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Over the last several years, a group of academics and intellectuals have formed what is now called post-liberalism. The members of this group do not agree on many things, but they agree on one important thing and that is what they call liberalism has run its course and it is time for something new. Patrick Deneen, one of the key members of the post-liberals, has a new book out called Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, in which he sets out to describe what should replace liberalism.
This is the third book from Deneen on the subject. In 2016, Deneen published Conserving America?, which was a collection of essays on the current social and moral troubles of this age. After that he published Why Liberalism Failed, which was a book length analysis of what he calls liberalism. This latest book is supposed to build on that second book and lay out a vision for how to put an end to the liberal order and provide a sketch for what should replace it.
Regime Change has been met with mostly negative reviews. A good example is from Charles Haywood at Worthy House, who was enthusiastically positive about Deneen’s prior book on the subject. It is also fair to say that Haywood is positively disposed to the broad concept of post-liberalism. He makes the point that despite the title, Deneen is not actually suggesting we change the regime. Instead, he offers up the usual list of reforms that have no chance of being considered.
The main problem with the book, as Haywood notes, is that it is organized in such a way as to avoid the main topic of the book. The first three quarters are a summary of the arguments Deneen made in his liberalism book. Instead of leading to a demand for a bloody revolution to overthrow the regime, replacing it with a dictatorship of recent Catholic converts, Deneen delivers a poorly conceived list of reforms and some bromides about racism and colonialism.
This gets to one of the main problems with the post-liberal project. It is not really post-liberal and the members are not opposed to liberalism. Instead, they oppose some of the consequences of the current ruling order. They appropriate words and concepts from dissidents, without fully understanding the meaning of them. The phrase “regime change” is a good example. One gets the sense that Deneen liked the sound of it and wrote a book so he could use it for a title.
More troubling, the post-liberals have not thought about why the arc of the liberal project has led to the present. If they wished to limit the scope, they could start with the American constitution and examine what happened along the way. It should be quite clear that the current ruling order is nothing like what the Framers created and nothing they imagined was possible. Chronicling how we got to this point, skipping past the speculation as to why it happened, would be a good start.
There is none of that in this book or in Deneen’s prior work. In fact, it is not particularly clear that he understands where to place the starting point of liberalism. He gives us far too many references to Aristotle, which is always a sign that the author is struggling with his choice of topics. He also likes to quote Aquinas. That is getting warmer, but when he talks about Locke, you wonder if he is talking about the same John Locke that the rest of us had to read in college.
Probably the most puzzling thing about the Deneen project is that he never mentions Alasdair MacIntyre, who was a long serving scholar at Notre Dame. He wrote the book, After Virtue, which was a highly successful critique of liberalism. If you search the name in Deneen’s last two books you get zero mentions. This is strange, since MacIntyre tackles the causes of liberalism’s failure and also takes on John Rawls, the most important liberal political thinker of the last century.
This gets to the main problem of the post-liberal project. They do a respectable job describing the present and the dangers it presents. Where they struggle is in understanding that maybe the current order is not actually a liberal order, but a post-liberal order. Further, they do not understand that the American project evolved outside of European liberalism. The Enlightenment is a good starting point, but the Reformation is a much better place to start.
All that said, none of this should be taken as a dismissal of the post-liberal project or the academics and intellectuals attracted to it. What Deneen and others are doing is drawing attention to the inherent flaws of the current order and in the process legitimizing the questioning of it. Slowly, questioning the assumptions of liberalism is becoming acceptable. When a bigfoot college academic calls for regime change, it is now acceptable to discuss the topic in polite company.
As far as the Deneen book, while it fails to deliver on the promise of the title, it is a useful look inside the mind of the post-liberal. The dissident will see the same struggle they experienced as they crossed the great divide. What comes through in this book is a man struggling to wake up from the myth of the 20th century. If members of the modern monastery are experiencing this, then it suggests the regime is far closer to a moral crisis than many would like to admit.
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“When a bigfoot college academic calls for regime change, it is now acceptable to discuss the topic in polite company.”
Yes. And regarding the realm of the bagel, the same can be said for Mearsheimer and Walt’s “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”. 2008
“Nonwhite and the Seven Diverse Weirdos” was an unloved prog rock band in the mid-80s.
You can diagnose a sickness without knowing the solution. I will be hated to say this, but the problem is the Reformation. Sola Fide is bad enough and liberal hypocrisy comes from it. But Sola Scriptura is the poison that killed Western civilization. It introduced subjectivism and relativism in the culture and no culture can live with that. The consequence was the Enlightenment, a secularized Reformation and a set of self-refuting relativistic and antisocial stupidities that were elevated at the status of the higher goods. After this, Western civilization destroyed itself trying to make squared circles and destroying everything that… Read more »
As one brought up in the Roman Catholic faith tradition, but who has, after much thought, reflection and consideration of its flaws and failures, I do not hate you, certainly not after your concluding remark about your Protestant brothers, and in fact my initial reaction after reading your first paragraph was merely to think about how I could respond in a loving and respectful way. Herewith my effort. If one accepts that there is but One True God, one must ask how He communicates with His earthly children. I can conceive of only two ways: directly and through revealed, inspired… Read more »
Look at how it’s ended up. That’s the point of his original post, yes? This is how the Reformation ends. With the virtual abolition of Christianity across the West.
You can debate the merits of your hermeneutic and exegetical approach to Scripture, but we are talking here about its effects upon the world of men, not scholars. The world of the polis.
And the outcome is abominable.
