Integralism is the principle that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society. As with everything political, there is debate as to when the concept was born, but modern integralism as a genuine political movement has its roots in the 19th century. For obvious reasons it has been limited to those countries with a large enough Catholic population to make integralism plausible. That means the Latin countries of Europe like Spain and Italy.
Over the last decade, integralism has become a topic of conversation, largely due to Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule. He is a critic of modern liberal democracy as well as the conservative movement that operates within it. His main work is in the area of administrative law, but his embrace of the integralism concept has attracted others from the traditionalist wing of conservatism. Matthew Schmitz, Sohrab Ahmari, and Patrick Deneen are the notable converts.
In fairness, what is forming up to be American integralism is not what Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had in mind at the Second Vatican Council. The thinkers and writers coming to the integralism banner share Vermeule’s disgust with modern conservatism and its role in enabling progressivism. Sohrab Ahmari called it David Frenchism, a performative traditionalism that is weak and conciliatory toward the Left. They imagine themselves creating a new Right similar to old European Right.
To be fair there are some serious people within this space thinking hard about how to re-center politics within the Western Christian tradition. To be even more fair, there is no chance of this happening, at least not peacefully. Liberal democracy comes with its own religion and moral code. It cannot tolerate alternative morale codes and it cannot exist within the moral framework of Catholicism. We will need a revolution to go from liberal democracy to some new moral order.
Therein lies the main problem with all modern political philosophy. It assumes a blank sheet of paper where the deciders get to decide the type of society they will create and impose on the world. They spend their time working out the political theory and then imagine how it would work, assuming a fresh start. It is the game of imagining your dream home in some idyllic setting. The plausibility of the house and the process to make it happen is just assumed.
Libertarianism is probably the most egregious example. As Hans Hermann-Hoppe explained many years ago, it is not possible to go from modern societies to a libertarian society within the constraints of libertarian theory. Further, there is no way to maintain a libertarian society, assuming you solve that first problem. Despite this obvious reality, libertarianism persists. The adherents are content to imagine themselves living in the Shire with the other hobbits of libertarianism.
Integralism has a strong whiff of this same sort of escapism. Instead of being yeoman farmers trading sheep for shoes, the integralists imagine themselves riding out to face the black knight of liberal democracy in defense of the faith. There is not much thought given to how we could turn back the clock. It is just assumed that something will happen, the current order will fail and this alternative will become the obvious alterative to the crisis of liberal democracy.
In fairness to the libertarians and integralists, they are not outside the bounds of normal political debate with this approach. The post-Marx culturalists who now dominate the American Left believe they just have to destroy the current cultural institutions and from the rubble will rise the egalitarian paradise. The old civic nationalists believe we just need a blank piece of vellum onto which we can copy down the original constitution and America becomes a republic again.
A curious feature of this age is that almost all political discussion operates in the world of forms to the exclusion of practical concerns. This is true in outsider politics on the Right, which has largely been centered on re-fighting the 20th century. Some want to re-fight the 1960’s while others want to re-fight the 1930’s. There is little self-examination about why those fights were lost the first time and no consideration for how re-fighting those old failures will change anything in the present.
The fact that this sort of idealism is popular on the Right suggests that maybe right-wing political theory in a liberal democracy is not supposed to be a serious counter to the prevailing orthodoxy but is a safe harbor for dissent. Historically, the Right exists as a counter to ideology, not as an alternative ideology. The man of the Right is the one throwing cold water on the dream of immanentizing the Eschaton. He focuses on what is possible, not what is desirable.
This is where integralism can contribute. All human societies need a source of authority to justify the rules of the society. “This is how we do things” must be supported with “this is why we do things this way.” Catholicism fused tradition with the supernatural to provide a basis of authority for medieval Europe. The Roman empire had to rely on force to impose its will abroad, but at home it was the traditions and customs of the Roman people that provided the moral authority.
Every human society has an authority. In theory, the authority in a liberal democracy is the will of the people, the consent of the governed. In reality, fifty percent plus one is a fickle master and easily exploited by unscrupulous actors. The crisis in the modern West is rooted in the fact that the system is easily manipulated to profit a ruling class that operates in the shadows of the political order. The gods of democracy are tricksters who revel in the frustrations of the people.
An alternative to liberal democracy must first deal with this reality and propose an alternative authority upon which to base the moral order. That new authority is unlikely to be medieval Christianity, but it will have to be something similar. Some combination of nature, nature’s God and the civilizational interest of the West will be the authority for a new political model. Perhaps some form of techno-feudalism is in the cards for what comes after liberal democracy is thrown into the dustbin of history.
Of course, this means moving from the safe harbor of political escapism into the world of practical solutions to present problems. The real damage done to the American constitutional order has been the deification of the Founders. Their ideas have been turned into holy writ. In reality, the Constitution was a practical solution to present problems hammered out by practical men. It was a political compromise, not the foundation for a political cult.
Whatever comes next will have to start from the same basis. What sort of civil society is possible in the world as it is demographically, technologically and materially? Is a civil society even possible under present conditions? If not, then what must be done, no matter how unpleasant, in order to create the conditions that will make a civil society possible in a post-democracy world? Whatever comes next will not be the work of dreamers, but of practical men solving practical problems.
That is the value in boutique political movements like integralism. It is not a solution, but rather the starting point for a necessary critique of the current order. From that will flow the necessary debate to conjure a plausible alternative. Integralism can be a hammer to crack the walls of modern conservatism, which in turn exposes the soft realty of the liberal democratic order it protects. Integral to an alternative moral philosophy is a rational critique of the present order.
