One of the first awakenings people have on the road out of the liberal mental order is the realization that libertarianism is nonsense. It is why you find so many former libertarians in the dissident space. Many of them started to see conservatism as a pointless trap, so they went searching for another answer and landed on libertarianism, only to discover that it was just a ridiculous version of conservatism. This sent them off on the journey that led them over the great divide.
While libertarianism has collapsed, conservatives continue to struggle with why their cause has slowly been marginalized, despite billions in funding. On the one hand, they have no answer for the post-liberalism that has swept the ruling elites. They struggle to even understand that there is a ruling elite divorced from the ballot box. On the other hand, they cannot bring themselves to join the populist reaction to the post-liberalism that is executing a revolution from the top.
Other than chanting about their principles, these people have had no answer for why they oppose the populists. Part of the conservative delusion is to assume that you are part of a temporarily out of work alternative elite. Once radicalism has run its course and everyone has returned to their senses, you will once against be a part of the cultural if not the political elite. Therefore, joining with those icky prols in the populist movement means abandoning the dream of restoration.
From Burke to the present day, this has been the personalized conceit of what passes for conservatism in the Anglosphere. On the one hand, the conservative is compelled to oppose radicalism in the name of culture and tradition. On the other hand, he must defend the system, even as it absorbs the values and principles of radicalism, because he imagines himself one day in the leadership of the system. The ratchet effect exists because conservatism exists.
At the most basic level, politics in the West has been driven by the internal political dynamic of the United States. That dynamic is a dance between those who operate on the assumption that the ends justify the means and opposed by those who argue that the means justifies the ends. The reason this has been a lopsided struggle in favor of the former is they have a wider range of action. To win, they just have to learn what the opponent will not do and then do that.
A good illustration of this is the Biden administration’s war on the court system in the person of Jack Smith. The courts knock down his spurious legal arguments, but he keeps coming back with new versions of the same arguments, always with the purpose of jailing enemies of the regime. Thousands continue to sit in jail after the Supreme Court shot down the legal claim against them, because as far as Jack Smith and his lieutenants are concerned, any means necessary is justified.
It is the one thing reactionaries understood. The antidote to people like Jack Smith is not obsessive rule following but a radicalism far more violent and deliberate than that practiced by Smith. You do not dig up the corpse of Cromwell and put his skull on display as a deterrent. You do so in order to get comfortable with what must be done to the next lunatic that slips thorough he defenses. In order to defend the law, one must go outside the law to destroy those who live outside the law.
Another way of thinking about it is the classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, starring John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Lee Marvin. In the film, set on the frontier, Stewart represents law and the order. Marvin is the frontier, the forces arrayed against the law. This is the central conflict of the story, which is settled when Stewart finally agrees to confront Marvin. Wayne, the man with a foot in both camps kills Marvin, but lets people think it was Stewart.
This is why conservatism is about to be run out of town. Like Stewart in the film, it has always refused to accept that the law is not the answer to the radicalism that seeks to destroy the very idea of law. Anyone or anything that rose up to face the radicals was met by the conservatives as a greater threat than the radicals. Imagine Jimmy Stewart having John Wayne arrested before the big fight. Conservatives imagine themselves as the defense of order, when in reality they are its chief opponent.
All is not yet lost for conservatives. Billions in financial support have allowed them to survive their audience leaving them. While the older generation is happy to sit around playing make believe until the sweet relief of death, the younger generation is looking around wondering if conservatism is worth saving. You see it in this interesting essay by someone calling himself Henry George. It is of the same tone you saw with libertarians a decade ago before they had their awakening.
All of those cultural sentiments captured in words by conservative writers over the years will only live on if the people moved by them are willing to fight. They can either be pleasing thoughts as you slip into the darkness of death, or they can be an inspiration to be far more ruthless and radical than the radicals who promise to condemn your culture and people to the dustbin of history. Some young conservatives seem to be creeping up to this realization.
In the end, the sentimentality that is conservatism is a luxury item. It can be indulged in times when there are no great threats to law and order. That law and order, however, must be ruthlessly enforced by those who cannot and will not allow their virtues to be turned into vices by the enemies of law and order. If conservatism is to survive it must transition from a comforting death into an inspiration for a violent revolt against radicalism and the societal death that leads from it.
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Conservatives (those who actually believe the rhetoric not the grifter whores like Lindsey Graham) suffer from “Anton Disease.” It’s the belief that your laws spring from God or nature and thus are not laws designed by and for a specific group of men at a specific time but the embodiment of a higher power.
