More Strictures

I posted this on twitlonger earlier today but anytime I work that hard on something, I want the blog to get a bit of credit (and traffic), and who knows maybe someone will want to comment in 141 bytes or more. So as I said on twitlonger…


Strictures on “Social Conservatism & Drawing a Line in the Sand”

  1. Mike you are admittedly not a natural born social conservative and I think you’re doing it wrong.

    I am a natural born, lifelong true social conservative. I can state with certainty that having gay/queer/trans/divorced/fornicating/masturbating/contracepting friends does not mean you approve of all your gay/queer/trans/divorced/fornicating/masturbating/contracepting friends’ choices, nor does it mean you favor social emancipation for them to make such choices. (That they have had freedom to make such choices cannot be helped by either of you.)

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  2. Not only does befriending a gay/queer/trans/divorced/fornicating/masturbating/contracepting person NOT mean you support such disordered behavior, but refusing to treat them with minimum kindness is itself disordered. It is a positive moral good to be loyal to ones friends. And it is a positive moral good to show kindness to people. One can be loyal and kind without approving of their disorders. In fact, I cannot stress this enough: LOYALTY, KINDNESS, AND CHARITY REQUIRE YOU TO *NOT* APPROVE OF PEOPLE’S DISORDERS.

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  3. It is natural and normal for people to be viscerally disgusted by perversion. Being so viscerally disgusted does NOT, however, make you conservative nor a reactionary. Not being so disgusted does not (necessarily) make you a liberal. Some people were raised in progressive environements and were trained to put aside such feelings of disgust. Neoreactionaries understand this disgust, whether they were raised to feel such disgust or not. And they know that society should be run in such a way that such natural disgust is not pathologized. So one can be neoreactionary, support patriarchal hetero-cis-normativity and the raft of opinions that come with it, without deeply feeling disgust at perverted people. A lot of the “post-libertarians” are this way. Even I, a genuine natural born social conservative, don’t always feel viscerally disgusted by some perversions.

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  4. The dispute between Mike and Bryce has NOTHING (zero, zip, nada) to do with Social Conservatism. If they did have that fight, Bryce wins in a blowout. Name the issue (abortion, contraception, divorce, euthenasia, fornication, masturbation, active eugenics, you name it): Bryce is to Mike’s right on all the so-con issues I can think of.

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  5. Yes there are “members” of neoreaction in otherwise “good standing” who in my experience, accept the social conservative aspects of it, but are yet uncommitted to the living out of all such principles in their own lives. Oddblots, whom you quote, is one who fits that description pretty well. But I have gotten to know him in person over the last year and I am quite convinced that he sees his failure to live up to the norms of traditional life as a defect and that he is working on correcting that.

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  6. Land is the oddest duck of all in this. I have never read anything from him that suggests any level of thedish commitment whatsoever. I like him, and I think he’s a valuable resource, but he does not appear to have a traditionally reactionary bone in his body. Which is weird because he has kids. Who knows? Maybe he is on that path I described in (5) and just isn’t letting on.

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    So, in short, yes you’re absolutely right there is a line: There exists a set of ordering propositions based on Natural Law that all reactionaries see as at least normative for society. But I think you’re going about measuring this in the wrong way. We should spend more time articulating that view and less time arguing about who better lives up to the norms implied by it. If we really wanna get into a holier than thou fight, I’m pretty sure I can win over all of you. But I don’t want that fight. I don’t believe it is necessary.

    Neoreactionaries stand for traditional ideals. All will fall short in some way in living up to them. Talking to people who do not subscribe to these ideals is not in itself a failure to live up to these ideals. And should someone fail to live up to them, we don’t shoot them.

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nickbsteves

If I have not seen as far as others, it was because giants were standing on my shoulders.

7 thoughts on “More Strictures”

  1. I don’t do twitter, so I read many of these posts without understanding much of the background behind them. I read Anissimov’s post without knowing about this fight between him and Laliberte.

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  2. Anissimov misses the point all the time, which is why he doesn’t allow comments on his blog.

    Perhaps the world is weary of ‘ego sum rex romanus, et supra grammaticam’ social engineering and ‘fait justicia, ruat coelum’ social justice. The old ways aren’t necessarily an ending point, but they are a starting point. So what of the feminisms and the gay rights of the present day? A meaning it must have, or it would not be here. We need to discuss the concerns of the present, if only to refute them, and how better than to have a Justine Tunney who can speak our language and their language?

    By now it’s clear that Nick Land is a weirdo and techno-commercialism is the odd one out, and White nationalism goes nowhere without first renouncing progress. So I think that there are a different three strands to NRx – N for the openness to new ideas, R for restoring the old ways, and x for trying to have a John Birch Society or a Ku Klux Klan, with purges for not being right-wing enough as if what works for the left will work for the right.

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  3. Mr. Anissimov is engaged in “holier-than-thou” status signaling of the sort that Mr. Donald often refers to as “lefter than thou,” but Mr. Anissimov is attempting to repackage the game as a right-wing exercise.

    This pattern should neither surprise nor disappoint us. Mr. Anissimov is, by his own admission, biologically and psychologically leftist – his brain structure causes him to tend towards left-wing means even in the pursuit of right-wing ends. His intelligence and penchant for nonconformity prevents him from feeling at home with leftists, so he’s trying to build a social home amongst reactionaries. The problem is that he isn’t really “one of us,” so to speak. I mean this in a biological sense; left-wing and right-wing brains are physically different and produce different behaviors.

    I don’t have a problem with letting him be one of the group, but you need to understand the people you’re dealing with to prevent the problems they cause from metastasizing. Mr. Anissimov’s status-signaling games and penchant for purging would be productive in a leftist group. But what works for the left does not always work for the right.

    The desire for purity is good. This manifestation of it is not.

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  4. Pingback: More Strictures | Reaction Times

  5. @pepperming7889: More Right is a group blog. Not allowing comments wasn’t Michael’s personal choice but the path we chose after discussing these things almost 2 years ago, so far I haven’t seen anything that would make me think we’ve missed much because of it.

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  6. Good post. Good position. Quite Catholic as well. It isn’t peoples human failings that set us off, it’s Progress now trying to purify us through the sacraments of sin as opposed to it’s previous incarnation where it was going to purify us of sin.
    ——————————————————————————
    PS – I’d kick your ass in a Holier than Thou Catfight, cuz I fight dirty holier than thou, I also spray and piss.

    😀

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  7. Alfred, then my blogging this stuff has served a purpose. (I hope.) There are several very high profile neoreactionaries who do not do twitter as well. I have always been of two minds about it myself.

    Max, I largely agree with that analysis, as has of today (Saturday) been made public.

    VXXC, thanks. (PS. No ya couldn’t ;-))

    Peppermint, I’m not so sure I’d like to have Tunney speak for any “us” than I’m in, but he/she does have a unique perspective (as a former professional leftist rabblerouser) and it certainly does no harm to converse. A loose confederation of biker gangs is one of the hardest entryist problems of all. Actually easier just to build a new biker gang. I’m satisfied with that “design”. As I have outlined in my post today (Saturday), I think there are perfectly reasonable circumstances in which it is right and indeed necessary to exercise the power of purge. But as of today none of those cirumstances have been attained.

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