The Marx Of America

Note: Henrik and Lana of Red Ice need some help with medical bills. Their new born needed almost two week in the ICU. Donate here.


There are men who are remembered for what they did. There are men who are remembered for what they said. Then there are men who are remembered for who they have influenced or the chain events touched off by them. This last group is unique for the simple reason it is hard to say exactly why they are remembered. They are history’s version of the popular figure who is famous for being famous. One such example is the late philosopher, Leo Strauss.

That last sentence provides a clue as to why this mediocre philosopher and historian is a figure who looms large of contemporary politics. Serious students of philosophy take exception to calling Strauss a philosopher. Historians dismiss him outright. Students of Greek philosophy roll their eyes when they the man’s name. Even his followers will spend hours debating how to properly label the man. Despite this lack of distinction, Leo Strauss is an important figure in our politics.

For those looking for an accessible explainer on Leo Strauss and his work, Paul Gottfried’s book, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America is a straight forward summary and analysis of the man and his work. For those looking for an even shorter introduction to the topic, here is a good review of the book. At the end of that review, the reviewer touches on the central question of Strauss. Why does this mediocre academic cast such a long shadow?

The main reason anyone talks about Strauss is that his followers have been central to American politics for half a century. His most famous acolyte was Harry Jaffa, who created the cult of Lincoln that still animates conventional conservatism. His reimagining of American history allowed contemporary conservatives to get to the left of their opponents on the issue of race. It is why the modern conservative cannot shut up about Abraham Lincoln. He is their get out jail free card.

That does not explain why we have lots of middlebrow intellectuals announcing themselves as Straussians rather than Jaffians. Modern conservatism owes far more to Jaffa than Strauss, but the conservative intellectual space is littered with people flying the flag of Leo Strauss. Additionally, there are flavors of Straussianism, as in the East Coast Straussians and the West Coast Straussians. What is so magical about this man that half a century after his death he still casts a shadow?

This is where Marx comes into the picture. Like Strauss, Marx was a mediocre intellectual, but he cast a huge shadow. There were many smart men working the communist and socialist circuits in the 19th century, many smarter and more reasonable than Marx, but it was Marx who towered over the rest. Despite having been wrong about pretty much everything, Karl Marx remains a respected thinker and philosopher on the Left.

One reason Marx rose above the rest was that he provided intellectual authority to the socialist movement. His theory of history turned a collection of moral preferences into scientific fact, which gave the believers an unquestionable authority upon which to base their economic and political claims. To this day we hear people on the so-called Left claim that they are on the right side of history. This means their opponents are on the wrong side of history, so they can be dismissed.

Similarly, the Straussian method provides the believer with a set of tools to instantly create the needed authority for their normative claims. Strauss taught that you must learn the true intent of a writer. The Straussian, of course, has the special skill to see through the esoteric writing of genuine philosophers, who out of necessity always cloak their real meaning from the casual reader. Strauss allows his followers to divine the real meaning of historical texts.

At first this does not sound like much, but it allowed Harry Jaffa to tease out the real thoughts of the Founders, which to that point had been called the Framers, because they wrote the text of the Constitution. Jaffa claimed that their real thoughts were contained in the Declaration. From that he could turn the Founders into Moses and Lincoln into Joshua. The former led his people out of bondage, but not into the Promised Land, while the latter completed the journey.

That is a clever trick, but as Gottfried noted, this was not simply for the amusement of bored intellectuals, but part of a political strategy. By casting Lincoln as the real founder of the American republic, conservatives, who were clustered in the Republican party, could claim him as their own. Not only does the “great emancipator” become a shield against the charge of racism, but he also becomes a license to turn egalitarianism and the blank slate into conservative principles.

That is a major appeal of Strauss. His method provides a set of tools for rhetorical combat within practical politics. The Straussian method allows the user to flit from one tine of Hume’s fork to the other. They can conflate those things that are axiomatically true with those things that are contingently true. Decorated with their own interpretations of Plato and Aristotle, gratuitous assertions become immutable fact. These tools let the users win the debate, rather than reveal important truths.

Probably the main appeal of Strauss is the same as for Marx. For the initiate, the system of thought provides a framework to answer every question. This in turn elevates the believer’s sense of self. When you are on the right side of history, you inevitably are filled with confidence. When you can divine the intent of the great minds and use this secret knowledge against your opponents, you become a god. The appeal in both cases is spiritual, not intellectual.

The comparison between Marx and Strauss works because of the people who were most attracted to the two men. The people who rallied to Marxism were not the urban proletariat, but the urban bourgeois intellectuals. Similarly, those rallying to Strauss are not highbrow political thinkers. His appeal is to the middlebrow bourgeois intellectuals that grow like a fungus on the modern age. Both provided a purpose to idle men without an obvious role in life.

Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have bad consequences. That should be the lesson of Marxism. Leo Strauss was a clever man, for sure, but his bad ideas have given us a half century of political agitation and subterfuge. One would think the embarrassing catastrophe that was the Bush presidency would have relegated Strauss and his followers to the dustbin of history, but when you are untethered from facts and reason, the facts never get in the way of your next argument.


If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!


Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Above Time Coffee Roasters are a small, dissident friendly company that makes coffee. They actually roast the beans themselves based on their own secret coffee magic. If you like coffee, buy it from these folks as they are great people who deserve your support.

Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link. If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@mi*********************.com.


124 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
J. B. Guud
J. B. Guud
Member
1 year ago

Well, gotta say between this post and the last one you really made your point to Anton.

idontknow
idontknow
1 year ago

ZMan, this might interest you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q15Qm4QHzRo

Coalclinker
Coalclinker
1 year ago

When I think of the modern “philosophers” and their Conservatives, I tend to equate them to the Socialists. Someday no one will care about what they have to say for many people will literally be fighting for their lives someday in this country.