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I wouldnt mind deification of the founders if we didnt reinterpret everything they said. If we had the society that they imagined we’d have, no nonwhites or non christians would have citizenship. Even Lincoln stated publicly that blacks and whites will never be equal and could never be equal in the same society
Any and All Integral Trad Caths can come and pry my Luther’s Catechism from my cold dead hands. My Yankee roots have near 400 years of tradition on this continent, with a good record of keeping the church of Rome at bay.
If there’s one ideal for which I will make a stand, that is the ideal of Martin Luther Catechism and his liberation of God’s Word to be read and interpreted by All Men.
I hope these integralists nothing but impotence and a fate no better than their grifter forefathers now known as Conservative Inc.
Something left unsaid about the anti-Catholic/Orthodox trend in American politics, even in much more conservative times, is the influence of secret faiths. Lots of “Protestants” (especially Unitarians) who love their Hebrew scriptures and want nothing to do with the magisterium or saints or the trinity and who see Jesus as just a community organizer are frequently Jewish, Muslim, or some kind of deist masonic cultist. Or plain old witchcraft. When the civil service doesn’t reflect society, and meritocracy is corrupt, the secret cult sector is in good business. The thing about cults, though, is that they compete against each other… Read more »
A true jibber-jabber response as I have ever seen. “Lots of “Protestants” (especially Unitarians) who love their Hebrew scriptures and want nothing to do with the magisterium or saints or the trinity and who see Jesus as just a community organizer are frequently Jewish, Muslim, or some kind of deist masonic cultist. Or plain old witchcraft.” With that you have let the cat out of the bag with your ignorance, I’ll reckon to guess you have no Idea or have Read Luther’s Catechism. Until you have, don’t lump all us “protestants” together, especially the demonic Unitarians. If they are who… Read more »
I think some sort of Pan-Christian integralism is workable in large parts of America. The term “Christian Nationalist” is openly adopted by mainstream politicians such as MTG, and is a nice, optical descriptor for such an ideology. America on average is far more Christian than Europe at this point.
My sense is that morality flows from power. The Medieval Christian morality was created by the unique circumstances of that era. Early pagan barbarian conquerors had no literacy, nor literate caste. Conversion led to a literate caste of scribes (monks) who could neither inherit nor challenge the Lord, and was a convenient place to stash younger sons negating much of the dynastic warfare that undid Ancient dynasties and the Mongols. Later morality adapted to the growing power of Kings, and later Presidents and Prime Ministers and the business leaders behind them. Today’s morality is a function of who has power.… Read more »
Sonmez just got canned at the Washington Post. Lorenz’ future not looking too bright, either.
Just my friendly rejoinder, Whiskey’s entire strategy is to blame women, most of whom have no agency. Who is he covering for? Who is programming the women?
Women do have agency if they choose to use it. Most do not.
I think there was a surplus of females for the silent and boomer generations. More women were in the population than men. This is why dating was easy for boomer men, and its probably why all of our institutions became female obsessed.
“Happy Wife, Happy Life”
Words to live by!
And yes, I get laid whenever and wherever!
/S
Some combination of nature, nature’s God and the civilizational interest of the West will be the authority for a new political model.
That is very close to the conclusion to which Fr. George Rutler came in his book “Beyond Modernity.” He cited Thomas Aquinas’ ‘tread lightly on moralizing laws” as opposed to leaning heavily on Natural Law, particularly the biggest three: murder, theft, rape.
I vote for neo-Green, environmentalism.
The honest stuff.
It is moral, emotive, universal, and ethnically neutral (with a subversively positive slant towards the whiteness that invented it.)
It is both rooted and reverent.
It also is eminently practical, because resources, population, and waste are the greatest problems that arose from oil / electric power’s unprecedented surplus.
(Thank you again, white people!)
Sometimes your on, most times not.
Do you do comment thread filler well??
I don’t think so. Must be slow times down in the Langley Cellar these days
Zman: “To be fair there are some serious people within this [Integral] space thinking hard about how to re-center politics within the Western Christian tradition. To be even more fair, *there is no chance of this happening, at least not peacefully.* Liberal democracy comes with its own religion and moral code. It cannot tolerate alternative moral codes…” Emphasis mine. This is one reason why we on the D-Right need to stop wasting time on resisting the gay movement. That bell has rung. Liberal Democracy’s hottest & sparkliest badge of honor is its victory for gays. Sure, liberating and lifting the… Read more »
Never straight ahead.
Always, gayly forward!
Embrace individuals who insert their erect penis into another man’s rectum?
Because they’re fresh funny and dynamic?
More like degenerates.
I’ll pass, and associate with like minded individuals.
I’ll leave it to bigger brains to decide if gays should be “allowed” in the D-Right. The bigger point, as I’ve long said, and which was a theme of Z’s post today, is that when Rightists come up with new plans, they tend to forget that there’s a Progressive plan already in place that took them 200 years to construct. Any group that messes with their core values will be badly hurt. Western Liberal Democracy’s most prized modern triumph is Gay Liberation. It’s just funny to me that you guys think you can turn the clock back on that one.
They cant reproduce. Cut the head off the propaganda and the problem disappears.
Whatever floats your boat Frip, but keep in mind it’s made of muscle not rubber. And punchin’ the turtle tail don’t lube itself, but other than that, enjoy!
Vermeule is a Harvard Law guy? I’m surprised he’s able to survive there.
When you think of the heavy-weight talents that COULD be on the Supreme Court, rather than the mix we have.
Funny, this bit from Wiki seems like it could’ve been clipped from a 1923 newspaper.
