The whole sphere got a bit of a scare this week with news of Nick Land’s (self-reported with a maximum of nonchalance) pulmonary embolism. Gnon was not ready to take him home just yet. And he’s apparently doing well. Our non-meaningless thoughts and prayers go out for him and his family, nonetheless.
Net neutrality ended this week. Malcolm Pollack says It’s Been Fun. With tongue planted firmly in cheek.
Although it’s politically moot, Heartiste has a worthwhile unpacking of this whole shebang: Roy Moore Did Nothing Wrong.
VDH on Why Trump Should Consider a Post-Twitter Presidency. Well… Twitter might very well ban him for violation of their shiny new TOS. If not, well I suppose Emperor Trump might oughta consider hanging up the Twitter… after his 5th term in office.
American Renaissance has up a snazzy (and clickable, zoomable) Hate Hoax Map. (HT: Unorthodoxy.)
Let’s see… what else was going on?
Navigate…
Fritz Pendleton provides an elegant kick-off to the week with his Sunday Thoughts—Puritanism edition.
Imperial Energy continues his theme with Some Tough Questions for Neoreactionaries and Some Thoughts on Formalism and Violence. Also there: Napoleon Really Was the Greatest.
Giovanni Dannato believes Dissident Success Requires Cities. We strongly agree. Civilization. Civitas. City. This earned an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Spandrell announces no plans to Live hard, die young, tho’ this would have made an epic parting shot. Continuing on the theme he so capably introduced: Bioleninism, the first step:
Any system ruled by political parties will always move to the left. Their business model is based on getting low status people to work for them. Obviously they must give them something in exchange. And they must motivate voters to vote for them. Their promise is simple: You, low status people, help us out, vote for us, obey our commands, and we will give you high status. Don’t vote for us, disobey us, let the right win, and you will remain low status.
The Committee gave this one an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Titus Cincinnatus zeroes in on Individualism as Western Pathology. The fixation of the West, especially among classical liberals (aka., “the right”), upon the “rugged individualist” myth, studiously ignores the collective behind the curtain. As always, Cincinattus is positively magisterial here—and he’s suitable for (open-minded) normies.
[L]ibertarianism and socialism are in many ways two sides of the same coin, both being modernistic rejections of traditional society which depend upon several post-Enlightenment epistemes for their intellectual justification. They reject traditional “grounding features” within society such as religion, hierarchy, the legitimacy of authority, and so forth. In doing so, they atomise society, breaking down social bonds and turning communities into soulless, mindless aggregations of atomic individuals with no loyalties or obligations to each other beyond the rather ridiculous “non-aggression principle.” Both libertarianism and socialism are anti-social in the true sense of the term – BOTH break down these social bonds. Classical liberalism does so to “free” the individual to pursue his own private interests often to the detriment of society, while socialism essentially does the same thing, enabling each individual to exercise political power to try to allocate to himself a greater share of the economic pie.The mythical noble savage, upon which individualism is precariously perched.
So… you’re saying halfway between socialism and capitalism, then? Exercise some imagination, Grasshoppah:
The principle of individualism is literally where our word “idiot” comes from. This same mistrust of individualism can be seen in Aristotle’s principle of the Golden Mean (see below), which described the “mean” as the apex in virtue (aretē) between two suboptimal extremes. In the cases of virtues relating to the interface between the individual and his social organisation (e.g. courage, magnanimity, proper ambition, modesty, etc.), the place of virtue is held by the one who keeps the effects of his actions upon his community and society in view, while the detrimental extremes are held by those who veer of into individualistic pursuits (e.g. cowardice as too great a concern for one’s own self-preservation, ambition as a lust for self-promotion rather than glory through service to the polis, and so forth).
And do take a look at Cincinattus’ excellent Golden Mean infographic. Whilst you RTWT, of course!! It earned an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Silver Circle Award☀.
Adam, at G. A. Blog, explains Moral Thresholds. It’s pretty heady socio-political and linguistic philosophy. He needs a more capable interpreter than me.