I was writing on a tablet, tired after a hard day, so I couldn’t elaborate too much. The point of my comment is not religious. Of course, as a Catholic, I think that Protestantism is misguided, although I have Protestant people in my close family and friends and I have learned a lot from Protestant authors intellectually. But I may be wrong. It is not my intention to refight the Reformation, which seems a pointless boring exercise to me. When, after years of thinking and reading, I discovered that the root of the Western decadence was Luther, this saddened me.… Read more »
Yeah I think the linkage between the moment of woke weirdness we are living through and the Reformation is kinda tenuous at best. At that scale just about everything could be blamed on Martin Luther.
Why is it tenuous? You didn’t give any reasons.
On the contrary, wokeness descends directly from Martin Luther. Liberalism is secularized Reformation.
Secularized universal priesthood = equality
Secularized Sola Scriptura = relativism
Secularized Sola Fide = liberty
(All these principles were enunciated by Luther and systematized by Calvin)
Wokeness is the last logical consequence of liberalism. A tranny is the embodiment of liberty (“Why she can’t be woman if she so wishes?”), equality (“Why she can’t be equal to biological women?”) and relativism (“After all, the concept of woman cannot be defined. Everybody has its own concept of woman”).
“At that scale just about everything could be blamed on Martin Luther.”
I’ve always blamed it on Rousseau. There were guys before him that did the heavy lifting on self-centered relativism. But Rousseau’s “Confessions”, 1782, and his dramatic public reading tour of it, made it sexy. He won over the hot high society ladies in a way your frumpy Hume’s and Luther’s could not.
Rousseau was a turning point, no doubt about that. When I was standing before his tomb in Paris (this was my honeymoon), I told my wife: “I am sure there are cameras. This is why I don’t take my d*ck and piss over his tomb.”. This was followed by a series of expletives about the guy that have no easy translation. I don’t use these expletives normally but this was a special occasion. I despise the guy deeply and consider his ideas a cancer. From Luther there are two branches: Protestantism and Liberalism (which is secularized Reformation through Puritanism, Descartes,… Read more »
Is it possible liberalism was never a political structure but rather the lack of a political structure? Post-liberalism may be the realization that someone needs to be in charge.
Well it’d be exceedingly silly to spect the guys that crashed the empire… to have the smarts to save it. Or admit their own part in killing it. They’ll be swept away in fire, ash and blood as it goes with so much of history’s trash. The monsters they’ve created will destroy them and then they’ll destroy themselves.
The people that will be left afterward will be hard, scarred…and changed.
If liberalism is to be replaced, a cogent ideology should already be thought about beforehand. The reason that liberalism arose in the first place, whether rightly or wrongly, is that it was to put an account to the kings/nobles/strongmen who could arbitrarily act against the peasants and not be called to account. It was also to give power to the middle class/intelligentsia that felt they could contribute more to society than the parasitic nobility in their eyes. I think a lot of people are still wedded to liberalism as many still have romantic notions of empowering underprivileged people against tyrannical… Read more »
Red pilled millennial snowflake: “I think a lot of people are still wedded to liberalism as many still have romantic notions of empowering underprivileged people against tyrannical people or organizations.” But then they barge forward pigheadedly with the “own-goals”. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/own+goal Rutgers Set to Disenroll Students on August 15th if Not Compliant with COVID Vaccine Mandates https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4176749/posts EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THE V@XXINES INDUCE MYOCARDITIS/PERICARDITIS!!!!! If Sh!tlibs are going to send off their own flesh & blood progeny to institutions of higher edumakashunal learning, simply to be poisoned to death at the altar of Scientific Charismatic Group Think Euphoria & Mass Hysteria,… Read more »
“If liberalism is to be replaced, a cogent ideology should already be thought about beforehand.” You could not be more wrong if you took lessons in it. Ideology is a cancer; it is precisely the problem What’s needed is a return to natural law and the natural order, NOT ideology. “In fact, as simplistic as it is, people probably see those attempting to overthrow liberalism as enabling strong man rule again.” Strong-man rule is and always has been the norm in human history. It’s just how things are. It is the only natural expression of human nature. Liberalism has been… Read more »
The Deneen book just sounds like mental masturbation of the kind that Academia produces constantly…What we need is a new Constitution that eliminates discretionary and emergency powers of all kinds, all administrative delegations from Congress (the Court is looking at this) and all US military bases outside North America. It must exclude aliens from US citizenship and any Federal benefits…It must also return most power to the States, including the power to exclude aliens from all welfare programs and to deport them, as was originally intended… Ideally, it would ban women from voting in Federal elections….That’s the minimum program that… Read more »
I just read Guillaume Faye’s book with that title. The purpose of Archeofuturism is not for, “technology to flourish.” Aside from the fact that technology can’t flourish that isn’t the point of Archeofuturism. Archefuturism’s point is to restore tradition, hierarchy, reality and the primacy of nature to allow European peoples to flourish in a European imperium that has sovereignty and primacy in an international order. Most of the population will live traditional pre-industrial lives. The elites will have access to technology. They will administer the civilization and keep a tight control on the technologies that are utilized and developed. Ideally… Read more »
Wrong, destroy Liberalism as essential duty in itself.
The reason that liberalism arose in the first place, whether rightly or wrongly, is that it was to put an account to the kings/nobles/strongmen who could arbitrarily act against the peasants and not be called to account Secular authorities in Christendom were held to account by the church. Which admittedly was imperfect, to say the least. All to often the church was co-opted by the secular authorities and became their rubber stamp. But the ideal remained, and was actuated. One consequence of liberalism was to liberate governments from even theoretical religious limits. The first country to fully embrace liberalism was… Read more »
Am I the only one who thinks Haywood has a megalomania streak to him? Like the guy is obviously intelligent, but when he talks about being a warlord, I’m like wtf.