“Vermeule was born May 2, 1968, into a family of prominent scholars. His mother, Emily Vermeule, a classical scholar, was the Stone Professor at Harvard University. His father, Cornelius Clarkson Vermeule III, served for many years as Curator of the Classical Department at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. His sister, Blakey Vermeule, is a literary scholar and a Professor of English at Stanford University.”
So what you’re saying,( to borrow a phrase from Cathy Newman), is not a single person in that family does anything of value for society.
I think the term is “High end navel gazers”.
Why would any modern person choose to live under a Catholic rule when they can have all the free sex, drugs and rock and roll of clownworld? The vast majority of people will not embrace the straight and narrow over the crooked and easy of their own accord, they would have to be forced into it.
So, yes, it’s just another modern form of escapism.
You are right on. It certainly doesn’t help that children are given tablets and phones right out of the cradle, thereby conditioning them to become addicted to dopamine releasing stimulus. It is only going to get worse.
They may not have a choice. The degenerates are removing themselves from the gene pool. Feminists are all on birth control, if not asexual obese freaks. Religious people still have high birth rates, but not as high as welfare class. In a generation or two, when the welfare system runs out of money, i can imagine a walled two class society of hardworking religious people and low IQ descendants of welfare recipients begging for entry, similar to latin america.
The Us black fertility rate is below replacement . So either the small Black middle class is entirely infertile which flies in the face of the people I’ve known or the welfare class isn’t with a few notable exceptions having tons of kids
I suspect the later.
The only group in the US with huge families are the hyper religious and more moderately the rural. This is the historical norm with one exception, that Elon Musk aside wealth people tend to small families
Well, ya gotta have a public morality. And, given that we are headed for some sort of monarchy, you want the monarch to view himself as, well, you want him to think in Pauline terms: the nation is a body, with the king as the head. But the king is as concerned with the welfare of the foot as he is with the welfare of the eye. This is literally the medieval concept. If you’re looking for an example of integralism, consider Russia. The Church has an important role in setting the public morality, the state supports the Church in… Read more »
Russia does the have the advantage of having the Russian Orthodox Church as their church. We Catholics have globohomo Vatican run by a communist atheist. So even if we could implement such a system, the Vatican would have to be reformed first. The rot is very deep.
Some believe that Ireland’s 12th century Saint Malachy, who left a prophecy of a hundred-odd Latin verses, predicted future Popes to include the present, which is supposed to be the final one before the end time.
If his prediction comes true, then the world will end soon. I’m not sure that’d be the remedy Tars has in mind, but it would surely address many problems.
Calumny is a serious sin. There is no evidence that the Pope is either a Communist or an atheist, however liberal and generally bad for the church he may be.
The Vatican reforms when it begins to matter again. Slim Jim Martin or the Queen of the Nile (Bishop of DC) are the kind of fabulous fellows you can only afford when you’re playing for very low stakes.
If we do end up living under a monarch he is far more likely to be like Raz Simone, the Warlord of CHAZ in Seattle than a new Charlemagne.
Practically, someone might want to study how technology can be used to effect or at least assist with large population transfers without producing large amounts of casualties. My reading suggests the gold standard for population transfers (with casualties) are the Soviet’s forced removal of the Volga Germans in the first six weeks after the start of Barbarossa, followed by the Khmer Rouge’s emptying of Phnom Penh in the spring of 1975. We can do better. With electric driverless cars, mobile apps and satellite navigation, we might even be able to find a Market-Based Common Sense Solution which will briefly please… Read more »
Stampedes can be manufactured (just like election frauds). Where there is a will, they is a way. With just a little bit of existential motivation, the Gulfstreams will fly. And once the disease cells are no longer in positions of power and preventing free association, the exodus and sorting will become largely organic. We don’t need a tyrant to marshal jackboots, crack skulls, and kill the innocent. We need to rid ourselves of the parasites that plague us at every level of society. That should be the focus.
I think people vastly overestimate how hard it would be to get rid of a large number of foreigners living in the US. I personally think a very large number of them could be gotten rid by just enforcing the existing laws. Large fines and prison terms for anyone employing them. Most of them are Mexican citizens already even if they were born here. Mexico has a law that makes children born in a foreign territory to Mexican citizens is automatically a Mexican citizen, which means their children will also be Mexican citizens. While Mexicans are not the only foreign… Read more »
Enforce existing laws? Of course you’re not wrong. We’re living in anarcho-tyranny where laws are arbitrarily interpreted and selectively applied depending upon the demographics of the parties involved.
Europe has the same problem. Illegal immigrants were told if they had them, to destroy any paperwork, especially passports, so there was no way to deport them back where they came from. They know European law enforcement will do nothing to remove them and now enclaves have established themselves everywhere. They outnumber the police and law enforcement, so the few that do get deported are a drop in the ocean compared to those who will stay, have kids and become permanent wards of the state. It’s a global problem and the liberal west will pay a heavy price for their… Read more »
That happens here as well. Journalists reporting from the southern border reported finding thousands of documents from Chile and Brazil (where many of these people had been settled for decades) as they crossed over from Mexico.
I recently planted a similar black (red?) pill on, of all things, a Covid-19 blog that doesn’t censor. I usually stay on that topic there, but a DR style comment about demographic changes was an apropos reply to an earlier comment.
Turn off the firehose of free handouts and entitlements and a significant percentage of illegals would rapidly self-deport.
This would also work in Europe.
But what would the people who administer these grifts do if this were to happen? Such bureaucracies metastasize like cancers, and the onslaught is often unstoppable, regardless of the consequences to the nation.
Of course, you are correct, but getting this to happen?