I think what Idi Amin had to say will hold far greater say than anything our own homegrown mental pygmies ever had to say.

My favorite Idi Amin quote is this: ” You cannot run faster than a bullet.”

Gauss
Gauss
1 year ago

> …license to turn egalitarianism and the blank slate into conservative principles.

Ironically, Lincoln was no blank-slater. He saw blacks as clearly different and was happy to see them go to Liberia or elsewhere. If Lincoln wrote for a normie outlet like National Review today, he’d be purged as Derb and Gottfried were.

Coalclinker
Coalclinker
Reply to  Gauss
1 year ago

If you want to get The Mental Philosophic Cloud People all fired up, here what I always say: It works every time, and it pisses off both Conservatives and The Woke:

“Abe Lincoln was really a small and stupid man. If he had been smart, he would have never sat with his back towards an unlocked door.”

Xman
Xman
1 year ago

For God’s sake, already. Do I really have to expend energy responding to ad hominem dreck? Strauss as the “American Marx?” “Serious students of philosophy take exception to calling Strauss a philosopher?” Name names, please. Strauss regarded himself as a scholar, not as a great philosopher. Marx, while far more brilliant than Z admits, was completely unlike the scholarly Strauss — Marx was an arrogant prick and a biased political advocate. The misunderstanding of Strauss here is breathtaking. What Strauss sought, above all else, was to restore Socratic intellectual discourse to political philosophy, which had been corrupted by crude Marxist… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

I know very little about Strauss and therefore cannot offer an informed to response to the men, either X or Z. I can, however, state that X has written a lucid, cogent post that evinces a much deeper knowledge of Strauss than what Z wrote. I’ve got Strauss’ Persecution and the Art of Writing on my shelf. Perhaps it is time I finally read the dam’ thing.

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

Well, you certainly expended a lot of energy, my good sir.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

Thanks for the counterpoint. I have not read Strauss but have heard about him a lot. I hope that our esteemed host responds to you.

“Strauss’s teaching on the distinction between esoteric and exoteric writing is best understood by his discussion of Machiavelli.”

I have read some Machiavelli with great benefit. Finally:

“Like Socrates, you should always be willing to cut through the bullshit, ascertain the facts, and think for yourself.”

If you really want to disorient yourself, read Nietzsche’s criticisms of Socrates.

WaltDisney
WaltDisney
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

I think Marx got his multitudes of Jewish fans on the basis of his polemical output and the fact he was Jewish. His underlying theory of sorts doesn’t seem directly appealing in an ethnic way, and it requires a lot of assumptions not in evidence and selective historical context to claim otherwise. To assert he was undertaking an insidiously Jew-centric program — as distinct from the post-hoc character of said program — is psycho-history, like deciphering screaming teen girls’ politics during Beatlemania from the rhyme scheme and meter of “A Hard Day’s Night” He had a more hardcore Zionist orientation… Read more »

Xman
Xman
Reply to  WaltDisney
1 year ago

“[Marx’s] underlying theory of sorts doesn’t seem directly appealing in an ethnic way, and it requires a lot of assumptions not in evidence and selective historical context to claim otherwise. To assert he was undertaking an insidiously Jew-centric program… is psycho-history…” Excellent point, thank you for making it. Marx was raised a Lutheran and was racially Jewish, not culturally or religiously Jewish. In fact, Marx was quite critical of Jews and Judaism. From “On the Jewish Question”: “Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look… Read more »

Dennis Roe
Dennis Roe
Reply to  thezman
1 year ago

The money to do it came from Brooklyn.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

“Strauss regarded himself as a scholar, not as a great philosopher”. then why discuss him at all?

Xman
Xman
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

Because he encouraged us to re-read and re-evaluate the great philosophers of the past that had been forgotten or dismissed by the ideologues of determinism and historical progressivism.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  Xman
1 year ago

they do fine without his cheerleading.

Vegetius
Vegetius
1 year ago

Mid-century America suffered from an explosion of rabbinical cults.

They ranged from the ridiculous (Objectivism) to the nauseating (Ginsberg-ism) to the sublime (Reichian Orgone-ism).

Strauss’s clique is simply another one of these. Despite their pretentions, all share an ersatz quality common to all made-up bullshit.

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  Vegetius
1 year ago

You could probably even go earlier, with the Unitarians and their adoption of a bastard form of Hegelianism (1830s or so). That’s the order of the ridiculous “the arc of history bends toward justice” notion which was the fuel of the abolitionist engine and remains the essence of the “american creed,” both “right” and “left.” The American Puritans had their problems, but the problem is less them than their descendants who replaced Christ. inherent to which is an idea of sin and limits, with “History,” which countenances neither.

Nick
Nick
1 year ago

There is a book that explains this whole tribe of “philosophers”. Kevin MacDonald wrote “The Culture of Critique” in 1998.