It is mostly tongue-in-cheek but there’s a bit of arrogance there. Maybe that’s a necessary feature of any outspoken dissident. In any case, he’s usually a clear-eyed thinker well worth reading.
Republican radio and podcast guys are all super-cops and super-soldiers. Right-wigger social media characters do “hustle” rhetoric, supercar-full-of-prostitutes displays, and claim to be professional fighters. Dissident intellectuals (except BAP) scowl down Olympianly on every literary and philosophical giant in history. Haywood’s dweeby self-confidence is quite pleasant in comparison.
Yes. There is an arrogance there. There is something about him that isn’t likeable in my view. For me, what is off about him is his generic espousal of pursuing space as the next frontier. That sounds all fine and dandy but boy do we have a huge problem set down here to deal with – including a myopic pseudo-economy that is so debt addled it can never be repaid. Using AI and robots to mine the solar system for materials that make life on earth better seems like a reasonable endeavor if it is cost effective. However, I haven’t… Read more »
We go up into space or go extinct.
By the way Nixon gutted the space program and we stopped going to the moon to make joggers whites.
No. Keep up or fall behind, but to Hell with fixing problems or making life better down here, we have been down that road for 2 centuries.
No.
Space is seen as the next frontier by a lot people. Which is just nuts.
The whole obsession / fantasy wrt space colonization is a form of American ghost dancing. A desire to restore the imagined reality that existed a couple hundred years ago.
I’m not an expert on Liberalism, but I have a difficult time accepting that we live in something Post Liberal. To me, where we are is where Liberalism was always headed. If anything, Liberalism is simply being carried to its logical conclusion.
From the perspective of many, probably including Deneen, they recognize that it’s not working, so it must not be liberalism.
Right on. NOTHING has been a serious barrier to liberalism since 1865. And here we are.
Yeah, I came to the same conclusion a while ago. It all starts with a clear definition of what liberalism is. Which requires explaining why that particular word was settled on as the label. No one wants to go that far. Instead they define liberal and liberalism by some basket of beliefs that they prefer and imagine existed at some point in the recent past (which makes their definition operationally conservative). So here’s my definition of liberal(ism). It’s root is liberation – the idea is that people should be liberated (freed) from outside control / influence. Why? Because people are… Read more »
True and beautifully expressed
Post-Liberalism just means that egghead liberals are at the point of raising an eyebrow at each other. Quietly conveying, “Pssss. Hey. Pssss! Lev! …Shhhhh! Listen. I think we may have f*cked it all up. Meet me in the faculty lounge under the coat rack to discuss.”
Completely, totally OT, but may I slip in a personal note to Jack Dobson and 3g4me? They were worried about their pumped water in a grid down situation. (My bestie is dealing with that now as our esteemed rulers Maui northern California’s coastal Gold Regions #5 and #6.) No power, no water. The solution is storage. I have a 2500 gallon tank, brought in on a pickup small flatbed trailer (fits anywhere, cheap). Cost about $900. Simply stick 1″ pvc pipe with a turnoff valve into the bottom outlet; the weight of the water alone gravity feeds to a simple… Read more »
(Oops, desert / mountain peach farmers with families and animals use the 5000 gallon setup, to include your gerbils, goats, and cows.)
Dammit! And just plunk the tank down on flat ground. It’s pretty impervious to weather, as well, and the inside stays pristine. No need for fancy here.
For potable, if the water is above ground, then it’s gonna get rather warm, and would likely induce bacterial growth. So you’re gonna need to boil, or else you’re gonna need to add something like pellets of chlorine salts [apparently most people at most times of their lives can absorb the chlorine without damage to their kidneys???]. All other things being equal, water in a subterranean well tends to be quite remarkably insulated against contamination [knock on wood]. Of course, you could bury your tank, and turn it into a “cistern”, and in many localities, at many times of year,… Read more »
If you want to go full hillbilly, used 200 gal. totes from peanut or cottonseed processors in the South, $25 each.
Food grade, so no poison or chemical residues.
Or rent a backhoe for a pond, or dig and line a cistern.
Tanks are much easier, all in all.
My basic principle is not to try and prep for the end of the world, since nobody can prep for that. A grid permanently down scenario is only plausible in a nuclear/emp/carrington event scenario. Otherwise, even in a worst case scenario, the power will still be on at least some of the time, like in South Africa. There are too many people who want the power on, who know how to make it happen, for it to go down and stay down permanently. So “realistically” you just need enough water stored to carry you through the few hours or days… Read more »
Jackson, Mississippi, Lahaina, Hawaii, and Texas in an ice storm say “hi.” Similar occurrences are the future. It isn’t the end of the world although that might be more desirable.
You are proving my point. Lahaina = end of the world, didn’t matter how you prepped, all you could do was run. Texas = everything back on in a few days tops. Jackson, a more intractable problem indeed, but even there, plentiful bottled water exists and will exist for many, many years to come, because in AINO, there are too many civilized whites and not enough savages for it to be otherwise for a couple centuries to come, unless Fauci Inc. comes up with an anti white people virus. Which might get us down to South Africa demographics, where plentiful… Read more »
“in AINO, there are too many civilized whites and not enough savages for it to be otherwise for a couple centuries to come, unless Fauci Inc. comes up with an anti white people virus”
A virus is not necessary. The biological weapons are in place. I don’t share your optimism.
“The safety of the bottled water being probably a separate subject”
Heh. It’s kind of the same subject.
Thank you, Al! I have found the other options (batteries, etc.) limited so far.