When you read a lot of the sentiments the founders had about what they were doing you realize the trap they fell into, and I believe never saw coming. Yes indeed they were putting something together that was a practical approach to practical problems. Their assumption, and the trap, was “surely everyone wants a practical method to solve problems.” As it turns out that’s not what many people care about. They want the promise, the vision, they want utopia. So until you figure out a way to combine both of those aspirations I think you’re going to end up with… Read more »
they also assumed white male supremacy, not realizing that their words over time would be interpreted to include blacks, browns, and women.
You left out the jooz, darlin, destroyers of worlds. Here to subjugate the cattle, as their good book says.
I just did a word for Catholic, 16. For Jesus, 0. That’s the problem
The average article or book written by an integralist uses the phrase “Social Reign of Christ” at least once a paragraph.
Southern Germany, Bavaria in particular, is very Catholic. If you go into the office for vehicle registration or where they issue drivers licences in that State, you will often find a crucifix on a wall and no one even blinks.
I think we all know what would happen if someone attempted to put up a crucifix in a California DMV, or even in their own business or work cubicle in the USA!
Karl Horst: Offhand, I cannot think of a single individual in my husband’s direct ancestry (Irish and Italian) who was a church official, although I’ve found numerous and various very distant relatives who had other relatives who were such. However, his late maternal aunt’s husband was of German Catholic descent. This uncle’s paternal great-grandfather came to the US from Prussia in the late 1830s and his maternal line (immigrated in the 1880s) was from Mecklenburg and the Rhine. Per said late aunt’s verbal recollections shared with me, they didn’t particularly care she was Italian but they were very much concerned… Read more »
It’s always good to see a Horst post. After unification (1871 or thereabouts) How did unified Germany deal with the various religious preferences of its people? Surely it was different from the US which at the founding (1790) was overwhelmingly British Protestant.
Germany, like most of western Europe, has become so secular the population has little interest in religion of any kind other than those that show up they don’t like for historical reasons.
The concept of Catholic and Protestant are just old labels to identify one’s heritage. Today, churches and cathedrals are nothing more than museums with the two exceptions; Christmas and Easter.
Not going to lie, that breaks my heart. (Being from a ‘mixed’ family.)
Germany is pretty well defined by religious identify by north and south when it comes to Catholics and Protestants.
For some interesting reading on European religious issues, you should look up the movement of the Huguenots who migrated out of France and Germany ultimately leaving both countries for other locations like the Americas.
Tut, tut, Z-man. How many articles have you concluded with “this will not end well,” or some other phrase prophesying the imminent demise of liberal democracy? If your auguries are correct and the current wretched system disintegrates in less than, say, 50 years, this result will provide an opportunity for the the critical idealists–such as the Integralists–to fashion their preferred society. The same can be said for white separatists, who seemingly make up the overwhelming bulk of your readership. No group, not even the Finkels, can control the future, but we can plan for it. Failure to do so would… Read more »
“I may disagree with the Integralists, libertarians and Civ-Nats, but I can at least respect their attempts to prepare for what comes after.”
Perhaps you can enlighten us on what attempts these groups are preparing for what comes after. Especially the libertarians and Civ-Nats. The only thing I can think of is they are preparing to get a bigger grill.
Right?
I walk around the parks here and everyone appears to be LARPing as hard as possible that everything is just fine.
The softball bros are all driving well-optioned, late-model full-sized pickups in good condition.
Rotarians will demand even more inspiring public memorials to their dead members. That should get the ball rolling. Ring that bell!
They have a vision for the ideal society. I consider those visions dumb, but even dumber would be to have no vision at all. My vision revolves around a populace that is at least 92% white.
Yeah, but what are they PREPARING to do? They’ll talk, of course, but I think they will actually do Diddley. And Squat.
After the imminent Unset, the Reset. The Reset. Start with the US Constitution I, which was a pretty good first edition. US Constitution II. Remove the “all men are created equal” clause and all affirmative action laws. Add a freedom of association clause to the Bill of Rights. Include an expiration date, after which a new Constitution must be ratified. Only tax paying CITIZENS who can read, write and pass a basic civics test may vote. Term limits for all politicians. Immigration moratorium. Immediate dismissal of any President who goes to war w/o congressional approval. Close the Departments Education, Agriculture,… Read more »
No written Constitutions.
They don’t work, never have and never will. Their subverted before the ink even dries.
Good observation. The problem with the Constitution is less one of correcting errors or updating/modernizing as that of clever people “interpreting” its meaning in the future.
No revised Constitution will survive for long unless such clever people are controlled for. Start there.
“Start there.”
Easily done!
No Agencìes.
Perma-ban on FDR’s Bolshie
Revolution.
The unelected are the problem; un-accountable power is the honey drawing the flies.
The USSR had a famously awesome Constitution (s). Rights for everything!
It’s just paper. Need to have a virtuous elite or and or virtuous despot.
There’s no other way. You can’t control it, you can’t vote for it, but you can hope for it while creating parallel institutions.
Plus, of course, replacing the “all men are created equal” clause with the mandatory “populace must maintain at least 92% white” clause.
If Japan and North Korea can do it, so can we.
You wouldn’t be able to measure 92% as time went on. Just make it 100%. No one who’s not white is allowed in, period.
Any non-whites inside the border are considered an invasion force or cross-border raiding party. They may be killed at will by any white person who finds them.
Possible special exception for ambassadors of other nations, but there is a closed town for them and they can’t leave.
You’re one of those ultra-online types who’ve convinced themselves all the puppy abuse and beheading videos on the ‘chans is fake.
Seems to me the American question is who we are, and we’re not allowed to answer it. In fact told very bad things will happen if we even consider it.