TomA
TomA
1 year ago

What is the essential benefit of esoteric critique? I am persuaded by today’s posting that Strauss is a menace to society by virtue of his impact on weak-minded conservative shills and grifters. But what is the usefulness of this revelation? It’s largely preaching to the choir here on the Zman blog, and even if it somehow influences the thinking a few souls on the political margin, it’s unlikely to change the course of politics anytime soon. And even if you managed to start a grassroots movement of new dissident voters, the “fortified for democracy” strategy makes voting meaningless. That is… Read more »

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

What do you consider a problem that is solvable under the currently prevailing rules? Please note, I’m not trying to flame or challenge you. But I am of the opinion that it’s important to understand the “philosophical” and historical origins of our current woes. For me — and I think for our esteemed host, too, but I don’t want to put words into his mouth — it began with Lincoln, who saw himself as a sort of rustic Napoleon or Bismarck (see the Lyceum speech) This was compounded by Jaffaism, which as Paul Gottfried pointed out and Z highlighted in… Read more »

G Lordon Giddy
G Lordon Giddy
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

Because it’s at the intellectual levels where policy is developed. The Heritage Foundation, the National Review….all know about Strauss and Jaffa, heck even your local high school history teacher is at this moment teaching a class where Lincoln is the man who attempted to correct the flaws in the founding of this nation.
Strauss and his disciples have deep seated remnants in our culture.
We must have an intellectual class that can argue these points and build our own think tanks to counter it.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  G Lordon Giddy
1 year ago

In a fortified democracy, even a “mainstream” conservative think tank’s highest aspiration is…….. pretty low. A dissident think tank isn’t even acknowledged (by the regime) to exist.

But at least some folks with fancy sounding degrees can get paid six figures to write policy papers and appear on talk shows. So I guess it’s good for the economy. Somebody’s economy.

PeriheliusLux
PeriheliusLux
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
1 year ago

Hi Jeffery Zoar – I think your impulse to do things that are practical and meaningful is great. I think one of the respondents to your point about needing an intellectual component to our movement is also correct. I think what needs to happen is that we need action in all spheres. Ideally it is a good balance of coordinated but also distributed. If you have specific things that you think need to be done in the realm of practical, concrete actions then step up, organize and get those things in motion. We all have something to offer and where… Read more »

tgord
tgord
Reply to  PeriheliusLux
1 year ago

Dissident schmissident. Real conservatism will make manifest out of the blood and ashes after the screens go blank. Triumph of biology. Yeah, kinda trolling here, but look around…

TomA
TomA
Reply to  G Lordon Giddy
1 year ago

Policy development only matters if you can get your hand on the tiller of government. Trump is the closest thing we’ve seen to an Azimov “mule” president, and he was thwarted by the Deep State at nearly every turn. The problem with believing in the pipe dream of electing a messiah president who will save us with new policies is that the odds of success are minuscule and getting worse with each new million illegal aliens crossing the border. In addition, all the wasted effort spent rallying the vote-harder electorate takes away resources that could be directed at solving the… Read more »

c matt
c matt
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

It’s not really either/or, is it? Some are better at the esoteric critiquing, others at the more pragmatic issues of the day.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

TomA
TomA
Reply to  c matt
1 year ago

Yeah, but skill at esoteric critique is of little value when lead and shrapnel are flying about. Ukraine’s military is now losing about a 1,000 men per day; and those husbands, fathers, and sons will be sorely missed and largely irreplaceable when the war is over. No amount of fancy words are going to fix that.

Apex Predator
Apex Predator
Reply to  TomA
1 year ago

And with this post, you’ve answered your own question. The lead & shrapnel have NOT started flying yet, so we have copious free time to waste on history and thought exercises. We are halfway between the ballot box and the ammo box unfortunately. And to be 100% honest, there are many other places for more pragmatic talk. This is not and never has been that forum. There are lots of eggheads, deep thinkers, and smart people here. Far more well read and intelligent than probably you & I, who I think skew more towards a nice balance of intellectual horsepower… Read more »

RealityRules
RealityRules
1 year ago

“These tools let the users win the debate, rather than reveal important truths.” I suppose the debate in question is the internal debate among conservatives/the-right/… Then there is the issue of winning the political war. I vaguely remember many of the Paul/Rockwell/DiLorenzo critiques of Strauss from the War on Terror days. I haven’t heard the critique of the second founding and its massive failings so clearly described as they have been in yesterday and today’s posts. Even DiLorenzo tries to de-legitimize Lincoln because he was racist. If the Straussians did manage to make Lincoln the great champion of egalitarianism that… Read more »

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

i am very curious if these new style ads are harming the brands using them? i never watch anything with ads, so i don’t get exposed to them, but i know they are widespread (and see their online brethren sometimes). i read yesterday that media companies have lost $500B in value so maybe the nig-ads are harming the companies paying for them?

KGB
KGB
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

And yet, this is what we’re going to get from here on out. There’s a great deal of truth to the saying “once you go black, you’ll never go back.” Every aspect of culture that becomes Africanized remains locked into that paradigm. Sportsball is a prime example. Popular music hasn’t enjoyed a revolutionary moment since 1991; if you ain’t beating on a hollow log and chanting, you’re not getting the major label push. And if you think Madison Avenue will once again depict white men as anything other than incompetent, cucked, lickspittles, you’re mistaken. Negroes are the new master race… Read more »

PeriheliusLux
PeriheliusLux
Reply to  karl von hungus
1 year ago

The 3rd world-ization of air travel in America forced me to drive 1/3 across the country to get to family for Christmas on an ad-hoc car rental that I was lucky to get. Billboards in ethno states are fully vibrational. It points out how everything is centralized. The Hive said, this is the new image that must be portrayed, and the entire industry selected for the advertisers the images on the ads. One thought I had was that there is probably a huge opportunity for our people to start advertising platforms that serve images and clips that come from our… Read more »

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  PeriheliusLux
1 year ago

Shutting down commercial air travel is a key part of the Great Reset.

I’ve been ill so I rewatched The Lord of the Rings. Even boiled down from the books, there are still a lot of subtexts in the films regarding the evils of industrialization and life in a dying society and world.