Kenneth Clark explains why the Roman Empire fell in his “Civilisation” series.
Devin Helton is Introducing Left-Versus-Right Book and Article Pairings at Counter Search. I perused the pairings. They are voluminous and comprehensive. Devin has put in some hard work here. Spread the word about Counter Search.
Atavisionary has an excellent reminder Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation Series—and embeds all 13 parts. It is simply a magnificent series: Very slow history, heavily focused on the aesthetics, and simply could not be made today. Hate speech-n-all that. Not to mention the vast troves of camera silence. In retrospect, it reflects a last gasp of the Civilization that was. And, we may hope, a breath of life to a Civilization yet to come.
Alf presents some cool music—in lieu of writing something for year’s end. Sounds like Jungle Jive to me… Meanwhile, fans around the world still await the soul-stirring conclusion to The Orb of Covféfè…
Malcolm Pollack has an excellent two-parter: The Personhood Of “Society”, And The Myth Of The General Will and here is Part II. Well, maybe not a “person”, but “living organism” is a remarkably strong and sticky analogy. Empedocles, the Darwinian Reactionary has been excellent on this subject over the years, but specific links are escaping me at the moment.
Friend of Social Matter, Anatoly Karlin observes that Europe can’t into big tech. At this point in tech, Europe is, at best, a distant third to the giants of the United States and China.
German tech guy notes that Europe barely has a presence in the tech sector.
* Hardware dominated by East Asians; Europeans used to do this, but Phillips, Nokia had their heyday many years ago.
* Internet infrastructure (e.g. cloud, DNS) dominated by the United States, though China has its own self-contained ecosystem.
* Platforms (operating systems, social networks, search engines, app stores) are dominated by the United States. Europe has almost zero presence here.
* Europeans do have some successful apps, e.g. some video game companies, various music and shopping services.
By way of Isegoria… New Yorker searches out the origins of “You will not replace us”—finds someone we’ve heard from before. Kids love dinosaurs. The dark underbelly of power-law distributions. Death by light saber wouldn’t be all it’s cracked up to be. Switzerland is prepared for civilizational collapse. And more Star Wars geekery.
Finally, this week’s missive from Cambria Will Not Yield, a hearty Merry Christmas!.
This Week in Jim Donald
A shorter, two entry week from Jim this time around, so let’s get to it. First, Jim observes that the Blue Empire of the consulates gets it in the nads. Only Jim can make tihs point with his characteristic style.
I predicted that Trump would have taken power by now. Obviously he has not. But, he is working on it. Unwise to bet against Trump.
In return for Israel not funding his enemies, he recognizes Jerusalem as the eternal and undivided capital of Israel. State Department furtively instigates world wide outrage against this move, which world wide outrage fizzles out dismally. The elite is maximally indignant, the Pope condemns the move, but the masses fail to show up on cue.
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Most of the empire continues to servilely move ever leftwards, and ever against local identity, electing a new people. We are still losing, and losing quite badly. But if you are a diplomat who just got fired by Trump, does not necessarily look that way.
“We are still losing, and losing quite badly.” Remember that, always remember that. It has long been the NRx analysis, and continues to be, that Trump can buy us some more time, but that is as far as it can go. No matter how much Trump wins, we are still losing, and losing quite badly. But if we use our time that Trump is buying us wisely, maybe one day we will win.
And, springing off not entirely recent events, Jim explains the trouble with Rotherham. As you might imagine, this is less about Rotherham and more about some uncomfortable facts about female psychology. I desperately want to quote the entire thing, so please RTWT. But here is a taste, because you have earned it, loyal readers.
Female behavior makes total sense from the point of view of evolutionary psychology when you reflect that the barista with an advanced degree in women’s studies and one hundred thousand dollars in college debt will probably become a cat lady, but if Islamic State was militarily victorious, and auctioned her off naked and in chains at public auction, would probably have seven children and twenty grandchildren.