Glad you saw it. Please tell our dear 3g.
For septic or outhouses, welp, got some about that too. Digging a cistern or septic with a pickax in that hard red Georgia clay or San Joaquin hardpack? Not for the weak. And those outhouse wasps, skeeters, and widows are a bloody menace, I’m tellin’ ya.
Thank gosh for that ditch next to my house. Rain burned out my electric s.w.pump, the nightly dip has been my bath for some months.
Strong current, too!
Oh, and thank you too, Jeff Z.- that reminds me to set up tanks for my Dallas suburb microfarm (city water) and mountain Missouri (frequent power outages).
So far behind, pathetic, really, but still trying to make scattered mini latifundia a thing.
Let me get to outlaw garbage gas microrefineries and barefoot doctoring networks, then we’ll be cookin’!
Oops, and dissident mechanics networks- the tow truck scene, second-hand warehousers, garbage dump owners, recyclers and scrap yards / junkyards is the place to find a firm Mad Max parallel economy already thriving.
(And Range Front Fault, we’re going to need you, dear.)
While I’m at it, Infant Phenomenon! Thou art needed, thou wilt be called upon if thou wouldst have it. We have no mind as fine as yours in the dire work.
Systems and networks fellows! Electronics, radio, and neurologists! Thou art needed too.
Someday, Zman, I should hope to recruit from these, the finest of minds. The scope is daunting, and I am but a lowly servant. I hope, that I might be worthy enough to plead boon from these, far better.
Alzaebo: Thanks for all the info. I have already been looking into those large potable water tanks – but they are expensive (particularly shipping – we don’t yet have a truck/trailer – that’s next on our list). Plus they’d need to be buried on the slope between the wellhead and the house. We’re on rock and that excavation will also be costly. I did just buy a Milwaukee battery pump (we already have a few Milwaukee batteries and tools) that can pressurize the water – and it will be useful for draining our small pond before winter (it will still… Read more »
Even “leftists” (for lack of a better term) talk about collapse now. Even leftists realize the system has failed, or is in decline. Nobody outside the regime (to include its media) is putting up any pretense that things still work. But as to causes, they haven’t yet got much past racism, sexism, climate change, or we haven’t taxed the billionaires enough. It is doubtful if they can ever get past such considerations. Their utopia cannot be disproven unless it is, finally, really tried! As any roadblock or speed bump to their utopia is erected, their rage only grows. As we… Read more »
I haven’t heard any non-libertarian mention taxes in a very long time. The one legacy of Marx in current (post-)leftism is that they want to obliterate all local things, especially the non-urban non-professional middle class—”daddy owns a dealership” is their kulak-equivalent insult (though never aimed at Joe Biden, whose daddy owned a dealership)—with the aid of (at the behest of) international finance. They want Elon gunned down by the IRS, but that’s not about taxes.
It is funny that Hazony came up in the comments. This is the second reference to the Haywood review in a few days so my mind wandered to Hazony and the National Conservative movement. It was a relevant mental jaunt tied together by absurdity. A book that mentions regime change and critique of liberalism, that proposes no change and clings to liberalism is absurd. Similarly, a national crisis stemming from the world’s leading nation-state having its power center and leading thinkers based outside of that nations state, and being made up of an essentially international order is patently absurd. It… Read more »
Reality Rules: “Similarly, a national crisis stemming from the world’s leading nation-state having its power center and leading thinkers based outside of that nations state, and being made up of an essentially international order is patently absurd. It is a sign of a huge power vacuum. No American man can or will stand up for the nation state and its natos in its cradle, so of course, a gaggle of foreigners will step in and happily guide the project.” =============== Two patently absurd news items over the weekend: 1) GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says China can have Taiwan after… Read more »
I don’t know. As for Hawaii and Ukraine Day, aside from an obvious game of, “Ho brah! Look ovah dayerr brah! Look da Ukraine brah! Nuttin’ to see Maui kind brah.”, game of incompetence distraction, the Tammany Hall of The Pacific Democrats is probably doing this to get billions in war appropriations for promoting the war.
The GAE spoils system is going to be something to behold as things unravel.
In NJ there’s extra concentrated diversity. To the point the Hindi imitate the New York Jews to absurd and comical excess. Imagine a Jew with no brains and no soul (yes, tortured, twisted, self hating but it exists) and you have the Hindu hustle; the brains of Meso Americans with the morals of a Hollywood Jew.
Stating the obvious, what’s needed is a move away from democracy and leveling, back towards aristocracy and nobility. The best have mingled with the common— they’re no longer inbred. Time to let them speciate, do their thing, and renew the body. Libs need to realize their job is long finished. They’re going to have a hard time with that.
Paintersforms: “The best have mingled with the common – they’re no longer inbred.” I have to continue to publicize Fast Eddie’s point of view here: Fast Eddie believes that chicks from wealthy White sh!tlib famblies are a bachelor’s best bet for motherhood, because wealthy White sh!tlib chicks are utter hypocrites who would NEVER engage in mμdsharkery. Personally, I sense that White sh!tlibs have set up something of a secret society of septua/octa/nonagenarian high achievers who are hell bent on nurturing & raising their own descendants into the secret society. For instance, I have watched doltish childhood friends of mine have… Read more »
When we were kids, my friend couldn’t perform eighth grade “Algebra I” to save his life, yet his son gained admission to the #6 engineering skrewl in the entire nation.
The secret here is that my friend’s father was a very prominent tenured intellectual, and I’m convinced that my friend’s father pulled a lot of strings & called in a bunch of favors to get that grandson admitted to the #6 engineering skrewl.