Pozymandias
Reply to  PeriheliusLux
1 year ago

I’ve been reading a lot of the posts here today and it seems that regardless of people disagreeing about Strauss there’s agreement that we need action more than words. The action in question being things of a counter-cultural variety (sorry Agent Smith). This idea about alt-ads of yours in one example. I’ve been toying with setting up a sort of “dissident practical exchange” website. The idea is a bit vague but essentially a place to share practical skills and engage in barter. I’m going to need ideas about keeping the thing simultaneously on the down low so I can still… Read more »

PeriheliusLux
PeriheliusLux
Reply to  Pozymandias
1 year ago

I once looked at contributing to Tor. Their community policy is as Cult of Woke oriented as any Big Tech firm. I do think the nodes are owned.

I think you should pursue your idea. Sharing practical skills and bartering won’t get you banned from Cucktopia. Another approach might be a blockchain based P2P network for organizing with a physical world requirement. Say, time on the network is dependent upon time spent sharing skills and knowledge in real life. Just riffing a bit on that one.

PeriheliusLux
PeriheliusLux
Reply to  Pozymandias
1 year ago

Speaking of Jaffa, check in with the New Founding guys who are working on establishing the one-app blockchain protocol. Not sure where they are at, but it could be an option and you might find some community there too.

Civnats and we may not agree on everything but we all agree the clock is ticking on building out our alternatives.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

…may someday real soon make people wonder if the way the post-antebellum South was organized was done so for a good reason.

Mis(ter)Anthrope
Mis(ter)Anthrope
Reply to  RealityRules
1 year ago

“The goings on in California, the ongoing crime wave and the fortification of elections which may fortify urban lawlessness and its territorial expansion may someday make people wonder if the way the post-antebellum South was organized was done so for a good reason.” There was absolutely a good reason. White people in the South had lived among blacks their entire lives. Contrary to modern popular opinion, they did not hate them. They just recognized that black culture and white culture where very different and that the races where both more comfortable living separately. I know this because both of my… Read more »

Gobsmack
Gobsmack
Reply to  Mis(ter)Anthrope
1 year ago

Excellent post. As much as I bang on about them, I don’t resent the ones here in the south. It’s still pretty copacetic where I am.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Perhaps this helps explain the shift from public debate to propaganda campaigns. Everyone with a public microphone feels unencumbered by facts or logic and free to advocate, even if it means having to tell nothing but lies or illogical leaps of reasoning. A recent example is how the last week’s weather events is not just a winter storm but one rung on the ladder to climate catastrophe. Or how every election is the most important ever and will make or break the Republic.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

And if you question “climate change” based on facts and reasoning, even pointing to other examples of extreme weather many years ago, you’re an evil planet hater and want everyone to die. That being said, if you contest the desire for nuclear war with Russia, you’re a racist demon who hates “democracy”.

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
1 year ago

If you’re a real sucker for punishment, but wish to understand the tortuous logic that the Jaffa/Lincoiln cult uses to make its claims) might I recommend “The Soul of Politics: Henry V Jaffa and the Fight for America” by 32nd degree Grand Magus Jaffa culktist Glenn Ellmers (Jaffaites are big on “soul,” eg the execrable Victor Davis Hanson and “The Soul of Battle,” which is one long fellate[sic?] of the likes of Sherman). The Ellmers book painful to read, all sorts of endearing anecdotes about Jaffa (he liked to entertain Leo Strauss by scraping away on a violin, eg) and… Read more »

Mike
Mike
Reply to  Enoch Cade
1 year ago

In my book anyone who worships Lincoln is automatically not worthy of respect, attention or anything favorable. I’m Southern so I may be prejudiced but Lincoln is the worst person, not just president, ever. With the blood of over a million on his hands he deserves our hatred and contempt. If someone screwed up and gave me power, my first act would be to level the Lincoln Memorial.

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  Mike
1 year ago

Couldn’t agree more. I’m also a Southerner, but that aside, anyone who makes claims that Lincoln was in any, way, shape or form a “conservative” should not be taken seriously and, indeed, should be treated with contempt. One cannot but note that the GOPe and the “left” tumble over each other trying to prove who can most idolize that vile orangutan. Jon Meachan and Brian Kilmeade come to mind, but there are countless others

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Mike
1 year ago

To anyone who’s anything like an American conservative/libertarian/etc., Southern or otherwise, the worst Presidents are obvious. It’s those who most deformed the government away from its Constitutional shape and sent the most Americans to their deaths. So Lincoln is on the podium with FDR and Wilson. To blind the normie right to such an obvious thing requires a “Satanic inversion” (or esoteric reading or whatever) of the presidency, the invention of a higher purpose for it than the Constitution and Americans’ lives. For Wilson it’s Democracy/internationalism, for FDR Democracy/Jewry, and for Lincoln Democracy/Black Lives™. Democracy being a rhetorical constant, it… Read more »

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Mike
1 year ago

YES! Lincoln and FDR, the two worst presidents.

Redpill Boomer
Redpill Boomer
1 year ago

When a fellow dissident recommends a book, I immediately go to Amazon to get the Kindle version. Not so this time. $11 to RENT? $22 to buy? Outrageous. I’m an author, too, so I understand the need to profit, but I wonder how much Gottfried is getting and how much o the motivation is simply Cambridge University Press getting greedy.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  thezman
1 year ago

Can you just buy directly from the publisher. I heard that everyone makes a bit more money that way, except, of course, Amazon.

Forever Templar
Forever Templar
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Hell, cut out the publisher if you feel like it. Get the book through alternate means, send an equivalent donation to Gottfried sonehow (I once sent him a birthday card with the amount of money Smazon had his book listed for).