Society seems structured to prevent us from getting an answer. That tells me it’s the place to start. And it makes sense, because how can you know what’s good for you if you’re a stranger to yourself?
Happily, it’s easy to figure out once you stop clinging to mammon, reputation, ego, etc. The first principle is inborn in each of us. It only needs to be uncovered.
Yes, practicality is the word. Enough with analysis & prognostication that accomplishes nothing. Nuts & bolts. The collapse is inevitable, the when is unknown. The interregnum is for restoring robustness. Strong and smart have always “worked.” The Cloud People have surrounded themselves with competent white male guardians, most ex-military, some thugs, some are intelligent & quite formidable; all are well paid mercenaries of limited loyalty. LEOs will also stand the line when not on riot duty. And once upon a time, high castle walls did the rest. But then technology happened. Drones are now easy & cheap to make. High… Read more »
Whatever comes next in the hopeful creation of some sort of civil society will have to be decided by practical White men for White people. Everyone else will have to figure out their own way, but not in any western countries. Now how that’ll get done is anyone’s guess, but it needs to be. The sewage flood that’s polluted western civilization – aided and abetted of course by leftist ideologues, must be terminated and reversed.
I tell my conservative friends all the time Someone’s morality will rule. It might as well be ours. I try to get them to see that progressivism has a moral foundation that is intolerant of any other morality. It must be replaced. Now what exactly it is replaced by is open to debate. Some form of traditional Christianity, or stoicism, or the Viking gods, or …….but whatever our current public moral foundation is replaced by cannot be worse than what we currently have unless it’s replaced by human sacrifice and Aztec type rituals I suppose, but the bottom line is… Read more »
“….but whatever our current public moral foundation is replaced by cannot be worse than what we currently have unless it’s replaced by human sacrifice and Aztec type rituals I suppose…”
That Sir, is a failure of imagination. Even accepting your examples, things can always be worse.
I don’t know even the Aztecs cut the heart out and left the person dead, we mutilate the genitals and the minds of our children and let them live.
“things can always be worse.”
The Aztecs sacrificed 84,000 people, mostly children, in a grand Fifth Sun ceremony.
It worked! What it brought was the arrival of the Spaniards, two weeks later, and the end of the Aztec world.
Talk about unintended consequences!
A new social contract with a re-calibrated moral magnetometer but not from RCC/Emperor Cult Inc is already emergent in techno-moral world. Amplification and magnification from technical advances demand that you do righteously or die on a much much larger scale now. On the other hand the AIPAC/Epstein model is insane as a moral premise to anything except endless murder, extortion and autopsy grab ass. What we don’t need is to drown in the new AIPAC jingle- Hare! Hare!… Hare Trumpstein! Trumpstein! Trumpstein! Hare! Hare! Hare Trumpstein! Hare Trumpstein! Trumpstein! Trumpstein! Hare! Hare! There is nothing like Evangelical Christians paralyzed into… Read more »
@Z Man – You might find a deeper critique and understanding in the work of Scottish Roman Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre – in particular his After Virtue; Whose Justice? Which Rationality; and Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry. TRVMI is the most accessible and clearest of these, since it is derived from the Gifford Lectures (for the general public); and contrasts the moral ‘systems’ of Aquinas, 18th century Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, and the Nietzsche-Foucault type of post-modernists. I’ve ended-up somewhere very different within Christianity; but MacIntyre made permanently clear to me that secular modernity does Not provide a coherent morality… Read more »
Alasdair MacIntyre’s most famous position is his argument against Humans rights, which he equated with believing in witches and unicorns. His argument was there is no such thing as human rights, but only rights conferred by being a part of a certain society at a certain time. It’s common sense if one gives it more than a minute of thought, but also makes most people at all sides of the political spectrum gasp in horror, as it completely refutes the assumed universalism of the enlightenment. If one wants to see how it breaks down, take a look at some rulings… Read more »
I had occasion to ponder on “human rights” yesterday while driving thru Hive Central (Portland) when I noticed a porta-potty on the sidewalk while waiting at a red light. It’s presence was made possible by several ‘homeless advocacy’ groups (will they ever figure out the more one “advocates” for something the more of that thing one gets?) who stuck their logos on the side of the potty along with the reason for its presence there – apparently being able to relieve oneself on a very public sidewalk but with some level of privacy is a “human right”. It must be… Read more »
I had to drive through downtown Vancouver yesterday and I realized that all the Portland soy boys have moved across the river to get away from the products of their “advocacy”. It’s all those boxy modern apartment buildings with swarms of bike riding fruits clogging the streets, and every parking space has some kind of weird restriction.
You mention an interesting civic point. Long ago (most of a century), major American cities had public lavatories. Of course these were long before my time, but I’ve used similar facilities which still exist in some places in nations such as Mexico, maybe some in Europe too. Now granted, these weren’t on every street corner, but they made sense in high-traffic areas like the train station. In marked contrast to modern public toilets, these were always staffed. It was surely not a glamorous job but it was an honest one: at least one staff member was on duty to keep… Read more »
I have been meaning to read MacIntyre, but have only been exposed to summaries. I am finishing Kevin MacDonald’s book for a review, so perhaps a pallet cleaner is on order. Just downloaded it on Kindle. Thanks.
zman: I haven’t heard of MacIntyre but what I’m reading of him here makes sense. I will similarly have to download some of his writing.
As an aside, you do hate your homonyms, Zman! A revolt against parochial school diction class? Handwriting (printing and cursive) was my bete noir; no one can read my scribbles to this day.
A pallet, traditionally a straw or crude bed, is now a crude wooden platform used for the storage or transport of goods.
Your palate is the roof of your mouth and a synonym for your taste or flavor.