This belief gives them a false faith that other races and genders will eventually see the light (and your goodness, btw) and accept those laws. Conservatives are childish and vain – and will fail.
I think this issue goes further: Their arrogance leads them to believe that the dirty work should be done by the proles; they would not sully themselves with such base matter as violence.
Agree. The conservative establishment is well-heeled and views populism as low class. They see those pick-up trucks and regular folk and feel zero connection, indeed they’re embarrassed to be put in the same category as them. Naturally, this is because they’ve accepted the morality of the Left.
The conservative establishment is culturally and politically the conservative wing of the Left. It’s why they want to talk about blacks and not poor whites.
How ironic that conservatives are far more sympathetic to the 300-pound bulldagger with green hair, tattoos on her neck, and metallic acne than to good old boys in Silverados with gun racks and a case of Shiner Bock in the cab. They shun their fellow travelers and embrace their natural enemies. At the end of the day, I’m left to conclude they’re just flaming idiots.
Almost none of them grew up around normal people, or, if they did, they felt much more comfortable with the people that they met in college. I used to work around Capitol Hill. The backgrounds and way that they conservative staffers lived their lives was indistinguishable from the Dem staffers. Sure, the conservative staffers were either libertarian types or religious (but as in “we’re all God’s children” super CivNat religious). But they were very comfortable around the Dem staffers. Ironically, even then, the Dem staffers were openly hostile to the conservatives and mocked rednecks and Hillbillies in front of them.… Read more »
“We’re all God’s children”…. Uggh, I hear that from some acquaintances who refuse to acknowledge race realism. I can’t stand it.
The synthesis here is that the Law, whether divinely inspired (as I think) or from man (as you and Zman think), exists to preserve the People. If it’s anything, it’s first and foremost a tool to preserve what we’ve built and provide a foundation for posterity. The Conservatives fetishize the Law while happily watching the people founder and imported savages destroy what’s been built. This is the fundamental problem with “conservatism” and why it’s a spent force. What comes next is about biology and civilization. The Law without the People and civilization is meaningless.
Well, there’s a difference between divinely inspired in the sense that God create different peoples and those people create different societies with rules to maintain those societies and divinely inspired in the sense that there is one God and one set of laws that reflect that God. Anton and conservatives believe the latter. I believe the former.
Hmmm. I’d like to partially take issue with that. You’re essentially arguing for a Hobbesian sovereign (“a mortall [sic] god, to keep men in awe”), not a Lockean one, and I’m not 100% on board with that. I think laws SHOULD, very loosely, reflect human Nature as created by a higher power. The problem is that the Enlightenment debate between Hobbesian and Lockean sovereignty has been bypassed by the Industrial Revolution and Modernity. The role of the sovereign today is to use technology to impose human will upon nature. This is exactly what we see with with the transgender and… Read more »
Whether law is divine or not, it should apply to the nature of the specific volk and not to humanity in general. God did not create a legal regime that comprehends Icelanders and Melanesians equally, and the descendants of Montesquieu cannot.
I’m arguing that laws are downstream from biology. They embody the beliefs and culture of a certain group of people at a certain time. They are divine only in that God create that people. Conservatives like Anton argue that the laws reflect God or nature and thus apply to all peoples at all times. It’s why they don’t fight back. They believe that the natural (or divine) power of their natural laws will win the day for them. They are basically saying that anyone who doesn’t agree with the Constitution is like a person holding a chair over their head.… Read more »
Anton is guilty of a Lincolnian misreading of Jefferson’s Natural Rights argument. Jefferson wrote “to secure these rights, governments [plural] are instituted among men.” Jefferson simultaneously believed that slavery was a violation of the Natural Rights of Africans, and also that when freed, they should be deported to form their own government to secure their Natural Rights as they saw fit. So, yes, there are God-given universal natural rights… but it is not up to me and MY government to enforce them for everyone. If the negroes want to have a different system of property rights to determine how a… Read more »
(Please give us a quickie on Hobbesian vs Lockean sovereignty.
Severian once delivered an excellent summary of the debate, but it is lost somewhere amidst thousands of notes on multiple devices and drives. I wish that Sev would re-post his summary too. Many thanks.)
They already have failed. And we’re living in the ruins they helped create.
Wait wait! If we show them another chart or graph with crime stats and police shootings, they’ll surely see the light this time, right? Right??