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Redpill Boomer
1 year ago

There was a time where publishers added value to a book. In the old days, even I remember they took an author’s manuscript, proofed it, sometimes made suggestions for improvement of content, typeset it, printed it and distributed it through a network they developed of resellers. For all this, the author always got a ridiculously minor percentage of the profit on the sale of their efforts. For example, a dollar or two on a $20 dollar text (this experience refer’s academic use books. I am less familiar with popular literature). Today with the advent and maturity of the Internet and… Read more »

Brian Hanley
Brian Hanley
Reply to  thezman
1 year ago

very true. I’ve written two books for academic presses (Univ of Delaware, Praeger Security International) and even though we’re told to aim for the general reader, the primary paying customers are libraries….that explains the 1K to 1.5K initial press run.

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

“There was a time where publishers added value to a book.”

Publishers like Cambridge, Oxford, and Springer (Germany) still do. The problem is that any particular title is not going to sell well — usually under 2,000 copies, which includes sales to university libraries. The print run is small and the price higher than a hardback bestseller. There’s no other way for these academic publishers. On the other hand I’m aware of publishers who are charging over $300 for a calculus text and where the author has become a millionaire from his royalties.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Redpill Boomer
1 year ago

You aren’t missing anything. I found it in a bin in a local second-hand shop. Z-man covered the most important bits of the 200 or so pages in a few sentences. In a lot of ways, Straussianism has no more heft than Buckleyite conservatism. Yelling “Stop” isn’t much of a principle. More than projecting your own prejudices into another’s work? Tough call.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Steve
1 year ago

That was to Redpill, BTW.

Bourbon
Bourbon
Reply to  Redpill Boomer
1 year ago

Always search on the title and the author and the various ISBN numbers [ISBN-10 & ISBN-13] at both Alibris and eBay.

You can even try the marketplaces at Books-A-Million & Barnes-N-Noble.

If you look around, you can often find yuge deals.

PS: Note that ABEbooks is ackshually (((ABEbooks))).

Of course, eBay is ackshually (((eBay))), and so forth and so on…

But Alibris tends to be very Mom-N-Pop-ish.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

As usual, there’s an underlying personal reason that people gravitate toward a certain philosophical theory. Anton is no different. Anton makes abundantly clear in the piece linked below that he adopts the “natural rights” position because he’s not ethnically Anglo-Saxon. For him to accept that natural rights are natural to a certain people at a certain time would exclude him, so he says that the Founder’s natural rights are natural to all people at all times. Here’s Anton: “The natural right standard is both more integral to America—just read what the founders said and wrote—and more appealing to those who,… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Simply excellent analysis. Exceptionally insightful.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  LineInTheSand
1 year ago

Actually, I was too harsh on Anton in saying that he’s using natural rights as a way to hide. He’s also pretty open about expecting the US to break apart at some point. He seems to be getting things ready for what comes next.

But he wants to base some semi-autonomous region on colorblind civic nationalism. The region would demand that it’s policies are based on these natural rights.

Anton doesn’t address why he thinks this would work in this new region when it’s utterly failed for the past 50 years in the US. Sailer’s Citizenism has the same flaw.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

They’ve been trying to write themselves into our history and people for quite a while. All it really accomplished was diluting our culture and people.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

The fatal flaw of colorblind civic nationalism is that it has no moral reason to exclude anyone. If everyone possesses these natural rights, how to do you exclude would-be immigrants from your country that’s built on those universal rights. They are just as “American” or whatever name you call your country as the current citizens. Anton tries to square that circle here: “Do would-be immigrants have a “right” to come here? I assume Gottfried would agree with me that they do not. Why not? I would say: because America is a regime, constituted by a sovereign people, who instituted and… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Citizen: Dude, you’re on a roll. I hope that your thoughts are preserved and sharpened in a manuscript.

PeriheliusLux
PeriheliusLux
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

CoaSC – ” Anton would likely argue that we need time to get recent immigrants to fully embrace our colorblind civic nationalism. But if these natural rights are universal, shouldn’t everyone adopt them immediately.” Nice comment. I think someone should ask Anton why this would work when an entire subgroup has not and seems to have no intention of ever doing this despite 70+ years of favors, concessions, handouts, self immolation as apology … … He is also effectively proposing swearing an ideological oath as the basis for membership in this propositional nation. This notion of mass immigration is absurd.… Read more »

Bruno the Arrogant
Bruno the Arrogant
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

I would argue that even if you acknowledge natural rights, you still have a moral reason to exclude outsiders. We may all be equal in the eyes of the Lord (or Zog, take your pick), but our relationships to each other are not equal. While your wife and kids may have equal value to my wife and kids, my obligation to my wife and kids has moral priority over my obligation to your wife and kids. Likewise, the claims of the citizens of a nation has moral priority of the claims of non-citizens. Even if you buy the proposition that… Read more »

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Bruno, That’s pretty much Anton and Sailer’s proposition. They say that current citizens own more loyalty to non-citizens and should judge immigration decisions on what’s best for current citizens, not the potential immigrant. In essence, you would only let in immigrants who will make the lives of current citizens better, presumably all of their lives and not just the wealthy. But, again, this is laughable in a multi-racial society because it assumes that current citizens of all races will show more loyalty to people holding a piece of paper saying “Citizen” than they do to their own extended family who… Read more »

Bruno the Arrogant
Bruno the Arrogant
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

The problem there is where Sailer and Anton are placing their priorities, not in the concept of priority itself.

They’re starting with “citizenship”, basically an artificial construction with vague boundaries , and using that for the basis for establishing priority.

If you start with a more organic priority, such as “family”, “community”, “ethnicity” and work outwards from there, you end up with a very result.

Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

Anton: “Gottfried’s ancestors, and mine, were admitted to that compact by the consent of its existing members.”

It’s unclear that the consent of its (then) existing members was ever consulted in the first place. What was somewhat mitigated in the past by the sheer capacity of the existing nation to absorb new members in its territory is increasingly untenable.

Tars Tarkas
Tars Tarkas
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
1 year ago

@citizen I agree. It all starts with who is one of “us” and it cannot be expanded to the whole world. What it means to be “us” is more than could ever be bestowed by a pledge or a piece of paper.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Close, but blood is also not enough. The real nub is selecting the individual compatible with high trust society. Most people today, of every race, are not. There needs to be some utterly ruthless way of removing low-trust individuals from your society if you want to have a high-trust society. Note, I did not say “nation”. I doubt that is desirable. I also did not say “citizen”, same reason, at the very least, that citizenship is generally understood to be heritable. Yet the “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves” phenomenon is familiar to all, and the later generations should have been excised before… Read more »

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Steve
1 year ago

A test like you propose would be helpful but such tests are unworkable on a large scale. Instead, we have to really on less precise heuristics, like race and sex. This is why women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, for example. While I have no doubt that there is at least one woman who can cast a wiser vote than me I also have no doubt that most women have trouble thinking objectively and are more conformist than men. Maybe someday we can devise a test that we can administer on a society-wide scale to decide for each individual but… Read more »

PeriheliusLux
PeriheliusLux
Reply to  Steve
1 year ago

The test exists when you have a society that enforces self sufficiency and self reliance. You create incentives and severe consequences for free riding. This includes when free riders turn to crime you have harsh punishment.

The Welfare State removed that test. The Ponzi Financialized State that followed is even worse because it enables a sizable class of people with private sector jobs who are not just free riders, but net detractors given their job is to subvert and undermine civilization.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  PeriheliusLux
1 year ago

I understand the appeal of the “live and let die” of minimal government. I feel it a bit myself but most white people don’t want, for example, an old woman to die in the street because she didn’t understand the complexities of her health insurance and wasn’t covered for the medical treatments that she needed for her illness that bankrupted her.

Most of the white people who build civilization don’t want what you propose. Most productive white people want Nordic-style socialism although they have been shamed out of asking for it by name.

Anonymous Frog
Anonymous Frog
Reply to  Steve
1 year ago

This reminded me of the Hoppe piece “On Free Immigration and Forced Integration” which states:
“For the same reason, a democratic ruler, quite unlike a king, undertakes little to actively expel those people whose presence within the country constitutes a negative externality (human trash, which drives individual property values down). In fact, such negative externalities – unproductive parasites, bums, and criminals – are likely to be his most reliable supporters.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/hans-hermann-hoppe/on-free-immigration-and-forced-integration/

Kevin Vail
Kevin Vail
1 year ago

A far more interesting and insightful thinker of political theory and history is Eric Voegelin. He’s probably too dense of a writer to become popular though.

Enoch Cade
Enoch Cade
Reply to  Kevin Vail
1 year ago

Couldn’t agree more. “The New Science of Politics,” while dense, is a great place to start. Volume V of the Complete Works is called “Modernity Without Restraint” and contains The New Science of Politics, The Political Religions, and Science, Politics and Gnosticism. if you have to buy just one Voegelin book, that’s probably the one. He is one of those academics that Germany used to churn out in such abundance – he had read everything, most of it in the original language. His lectures on the history of political philosophy have been published as part of the “Complete Works” over… Read more »

Boarwild
Boarwild
1 year ago

Have never understood this conservative/Republican fascination/fetish for A. Lincoln. An atrocious president who – IMHO – helped set up the tyrannical state now unfolding before our eyes. He mobilized the Army & sent it south to shoot up & destroy private property & force the southern states back into the Union @ the point of a bayonet. Under The Articles of Confederation, the South had the right to secede. Slavery is a totally separate issue; Lincoln- in a cynical move – framed that argument masterfully by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, thereby keeping France & Britain out of the war on… Read more »

Some Guy
Some Guy
Reply to  Boarwild
1 year ago

” His reimagining of American history allowed contemporary conservatives to get to the left of their opponents on the issue of race. It is why the modern conservative cannot shut up about Abraham Lincoln. He is their get out jail free card.”

WhereAreTheVikings
WhereAreTheVikings
Reply to  Some Guy
1 year ago

Lincoln a get out of jail free card. That’s rich. He wanted to ship them all back to Africa. Then John Wilkes Booth interfered. One of the reasons we are in the shape we’re in is because the Civil War is taught in schools as solely a war over slavery, with Saint Abe unlocking the chains. Tenth amendment issues, tariffs, industrial vs. agrarian interests – never a peep out of anyone about those aspects of the War of Northern Aggression. The victors (corporate Republicans, the real Republicans – Taft, Goldwater, and Reagan provided cover) did indeed write the history. Thomas… Read more »

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Boarwild
1 year ago

As Some Guy says, Republicans embrace of Lincoln started after the Left grabbed the high ground on race. As soon as Republicans became terrified of being called racist, they adopted Lincoln as their standard bearer so that they could claim that they were the original saviors of blacks and of desiring a colorblind society.

The fact that Lincoln did all the things you mentioned and was openly disdainful of blacks didn’t matter.