MacIntyre is one of the main reasons I did not jettison the Catholicism of my youth and strive, by the grace of God, to live by its tenets. He is a convert himself after many years of Marxism.
“The real damage done to the American constitutional order has been the deification of the Founders. Their ideas have been turned into holy writ. In reality, the Constitution was a practical solution to present problems hammered out by practical men. It was a political compromise, not the foundation for a political cult.” Yes, perhaps. But you cannot fight Globo/Prog with a glorified instruction manual either. So you cannot help but sympathize with, or at least understand, the old Right’s deification of the Founders and the founding documents. The synthesis, as Zman has suggested before, may be “re-Founding” principles dedicated to… Read more »
Great thoughts! Homing-in on the relevant essential truths, while calling bullshit on anything less. I love Z’s characterization of our present task as “conjur[ing] a plausible alternative” based on “a rational critique of the present order.” “Conjuring” in the sense of calling into being that which presently exists only as intriguing possibilities. “Catholicism fused tradition with the supernatural….” Or would it be more accurate to say that Catholicism fused tradition with superstition? And however attractive superstition may be, it’s still superstition: what humans imagined before they had the means to truly know. What’s wrong with utilizing the same authority that… Read more »
If you think that we now have the means to “truly know” answers to important questions, you are the problem. Let me just point out that the tedious invocation of magical social sciences has been used for decades against the Left, to no affect whatever.
You are barking up the wrong tree, and this particular tree has been barked up quite a lot by the kind of conservative that has a flawless record of losing everything all the time.
When we can launch a spacecraft off the orbiting, spinning Earth,
slingshot it around the Moon, using the Moon’s gravity to speed it up and direct its trajectory,
and then send it 5 billion miles to Pluto, and send back videos—
then YES! We sure as hell know the answers to many important questions about the Universe!
Not sure what you’re referring to by “the tedious invocation of social sciences”— but that’s NOT what I was referring to when I suggested that a scientific approach to understanding reality is the way to go
I have no problem with science, but it needs to stay within its domain – knowledge of the mechanics of the material. The problem we often run into is trying to use science to answer questions it is not designed or capable of answering. Like trying to use a hammer to carry water.
Agreed. For one thing, science can go a long way towards answering the questions that religious myths attempted to answer: Who are we? Where did we come from? What are we like, and how did we get that way? Evolutionary science is the ongoing attempt to provide those answers, relying on demonstrable facts rather than attractive conjecture. A scientific study of history can teach us much about what human beings are like; about human nature. And a fact-based understanding of human nature can go a long way towards helping us figure out what’s possible, and what the best way is… Read more »
lol. You guys are all the same.
What makes you think I’m a “guy”?!?!
I could be identifying as a pretty pink petunia!
Did you ever think if THAT?
To paraphrase Twain* rather poorly: The problem is not so much that one doesn’t “truly know” answers, rather it’s when one “truly knows” a “truth” that actually is not very true at all. No one is immune to this flaw, as I often point out to no applause here 🙂 It is not given to Man to know all truths. But given the tools at hand, we can often make a reasonable approach to it and in many domains, determine [with near-certainty] what is true and what can’t possibly be true. *I have an ebook (Gutenberg) supposedly Twain’s complete works,… Read more »
Real Bill “What humans imagined before they had the means to truly know”. Is there some kind of test to “prove” God exists? Please enlighten me because I’d like to be sure. I’m not going to comment to convince anyone that there is a God, uncaused first cause, etc. I’m simply pointing out that, while breathing, we can’t be “sure” of the existence of a supreme being; without him whispering in our ear that is. The only certainty is that either there is an afterlife, with a bunch of stuff we have not even thought about, or oblivion. I’m not… Read more »
Bartleby: Your solid comment was not a rant and no apology ought to have been offered. As a Christian believer, I respect those who do not share my faith/beliefs, but believe the civilized and courteous commenter (the vast majority here at Zman) ought to offer respect to others’ legitimately held beliefs. I’ve tried to offer more subtle rebukes to the real Bill before – he is under no obligation to believe in God but ought not to consider that license to deliberately insult and/or mock those who do.
I think Scientism has been thoroughly discredited in the last couple of decades with global warming and covid. It had a good couple of centuries, but has now proven as corruptible as any other endeavor undertaken by man.
Science follows the money.
Bartelby, I’ll second 3g4me: not a rant at all; rather, a very reasonable response. I’ll try to be equally reasonable in my reply! I agree that the questions of ‘Is there a God?’ and ‘What is God like?’ are not susceptible to “proof”. My own conclusion— that whatever Higher Power may exist, He/She/It does not match the description of God offered in the Bible— came after decades of attempting to believe in that God. In the end, I just couldn’t do it: the world I knew was not the world described in the Bible. I called out to God, and… Read more »
I sure appreciate the thoughtfulness of the commentariat here. I raise my glass to all of you.
The fact that this sort of idealism is popular on the Right suggests that maybe right-wing political theory in a liberal democracy is not supposed to be a serious counter to the prevailing orthodoxy but is a safe harbor for dissent. Historically, the Right exists as a counter to ideology, not as an alternative ideology. Conservative in the American paradigm, seek to conserve some point on the enlightenment-liberal spectrum, as if that point was a place and not a moment in time. They are literally yesterdays leftists. That is why they seam to fail at conserving anything and the leftward… Read more »
That is conservatism’s role in the American context – conserve yesterday’s leftist gains while today’s leftists forge ahead.
This goes further back than that: how many monarchs in Europe still sit on the throne? And how many of those wield any real power? In theory the British Monarch can go all “Charles the First”, but probably with Charles the First-like results.