If Trump somehow manages to prevail in November, that will be the easy part. The hard part comes after because all you have to do is listen to the other side and what they’re accusing us of: violence. insurrection. terrorism. etc. We already know what’s coming. And a lot of it will be led by government bureaucrats and elected politicans, which means there is one and only one answer available to Trump: a purge. Maybe not Stalinesque purges, but an American-style purge. Firings, mainly. Revocation of security clearances is another. There’s some debate over whether the President can impound funding… Read more »
Forget it. The recent announcements that counting the vote will take weeks are the regime’s assurance that he is not going to be declared the winner.
Also, the consistent claim of “a close election” is a part of this. What happens will depend on the margin, along with what Z describes periodically as emergent behavior, i.e., lone wolfing it. The wildest part is that literally no one will accept and/or believe the results. Pre-announcing it will take weeks to attain a result is not an act of confidence.
Like I said, winning is the easy part.
If Trump were to win — (and he won’t) — he’d have to actually be the “fascist” they have been accusing him of being to enact any truly substantive changes.
And he’s not.
There lies my thinking. Does Trump have the cahonies to be America’s Pinochet? He did not in the past as he showed himself to be a believer in the system and followed the “rules”. In short, as I’ve said many times before, and Z-man has restated today: “he let his virtues be used against him”! Pinochet tore up the book and settled the situation in a matter of months, then stepped down to (at that time) a restored conservative government of laws. On the other hand, my cursory following of Chilean affairs since would seem to indicate they have fallen… Read more »
Agree with all you’ve said, except that Pinochet not being what was needed. What was needed, was a way to prime and perpetuate Pinochets, as Guardians of the nation. How do we prime protegés?
This^^^ XMan. Even if he wins, he won’t do any of those things. Hillary would be rotting in jail right now if he were a man of his word. Instead we will get more platinum plans for negros and more juice power.
“If Trump were to win — (and he won’t) — he’d have to actually be the ‘fascist’ they have been accusing him of being”
In other words, he’d have to behave like an AINO Leftist.
There is no solution within the system. Trump is part of the system. It’s mind boggling to me that people still don’t understand this.
I think there’s a Diocletian solution possible. But as Zman writes, it’ll be outside the law or in one of those penumbras and emanations the judges like to opine about.
I wonder what an AINO tetrarchy would look like.
I think that many already do understand this. And some also see that Trump is not the messiah; rather, he is like Moses — called to lead a fractious and flawed (group of the) people toward the promised land. However, he can not, and will not, lead the people across the river. He can only go up to it …
Note: Across the river is someone else’s job — the task for a different sort of human.
Trump’s recent trip to wailing wall with that vile rabbi and little Benji tells me nothing important will change. Still, imagine Harris and what they have in store for us. Only if one takes a real long view is there any hope to cling to.
Trump would have to go General Pinochet on them. I doubt he has that in him. He believes in the rule of law to his detriment. If he did find the strength he most likely would not have enough support from the foot soldiers in the system.
Trump is playing that right. It keeps his base close going into the election. Once elected, fully expect him to bring hostilities to a close as he did the first time around. None of this would have happened if he was in Term 2. I think that’s why they did it last Fall…they knew they were running out of time.
I expect something similar with Taiwan to erupt before January 2025. The government has been very “leaky” about war with China by 2027.
Trump is not going to do any of that, and I fail to think of something Trump has done that’d make you even hope so.
Yep. I do enjoy Trump in the sense that he causes people I hate so much pain and anguish, but that’s about all that he’s good for. Even after everything, he still wants the approval of the system and the ruling elite. He’s a good man but from another time. Vance is a different character. He’s not one of us, but he’s also not comfortable with the ruling elite. Him and people like King Cobra are the rising elites who want more than to be well-paid help for the true rulers. They recite all of the conservative catch phrases, but… Read more »
The emerging alternative elite indeed is a very positive sign. There very well might be some overlaps with them in goals and aims, which is far better than what currently is available.
Yep. They may not be on our team, but I also don’t think that they hate us to their core and want to destroy us. The new boss isn’t always the same as the old boss.
And anything that disrupts the system is probably good for us.
Vance is not one of us, but he’s also not comfortable with the ruling elite.
“Not comfortable with the ruling elite”, is not exactly a good trade for “not one of us.”
If they’d toss the rules, but not to help whites, to what end would they toss the rules? Not an unfriendly question, just genuinely curious.
