This Week in Reaction (2015/11/01)

Neocolonial maps out Enlightened Idiocy.

• Liberty is not the base virtue. It is the crowning flower that appears when virtue is possessed. The drive to the possession of virtue over generations within Western Civilisation resulted in increasing liberty.

That is supremely well put; liberty is not a virtue in itself, but the fruit of virtue. Virtue must be cultivated. The modern world has stopped doing this because it’s trying to cultivate liberty. Hence degeneratcy, in Neocolonial’s lingo: dyscivic action. Neo’s was an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀.

Prompted by Franklin’s TFP article last week, Nick Land continues the conversation on NRx Thought: “Refuse all dialectics.” Which may be laid against the principle in which we refuse to refuse all dialectics. He also considers Cathedral Decay as a possible source for alternative right energies.

Different medium, same ol’ Moldbug.

Sydney Trads quote Larry Auster’s Path to National Suicide this week.

Never let it be said that Antidem doesn’t give his sponsors good bang for the buck. He continues with part III (!!!) of his “review” of My Little Pony: Friendship is Optimal. Review? Or Launching Pad?

My Little Pony: Friendship is Optimal was written for an audience of transhumanists, internet libertarians, New Atheists, and My Little Pony fans. Whenever one is dealing with such people, there is one subject that is absolutely inescapable: masturbation.

LOL. But Antidem scores many strong points to follow.

And never let it be said that Jim isn’t the Most Right-Wing Person on the Entire Internet.

Over at West Coast Reactionaries, Alfred asks What Causes Decline? His money is on wealth. It’s a good article, but I take issue with his use of the word “cause” here. Wealth cannot (formally) cause civilizational decay any more than a gun can kill someone. (It’s little metal projectiles flying at about 1200 ft/sec.) And Adam Wallace offers part 8 of his Reactionary Primer series: Diving In.

Mark Citadel has a big one up over at the eclectic Return of Kings: Why Vladimir Putin Is Russia’s Proto-Tsar. He also notes some promising trends in anti-liberal institution building in Russia.

Dividuals takes some perverse pleasure in lefty excesses: Why Fat Activism Is A Godsend For The Right. Basically, they’re writing all of our comedy material. Also another big theory piece—☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀: Morality/Ethics As A Social Prestige Engine.

It looks like our grand 400-year civilizational change called Progress or “swimming to the Left” is largely about coming from ages where rulers listened to high-prestige priests who derived their prestige from borrowing from God’s infinite prestige to moving towards ages where the rulers listen to intellectuals who seem to just have a lot of prestige on their own, without such an external source, although they tend to invent such makeshift external sources as “history’s judgement”.

The salience of “history’s judgement” arises from universal literacy: Votes for hypothetical future people. But we don’t let children vote. Not yet.

One Irradiated Watson and Count ∅-Face collaborate on Caligula’s Council Episode 2: A Bowl of Melons.

Free Northerner regales us with the rhythmic strains of Kipling’s Song of the White Men.

Must read thoughts from CWNY: A Sentimental Attachment. Truly, he pulls no punches in defense of Christian Europe.

This Week at Social Matter

Busy week over at Social Matter HQ. Ryan Landers kicks it off with Jim Webb, Bernie Sanders and Ghosts of Democrats Past. Webb and Sanders represent formerly important coalitions of a party that has completely left them in the dust. Both of them, while at odds on many issues, are overwhelmingly white.

David Grant has recommendations for the Top Ten Ancient Histories. He highlights several reasons to read and like them: ethnographic detail—which moderns tend to see as stereotyping and therefore evil— is not least among them.

Isaac Lewis returns, this time with a review of objectivist and Ayn Rand scholar Leonard Peikoff’s The DIM Hypothesis. Along the way we get an interesting discussion of epistemology, ancient and modern. Dividuals keeps the conversation going an article-length response.

On Wednesday, Mark Christensen returns with a magisterial piece: Reactionary Heretic: How Luther Survived A Holiness Spiral. He covers so much ground, it’s hard to excerpt the work with justice. I had not known much about the leveller radicals that Luther had to face personally.