There was also old money in the fambly, and that could have been translated into a large endowment gift to the #6 engineering skrewl.
“Fast Eddie believes that chicks from wealthy White sh!tlib famblies are a bachelor’s best bet for motherhood, because wealthy White sh!tlib chicks are utter hypocrites who would NEVER engage in mμdsharkery.”
Drawing from women I’ve known, bourgeois but not upper crust, yeah, they’ve had kids. Some of that residual bourgeois conservatism. Mostly to unimpressive beancounters, and in the meantime imposing their craziness on the kids, vaxxing, etc. Raising up the offering to Moloch, Sophia, or Gaia, I suppose.
I don’t know the best type. I’ll let you know when I meet her lol.
Also obvious, {the best} ≠ {the elite} today. Democracy!
I’m positive the regime agrees with you. However, the aristocracy/nobility they have chosen isn’t the one I would have chosen.
Selecting for a different type, certainly.
Here’s the thing, though: the truth can stand on its own, while the lie needs to be believed.
[…] ZMan peers behind the curtain. […]
Dictatorship of recent Catholic converts
Classic
The most annoying part is they really think they’re edgy by embracing hard-line papalotry and theocracy while clutching their pearls the moment someone brings up simple biological truths every Catholic would nod along and agree with a hundred years ago.
The dumb DEUS VULT and RETVRN larpers need to go. We can get inspiration from the past, but we’re in uncharted territory now.
Catholics need another Italian pope. Italians know how to run that thing.
At this point, I would almost settle for a pope that’s, you know, Catholic. At our house, we call Francis the Poop.
Immature? Definitely. But that doesn’t make it any less accurate. This guy is the shittiest Pope in modern history. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t even like Catholics.
There’s no doubt in my mind if he walked into my home, he would be repulsed by the icons and ‘rigid’ books we own.
There’s also no doubt in my mind if he visited my lesbian cousin’s house, he would have nothing but praise.
At this point it doesn’t matter what he really believes, as his actions make him an enemy of the very faith he heads.
The poop lol. Didn’t he actually make a comment about eating poop a few years ago?
Zman,
Your link to Haywood’s review goes to his review of Deneen’s earlier book, Conserving America?.
Haywood’s review of Regime Change is found here: https://theworthyhouse.com/2023/06/22/regime-change-toward-a-postliberal-future-patrick-deneen/
Fixed! I was thinking about linking to his other Deneen reviews and must have copied the wrong link. Worthy House is a great book review site. Very under appreciated.
One begins to suspect that the first big sticking point is what Edward Banfield called “amoral familism” (in his book The Moral Basis of a Backward Society; not including the link in a no doubt doomed effort to avoid comment moderation). Thanks to the failure of the liberal order, social trust has collapsed to the point where “amoral familism” is, or soon will be, the only way to get things done. Need something fixed or added on to your house or place of business? You will soon discover that “your” house really belongs to The Government, and whatever you need… Read more »
Severian: “…what are the odds they shot [their families] (and themselves) up with Suddenly Juice?”
That’s an excellent question.
They certainly didn’t bother to mask themselves at their various soirees & balls & cotillions.
If they secretly weren’t masking, then maybe they were also secretly not v@xxing?!?!?
The thing is that without discussing of racial demographics, the whole discussion is pointless. Ideological motivation is pretty much a white person thing, especially a Northwestern European thing. Black people believe in all kinds of wonky things, but it never affects their families/groups. They’ll say “Sheeit, he a uncle Tom” but there is no real anger over each other’s ideologies. White people truly feel anger and resentment at each other over our views on things. The rest of the world simply exists. There are 2 options: A – Corrupt authoritarian ruling class who gets more than their fair share, but… Read more »
Tend to agree. I’m certainly so expert, but I envision a relatively orderly decay into something on the Latin American model (inclludes Brazil.) Note that I don’t welcome such a future — only that it seems most probable. And largely driven by demographic alterations. The foregoing is heavily contingent on “orderly.” Any number of disrputors would trash the scenario: a panemic worthy of the name, economic disaster (runaway inflation a likely candidate), honest-to-god civil war or insurrection, nuclear war, etc. People who have not read of world history, and ideally of having had first-hand experience visiting some of the third… Read more »
Related: Mississippi kicking Britain’s a**.
From The Atlantic, no less.
Same as Canada, our GDP per Capita is equivalent to something like the 47th poorest state (Louisiana), but with 15x more expensive housing and triple the taxes.
AND the South is comprised by 30-40% of descendents of literal slaves.. Canada is so screwed.
Not really. Poor areas, as a rule, have higher rates of violent crime, suicide, drug addiction ,street pooping, and lower average IQs etc. This is true of any jurisdiction. UK, using the various metrics above, is much better off than Mississippi. I suspect it’s to do with the dollar being the number one reserve currency so it confuses the “signal” the dollar sends regarding the wealth of jurisdctions which use the dollar. Interesting they focus on the UK rather than France or Germany or Italy. Just the permanent hostility/ contempt Amtericans have for the British. UK has a higher per… Read more »
I reject any analysis that is made on the basis of what is currently defined as GDP
I question the orderly descent aspect of the decaying GAE. It seems we in the gae have lost the ability to be poor. Hence the unprecedented credit card debt to just get by. With so many households living pay check to pay check it seems that a lot of people are closer to the edge than anyone realizes. I wonder if our decline is going to look more like a cliff than a slope. The absolute dependency on outside resources for all of the daily needs seems to leave little room for a downward regression in an orderly manner. An… Read more »
Right. You won’t be Latin America. Latin America is a poor region when EVERYTHING (from people, economy, laws, customs, taxes, etc.) is adapted to poverty.