Personnel is policy. I think he’s got the right people targeted for key cabinet positions. Many of them fought the impeachment wars in 2018-20, so there’s a revenge element at play here.
Getting shot at changed everything. Democrats literally just tried to murder him, and killed a supporter and wounded others in the process.
Don’t underestimate the revenge aspect of this.
I wish I could agree. He’s out there talking even more about abortion, endless war for Israel, wiping Iran off the map, stapling green cards to diplomas, locking up “antisemites”, so on and so on. We already know prominent tiny hats are going to be involved in hiring. He was just out there literally at Schneerson’s grave with Ben Shapiro. A more black pilling sentence I could not imagine. Maybe he’s lying, maybe he is secretly based, maybe he will kick all these people to the curb if he wins. I wish that was the case, but at some point… Read more »
I think he’s got the right people targeted for key cabinet positions.
His VP candidate is a bona fide neolib meat puppet.
The “impeachment wars” is theater to make you believe Trump is a legitimate dissident. If they wanted him off the board, he’d be in the cell next to Jeffrey Epstein by now.
Trump is an old man whose views are ossified. His instinctual civnattery will sublimate the revenge impulse, I’m afraid. But it’s all otiose because the closest he will get to the Anti-White House is in a passing Limo.
I have suspected for more than a year that the plan is to allow Trump to “win” and then plunge the country into chaos as a pretext to set aside the rule of law in order to “save democracy from Trump”.
That’s a fallback loser plan. Trump will not be encumbered this time around by a sense of fair play. Everyone expects that to happen. The problem the other side has is they can burn their own cities down as much as they want. Nobody on our side really cares.
Trump can pardon anybody who shoots a looter for example.
A lot of the coming war is going to be over the dismantling of the IC/FBI/DOJ’s power to harm us.
The surer path to utter hegemony is to continue fortifying elections, jailing dissidents, censoring speech and canceling anybody who’s not a sheep. No reason to play the wild card of allowing Trump back into the Anti-White House.
“So you fire them. And, thanks to the SCOTUS “unitary executive” ruling, Trump can pretty much do what he wants to Executive Branch employees.”
Please elaborate on how this will work? 85-90% of the Federal workforce is under civil service protection. In short, they can’t be fired for political reasons or without cause. I don’t think such firing can withstand court injunction, nor would Trump be immune from prosecution for attempting such in defiance of Court injunction.
Trump can redesignate them as at-will employment, and then fire them. I forget the exact term for it, but he has executive authority to do this and did it in his last term. It was called “Schedule F”. From a strategy point of view, I would stress the importance of cutting the heads off the hydra so the most senior people down 3 levels administration-wide. Death by 1,000 cuts. The issue is the scale of it. He did not go far enough last time around. Security clearances are another very useful weapon. The Courts and Congress do not grant/refuse security… Read more »
How it works is that he does it, he fires these people, and then dares anyone to stop him.
It’s how Democrats work, after all. It’s why we have DACA even after Congress rejected this exact proposal, for example. This is the way the system really works, and again, it’s only conservacucks tethered to things like rules and the law. Now, will be do that? I have serious doubts, but the point is, he can do whatever he wants.
I like that post. However, while Biden and Kamaltoe can do as they please, I’m not sure Trump would enjoy the same latitude.
Even if he manages to get past the cheating, Trump has been absorbed by Conservative, Inc. The whole GOP establishment is behind him and has hooks in his team. He’s going to be surrounded by people who will tell him no on every important thing we support. They will work with his worst instincts on things like Israel. They will fight him tooth and nail on deportations. Firing all the bureaucrats is pure fantasy. Reagan couldn’t even get rid of the then new Department of Education. The courts will fight him on every issue. Remember the reporter Trump tried to… Read more »
I don’t know if you’re paying attention to who he is surrounding himself with, but the neocons are persona non grata anywhere in his sphere. None of the usual backstabbing traitors (the Chris Christie types) are involved at all. And a lot of Conservative Inc. (e.g. Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, etc.) have shuffled back over to the other side where they belong. Others, like Mark Levin, got whipped into line in 2017-18 as their viewership/listenership cratered. Yeah, they’ll be out there, but they’re on the outside looking in. There is a political realignment nobody is talking about, but it is… Read more »
I didn’t say anything about the neocons. I also didn’t say anything about the voters and the realignment of Republican voters. The voters don’t matter anyway. The GOP has been ignoring the voters for decades. JD Vance said Oct 7 was an attack on America. It most certainly was not. We don’t need to guess how Trump is going to handle Israel. Trump’s instincts are TERRIBLE when it comes to Israel. A large number of the displaced people are going to end up here. RFK says anyone who denies climate change should be sent to prison. He’s a degenerate and… Read more »
We see that scene play out in real life all the time. Most people understood that while the police were letting BLM and Antifa running wild, they would not hesitate at all to bring the full force of the state down on you if you resisted BLM and Antifa.
