My last two posts (here and here) were in response to an extensive review, by Michael Anton, of Thomas West’s new book on the American Founding, and to a comment by our reader Jacques. In Saturday’s post I laid out some questions that I thought the review, and Jacques’ comment, had raised. I did not […]
In my previous post I linked to a review, by Michael Anton, of a new book on the American Founding by Thomas G. West of Hillsdale College. I have a keen interest in the Founding, and in particular I am, like nearly everyone in the “neoreactionary” community, dogged by the question of just where things […]
Here is a good piece by JM Smith at The Orthosphere on the acedia consuming the modern world.
For as long as I can remember we’ve been lectured about the peaceful streets of England, and how that “scepter’d isle” should be a model for us of the blessings of a government that disarms its people. Meanwhile, old Blighty has been hard at work, for decades now, putting every aspect of its ancient culture […]
You might have heard about this terror attack in Belgium: Two female police officers were killed in Belgium today…Police identified the gunman as Benjamin Herman, a 36-year-old Belgian native who was allegedly radicalized in prison. Herman allegedly approached the officers from behind, stabbed them multiple times and took their guns, officials said. “Two female police […]
With “Dear Old Blighty” on the Motus Mentis radar these last days, we have for you a warmly dyspeptic assessment of the recent House of Windsor nuptials. (We thank, once again, our e-pal Bill Keezer for the link.) A sample: Both Harry and Meghan seem personable young people but the role of a royal is […]
I’ve been unexpectedly busy over the past few days, with little time for writing. I do have something substantial for you to read, though: an essay by the late Joseph Sobran on the nature of conservatism. It was written in 1985, and bears the title Pensees: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow. I’ll quote the […]
From Spandrell: here, here, and here are three posts outlining an idea — “Bioleninism” — that seeks to explain the steady movement leftward of political systems, and the shift, beginning in the 1960s or so, from economic to cultural Marxism as the vehicle for that movement. The model seems coherent and plausible. It also has […]
Jonah Goldberg has a new book out, called The Suicide of the West. (I don’t know why he felt he had to swipe the title of James Burnham’s monumental assault upon the modern liberal order, but it would’ve been nice if he hadn’t.) I haven’t read the book, but I know Jonah Goldberg’s oeuvre well […]
I commented a few days back about “incels” having risen to virality (though not, of course, to virility, which would make the whole topic moot). A point I didn’t make, though, was that the collective shudder on the Left at the sight of these wretches, and the equally collective wish to make them go away, […]
From ‘Mencius Moldbug‘: Since the reality of political history is that all polities of nontrivial size are controlled by organized minorities, all nontrivial democracies are pseudo-democracies. They are all different, however, since every organized minority is different. Every government flavored with democracy is irredeemably foul, but broadly the 20th-century pseudo-democratic regimes can be separated into […]
My friend Bill Vallicella, having read our recent post and comment-thread on Rod Dreher’s essay on Marx (see Bill’s recent post on the same article, here), noted my formulation of the consistent principle of our opponents in the current culture war: Defend your people, always. Attack the enemy with whatever comes to hand, always. (The […]
I’ve just read a response by Rod Dreher to a recent NYT op-ed, by Jason Barker, praising Karl Marx. Mr. Dreher grants to Marx a correct understanding of the revolutionary power of capitalism: Capitalism ”” for Marx, the merchant class (the “bourgeoisie’) were the carriers of capitalism ”” turns everything into a market. Capitalism is […]
Here’s something worth reading: an interview with the anonymous traditionalist “Wrath of Gnon”. (For those of you not familiar with the neoreactionary term “Gnon”, you should imagine it as meaning something almost exactly congruent with Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings“: the enduring truths of Nature, or Nature’s God, that periodically render a pitiless judgment […]
April 26, 2018 – 12:05 pm
Over the transom today: It’s “ethically inappropriate’ for government and medical organizations to describe breastfeeding as “natural’ because the term enforces rigid notions about gender roles, claims a new study in Pediatrics. “Coupling nature with motherhood”¦ can inadvertently support biologically deterministic arguments about the roles of men and women in the family (for example, that […]
The scales have fallen from Rod Dreher’s eyes. Commenting on Harvard’s decision to suspend and defund a campus religious organization, he says that his belief in “compatibilism” — the idea that it is possible for orthodox religion to coexist peaceably with the modern liberal state — is over. Regarding the new liberal order, he notes […]
The secularist writer and podcaster Sam Harris has got into a public scuffle with Ezra Klein, “editor-at-large” of the young-adult news website Vox, over Harris’s recent interview with Charles Murray, and the more general question of the role of genetics in the distribution of traits in distinct human populations. The absolutist “blank-slate” view of human […]
I’ve been unable to turn on the news over the past 24 hours without immediately hearing about yesterday’s protests against “gun violence”. The news agencies have clearly learned a trick or two from their show-biz colleagues who call themselves “illusionists”: if these protests were about “violence”, the marchers would surely have something to say about […]
March 20, 2018 – 12:00 pm
An addendum to yesterday’s “reactionary roundup“: In the Radio Derb podcast linked to in the post, Mr. Derbyshire reported on the detention and deportation of several identitarian dissidents who had come to England to express their views at Hyde Park’s famous Speakers Corner. One was a young Austrian by the name of Martin Sellner. Mr. […]