You will be a poor country when EVERYTHING is adapted to wealth.
Excellent points. To tie your comment to Zman’s post, wars were not always ideological in Northwestern European cultures, either. Prior to the Enlightenment era (or the Reformation, as per Zman), wars in Europe were mostly feudal in nature and fought over control of land and the resources it generated. Ideological Man, and therefore ideological war, grew out of the Reformation/Enlightenment, and perhaps the Industrial Revolution. The Haitian revolution and its aftermath is an excellent case study of your point. The various leaders of the slave revolt (Christophe, Toussaint, Dessalines) donned European-style clothing and did their best to emulate European-style rhetoric,… Read more »
You framed it well. I would make a few additions. As the United States continues to atomize as it grows weaker, and this may be the case up there in Canada and possibly down in Australia (Europe is too densely populated for this to happen there, I think), there very well may emerge the equivalent of warlordism, which initially will take to form of viceroys of sorts until the central government weakens sufficiently for the local dictator to emerge as something greater than a middle man. Another possibility, and it is the one being urged more or less now, will… Read more »
Jet ski dealers regional nationalism
I’m thinking more along the lines of a monopoly on basic staples–just with the WEF eliminated as the beneficiary, which is their goal with housing now.
“Deneen delivers a poorly conceived list of reforms and some bromides about racism and colonialism.” Either he is in total fear of cancellation or, more likely IMHO, so successfully brainwashed in the subject that his mind cannot conceive of anything more important. As bad as all of our brainwashing has been, academics have it even worse living in it all day every working day. Academics may be able to legitimize a topic like regime change, but no original political ideas will ever come out of academia. Academics are now the prototypical “Team Player” types. Even if they have original political… Read more »
The Haywood review is a good listen/read. he thinks the weird racism chapter was tacked on to inoculate Deneen against the old slander, but there is nothing in the rest of the book about race, so I am not sure. Imagine reading a book about woodworking at the end there is chapter on racism in the carpentry world. It was that weird.
It’s because he knows, perhaps unknown to himself, even, that the implications are exactly as racial as they are.
It’s like the meme:
> Pedophiles to the wood chipper!
> Hey! Cool it with the anti-Semitism!
To me, that is evidence precisely that Deneen is attempting to cover his ass. Just as Leftist jurists can tease an iron-clad case for heauxmeaux marriage from the penumbral emanations of the Constitution, so Leftist academics can descry racism in even the most anodyne political prescriptions. Tacking on a seemingly incongruous anti-racist coda is thus almost certainly a defense mechanism.
Sad thing is, it won’t do any good – he opposes clown world, he’ll be called a racist. Simple as that
It is shocking that so many otherwise intelligent people do not grok this.
What I find most striking about projects like the one that Z Man reviews is their absolute inability to question the imperative of a multi-racial society. This unwavering commitment is rooted in their foundational beliefs in compassion, fairness, and race-blindness, which only white people feel, generally speaking. If I could say one thing to them: “The people for whom you have ruined your society are incapable of reciprocating the deepest impulses that motivate you. Act accordingly.” Their absolute inability to question their assumptions makes me think that they are brainwashed. The only viable culprit for this brainwashing is the media… Read more »
Yes. But it is quite possible that a lot of the TradCath folks struggle with this problem because of the universalist credo of Catholicism. Haywood himself has crossed this bridge but others haven’t yet.
The basic “friend/enemy” thing has to be the point of departure for any “regime change”. Academics aren’t going to cross this bridge for obvious reasons.
Dunno, Captain. I know my share of TradCaths. I would not say they are more scared of this sort of badthought than others.
The notion that Catholic “universalism” prevents racial distinctions or action upon them — or any other kind of distinction — is autistic nonsense and a red herring.
But was Catholicism truly universalist prior to Vatican II? The Crusades and the Wars of Religion lead me to doubt.
One of my sons and I attended a couple of Masses at a Caldean community Catholic Church. It was packed to the gills and the priest even shamed some of the women for “inappropriate dress” during his sermon. It was refreshing. Myself, my son and one man married to a Caldean woman comprised all the whites in the overflowing attendees. The Caldeans were polite enough, made the basic motions of courtesy to me and my boy as co-religionists… but that was where it ended. It was clear, based on friendly but pointed questions after Mass, that we were welcome to… Read more »
Effectively, an Iraqi catholic church? Had never heard of the Chaldean Catholic Church before.
@Ostei:
You likely haven’t heard about it since W’s invasion led to the massacre or forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Christian Iraqis, quietly supported by the State Department and United States military and largely the subject of a media blockade. Most of the slaughtered were Chaldean.
Yes. Iraqi Christians. They draw their lineage from John the Apostle. After the crucifixion he went to those lands and converted them. They are part of Syriac Catholicism. I believe F. Murray Abraham is one of the more famous Syriac Catholics… probably the reason he played a role in Siege of Vienna movie.
“Their absolute inability to question their assumptions makes me think that they are brainwashed. The only viable culprit for this brainwashing is the media and this is what leads me to focus on those who control the media.” They’re either brainwashed or afraid. Personally, my money is on fear — fear of lynch mobs showing up outside their door, fear of financial loss, fear of being shunned in polite society, and in some cases, fear of imprisonment or physical harm. But of course, this leads us to the same place — the media and those who control it. As long… Read more »
Yup, fear for the win. Machiavelli could move from exile to other work outside of Florence. This would be impossible today.
Deneen’s book is sold on Amazon and it’s published by Penguin Random House, so no surprise there’s no criticism of multiracialism.