Yes. We have to come to terms with the fact that the Enlightenment was one of the bigger mistakes in history. Conservatives who want to return to the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence are simply going back to the beginning of where things went totally wrong.
The last true Rightwing force in America, using that definition, was the Old South. Probably why the cloudies never pass on a chance to shit on them.
The post-Marx culturalists who now dominate the American Left believe they just have to destroy the current cultural institutions and from the rubble will rise the egalitarian paradise I used to believe this but realized that there’s bo evidence supporting it. The left never talks about their utopia. What it will be like and how awesome it will be. Maybe they used to believe, back in the mists of time, that some better place would be achieved by tearing down the system. But they’ve long lost that vision. Generations ago. At this point, it’s a zombie nihilistic movement. The only… Read more »
Few Christians talk about heaven. Mature religions and ideologies come with a lot of assumed truths. Just as most Christians are ignorant of the tenets of their faith, most leftists are ignorant of the underlying intellectual arguments underlying eh smashing of the culture.
Ask a Christian what heave is like and they give you some description.
Ask a leftist what follows the extinction of white people and they got nothing, Half of them (or more) will even deny that that’s what they want. Unfortunately, I have a few woke lefties in my life and I’ve directly asked them that question, so it’s not just conjecture on my part.
Other differences with that analogy is that Christian’s believe the afterlife exists not they they are creating it.
“Reasoning” is so TEDIOUS !
So White!
I believe what I believe because believing it MAKES ME FEEL GOOD!
What in the heck does reason have to do with it?
That seems to be a built-in pitfall which has often sabotaged human reason:
the tendency to confuse ‘what we *wish* was true’, with ‘what we can show to be true’.
Marxism, religious belief of all sorts, and the current radical egalitarianism: all are based on wishful imagining, of the ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…’ sort…. rather than a clear-eyed appraisal of ‘what actually is and what that tells us about what may be possible’
Clovis I could not be reached for comment
Dinodoxy is on-point here. The utopian Marxists are all long-dead and those who now cling to the communist identity are self-hating cluster B freaks who project their own self-hatred on the world.
Why do so many otherwise brilliant people have a hard time accepting the fact that evil exists, and many people seek destruction merely for destruction’s sake?
This is why I use the term “post-Marx culturalists” rather than Marxists.
I think what complicates the use of the word ‘evil’ is that it can mean different things to different people.
The religious sense of ‘evil’ derives from the Bible, and includes the notion of personality: that there is an active, personal, conscious source of evil in the Universe: the Satan spoken-of in the Bible and the Koran.
While secular (non-believing) people are using ‘evil’ in a different sense: to describe the worst human badness it’s possible to imagine.
“The left never talks about their utopia”. Of course they do. The first will of Cecil Rhodes wanted English men to rule the entire world as a preventative of the horrors of war. That is the common thread of globalists. John Lennon even wrote a song about it. It isn’t practical, but that’s the dream.
Rhodesia: never a more fitting epitaph.
Yeah,it proved his point.
What’s called The Great Reset or post-American globalism may fit the bill. Too many people for the world’s permissible resouces to sustain. AI replacing white collar professions. Techno-feudal selfdom as you say. The mass of the American people, descending into poverty and forming the new American peasantry divided and ruled by race, gender and other provincial identities, would well suit the designs of a growing international elite. From these Marxian-type material conditions a new moratlity and ethics may emerge that, from today’s perspective, may be ghastly but from tomorrow’s, who knows. Of course there’s the Tower of Babel factor that… Read more »
Rather than argue separation of church and state or other issues as I typically do, I propose another perspective. In normal times it is natural to debate the most trivial, arcane details. Is it racism to arrest Blacks, even if they crime out of proportion to other races? Should [more] support be given to gays, to transgeneders, the latest economic migrant from a shithole country, etc? Should we support the Ukraine side, and in what ways? Vote Republican or Democrat in the next election? What do nearly all these have in common? They are what are termed “luxury problems.” By… Read more »
Sounds like you are channeling the latest Ed Dutton podcast. We are all of us sitting down to a banquet of consequences, or at least the preparatory hors-d’œuvres. The lavish lifestyle will give way to one of struggle; out of struggle, triumph, one hopes.
Anyone who has been in the inside of a basic Catholic Church in the last 30 years can see how neutered the institution is. This isn’t even going into the Diocesan bureaucracy and Bishops. Even the good people in these roles are generally incapable of good governance, as there are a multitude of Catholics who will gleefully stab them in the back for secular praise. The idea of a Catholic state is a dumb LARP, regardless of how prestigious the Universities these people came from operate. There’s a de-facto cold war in Catholicism between trads and the Vatican, and the… Read more »
Well stated Chet. This unto itself is good essay material.
Chesterton Coziness between Church and State is good for the State and bad for the Church. Tocqueville As long as religion relies upon feelings which are the consolation of every suffering, it may attract the human heart….but by uniting with different political powers, can … form only burdensome alliances. MADISON Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together. Or, religion makes the man, and man makes the government, which also has mixed results depending on the religion. According to Tocqueville the Protestant religion, at that time, had the best results making the man… Read more »
I could see a Third Great Awakening happening, based on the rejection of consumerism. For one thing, it’ll be making a virtue out of necessity — every day brings more examples of GloboPedo deliberately destroying the “economic base” that makes the “ideological superstructure” of GloboPedo possible. When you can’t afford to buy anything, and there’s nothing to buy anyway, a spiritual renewal by rejecting materialism makes a lot of sense. Another virtue-by-necessity is extreme localism. Leftist morality depends on virtue signaling to screen names on a smartphone. If you run across an SJW in real life, you can reduce xzhym… Read more »
In the past, I have compared these spasms of progressive radicalism to the Great Awakening. This current one started with the 2000 election. It is showing all the signs of petering out now. The prior one, which started in the fifties with the Civil Rights crusade ran out of steam after 20 years. These are moral panics, even though they manifest as tantrums against conventional morality.
