The Very Best of Last Week in Reaction (2016/04/10)

Supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) take part in in demonstration march, in reaction to mass assaults on women on New Year’s Eve, in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Unlike the New Years’ Eve mass “assaulters”, they are no match for the Cologne police.

The latest This Week in Reaction is finally up over at Social Matter. Another great week in the sphere. With many superb articles. Those judged the most worthy were as follows:

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Honorable Mentions:

Free Northerner: Owned Markets. A deep Menciian analysis of the free markets and the natural tragedy of the commons. Ownership fixes commons problems. Therefore the market must be owned. FN explains how.

Raymond Brannen: You Can’t Save The World Without Civilization. A perfectly pitched tutorial, aimed at would-be philanthropists, about that most important good of all.

Dividuals: Tribal competition, status-wireheading and its uses. You may not be interested in tribalism, but it sure is interested in you. This is a magnificent meditation on the role of in-group competition for status.

Mark Citadel: Reflections on Caesaropapism. A definition and spirited defense of the concept, and how it is natural that bishop and king cooperate for the good of the people.

Intellectual Detox: Day Dreaming of a Living Wage Grand Compromise. A perfectly sensible policy proposal, followed by acute analysis of why such an arrangement is currently impossible.

Porter: The Decline of Boxing’s Intellectuals. Not really about boxing. Just supremely well crafted short essay on the nature of modern pundit liberalism.

Donal Graeme: The Misery Of Too Much Comfort. A meditation on the redemptive nature of suffering, specifically from the Curse of Eve in the Garden.

Evolutionist X: The series Is Capitalism the only reason to care about Intelligence? (part one), part two, and part three. A one-stop shop for the role intelligence plays in social status and in civilizational flourishing. Huge amound of research, graphically dense, and well-written.

Cato the Younger: A Fools Hope. A short but profound essay on centrality first things, and how there’s no fixing secondary things without ’em.

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… And the Winner Is:

Mark Yuray: Right-Wing Activism Always Fails. Looking at current events as well as the history of rightist political movements, Yuray applies a Neoreactionary—i.e., Jouvenelian— lens revealing the nature of power in liberal democracies. And how the nature of the system prevents (or often works around) understandable and well-placed right populist outrage.