It also makes total sense if you take the story of the fall seriously. It is the curse of Eve. “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
It also makes sense of female voting behavior. Single women have no country. They want us to be conquered, they want their male kin to be castrated, so they can finally get into the possession of someone strong enough to own them.
On only one point, I must disagree with Jim: we must still restrain Muslims as well, by keeping them the hell out of our countries. Otherwise, Jim is completely correct. I firmly believe that the Fall is the most literally true portion of the Old Testament, for precisely the reasons to which Jim alludes. Nevertheless, Jim snags an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for his work here.
This Week in Social Matter
Social Matter has gotten a bit quiet of late and I don’t actually know why—even from my lofty editorial perch. Still, the West Coast Guyz™ work like clockwork, and delivered the Myth of the 20th Century podcast on-time and intact: Episode 48: Rambo—First Blood.
This Week in Kakistocracy
For an unprecedented second week—well, we haven’t actually checked the “unprecedented” part—Porter has failed to update at Kakistocracy. Rumors are beginning to spread, and a pall has spread over the crime-thinky sphere: Perhaps the fat blue-haired feminists and their band of vegan “male” orbiters have hauled him off to the Tumblr re-education camp. Or perhaps not.
This Week in Evolutionist X
Evolutionist X maintains her abbreviated schedule with only two posts this week. First up, Exciting Bith Data from 1919. And when she says exciting, she means she’s digested a large amount of data and made infographics.
We can pick out several trends: the West probably had more men than women, resulting in lower birthrates. Mormon Utah was serious about making babies. The Midwest and North East had overall moderate birth rates, though there are a few towns in there that look heavily Irish.
“Irish”. There’s probably a meme in there somewhere. LOL.
And for Anthropology Friday, the conclusion of The Way of the Wiseguy by Donnie Brasco, pt. 3/3. But do not despair, her exploration into the anthropology of criminal gangs will continue with a new book next Friday.
This Week at Thermidor Mag
Huyuge week over at our sister publication Thermidor. Nigel T. Carlsbad kicks the week off with a Royalist and Rousseauist All the Same. At least in a particular instance.
Alex Nicholson (of Myth of the 20th Century fame) writes In Praise of the Safari—along with some fantastic pictures.
It is meet and right that leaders should hunt, for hunting is the primordial task of men, and a leader who refuses to take game is in a deep way refusing to fulfill his duty as such. From the ancient Assyrians mentioned above to the Soviets (the breakup of the USSR was negotiated over a hunting trip) the mighty have always used their status to secure hunting rights for themselves. Given endless supplies of luxuries and women, these men still chose to hunt, we should ask ourselves why, before like [Michael] Savage, we descend into hysterics over a matter we don’t fully understand.
Many have noted the connection between manhood and the preparation and provision of meat. One of the last vestigial masculine roles in our age of decline revolves around meat. Few men hunt, yet it is almost always the man who tends the grill and the man who carves the Thanksgiving turkey and the Christmas ham. It would just feel wrong to everyone if the women did these tasks.
But how to explain Michael “Boahdahs, Language, and Cultcha” Savage getting mixed up in this… purity spiral?
Michael Savage and his ilk (presumably) object to the returning of trophies from Africa, not because of some data-driven argument about wildlife conservation, but because of causally indeterminate negative emotions. Like unexpectedly small portions in a restaurant, or increased tolls on the Queensboro Bridge, rich white men shooting charismatic mega fauna is intolerable. For Savage, who openly looks down on his flyover audience and their limited understanding, hunting is a bizarre practice, the habit of brutes. The only possible motivations for hunting, being that it requires entry into the scary realm beyond the confines of Metropolitan Statistical Areas, are sadism and perhaps a need to vent sexual frustration. This is of course nonsense.Radio host Michael Savage
Nicholson impressed The Committee and earned an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for his fine research and analysis here.
This week’s Europa Weekly podcast covers “Mushroom Nationalism”, as well as various news items of interest from around the world.
