouldn’t know what to do with power even if they got it.
As an explanation for this, lack of seriousness, Greenhorn identifies the bifurcation in the minds of Americans between sex and reproduction.
How many Marchers would give up their contraceptives? How many women would relinquish the sexual power the past half-century has given them? Outdoor protests in January are not propitious to short-shorts and tees, but you’ll still find plenty women Marchers wearing contour-fitting jeans and tights behind the “Pro-Family, Pro Women, Pro-Life” signs. For a large part of the Marchers—probably a majority—the issue of sexual morality is tenuously connected or even distinct from that of abortion. The average Marcher, just like the average American, has thoroughly embraced the contraceptive mindset. She has divorced sex from childbearing. Just stop killing your babies—then everything will be alright.
Abortion is a second tier issue. It is the natural result of the liberation of women; the natural result of contraception, of our contemporary lack of chastity. A culture of casual sex by intellectual and spiritual fools requires some kind of suffering to maintain. Yet for almost all abortion opponents, abortion is an issue completely divorced from sex. They operate on the delusion, built by centuries of Christian sexual morality, that chastity, in the form of lifelong monogamy, is natural. But the exact opposite is true.
For this valuable perspective and corrective, the Committee honored Greenhorn with the ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀ this week.
Europa Weekly this week gives us The Free Market is Gay.
Leonid Savin produces Responsible Power: Towards a New Frame of International Relations. Savin discusses the work of several American political scientists writing about power, its modes and expressions, and decides that Russia needs a new and different set of ideas.
A Russian approach will be effective when it confirms the clear hierarchy of decision-making in the interests of the country and state in harmony with divided responsibility, the goal of global social justice, a long-term strategy for any kind of activity (be it political, economic or cultural), and the impossibility of consensus on a series of questions of principle (for example, the blocking of ecumenical initiatives by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is an organic part of Russian power, or a full ban on gay-propaganda and single-sex marriage in the country). In addition, we consider the alignment of the structure of power to necessarily be linked to our geopolitical approach. Thus, land power must be the foundation of all possible emanations of power in Russia, through military force as well as through different diplomatic instruments, including the activities of different layers of society.
Savin writes specifically for a Russian audience, which makes his piece a bit strange for an American to read. Strange, but informative.
Finally, Thomas de Terminus makes his Thermidor debut with The Maslowian Overman. That’s Thomas Maslow of the “hierarchy of needs” fame. Terminus sees the top of Maslow’s hierarchy, “self-actualization,” as a viable alternative to Nietzsche’s übermensch, indeed superior in several respects.
For starters, he actually exists; any man can, in theory, attain or at the very least approach self-actualization by satisfying the baser needs of human nature, whereas Nietzsche’s Overman was by design an unattainable ideal, a literal superhuman being that all generations of mankind would eternally strive for and fail to reach.
Moreover, Maslow’s self-actualized man possesses a spiritual dimension, in contrast to the purely physical Nietzschean Overman. The Nietzschean Overman was necessarily of the world, deriving his power and his station from his supposed physical superiority. The Maslowian Overman requires no physical confirmation of his superiority—other than the satisfaction of the physiological needs of hunger and homeostasis—and is instead concerned with achieving psychological and spiritual peace and confidence.
Terminus goes on to apply his interpretation of Maslow to the bourgeoisie and aristocracy and derive implications for social and political organization. de Terminus earns an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for his excellent efforts here.
—David Grant
This Week Around The Orthosphere
Faith & Heritage runs some Pew Research numbers on Religion and National Identity.
Knight Stephen of Númenor envisions a New American Mythology, which, we agree, is absolutely essential for long-term restoration. And speaking of Rome, the envisioning continues with: America after this democratic Republic II: Build the new Rome. Very solid points all through this one.
The Roman part must complete the American deep heritage, together with Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Norman and settlers elements. Other elements are Teutonic, Slavic, Greek, Baltic, Finno-Ugric, Vasconic and Mediterranean
America must get rid of the Enlightenment equality garbage that its Founding Fathers mistakenly espoused, as well as the yoke of the global neo-Communist “Blue Empire” and become the true heir to the Roman Empire. It must be educated with Roman values and classics. What it means to be a good Roman citizen should inform what it means to be a good American citizen.