Did they understand? Default American ideology allows an out: say “follow the money” (or “muh pension”) then think no more of it. It’s not really conservatism. Every claimed forefather of the American right understood that what makes a man take a truncheon to his neighbor on behalf of bankers (or whoever) isn’t the paycheck. Republicans are still complaining that Trump wanted the Guard brought in on January 6th to back up the capitol police and Pelosi didn’t allow it. Overlooking admission #785 that Trump was outside the chain of command—bring them in to do what? The civilian body count disappoints… Read more »
Great essay. This argument effectively encapsulates the thinking of the Founders. They were, at heart, English conservatives. They sought to apply the English Bill of Rights of 1689 to the Colonies — no taxation without representation, right to bear arms, free press, trial by jury, right to petition the government, religious toleration. Because the Crown suspended the Bill of Rights in Boston and imposed martial law in 1775, the colonists resorted to extra-legal means to defend the law. The problem with doing this today, of course, is that the “enemy” is not a discrete, identifiable group sent across an ocean… Read more »
It’s going to take a crisis here for this to happen. People complain about the moustache man but Macron, Scholz, the a-hole in Spain and Starmer too are doing the same thing. They rig the Parliamentary system then rule by decree while importing savages to crush any resistance. As Erdogan famously said: “democracy is a bus we ride to our intended destination”. An entire generation of Western Elites has adopted this philosophy.
Off-topic, but can someone let me know where Abe Lincoln is buried?
Dan Bongino is the epitome of insane contradictions embodied in modern Conservatism. He will proudly come to your house and beat you to death if you refuse to join him in his opposition to violence. And he espouses this dogma with the visceral religiosity of a Crusader intent on slaughtering all non-believers. And he is utterly oblivious to this hypocrisy. He considers himself to be a good and moral man who loves Jesus, and is therefore righteous. And he will not wake up until he and his family are third in line at the gas chamber door and his daughter… Read more »
Is Bongino worth mentioning? I assume he’s a showman/grifter making his living off of telling a certain segment of the populace what they wish to hear. But a thought/movement leader? What’s the difference say between him and Shapiro?
He has the most popular podcast in the US currently and reaches millions on his radio show (is effectively the new Rush Limbaugh). A large component of his audience is based, staunchly anti-woke, and represent traditional American citizenry. And he is the poster child for vote-harder. Most importantly, he keeps alive the illusion that Trump will be the messiah that saves us from Deep State damnation. Under his influence, normie cracks open another beer and shouts “damn straight” while remaining ensconced on the couch.
Back in the frontier days, citizens sometimes took the law into their own hands – usually rightfully so – when the so called “law” failed in its basic duties. Today, our judicial system is failing everywhere all around us. Until “conservatives” pull their heads out of their collective asses and start playing big boy hardball, the west will continue down the path to perdition.
Vigilantism should fix it all up.
It is darkly hilarious to read National Review types of late. They are absolutely, positively convinced they will be in the catbird seat if/when Trump and MAGA go down in flames come November. They are like the meme of yore of the old Confederate officer holding a Rebel flag and announcing the South will rise again. Each time there is any indication that Trump would win a fair election, as if such a thing even were possible, the despondence is palpable among Con, Inc. While I remain convinced this is the last election in which the GOP will remain nationally… Read more »
If you live somewhere long enough, it ceases to be a residence, business opportunity, or laboratory, and becomes your home. You develop a culture and a shared history. Law and economy come to reflect tradition. “How we agree to coexist” becomes “How we do things.” The social contract becomes a bond.
American Conservatism, which claims to be classical liberalism, can’t comprehend these things. It hasn’t failed, so much as it’s no longer useful. Many of us have outgrown it.
FWIW Maybe I’m reaching a bit, maybe not, but the Enlightenment concerned itself with the state of nature, natural law, etc. It occurs to me that I’m talking about a state of culture. I also talk about living closer to nature, being a civ skeptic, etc. Do I contradict myself, or is culture the state between nature and civilization? That’s probably it. I think nature is a lack of culture, and civ is corrosive to it. Nasty, brutish, and short, vs. deracinated and transactional. Small is beautiful. edit: further, is basing civilization on natural principles an error? Can it possibly… Read more »
One more thing, which might be a stupid question. Was the Enlightenment, at least partially, the result of Europeans arriving in the New World, especially the wilderness of North America?