Hoyt Thorpe has a magazine-level entry on Trump And The Return Of Pre-Modern Incivility. Despite it’s title, this article is principally focused on the relatively (and totally undeservedly) obscure 20th century American sociologist John Murray Cuddihy and his take on American Civil Religion, which, by his (and Thorpe’s) accounting, took a shot to the nose during the Civil Rights era, from which is has not recovered.
Today many of our most august and respected public figures identify as heirs to or direct participants in the counter-cultural revolt against civility. While many of the more radical goals of counter-cultural intellectuals have fallen out of favor, the revolt against civility has left its mark on the values of western leadership, covering our most vocal and respected thinkers with a pall of counter-cultural cool. Nearly every sacred event, including the most recent Presidential inaugurations (the solemn coronation of our secular pontiff) are sound-tracked by the most uncivil of rappers, rock and rollers, and pop singers. Politicians openly schmooze with “vulgar” comedians and artists whose works are applauded for their blunt confrontation with reality and disrespectful dismissal of stifling, outdated pieties.
Of course, disrespectfully dismissing outdated pieties has itself become a rather outdated piety… and a particularly fun and easy one to dismiss with disrespect. As the expansion of the Dissident Right and the leakage of its ideas into mainstream culture has shown. And by—as Michael Moore so helpfully and artfully predicted—“The Biggest Fuck You in Human History”. Political incorrectness has become alarmingly high status again. Alarming to the curators of public opinion at any rate:
[I]n a March issue of that most civil of conservative publications, the National Review, Kevin Williamson unleashed his own Id in a declaration that “downscale” white working class communities “deserved to die”. The same mediocre whites whose sexual insecurities were allowed vent by the Trumpian Id deserved the slow death they were experiencing. Similarly, after decrying the fact that Trump freed the “dirty little ids of his Twitter feed’s tiniest minds”, Kathleen Parker engages in her own vulgar and incivil sexual innuendo about the “[sexual] limitations” of Trump’s followers. And of course the oft-repeated refrain that Trump’s incivility is dehumanizing can be compared to the outcry against Jimmy Fallon for his “humanization” of Trump on the Late Show.
Thorpe cites dozens more examples.
Why are these commentators focused on criticizing Trump’s incivility and simultaneously undermining his claim to being politically incorrect? Why does civility coexist with the valorization of incivility? Why the urgent need to qualify and justify? To explain the paradox of commentators with liberated, incivil Ids demanding that Trump and his supporters refine their own Ids, we must return to sociology.
I’m not going to be able to do this article justice by excerpt. Suffice it to say, you must RTWT… This took the ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀ in a tightly contested week..
And our own “Bad” Billy Pratt gets his name up in Thermidor lights with Authenticity and “The Cable Guy”. New digs, same ol’ Billy Pratt, with his patented social commentary through the lens of cultural artifacts.
There is a decadence to this obsession with authenticity. Our culture fosters a kind of Holden Caulfield-like suspended adolescence where wearing the Metallica shirt isn’t enough, nor is it immediately permissible, but only after an undefined quantity of experience is your ownership of the shirt acceptable. Are you sophisticated enough to understand why you should enjoy chocolate liver pate, regardless of personal taste? Are you watching Mrs. Doubtfire the right way, ironically and detached, or following the film’s narrative as intended?
If the obsession with authenticity is a luxury, indicative of a culture so problem-free that it’s boring itself to death, to what degree is the expectation of authenticity reasonable?
The most powerful authenticity possible is never to care about authenticity. Or at least that’s the approach I take. If nothing else, it lulls your ideological opponents into a sense of complacency. Whereupon, you can whack them over the head with, “Traditional life, of course! Social norms didn’t just evolve over the last million years of hominid adaptation for no reason. Don’t you believe in SCIENCE?”
This too was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.