It must become the highest expression of European civilization, a nation where Europeans come together to establish something higher, something greater, something brighter and more capable than all the states throughout history.
European history since the fall of Rome may be approximated as a series of attempts to regain what was lost in that fall.
America’s history began not in 1776. It did not on the board of the Mayflower. It did not begin with the history of England. It did begin even with Celtic tribes on the island of Britain. But even that is not enough. America’s history also began with the founding of Rome.
And he has a third installment (conclusion?) here: Envisioning America, the Anglo-Rome. Excellent work from Knight of Númenor, the second article is I think the standout of the series and Stephen takes home the rare ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award☀.
Knight of Númenor also has a two-part series on “The problem with Reaction and a proposed alternative”: Part 1: How Reaction might fail and Part 2: How to practice republican monarchy and aristocracy
Over at The Orthosphere proper, Kristor shows how the Incarnation & Transubstantiation are Formally Analogous, particularly where they similarly defy human understanding. Then he describes how Nation & Culture Coinhere in Cult rather inextricably, demonstrating the inseverability of religion and nation. Last, he rejects a certain conspiratorial trajectory of history and predicts The Great Sortition, where homogeneous cultures see to their own interests.
Alan Roebuck writes this Letter to My Son: Old Movies and Books Help Inoculate You against Liberalism.
In the old movies and books most men are masculine and most women are feminine. In the old movies and books Christianity is generally honored as the religion of our people. In the old books and movies divorce, adultery and abortion are shameful. . In the old books and movies white Americans do not welcome masses of immigrants and refugees or apologize for their “white privilege” or their “xenophobia.” In the old movies and books, the madness of liberalism only lives in a few villains and other odd characters.
J. M. Smith narrates a modern retelling of an old nursery rhyme in Tussling on a Tuffet: A Tale of Our Times. Then he notices a disconnect between the classical definition of “patriot” and its American counterpart, concluding that New England Patriots is an Oxymoron.
I do not doubt that there are and have been patriots in New England, but cannot overlook the irony that, of all the American peoples, New Englanders have always been the most exuberantly patricidal.
Swedish-born Ann Margret.
Bonald paints the newest Papal proverb, “Time is greater than space” as an illustration of the intellectual vacuity of today’s clerical culture. Then he makes a short, interesting list of possible theories of substance. He also writes The tribal Catholic on the value of loyal intellectuals to the restoration, particularly regarding subjects where reasonable minds can differ.
Matt Briggs argues There Can Be No Consistent Atheist System Of Morality Or Ethics because whenever the implications of atheism are followed to their natural ends, the conclusion is inevitably that nothing matters. Then he asks, Should We Worry Artificial Neurons Can Now Compute Faster Than the Human Brain? Short answer: nope, because mere processing speed cannot compete with actual awareness. Finally, reporting this week on the insanity and doom front, a Pedophile Says He’s a 9-Year-Old Trapped in Man’s Body. Therefore, He Is.
Guest posting at Briggs, the Blonde Bombshell introduces readers to one of the hottest new conspiracy theories surrounding an anonymous channer, asking Who Is Q & Why Might He Matter?
William Wildblood imagines what Evolving Consciousness and its Results might look like if we moved past materialism.
In this world, men and women would understand their true complementary roles, and neither would try to dominate the other unnaturally. That doesn’t mean there would be equality. Equality is an illusion which when enforced, as now, leads to a massive distortion of reality. But there would be harmony as each sex took up its true vocation and genuinely respected the other for what it was without trying to imitate that other. Women would not seek to rival men and men would not seek to diminish women. Each sex would recognise how it needs the other.
—Hans der Fiedler
This Week in Arts & Letters
Seriouslypleasedropit offers a poem that he’s memorized from William J. Bennett’s Book of Virtues: If. Along with… some solid commentary thereupon.
