The Very Best of Last Week in Reaction (2017/03/12)

Last week’s This Week in Reaction is now up at Social Matter. Very crowded near the top of The Committee’s balloting. The results were as follows…

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Honorable Mentions:

Mark Christensen: Deconstructing a Deconstruction: Some Notes on Propaganda. The near occasion was a takedown of a predictable—so drearily predictable that it served as a stereotype—hit piece against Jordan Peterson, but Christensen marks and defuses several time-tested, critical theory approved sophistries that show up a lot in the lefty press.

James A. Donald: The solution we do not want. Jim dons the cap of Christian apologist as he explains that, while Islam solves certain problems in modern society, it is in many ways civilizationally degenerate. Only Christian patriarchal order will work for the West.

Ryan Landry: Modeling Masculinity. An accounting of the diverse ways in which masculinity learned in the past and in in Landry’s life; and of all the obstacles that hamper this sort of learning today in nearly all swathes of society.

Evolutionist X: The Activation Energy of Economic Activity. The distance between zero and one in mutually productive economic arrangements is analogized by the chemical concept of activation energy. Activation energies near zero are obviously dangerous (free-market -tardianism), but setting them too high (e.g., by over-regulation, low social trust, government unintelligibility, capricious enforcement, etc.) will squelch beneficial economic arrangements and necessarily work in favor of established large market players.

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The Silver Circle:

Adam (GA Blog): Ancestries and Meta-Sovereignty. A deep philosophical reflections the psycho-social origins of sovereignty.

Fritz Pendleton: Henry’s Rabbit Hole And You. A compelling demonstration of how Henry VIII, although a great and admirable absolute sovereign (and also in large part because of that), sponsored the first administration of the universalist poison that would eventually reduce the English monarchy to the thin shadow of its former glory that we see today.

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… And the Winner Is:

Titus Q. Cincinnatus: Why Tribalism Happens and What It Could Mean for the Future. A ground-breaking exploration of tribalism and its causes. Instead of thinking about tribalism as purely a primitive mode of social organization, Cincinnatus looks at it as (typically) a failure to advance toward—or a fall from—civilization, which he sees as a fundamental telos for human societies.