The clash between Luther and Müntzer crystallizes the crisis of the Reformation during this period [1517-1525]. Müntzer and other reformers such as Zwingli condemned Luther for not extending the Reformation from the religious order to the political and social one. Anti-Lutheran pamphlets were published on these grounds to delegitimize him as a leader. […]

The Reformation had entered a full blown holiness spiral, a mere eight years after Luther published his academic 95 Theses. Since status could be achieved on the basis of being a true Reformer, the incentive for those seeking prominence was to extend the Reformation to ever more radical ends.

This is a monumental contribution to neoreactionary religio-political theory and an instant ☀☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Award☀☀.

Finally, Henry Dampier fires on all 12 cylinders when he discusses Why We Can’t Revive the Apprenticeship System Yet. A lot of smart people want the more traditional apprenticeship system. Henry traces the the reasons why that system died in this ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀. The usual suspects show up: compulsory education, abstract notions of liberty and equality, government regulation. This bit was decisive:

Viewed from a different perspective, all that we did was switch from one form of human bondage to another. Apprentices might have been unfree, but they were at least working in something that was in their long term interests – and often better than the alternatives at the time. Schooling provides difficult-to-define practical benefits – they are more concerned with molding citizens than they are with imparting practical skills.

Students today aren’t free, either. Their parents will be fined or imprisoned if their children go truant. Rather than being bound to a workplace, they’re bound to a government school until they turn 18. And ever-increasingly, they must then attend a university until 21 or graduate school until much older before finding suitable employment.

This Week in 28 Sherman

Over at #NRx’s only slightly less most criminally underappreciated blog, Ryan Landry kicks off the week celebrating Halloween, the Army of Lanzas And Unintended Consequences of Suburbia. Halloween the movie as well as the holiday. The familiar safety and normalcy of the suburban backdrop for the movie makes it all the more frightening.

“Tweens are supposed to experiment with their sexuality. It’s normal.” –Yahoo Parenting

Speaking of Hallowe’en, that brings to another installment of… Tales From Weimerica: Tween Halloween Hookers. The usual suspects say, “Bring it on.” Cosmo (surprisingly) says, “Not so fast.” Here’s Landry:

This confrontation was bound to happen. Our mission as adults was and is to say, “No, some things are for when you are older”. Our mission was and is to tell young adults to put things away as those are kiddie pursuits. Those were default reactions when we split culture and society up well by age. There is a time and a place for everything. This works. We abandoned it. The problem group is the easily persuaded who will read these garbage essays and whore out their tween and teen daughters. We have destroyed the split between child and adult, creating a weird 20 year period of sex obsessed manchildren and nymphettes. They hit age thirty shells of what prior generations were at thirty for life history and accomplishments. It is up to you to say no.

Weimerica seems an expertly blended cocktail of just enough equality to ruin every institution and just freedom to enslave ourselves.

His attention turns to national politics with Jeb’s Gridlock Nonsense. What gridlock? Oh that gridlock… This part was priceless:

Jeb Bush had no clue that the GOP is so brainwashed about “not appearing racist” that they cannot properly brush off comatose Carson. Jeb probably saw Carson as useful (just like the dumb GOP punditry), but now the GOP has a candidate eating 20-25% support when in reality they are just a fundraising machine for some hustlers. Add to this Trump’s 20-25% support, and it’s major trouble. The fighting with proxy candidates is weak and something that his father and Reagan did not do in 1980, nor his brother in 2000. Had Jeb showed a bit of dominance, he might have prevented the 17 candidate clown car race.

In This Week in WW1 Pics, he has a couple beautiful British propaganda posters.

And finally, Ryan notices Friskies brand cat food driving an Abrams tank through the cat lady advertising demographic

This Week in Kakistocracy

This week in Porter begins with meditation on being Pro-Choice in Europe. Not that choice exactly. More like all of them. Along the way, this idea beautifully put:

Can the Western states replace their nations before the nations replace their states? I’m sure history offers some analogues of comparable import, though none in which our children are as vested.

Context is a bit assumed in Fast Funny on CNBC. Porter watches GOP debates so you don’t have to.

Henceforth to be known as Porter’s Corollary to Heartiste’s Law: “Diversity + proximity = war. Intra-group war foremost.” The biggest problem for European peoples is… other European peoples. And it’s kinda supreme-isty to notice, but… really, how could it be any other way? Along the way, he takes a nice slice out of The Narrative™:

The global south being “on the move” is only and exclusively a problem for those countries whose machine guns and electrified fences aren’t functional. But of course such sentiments are barbaric. Anyone who wants a better life is entitled to another man’s inheritance to get it. Besides, these migrants from Africa and Afghanistan are fleeing war in Syria.