Finally, on the blog Jake Bowyer takes a stab at Upsetting the Hikikomori: Against Net Neutrality. His intuitions are much akin to ours: Anything that makes liberals squeal like stuck pigs is fine by us. B-b-but… muh bandwidth…
Look, if your major political rallying point is more endless distraction, then you need and deserve to suffer. America already has too much leisure as it is; it’s making us all terribly unhappy. At the sake of sounding like a cranky old codger, go read a book or go to a bar. Ride a bike, go to the gym, or, for heaven’s sake, go meet people in the real world. You’ll probably find that Rick and Morty is not half as fun as meeting real-life dorks.
Hey, you can cranky old codger… ironically!
This Week Around The Orthosphere
Over at Faith & Heritage, Adam Grey has a nice piece on the long intramural struggle within Protestantism: Two Centuries of Struggle and Division. Heretics always seem to be on the same side, regardless of denomination. Also there: On the unlikelihood of White Fragility. Does mockery count as “racial stress”? And this too was interesting: HSLDA Wrong on Race in Homeschooling. HSLDA (FD: I am a life member) burnishing up its prog credentials?! What’s this world coming too??!!
Cane Caldo points to a terrific-sounding History of England podcast, which may be of interest to our erudite—if somewhat autodidactic—readership.
Universal Dissenter composes apposite remarks on The True Constructive ‘Love’ and the False Deconstructive ‘Love’.
J. M. Smith compares the merits of The Lesbian Rule of Sheriff Andy Taylor to the rigidity of Deputy Barney Fife.
Over at Throne & Altar, Bonald finishes up his Interview with a (far future) Historian with parts IV: the coming of black rule, V: natural selection, and an explanatory Postscript.
And Bonald picks a bone with David Bentley Hart in When the present contests the past: the death penalty
As he grades mid-term papers, Thomas F. Bertonneau vents about grammatical pet-peeves in Linguistic Subscendence. Try not to make these mistakes.
Matt Briggs reports about the old memory hole being ripped open as SJWs Warn Against Viewing It’s a Wonderful Life and about thousand other movies. Then he predicts very little change in The Future of “Merry Christmas” in America. Also among Briggs’s predictions this week is The Final Fall of the Church of England. And the marxists go after ancient horse trainers, a Catholic couple is rejected by Catholic Social Services for being Catholic, the Pentagon actually pays for an “operation,” and girl scouts are trained not to hug their relatives, all in this week’s Insanity & Doom Update XVI.
Filed under What Was That Definition of Insanity Again… Mark Richardson criticizes Tim Farron: the cure for liberal tyranny is liberalism? Instead, Richardson argues, liberalism itself is the cause of modern tyranny.
Imagine if a Christian agreed to the liberal standard, and assented to the idea that moral choices are just subjective preferences, in which no matter what we choose we could just as morally have chosen something else. Surely that would be demoralising, in the sense that it would undermine Christianity as a serious belief about the nature of existence.
William Wildblood posts More Christmas Music—Nesciens Mater, a stunningly beautiful polyphonic vocal canon.
In The heartache of entitlement, She made a mistake once, and Weak men are screwing her feminism up, Dalrock recounts the tale of a Christian woman who ended up alone because she thought she was too good for her potential suiters. A Pearl of Great Price, indeed. Poor girl. Poor old cat lady. And Dalrock warns that, despite society’s promises, married men will receive No respect.
This Week in Arts & Letters
Over at Chris Gale’s place, he digs up some verse from an authentic Puritan Poetwife: Anne Bradstreet—before they went totally downhill. Reports from the ground in Sydney of a society in secular decline. By way of Elspeth, “women love attention from men until it’s somehow in their interest to pretend that they don’t.” How, in Belgium, they are now killing people with depression, which is generally treatable. Finally, an olio for the Third Sunday of Advent as well as the obligatory Sunday Sonnet, courtesy of Hilaire Belloc.