PA is becoming a regular Poetry Translation Machine. Some more this week from the original Polish: “I shake like a spleen ripped out of an eel”
Memorized, translated, and… original: Lulach the Simpler lends his pen to Derb’s call for a Worldwide Nationalist anthem: “The Nationale”. An admittedly tall order… for obvious reasons.
Chris Gale wraps up his Belloc cycle with our Sunday Sonnet. He also offers his Defense of Traditions, along with some Quotage on the issue of women in modernity. Lastly, an observation on how our kids (and adults) are Spoiled Rotten.
Heather MacDonald of City Journal gives a rundown of the Left’s broad-spectrum push to fulfill a panoply of identity quotas in #MediocrityToo.
Richard Carroll dives into the real meat of Plato with his review of Republic. Highly recommended. And an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
At Albion Awakening, John Fitzgerald presents a short story on The Advent of Arthur.
Finally, at Logos Club, Kaiter Enless schools us on some of the Overlooked Fundamentals of Fiction Writing, for the aspiring reactionary writers among us. God knows we need more of them.
This Week in the Outer Left
With the demise of The Awl, it was a light week on the left.
Grace Kelly, American Film Actress and Princess of Monaco
The Baffler had a rare article we can kinda get behind, analyzing the proposed acquisition of much of Fox by Disney as Simulacra, Inc.. It goes to show how confused the true-believing socialist left really is in our current circumstances. The acquisition would make Disney by far the most powerful player in Hollywood, and likely in television and paid streaming services as well. That is supposed to be bad because “muh evil concentrated capitalism”, but Disney is at the very vanguard of pushing the poz, so what is a true-believer socialist to do? Well, go to Baudrillard I suppose, which just goes to show how bankrupt and desperate the left is getting to try to make their worldview make sense.
You probably don’t realize this if you haven’t studied 20th century Continental philosophy, but even among the French post-modernists and post-structuralists, Baudrillard is still considered something of a punchline. It is telling that they have to dig so deep to try and muster up some way to oppose moves by Disney. Our leftists just ain’t what they used to be. Sad!
And our LRx friend, cyborg_nomade had a provocative post claiming that capitalism = feminism. As I said, quite provocative, so give it a read.
individual freedom (responsibility) will soon cease to be optional.
destruction of traditional marriage (patriarchy) is inherent in the development of commercial societies. capital wants to bypass the middlemen and cut a deal directly with women—the matrices of its substrate. thus it becomes ever more economically unfeasible, under capitalism, to keep women out of the workforce. in the end, capitalism = feminism (as a process).
I’mma let him finish this series, but here’s a brief rebuttal: most women are not directly economically productive units. Capitalism existed long before feminism and it had to reach a certain base level of productivity before societies could afford to burn resources by integrating women into jobs for which they are ill-suited, which is most of them. For the median woman in a job outside of certain fields where nurturing is a useful trait, removing her from the company and not even replacing her would constitute an increase in productivity. Ask Jim, he’ll tell you.
This Week in Besieged Liberalism
We kicking off a new subsection this week that is very difficult to name. Think Stephen Pinker, Jordan B. Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, and Sam Harris: Principled liberals, with significant shreds of decency, who find themselves increasingly in the cross-hairs of the blood-thirsty monster that liberalism has created. We like to think of them as… Pre-Reactionaries. Here’s some of what went down this week…
Heterodox Academy put out multiple articles on viewpoint diversity this week. Coleman Hughes has some horror stories from Columbia University, which appears to be somewhat lacking in viewpoint diversity. They also review a study titled “Intellectual Humility and Openness to the Opposing view,” which concludes that intellectual humility leads to openness to opposing views. Unfortunately, the Cathedral’s priests aren’t exactly selected for their intellectual humility. Nick Phillips argues that conservatives shouldn’t provoke professors and administrators by passing legislation protecting viewpoint diversity. We, on the other hand, think that provoking the beast into overreacting is exactly what conservatives should do…if they ever want to win, anyway.
Over at The Rubin Report, Rubin has a two-hour long discussion about “free speech activism” with Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Peterson notes Nietzsche’s prediction that societies which kill God will become nihilistic and totalitarian… anarcho-tyrannical, if you will. Peterson is notably less sanguine about the enlightenment than Little Ben. Unsurprisingly.