I agree, and I’d add in the sub-panics (I guess, for lack of a better term) that seem to act as pressure release valves. They can just as easily come from the “right” as the “left” — e.g. the McMartin Preschool Great Satanic Panic of the early 1980s. Or Covid, more recently — they’re like tectonic plates shifting, as the young up-and-comers lash out at the fossils of the old order, like the Salem Witchcraft Trials. But those panics and sub-panics don’t result in a fundamental lifestyle reorientation — as you’ve said many times, the Left talks like MLK but… Read more »
The McMartin pre-school panic was mid-late 80’s, but yeah.
“In the past, I have compared these spasms of progressive radicalism to the Great Awakening. This current one started with the 2000 election. It is showing all the signs of petering out now. The prior one, which started in the fifties with the Civil Rights crusade ran out of steam after 20 years. These are moral panics, even though they manifest as tantrums against conventional morality.” And they are also all flights of fancy: based not on ‘what can be shown to be true’, but rather, on ‘what makes us feel good to imagine as being true.’ The notion of… Read more »
The real Bill: While most of us here term ourselves ‘realists,’ the label has its limits. Those limits are inherent in human reason and the human brain. There remain numerous concepts and occurrences and things that the human mind and human concepts (science, philosophy, etc.) cannot accurately explain. Some of us can argue we have had personal experience of things beyond what we might previously have believed legitimate or comprehensible. Belief in the supernatural (Christian or otherwise) is not an inherent indicator that its adherent is a mystical, anti-racial anti-empiricist. Your repeated linking of any traditional religious belief with modern… Read more »
Sorry you feel insulted: that was not my intention. I’m merely stating what I’ve found to be true, and why. I DO see religious belief as a superstition. Am I not allowed to say that? And while it’s not legit to apply “empirical” standards to anyone’s particular subjective personal experience, it IS legitimate to point out the bigger picture: That when we see a wide range of religious believers— whose mutually-contradictory beliefs *can’t possibly all be true*— ALL interpreting their experiences as if they confirmed the truth of those mutually-contradictory beliefs— Then we can say with absolute certainty that spiritual… Read more »
Real Bill, do not be speaking out of line about my Church of the Ultimately Mysterious Universe.
I could see a Third Great Awakening happening
Wokism is our eras great awakening.
Whatever deep Anglo cultural trends drive great awakenings are playing out in a post Christian culture.
I agree 100 percent with you although with a caveat, Dinodoxy. Not only is the New Great Awakening post-Christian, but it is also post-Western. In the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd moral panic, the digital tent revivals, along with their legacy broadcast and print brush arbors, were altar calls to repent and redeem souls. White fragility/privilege/supremacy was the new Original Sin, and the Western culture that gave rise to it the Fallen One. The caveat is this will not last much longer for the reason Severian pointed out. Due to necessity, we are about to enter a post-consumerism era.… Read more »
“and there’s nothing to buy anyway”
That’s the fundamental difference between was is happening/what is about to happen. Unavailability will be the actual reset, and with effects its architects will not enjoy and likely never anticipated.
In regards to extreme localism, as recent as late 2020 I thought that even though the World was going insane,I would be a able to ride it out in my quiet, semirural corner of the Northwest. There are currently at least 8000 housing units (mostly apartments) under construction in my county of 100,000 .Blue state refugees abound and no, the people leaving those states are not mostly conservatives (see the effect of Californians on Oregon and Washington). I am already starting to feel a stranger in my hometown.
>”We will need a revolution to go from liberal democracy to some new moral order.” You say that as if it’s an impossibility, instead of an inevitability. Our enemies are not giving up without a fight, so our choices will eventually be to either fight, or live under their increasingly cruel, depraved, and intolerable domination forever. >”There is not much thought given to how we could turn back the clock.” That’s a leftist phrase, and like everything they say, it’s meaningless. Clocks only go in one direction, but that doesn’t mean that liberal democracy is inevitable, any more than communism… Read more »
When Barbarossa took Stalin by surprise his initial exhortations to the Russian people were to fight for the Party and the revolution. When that didn’t work as planned, he changed to fight for the Rodina, blood and soil. You have to have something meaningful to fight for not an abstract.
I had left the Catholic Church before Vatican II, and that false Council merely confirmed my choice. Like many former Catholics, there can be no return to the Faith unless traditional Catholicism, that of Pius XII and other previous Popes is restored. It is not just a matter of the Latin mass. The mass is a symbol for a whole doctrine and practice. Until, and unless, there restoration occurs, Integralism is empty and will not happen.
A funny thing is you can follow the trajectory of dissident thoughts in Church life as well as American life in almost a linear trajectory. The idea that the FBI would orchestrate mass killings would make your average American recoil in horror, and now he takes it as matter of fact. The same goes with VII, that it was considered untouchable except by those crazy SSPX people 20 years ago, and most educated Catholics now know that it was plagued with chicanery. As institutions, whether the Vatican of U.S. Government, deteriorate and become incapable of self-correction, they lose control of… Read more »
At some point outcome begins to matter less than just seeing a change. The innate gambler takes over and damn the consequences, at least these pricks enjoying power now will have some real worry in their life. And if it all crumbles… well it was probably going to anyway. So friends, let’s embrace our inner Pareto and let the dice roll.