March 19, 2018 – 10:19 pm
For tonight, something to listen to and some things to read. To listen to, we have John Derbyshire’s latest Radio Derb. This week’s 43-minute installment is dedicated to the cultural and demographic death of his ancestral homeland, the British Isles. It is a melancholy survey of the ruin of a great nation, but some things […]
In a recent post I declined to comment on the proposed imposition of new tariffs, pleading ignorance of the subject. The uncommonly astute blogger calling himself “ZMan”, however, has a definite opinion. An excerpt: The fact is, the current trade regime ushered in after the Cold War, has proven to be the boondoggle critics like […]
Planned Parenthood tweeted this the other day: Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have a uterus. Some men have […]
February 28, 2018 – 11:02 am
Our e-pal Bill K. sends along this link to a mordant little item at Gates of Vienna. The gist: – Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected French President, has no children. – German Chancellor Angela Merkel has no children. – Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has no children – British Prime Minister Theresa May has no children. […]
February 25, 2018 – 1:09 pm
Goodness: might there be hope for England after all? Meet the man who could be the next Prime Minister: here and here. Intelligent, educated, gentlemanly, articulate, and deeply reactionary, with an abiding love of his ancient nation, its people, and its culture: what’s not to like? May he prevail.
January 15, 2018 – 1:16 pm
The blogger JayMan (one of the most intelligent and articulate voices you’ll find online) comments on the Steven Pinker brouhaha, here. In my own comments a couple of days ago, I said that “Dr. Pinker, quite understandably for someone who wishes to remain employed”, was “trying to thread a needle.” JayMan puts this far more […]
January 12, 2018 – 9:49 pm
Steven Pinker, who by some miracle still finds himself employed despite holding some deeply heretical notions (of which those he expresses are surely just the tip of the iceberg), is under fire today for some remarks he made at a panel at Harvard. The snippet that’s been making the rounds is this: The other way […]
December 12, 2017 – 2:59 pm
How can anything benefit “society”? There is nothing we can call “society” that actually experiences anything at all — and what (and to whom) is the value of a benefit unexperienced? If “society” benefits, it is only experienced by individual persons, each of whom experiences any social benefit or blessing as an individual. There is […]
December 8, 2017 – 11:55 pm
I have nothing prepared for publication tonight — I was too busy all day, and I went to the VDare Christmas party this evening — but I’d hate for you to go away empty-handed, so I’ll offer you this excerpt from Richard Weaver’s essay Up From Liberalism: The attempt to contemplate history in all its […]
December 7, 2017 – 7:15 pm
A reader from an Australian metropolis wrote me a little while back to describe the social and emotional difficulties of being a Right-thinking outlier in an overwhelmingly, and so often unreflectively and oppressively, Leftist culture. He needed some bucking up, I thought, and so I offered the following (slightly edited) reply. I don’t think he’ll […]
December 3, 2017 – 3:40 pm
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella comments on the Kate Steinle verdict, in a post rightly titled A Struggle for the Soul of America. After quoting a passage from this essay by the indispensable Heather Mac Donald (an essay you must be sure to go and read in full), Bill adds: There you have it. […]
November 22, 2017 – 2:47 pm
Richard Fernandez: Some social commentators have noted a mood of disillusionment. “Millennials report depression in higher numbers than any previous generation”, up to one in five. People appear to be tuning out of politicized “comedy”, sports and entertainment, exhausted by the public frenzy. It’s a direct consequence of the fall of the Narrative. The irony […]
November 5, 2017 – 10:32 pm
The key weakness of liberalism — which, to be fair, has at times done much to improve society — is that it must assume as “given” the existence, and the continuing existence, of the society it hopes to improve. But liberalism, by its very nature — its pacifism, its sentimentalism, its opposition to hierarchy, its […]
October 30, 2017 – 11:00 pm
I’ve been reading James Burnham’s Suicide of the West. Published in 1964, it is an anti-liberal jeremiad, and a corking good one. It also anticipates a number of themes that have become central tenets of both traditional-conservative and neoreactionary criticism. I’m still only about three-quarters of the way through, but I’ll offer some excerpts. Burnham […]
October 27, 2017 – 3:17 pm
A few days ago I mentioned a manifesto called the Paris Declaration — signed by, among others, Roger Scruton — and gave it two-and-a-half cheers. I did allow that I had a “quibble or two”, but in general I thought — and I still do think — that it was an important step in the […]
October 24, 2017 – 3:47 pm
From Campus Reform: Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege The story is about one Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois. We read: “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of […]
October 21, 2017 – 11:45 pm
A group of concerned thinkers, including Roger Scruton, have written a rousing manifesto calling for the defense of Europe against its accelerating cultural suicide. The document is called The Paris Statement, and it is good strong stuff. (I learned about it from this article at Reaction, where you can find additional commentary.) You can read […]
September 29, 2017 – 10:36 am
With a tip of the hat to our pal Bill Keezer, here’s a good item by Mark Steyn on the “progressive disease” I’ve called C.I.V. It’s all been said before, but it needs saying again and again. Best line: “When you demolish your own inheritance, the lot does not stay empty. Something arises in its […]
August 23, 2017 – 2:40 pm
Our discussion of “white supremacy” continues, over at Bill Vallicella’s place.