Over at The Logos Club, Kaiter Enless explains The Extraneous Nature of American Political Parties. Extraneous perhaps, but also inevitable. And anyone with the power to change it would have the power to suspend the constitution. Which come to think of it, is not really a bad idea. Enless finds his Inner Lenin is THE PARTY: Manifesto Towards A New Political Party.
And from the Radio Enless podcast Episode 06, Episode 07, and Episode 08—concerning the unification of the Samizdat blogosphere.
By way of Imaginative Conservative, a Timeless Essay on how and why Beauty Will Save the World. Richard Strauss’ “Dreaming by the Fireside”. An exposition of Advent and Melancholy. The poetry of Michael Shindler “Before First-Frost”. Voegelin’s remarkably short (for Voegelin) meditation upon The American Experience. Ten odd facts about Handel’s “Messiah”. Like slow history, slow movie reviews are always right on time: David Hein characterizes the 1962 Western “Ride the High Country”: An Elegy on Leadership.
Richard Carroll goes meta-literary with a review Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages. Esperanto, as well as Klingon, get some attention—the former in particular for having created a particularly exclusive (and therefore powerful) subculture.
Finally, over at City Journal, Seth Barron recounts the recent, not terribly successful terror attack at NYC’s Port Authority bus terminal. (Related.) Heather Mac Donald finds a host of liberal Double Standards and Distortions. Joel Kotkin and Tory Gattis set the record straight regarding Houston’s supposedly inadequate urban planning. Polèse on Why the Populist Surge Has Missed Canada—so far. And a window into Portland’s Disgraceful Anarchy.
This Week in the Outer Left
Cyborg Nomade thinks NRx is dead. 1) Define: “NRx” as “the one thing neoreactionaries talk about that is interesting to me”; 2) observe they don’t talk about much any more; 3) declare NRx dead; 4) ???; 5) profit. The much bandied, and even more misunderstood, trichotomy (ethnic particularism, religious traditionalism, techno-capitalism) makes an appearance. Neoreaction lies at the intersection of those branches, not their union.
Craig Hickman is not abandoning his post, just tending to things in IRL life. Which is probably something I should do more of…
Elsewhere on “the left”, another interesting week, including some rather… surprising… pieces.
Two entries at The Awl were worth our time this week. First is another piece of the truly fascinating series on unusual colors. This week is glaucous, the greeny blue of epic poetry and succulents. As per usual, there’s nothing political here, just interesting discussion of an unusual color. This color series is one that I am quite enjoying week to week, and I hope that the readers find it equally worthwhile.
I usually try to avoid schadenfreude in this space on the left, but sometimes it is just too much. That is the case with Dilbert: a Reckoning. Writer Miles Wray is, apparently, a long-time fan of Dilbert and is quite upset about recent innovations in the comic and aspects of Scott Adams’ life. 60 year old Scott Adams posts pics of his abs on Twitter, oh no! He posts pictures of his girlfriend who is half his age, shame! Fair warning, the levels of salt to be found in this piece are dangerously close to a lethal dose, so read with caution.
Adams has just released his fifth non-cartoon book, called Win Bigly. The existence of this book is infuriating at every level you can think of. In the last two-plus miserable years since Trump came down that fucking escalator and kicked off this whole shitshow, the only accusation that he is not completely goddamn guilty of is that he was never saying the nonsense word “bigly,” but actually saying the phrase “big league.”Scott Adams and Kristina Basham
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Rarely, though, have we had to get our hearts broken by learning that an admired artist, who made work that really did capture, heighten, celebrate the human condition, is pro-Trump. Dilbert is an exception. It is a compelling work of art made by a member of the alt-right. There’s no reconciling or skirting around this fact. It’s just uncomfortable.
All these flavors and you chose to be salty.
And over at The Baffler, John Ganz is trying to be the first leftist to break the scoop on The Forgotten Man, Murray N. Rothbard. This one is… actually surprisingly fair. There is the occasional desperate reach to try tying Trump and Rothbard together, but otherwise it mainly does stick to the facts of Rothbard’s life and career. Presumably, Mr. Ganz thought the mere facts themselves were succifiently damning that only minimal demonization is required. In any case, RTWT if you’re interested in Rothbard or, as is likely for people reading Social Matter have your own history with Rothbard.