Boarwild
Boarwild
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Exactly. Had Lincoln framed the war in 1861 as a war of slave liberation he would’ve had a riot – or worse – on his hands. Outside of the die hard Abolitionists it’s my understanding no white man would’ve laid down his life for a black one. The whole Federal Army would have revolted most likely. He had to frame it as a war to save the Union & slide in the Emancipation Proclamation thru the side side door when the time was right. And again, he only did that to forestall France & Britain entering the war of the… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

It way predated Civil Rights. My grandmother was indoctrinated into Lincoln idolatry, and she was born in 1900. I think a fair case can be made that they repurposed an already existing belief, but not more.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Steve
1 year ago

How much of the Lincoln mythology was cooked up in the late 19th century in an attempt to provide a narrative to be used in solidifying the Imperial Capital’s new hammerlock on the States?

Dennis Roe
Dennis Roe
Reply to  Steve
1 year ago

Media, then, as now, the sheep are led into the pen.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Boarwild
1 year ago

I still don’t get the rift over good old Abe. In lieu of a specific clause in the Constitution directly permitting secession or outlining an orderly process for such, he resorted to decision by force. South lost the decision. Folks don’t like this, I don’t like this, but is it really hard to understand and accept? Lincoln was just the first to jump the ship. An end justifies the means sort of fellow. We’ve had a long line of them—and here we are today. The real question is that *if* we ever get a second chance at a new “founding”… Read more »

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

You won’t prevent a Lincoln. I’d suggest that you change tactics.

Don’t fight an opponent in a way that favors their strengths. Slowly break away. Use peaceful non-compliance when possible. Use low-level violence – which prompts an over-reaction and waste of resources from the other side – when needed.

Force the other side to choose between genocide and withdrawal. You’ll win either way because the minute they choose genocide, every man, woman and child will take up arms. In addition, the population on the other side won’t back such an extreme strategy from their leaders.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Agree, but I was thinking about the aftermath of a successful breaking away and *our* reorganization into a new society. True, this is counting chickens before hatching, but comes to mind in my thoughts. If we or our children are ever successful in our secession, how do *we* reorganize and govern ourselves in light of our prior “bad” experience with the present form of self government. The South for example, gave this little thought (I profess no expertise here) and as near as I can tell simply formed a governmental mirror image of the government they broke from. Perhaps they… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

I think a good start would be to look closely at both the Articles of Confederation and the Confederate Constitution. The former for the ideas of unanimous consent, no taxing power, and strict federalism, the latter for ideas on how to fix the holes the weasels found in the first 80 years.

To that, you need to add a strictly defined judiciary. Giving Congress the power to create one could not help but end in star chambers. The SC was correctly established as a way of settling squabbles between states, but should never have been expanded beyond that.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Oh, and a return to the Articles’ expressly delegated powers.

PrimiPilus
PrimiPilus
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

One might be excused for thinking they’re running a genocide now. They’re just very clever about keeping it kind of low-key …. they do have tremendous message discipline.

Boarwild
Boarwild
Reply to  PrimiPilus
1 year ago

Uh..ahem..the vax?

WhereAreTheVikings
WhereAreTheVikings
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Citizen, I would not be so sure that the other side would not back “such an extreme strategy from their leaders.” The American Left has revealed its bloodthirsty tendencies in its indulgences of BLM and Antifa as well as its letting hardcore criminals loose on the streets without bond. Forget not its willingness to let people freeze and starve in order to implement its idiotic climate change protocols. And in response to all that, there has been almost no protest coming from the average Volvo driver living life in the Starbucks line. That vaunted liberal compassion is just the public… Read more »

Boarwild
Boarwild
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
1 year ago

Sounds like the strategy the Communists used in Vietnam.

Worked too.

Anonymous Frog
Anonymous Frog
Reply to  Compsci
1 year ago

Absolute Monarchy
Yarvin is right that the Anglo-American world has been moving left for hundreds of years because that’s where power is.
Machiavelli told the Prince to appeal to the people against the nobles, but what do you do when there’s no more king or nobles? You can always expand the franchise and reach lower in social status and invent new sexual identities to court as supporters.
Spandrell’s bioleninism in action

Drew
Drew
Reply to  Boarwild
1 year ago

Lincoln was a linchpin, sure, but the American trajectory was always going to be either federal imperialism or dissolution, due to the nature of federation in relation to demographic and economic growth. Imperialism was always more likely because it was always more lucrative, and would likely have happened without Lincoln, though not in the same way.

Vizzini
Member
1 year ago

Marx, Strauss, Jaffa. There’s a pattern.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  Vizzini
1 year ago

Presbyterians?

Quakers?

Jehovah’s witnesses?

Heebie Keikelstein
Heebie Keikelstein
Reply to  roo_ster
1 year ago

Marx’s parents converted and he was not brought up in any Jewish tradition. He hated Jews as much as anyone here. See his piece “On The Jewish Question.” But the Jew haters here appear to believe in some weird-ass genetic determinism that somehow overrides any upbringing and education.

Vizzini
Member
Reply to  Heebie Keikelstein
1 year ago

Genes do, frequently, override education and upbringing, as demonstrated in studied of twins and adoptees. There are genetic markers that even influence our political preferences. It is a lot more intellectually defensible to claim Marx was a Jew and acted like a Jew because he was genetically a Jew than to claim his parents conversion overrode all his genetics.

imbroglio
imbroglio
1 year ago

To follow up the Straussian angle, looking forward to your response to Michael Anton who paid you the compliment of reviewing your piece on natural rights. Anton is reasonable and readable. I think it would be a profitable back and forth.

ProZNoV
ProZNoV
Reply to  imbroglio
1 year ago

Michael Anton and his “Flight 93 Election” article is the penultimate poster boy of the apocryphal dog that caught the car and didn’t know what to do with it.

It was a great article. But it didn’t work (he never said it would); I’ve yet to read anything of his since that wasn’t standard Conservative Inc boilerplate.