August 18, 2017 – 5:03 pm
Last week a Google engineer expressed, in a perfectly reasonable memorandum about human diversity, the view that the company had become a left-wing monoculture in which dissenters actually might have to worry about being fired. For publishing this essay, he was fired. Now Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has announced that the company is giving a […]
August 16, 2017 – 4:03 pm
A comment on Charlottesville: this sort of chip-on-the-shoulder activism is a no-win for the Right. It attracts too many of the lowest, stupidest, and most undesirable elements, and as we have seen, it results in officially sanctioned violence. I remember a slogan from back in the Vietnam War era: Fighting For Peace Is Like Fucking […]
President Trump gave a fine speech in Poland yesterday, in which he seemed, at times, downright reactionary. He spoke in rousing terms of the great Western heritage, and of the dangers it faces both from within and without. Some exhortatory excerpts: As I stand here today before this incredible crowd, this faithful nation, we can […]
Here’s RamzPaul commenting on CNN’s publicly threatening to dox a meme-creator they don’t like. Normally I wouldn’t pay an awful lot of attention to this sort of thing — it is simply a given that mainstream news outlets like CNN are Cathedral clerisy, and will say and do whatever they believe advances their religious hegemony […]
Presented without comment: Beyond Pro-Choice: The Solution to White Supremacy is White Abortion An excerpt: White women: it is time to do your part! Your white children reinforce the white supremacist society that benefits you. If you claim to be progressive, and yet willingly birth white children by your own choice, you are a hypocrite. […]
Over at Jacobite magazine, Nick Land has posted an item called Modernity’s Fertility Problem. It addresses a liability that, although it presents itself in an especially virulent form today, is hardly unique to modernity, and has been the death of high civilizations since antiquity. We read: Modernity has a fertility problem. When elevated to the […]
Our previous post mentioned an article at National Review by David French. I’d also like to comment on another item by Mr. French, published two days earlier. The piece was a commentary on Wednesday’s rifle attack, by left-wing kook James Hodgkinson, on Republican members of Congress as they practiced for a baseball game. Mr. French […]
A disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter directed rifle fire at a Congressional baseball-team practice in Alexandria today. The House majority whip, Steve Scalise, was shot in the hip, and several others were injured as well, including two Capitol policemen. The gunman, 66-year-old James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, was killed. He had apparently asked Rep. Ron DeSantis, […]
I’ve just run across a really excellent essay, from 2014, about our hegemonic modern religion — a religion that the author, Joseph Bottum, correctly identifies as deracinated Protestant Christianity. The essay is long, but there is very little in it for me to disagree with. To the neoreactionary reader it will sound some very familiar […]
Mark Steyn weighs in on Manchester, here. A longish excerpt: A few months ago, I was in Toulouse, where Jewish life has vanished from public visibility and is conducted only behind the prison-like walls of a fortress schoolhouse and a centralized synagogue that requires 24/7 protection by French soldiers; I went to Amsterdam, which is […]
In a response to our Jeff Cooper quote a couple of posts ago, commenter Uriel Fiori linked to a post from 2013 by Nick Land. That post, at his blog Outside in, is called “Monkey Business”, and it discusses a tension in neoreactionary thinking about something called “orthogonalism”. Simply put, “orthogonalism” is a way of […]
I’ve mentioned Charles Murray rather a lot recently; this is because he is often in the news lately, and has been right on the frontlines of the culture war. The pillorying and excommunication of this meticulous and mild-mannered scholar also shows the extent to which ideological and cryptoreligious loyalties and prejudices have contaminated science as […]