Despite … his prolific writing on every subject from contemporary cinema to the Federal Reserve system, Rothbard’s name is not widely known. It’s not likely to be found in bibliography of a contemporary economist’s paper, but you will find it scrawled on the seamy underbelly of the web, in the message boards of the alt-right, where fewer voices are more in the air than Rothbard’s. One can look at the recent profiles of neo-fascists to find the name Rothbard, and that of his favorite pupil and protégé, Hans Hermann-Hoppe, again and again. In The New Yorker’s piece on Mike Enoch, the founder of the “Daily Shoah” podcast, Enoch notes that his path to the alt-right began with reading Rothbard, Ayn Rand, and Ludwig von Mises. When asked how he began to move “so far right,” Tony Hovater, the Indiana [sic] Nazi from the infamous New York Times profile, “name-drops Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.” Chris Cantwell, the crying Nazi of Vice News notoriety, says he was a “big fan of Murray Rothbard” and then went on to “read Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God that Failed.” Trump backer Peter Thiel’s essay, “The Education of a Libertarian,” shows the clear influence of Rothbard’s apostle Hoppe, who invited Thiel to a conference that also hosted American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor and VDARE’s Peter Brimelow. For a time before his death, Rothbard had the ear of Pat Buchanan. Paul Gottfried, the erstwhile ally of Richard Spencer, who is sometimes credited with coining the term “alternative right,” was a friend and admirer of Rothbard, and he also delivered the Murray N. Rothbard Memorial lectures at the Mises Institute.
This does highlight an interesting point: many people who end up part of NRx or the alt-right make their first deviation from the mainstream by entering libertarianism.
This Week… Elsewhere
TUJ pays more attention to foreign affairs than is probably healthy. So may as well take advantage of it: The Israeli-Saudi Proxy War Against Iran as Hamiltonian Concentration of Force in Practice.
Hapsburg Restorationist presents: The Origin of the House of Hapsburg: An Alternate Theory.
PA finds some (relative) wholesomeness in the 60s protest era in A ‘Nam Flashback. Certainly the centroid of civil discourse was shifted 73% more sane back in those days.
Al Fin has a bunch of nice stats and infographics on Should Everyone Go to College? Hint: no. And here’s why.
Zeroth Position has a review of Stiglitz’s The Euro, which they received rather cooly. Also there, Insula Qui’s essay On Traditionalism, Degeneracy, and Compassion. It’s actually pretty good, but tends to prove that libertarians are often right, even if for all the wrong reasons.
It's very hard to escape the conclusion that the only way to get a libertarian paradise is iron-fisted authoritarianism.
— ♔ The Nick B. Steves ♔ (@Nick_B_Steves) October 25, 2017
All women are married… to “a husband, her Johns, or the state”.
Unorthodoxy posits: Russia Collusion Crimes May Blow Watergate Away. If some critical mass of the media can turn it’s guns on the Democrats, perhaps.
Zach Kraine explains the right reasons to oppose Islam in the West.
Rounding out the week, Arnold Kling displays a remarkable level of ignorance in How I think about Bitcoin. Has he not read his Nick Szabo?
That’s all we had time for. Remember: Only 4 shopping days left til… Holiday… folks! Note to Roman Catholics: You must attend 4th Sunday of Advent mass and Christmas mass at separate times, even tho’ they may very well be on the same calendar day. No two-for-one mass deals. And besides, why would you wanna? Many thanks to the TWiR Staff: Egon Maistre, Aidan MacLear, and Hans der Fiedler helped out tremendously, as usual. David Grant was out this week due to exigencies of the season. We expect our coverage to be much improved next week by his swift return. Keep on reactin! Til next week: NBS… Over and out!!
The post This Week In Reaction (2017/12/17) appeared first on Social Matter.