Danish mulatto lawyer Jacob Mchangama kicked off his free speech history podcast Clear and Present Danger discussing the relationship between free speech and ‘democracy’ in ancient Athens. (Scare quotes because ancient Athenian democracy ain’t what you think.)
Finally, Ribbonfarm has an article on “gray man,” survivalists who prepare in secret. What’s the fun in it if ya can’t brag about it?
—Burgess McGill
This Week… Elsewhere
Well… Moby got a vasectomy—kind of a Darwin Jr. Award: a net gain for Western Civilization. Vasectomy, Heartiste notes, is an Alpha-ectomy, to say nothing of it being a violation of the timeless and irreformable teachings of the Church.
Al Fin is bullish on the Trump Tax Reform: Latest Boon to US Economic Growth. He also has a pessimistic look at Russian fertility statistics. And Fin has a nice overview of Peterson’s 12 Rules: Antidote to Chaos.
Over at Zeroth Position, firebrand Insula Qui kicks off (apparently) a new series: On Libertarianism and Statecraft: Introduction. He proposes the creation of a “libertarian theory of statecraft,” whilst maintaining the non-necessity of the state. A tough row to hoe, IMO.
Libertarianism is fundamentally antithetical to statism, but contrary to popular wisdom, not to governance and statecraft. There is no libertarian theory on how a government ought to govern because libertarianism has been an anti-government philosophy, and confusion between government and governance leads to limited thinking. Furthermore, by not focusing on governance, libertarians are at risk of ignoring the fact that without the state, there still will be massive structures of governance because even voluntary associations require bylaws and organizational structure. Thus, there is only folly in ignoring the question of statecraft.
So what’s “statism” exactly? Serious question, especially if one is going to espouse an ideology “fundamentally antithetical to it. Well, Mr. Qui, offers more here. And it is not terribly long. A recommended read and an impressive ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀. We’ll be looking forward to future installments.
Also there, Nullus Maximus has a deep meditation on On Linguistic Warfare. This too was an excellent bit of analysis, earning an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Because everyone in a democratic system has a slice of political power, everyone becomes a political target. The deliberate engineering of permanent conflict in society that is democratic government ensures that weaponization of language is omnipresent. Thus, all linguistic innovation is hindered to the detriment of rationality and real progress, as efforts which could have gone toward higher endeavors is misdirected into internal disputes.
He goes on to describe better and worse strategic countermeasures.
Gratuitous pic of girl with flowers in hair
Ace checks in with considerations on the whens and hows of male submission: “I got the haircut they told me I should get; I can’t remember what they said to forget…”
AMK offers a humorous warning: Don’t create genetically enhanced African warlords: intelligence is not just IQ. I think he’s right, I just don’t think it’s that big of a concern at present.
Unorthodoxy documents: David Brooks Wants to Replace You. Just when we were beginning to think he might not!
Down Under, Lorenzo analyzes The Illusion of free banking.
Justin Murphy is doing some real social science. He uses some “big data” to analyze The Moral Foundations of Social Justice Warriors.
Loretta the Prole has some Feedback for Paul Nehlen. He’s getting shipwrecked on “The Jews” unfortunately.
Zach Kraine posts his thoughts on Welfare. He’s basically correct about the tribal nature of it. No one minds helping out Our Guys, but no one wants to pay for Those Lousy Bums. I’m remain unconvinced about automation arguments. If automation increases the productivity of labor—which seems obvious—why would it lead to fewer people being employed? No one has ever riddled me this. Also there: considerations on Masculinity and Femininity.
Meta-Nomad continues his film review series in two entries, TSPDT 2, and TSPDT 3. Number 2 also has a bundled reflection on Outside, and 3 opens with a brief missive on Satoshi Nakamoto and organic economics, so give them a read.
That’s about it folks. A hearty welcome and thanks to newest member of the TWiR Staff: Burgess McGill. He along with Egon Maistre, David Grant, Hans def Fiedler, and Aidan MacLear keep this machine hummin’. Keep on reactin! Til next week: NBS… Over and out!!
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