This Week… Elsewhere

Imaginative Conservative has a timeless 1993 essay from Roger Scruton up: The Plague of Multiculturalism. This was in review of Russell Kirk’s America’s British Culture. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Evolutionist X has some nice rambling thoughts on social status, and the way that getting it is changing, here: Slate Star Codex finds Aristocracy, doesn’t notice. Changing, demonstrably, for the worse.

Filed under Reviews of Not Terribly Old Movies: she didn’t like Noah and loved God is not Dead. The latter features Kevin Hercules Sorbo. Every trailer I saw of that made me cringe. Also, another timely and valuable Cathedral Roundup.

And Evolutionist X earns an ☀“Official” #NRx Best of the Week Honorable Mention☀ for this picture, data, and research rich article: Genetic History of the Finno-Ugrics.

HBD Chick talks about community vs. communism, but it may as well be about all the stark contrasting shades of white. Corrupt because post-communist? Or communist because corrupt? (As if it had to be one or the other…)

Where academic theology goes, academia is soon to follow. Chris Gale has an account plus some well-place comments. Also The fifth column that would destroy us highlights how advocacy for the “abused” is usually a cloak for ripping up moral culture.

Dalrock shows how pozzed Focus on the Family has become. Basically, define “abuse” as whatever you don’t like (and only notice when one side of the power structure does it).

This week in Getting Culturally “Enriched”: Denmark. Mm. Vibrant! And Austrians are getting culturally enriched and fed up both at the same time. Also: Syrian Refugee? My Ass looks at the Alinskyist tactics deliberately deployed by the latest cast of priests.

The lesson of this video if you watch it carefully is this: everyone who makes a passionate demand is an exception. If everyone is an exception, there can be no rule.

Esoteric Trad has an open letter to Dear Libertarian/Ancaps. The State may not be “us” exactly, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t people. Also a great deal of insight into the mind of our enemies in Black Rhetoric Matters.

Black Lives Matter is not just mucking up things for average white and black people with their silly stunts but actively challenging the existing hierarchy in the activist black community.

…

Sharpton and Jackson have been passed by, they can’t keep up with the pace of progressive bullshit that Cathedral universities teach. Frankly I think both of them would not be thrilled at the degeneracy taught in these insane classes on Gender Studies of African American Studies. The youth however, the Black Lives Matter, have fully absorbed the (((narrative))) and are enacting it in the only way they know.

Those who live by the entropy, die by the entropy.

My good buddy Reactionary Ferret talks about Memetic Warfare. And ferrets know about these things:

What we need is not a change of mind toward policy direction, but a sea change of what is considered socially acceptable behavior. To do this, we need mythologies….

It seems daunting to create this mythologies, but it really shouldn’t be. Hero worship is already a part of human nature; maybe it is an evolutionary process regarding the need to follow those who will lead us to prosperity as a species. I am unsure of where it comes from, but I know that every culture has had their heroic myths.

The Iron Pill graphic novel series strikes me as a step toward this sort of myth-making.

Malcolm Pollack helpfully suggests, “If only there were some way we could get people to live at equal distances from wealthy areas…” He is also brilliantly brief (brilliant because brief?) here and here.

Matt Briggs was able to attend Ross Douthat’s First Things 28th Erasmus Lecture and record his lively and colorful thoughts. Also this week in Pedantry with a Purpose, a gentle reminder: Data do not have means. Subject-verb agreement no extra charge. Over at the Stream, he’s got Bishops Demand World-Wide Decarbonization. And as always This Week in Doom–Justice Kennedy edition.

Over at The Orthosphere, JM Smith highlights The Perils of Public Prayer. “The first peril of public prayer is the strong temptation to affect becoming piety.” The first peril is a lulu.

Mansized Target covers This Week in Cop Hatred–South Carolina edition.

Brett Stevens has a humorous take on his local Alabama media cheering for their (federal) team: The ridiculous world of forced desegregation. Stay longer? Isn’t 150 years long enough?!

On the eve of the eve of All Hallows, Al Fin talks about Dangerous Ghosts. And dangerous jobs.

Well that’s all I had time for. Terribly sorry this is so late. I wish I could say it wasn’t a sign of things to come. Keep on reactin’! Til next week, TRP… Over and out!!