Yes, fear. But why aren’t they afraid of the right? Even where “right wingers” are in control of some institution, they will not enforce ideological purity the way the left does. The right would first need to move away from conservatism, which in the modern US context is support for the status quo, whatever the status quo happens to be. What has made the left so damned powerful is the cowardice of the right. We are being bullied by freaks and misfits with purple hair and being gender-confused and homos and “minorities” Just about every problem we have is the… Read more »
The GAE is at the late stage that almost every ancient empire went through.
The entrenched bureaucratic power centers were headed up and maintained by eunuchs.
We have an ever-increasing governmental cadre of self-mutilated men in dresses, tittering homosexuals, childless politicians, and angry middle aged women suffering with mental health issues.
All as much of a genetic dead-end as those eunuchs from antiquity.
Next comes the unbathed hordes of men with pillage and rapine in mind. Same old story.
“Next comes the unbathed hordes of men with pillage and rapine in mind.”
That’s OK: they are natural conservatives.
Great comment. Yes, fear…and futility. “The right would first need to move away from conservatism, which in the modern US context is support for the status quo, whatever the status quo happens to be.” Precisely, and that may be happening. Most self-proclaimed conservatives actually are nationalists now, and perhaps that always has been the case although it was not defined as such and the concept was inchoate. I mean “nationalist” here in the traditional sense rather than the civic one. “What has made the left so damned powerful is the cowardice of the right. We are being bullied by freaks… Read more »
What is ironic is that previous generations of academics–beginning in the late 60s–taught the media everything they know about Leftist ideology and crushing dissent.
I haven’t read this thing, but the drift of Z’s review is that Deneen’s book doesn’t quite live up to its billing. All I can say is, if you want a social traditionalist who really does bite the bullet, who describes what an illiberal regime would actually look like and why it is necessary, who actually does understand Aristotle and St. Thomas, and who actually does chart a course from A to B… …then you can always ask me. My bona fides in this respect are impeccable. Whether you agree with me or not, you can at least be perfectly… Read more »
What did you think of “John Locke’s” performance in ” Lost? “
I’ve never seen one millisecond of it and I don’t plan to. Serious inquiries only, please.
I would ask you to start by reconciling the traditional Catholic universalist worldview/ethos with the pretty clear need to draw firm “friend/enemy” distinctions to save our society/people. Perhaps Carl Schmitt did this, but I may have failed to understand it. I’m a finance guy and just an amateur (at best) philosopher. Thanks!
(I always enjoy your posts; they’re extremely thought-provoking).
Thank you for your kind words, Captain Willard. While the topic of Christian universalism often raises hackles in these quarters, the simple (and I daresay anticlimactic) answer is that all the concern is really just the outcome of a faulty premise. There is no Christian universalism, at least not in the social sense. Christianity is only “universal” in the sense that the means of salvation is the same for every man. The atoning sacrifice of Christ is the sole and efficacious means of salvation for the children of men, “and there is no other name under Heaven by which we… Read more »
“’Christian universalism’ is, therefore, nothing but a modern sentiment wearing old religious garb, and I must admit to sometimes losing my patience with those who still don’t understand this.”
Why do you think this point is so universally misunderstood? You mentioned Vatican 2 but that only pushes the question back to why Vatican 2 had to happen.
Do you think that this misinterpretation of Christianity is intentionally promoted and if so why?
LineInTheSand, It is, of course, intentionally promoted, mostly unconsciously, and indeed the antecedents were there before Vatican II. What it points to is a development within Western civilization itself. The reason the misunderstanding is so commonplace is because that misunderstood Christianity is the religion of the West. Christianity is not exclusively Western, and Western civilization is not natively Christian. However, because the Christian religious field overlaps the Western cultural field, there was always a great pseudomorphosis underway in which the Western religion (what Spengler would have called Faustianism) took over and misappropriated Christian language. St. Thomas Aquinas was a Christian… Read more »
Intelligent Dasein: Very well said. As you note, Jesus accepted the reality of autocratic rulers and distinct social classes, including slavery. To the best of my knowledge, He never denounced such but rather focused on the mutual social obligations between master and servant, king and subject. I noted this to a devout Christian friend, who averred that despite the fact Jesus did not denounce slavery, “He would have been against it.” Please note I am not advocating for the institution, but would be interested in hearing how you would respond to such a statement. Obviously it was an emotional one… Read more »
3g4me, I hope you’re able to help educate your friend. In fact, there is no need to speculate that Jesus “would be” against slavery because, in actual fact, He came into a world where slavery was quite commonly practiced and he said nothing contrary to it. We know that He was not against it. Servitude, which can be distinguished from chattel slavery, is the condition of most of mankind, then and now. The only thing that tends to obscure the fact in the modern age is our excessive reliance on machine power, but it would be odd indeed if an… Read more »
Slavery is a blight upon human history, but such things–and worse–are common enough. In fact, the various blights, abominations, atrocities and injustices are arguably the very core of human existence, with glorious achievements and halcyon times the periphery. Alas, the trans-Atlantic slave trade is a convenient cudgel with which to bash the white man and a scepter with which to confer sainthood upon the negro. And that is why it central to AINO’s master narrative. Personally, whenever I hear the jeremiads about the poor negro slave, my eye remains curiously dry…
Thanks very much for such an excellent reply to my question. But way before Vatican II, Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891) firmly planted the Church in the social teaching business – both regarding unions and the proper social role of government. It could even be argued that Rerum Novarum was a foundational text for modern Christian Democratic political parties in Europe. While not a “universalist” tract, it sure inspired a lot of government activism. Do you agree? If so, what is the “corrective” doctrinal prescription for the excesses of modern Christian social thought. (Obviously Rerum Novarum is tame… Read more »
Here we have to be careful not to fall into the same error we’ve identified in others. Rerum Novarum is actually wonderful. It defends private property, the family, the living wage, subsidiarity (read: no Deep State), and the solidarity it promotes among workers is very much in the same spirit as what DRs call “nationalism.” There is nothing there not to like. Indeed, I have been perplexed for many years about why Dissident Rightists aren’t just moving en masse to the Traditional Catholic Church. Everything they talk about is right there and has been for centuries. I would urge everybody… Read more »
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to answer your question about the corrective.