There may be no answers. Not ones you can print, anyway.

karl von hungus
karl von hungus
Reply to  imbroglio
1 year ago

it’s on zman’s substack channel.

NateG
NateG
1 year ago

The Biden administration isn’t influenced by Karl Marx, but Groucho Marx.

Outdoorspro
Outdoorspro
Reply to  NateG
1 year ago

“The Biden administration isn’t influenced by Karl Marx, but Groucho Marx.”

If only we were that lucky. The Marx Brothers were brilliant and their work (most of it) stands the test of time quite well. If what you say were true, we’d at least have some world-class repartee, instead of the cringe that is this government.

Heebie Keikelstein
Heebie Keikelstein
Reply to  Outdoorspro
1 year ago

The Marx Brothers were Jewish, so their humor must have been designed to demoralize Whites and destroy White society, right?

DavidTheGnome
DavidTheGnome
1 year ago

Clowns to the left of me
jokers to the right,
here I am stuck in the middle of jews.

joeyjünger
joeyjünger
1 year ago

The settled dialectic seduces a lot of people. I think it goes back to something you said about Obama. He constantly liked to say things like “We solved that already” or “That’s already been decided.” As if every problem had a solution, rather than requiring constant vigilance, and recognition of the intractability of the human condition and all its downsides. Bumper stickers and yard signs are not going to stop the hostility—genocides, wars, etc.—that erupt every so often as much for atavistic reasons no one understands as over territory. But Obama was “the first president who’d gotten where he was… Read more »

SamlAdams
SamlAdams
Reply to  joeyjünger
1 year ago

When I’d have to give introductory talks to new crops of analysts, would usually work in a reminder that as much as you’ll hear the C-suite talking about “building”, “increasing”, “expanding”…ad nauseum, half your effort in business is generally spent simply resisting entropy.

Anonymous Frog
Anonymous Frog
Reply to  joeyjünger
1 year ago

“From the maggot up to man, the universal law of the violent destruction of living things is unceasingly fulfilled. The entire earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be immolated without end, without restraint, without respite, until the consummation of the world, until the extinction of evil, until the death of death.” — Joseph de Maistre

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
1 year ago

“Marx was a mediocre intellectual, but he cast a huge shadow. There were many smart men working the communist and socialist circuits in the 19th century, many smarter and more reasonable than Marx, but it was Mark who towered over the rest. Despite having been wrong about pretty much everything, Karl Marx remains a respected thinker and philosopher on the Left.” Granted, his prognoses turned out wrong. But in the three volumes of “Das Kapital” — which few people read today, and particularly not the so-called US Left — he provides an unparalleled analysis of the structure and dynamics of… Read more »

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
Reply to  thezman
1 year ago

Fair enough. I know you to be too smart to not know something about Marx’s real work.

Bruno the Arrogant
Bruno the Arrogant
Reply to  Arshad Ali
1 year ago

Granted, his prognoses turned out wrong. But in the three volumes of “Das Kapital” — which few people read today, and particularly not the so-called US Left — he provides an unparalleled analysis of the structure and dynamics of 19th century industrial capitalism.

That seems to be the common problem with all our modern political analysts, from everywhere on the political spectrum. All of them have a great analysis of the problems. And none of them have a clue how to fix them.

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
Reply to  Bruno the Arrogant
1 year ago

Before the time of Marx, in his time, and certainly after his time , much of Leftist “thought” — I use the term rashly — consists of moral judgements, admonitions, and prescriptions. Marx said, “Well, hang on a moment, what if the capitalist is forced to act the way he does because of the nature of the evolving political and economic system? What if he has to maximise profits by underpaying labor because otherwise he won’t be able to invest the profits in upgrading his machinery — and not doing that would mean he can’t compete with other capitalists who… Read more »

Severian
1 year ago

I love these parallels. If Strauss is the Karl Marx of the Right, wouldn’t that make that “Mencius Moldbug” dude the Michel Foucault of the Right?

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Severian
1 year ago

My main association with Foucault is the normalization of pedophilia, https://dissidentrealist.com/michel-foucault-wanted-to-normalize-pedophilia/.

As low an opinion as a I have of Moldbug, it doesn’t include this association. I mostly think of Moldbug as a guy who will use ten obscure sentences to say what could be said clearly with one and who intentionally misdirects people. He popularized the term “the Cathedral” as where we should affix blame when the temple where his people worship would have been at least as accurate.

joeyjünger
joeyjünger
Reply to  Severian
1 year ago

Foucault is the one who gave us the body as the site of politics. The reason you hear every undergrad in a soft science saying “black bodies” more often than a bird chirps is because of Foucault. His books, like “Discipline and Punish” ostensibly examined the body as the locus for the state exerting its power or “gaze” as the feminists/critical race theorists would say (brief summary: males/white people are so evil that they destroy everything just by seeing it, like Cyclops from X-Men firing lasers out of his eyes). Someone (Bruce Bauer or Steve Sailer, maybe both) postulated that… Read more »

Reply
Reply
Reply to  joeyjünger
1 year ago

Roger Scruton had Foucault’s number. Another overblown fraud exposed.

Related, if you see someone refer to The Bearded One, that is someone who is left-adjacent and wanting to ride coattails but afraid to admit to who he really means or to acknowledge decades of failures and deaths.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Severian
1 year ago

That’s an insult to them both, so we should probably say it.

But Moldbug doesn’t have the Marx/Foucault/Biblical quality of being hugely influential in name and unread in fact. We all read reams of Moldbug and all we got is “the Cathedral,” misappropriated from Eric S. Raymond.

NewHere
NewHere
Reply to  Hemid
1 year ago

Moldbug is terrible.