The best antidote to fake Cristian mushiness is real Christian thought, and there is no better modern source for that than Pope St. Pius X.
Do yourself a favor and read Pascendi dominici gregis and Lamentabili sane exitu by Pius X and the Syllabus of Errors by Pius IX.
I get the feeling that the same relationship exists between modern leftists and your favorite philosopher and the average leftist and Orwell or Ray Bradbury. I read a blurb written by Bradbury about an encounter he had with an English professor. She actually told him that he had no idea what he really meant when he wrote Fahrenheit 451. They did the same thing to Orwell when he was alive. If we could magically bring the Philosophers they claim to be following into the modern era, they would be denounced as racist, sexist and homophobic by their followers. None of… Read more »
By today’s capacious and preposterously one-sided standards, the overwhelming majority of intellectuals who died before 1960 would be classed as racists. But, of course, the comparatively minute cadre of postmodern intellectuals who rule the roost today are right, and the entire corpus of human thought that preceeded them was wrong. One might just be able to detect a touch of solipsism among these people…
Your take and Haywood’s (Haywood was far less kind in regards to the intent of the author) remind me of the reactions of a recent Tim Pool podcast where he and that odd Jewish lady, whose name escapes me, were running interference on the demographic issue. On one hand, like Haywood would say, it’s infuriating that people nominally attached to the fringes with us would still try to cover for our enemies, but on the other hand you do bring up a good point that if they feel they have to speak to the issue at all it’s an encouraging… Read more »
It’s more difficult for people who are or have been “plugged in” to the system to escape the fringes and join us on the other side of the great divide. I’ve never gone to swanky dinner parties nor been feted by academics or media types nor been involved in public policy of any kind. I am a true dirt person. It’s easy for me to point finger at cloud people or fringe people and yell “cuck!” But imagine your formative years and most of your middle years spent with people with their head up their ass and writing about it… Read more »
Yeah. Caldwell’s book struck me as similar: this great explanation of the profound flaws in the entire project. They are great for explaining just how terribly the rulers have managed everything and, implicitly, a wonderful primer about how there’s really only one solution to all this. And then, of course, they shudder at the obvious implication of what they’e just said. These books are terribly frustrating. These guys are much more deeply read than I and explain in very precise detail exactly how impossible the situation is. And then they come up with the solution which is some version of… Read more »
Agree and the term limit solution for our woes is totally lame – the only opportunity for those left the station decades ago. Hell, the closest we’ve come is limiting el presidente to two terms – at least two official terms…
I wrote about this with regards to Hazony’s nationalism book. You could tell he was wrestling with the obvious implications for himself if his audience accepted his argument.
What you see with all of these guys is they want the fruits of a moral society without the ickiness that must come with it.
Bingo! This omelette and egg-breaking problem is perhaps the key issue to resolve for the DR. I hope you will devote an essay to it because I think most of us struggle with it.
Problem: chefs would would advocate actually breaking eggs can easily run afoul of fines and prison even in these relatively normal times. At least until more liberty is taken away, one does have the option to discuss hypotheticals, or perhaps to survey history, and so forth. And as already mentioned, it may be that things are too far gone to be reversed and they must follow their natural course. Returning to the cooking analogy: it may not be a wise choice to actually break, or even openly discuss, breaking the eggs. But one can write the cookbook of omlette recipes,… Read more »
I would put it differently.
Hazony wants the fruits of a moral society because he himself is the ickiness.
Therein lies the contradiction, and the parasite’s need for skills that are portable.
“When you get to the point where you can see the video of the Somalian guy who shot the cops in North Dakota ” I can’t believe what a racist you are!!! He was Syrian, not a Somali!!! God, don’t you know the difference between a black person and a brown person? Well, I never! How in god’s name can a Syrian claim asylum in the US? Assuming international law means anything whatsoever, the first “safe” country you arrive in is where you get asylum. He probably went through multiple countries before getting on a damned plane and coming to… Read more »
Skip the “charging”. I want to go right to the sentencing part and their time served will be the last “time” they will ever need to serve.
To be fair, under a you broke it, you bought it system of morality a lot of places could make an argument for asylum here. Which is why we need to stop breaking places.
“If members of the modern monastery are experiencing this, then it suggests the regime is far closer to a moral crisis than many would like to admit.”
Good, it’s about time some these supposed “big” thinkers pulled their heads out of their asses. Now, when they fully come to realize there is absolutely no reforming the current system, and that regime change begins with completely replacing the existing one, we’ll be getting somewhere.
Great point! But we are a helluva long way from the “What is to be Done?” moment though, aren’t we?
Yes, it would have been good if a book called “Regime Change” had actually dealt with, you know, regime change, but I suppose that he didn’t want to get on a three-letter agency list quite yet, assuming he’s not on one now. But as you say, serious people are finally starting to realize that this clown show can’t and won’t go on, and that is indeed a hopeful sign.
My thoughts exactly. No real answer to the subject of the book. Also, as the Zman said, the “ bromides” about “ racism and colonialism “ told me the man isn’t serious.