I’ve absorbed the critique of the Enlightenment, found much if it valid. Listening to EMJ, lately he’s been talking about American identity, its relationship to the wilderness and satanism (at least in his opinion, I gather). Yet the problem of building a society in this distant wilderness, while not completely from scratch, was a real one. Europe looked on interestedly. It had to have a big effect.
Sam Francis was wrong, and so was Bob Seger. There is nothing beautiful about losers and losing.
From George Will to Jared Taylor, conservatives are losers.
If you are old enough to have been a conservative when it supposedly mattered, you are not only a loser you are too old to matter.
Old losers should retire and write memoirs describing their failures and the means by which they failed
Jared Taylor put up a good fight. To put him in the same category as George Will is ridiculous and insulting.
Nothing quite makes me want to puke so much as an alleged conservative piously intoning “that’s not who we are” when nut cutting time arrives.
Those calling themselves “conservatives” have long been trying to wage a gentlemanly war against people who are waging a war of annihilation. We bring better arguments, they bring Molotov cocktails. Unless our hatred and extremism matches theirs, we will lose and civilization itself will perish with us. The “right” has been in a cage match but trying to abide by the Queensberry Rules. https://www.arthursido.com/2019/03/fighting-in-a-cage-using-the-queensberry-rules.html
In listening to Trump’s statements lately it seems to me that we are going to war no matter who wins the election. IMHO that should be the hill we die on. No more sending young people to be maimed and killed for Israel of the bankers.
I mean or the bankers.
The rules of engagement are in reality set by our enemy. A good start is to follow their example and “one up” them.
Spot on.
Righties are materially comfy in a post-feminist (radical) society that’s imploding. Not willing to stand against the Chaos, much less willing to fight. That’d be unchivalrous!
Would rather chasten and silence those who are willing to stab the beast down.
You hold the gun
And I hold the wound
And we stand looking in each other’s eyes
Both think we know what’s right
Both know we know what’s wrong
We tell ourselves so many, many, many lies
We’re not pawns in any game
Not tools of bigger men
There’s only one who can really move us all
It all looks fine to the naked eye
But it don’t really happen that way at all
— The Who, “Naked Eye” (1971)
Since you touched on Libertarianism, I will post something I read a few days ago and it was a question being asked.
interviewer: “Give me your best description of libertarianism in two or less sentences.”
Interviewee: “House cats. They are convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate, or understand.”
Excellent work today, Z.
And the comments are too.
You no longer see stuff like this in the mainstream.
American conservatism is just a variety of liberalism which accepts the liberal philosophical assumptions but is unwilling to follow through to their logical ends. That is why the ratchet works. The liberals engineer some outrage, the conservatives complain but go along in the end because they recognize the logic of liberalism is against them. Soon, the outrage is the status quo and is defended by conservatives. We will see a gigantic test of this ratchet effect in November. The Dems have souped up their steal the election strategy and we will see a repeat of 2020 with the Dem-controlled metropolitan… Read more »
Z-man’s essay reminds me of this quote from Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons:“William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And… Read more »
Arguing about abstractions in lieu of arguing about facts is an old conservative tactic. They will happily debate how many trees it is proper to cut down in pursuit of the devil while the flesh and blood manifestation of evil runs wild in their ranks. Fixed the typo. As far as how to interpret the movie, my view is that it is intended to be an unresolvable paradox. This comes up often in classic Westerns. On the one hand you have the absolute freedom of the pre-society frontier. On the other hand you have the lose of freedom in society,… Read more »
I tend to view conservatives less as Stoddard and more as the monks at Lindisfarne as the Vikings sacked the monastery and killed them indiscriminately. Conservatives can’t accept that other peoples might not accept their religion (the Enlightenment and natural rights) and don’t fear its wrath.
Let them get cut to pieces. Every pious normie conservative who gets his life destroyed or sent to prison because of his childish belief in the Constitution shakes hundreds from the same stupor.
“The men who sat in theaters watching that film when it was released understood that Valance was not without virtue and Stoddard was not without fault.”
And thus we have the beginnings of the now ubiquitous “antihero” portrayal in media, Doniphon (John Wayne).
If you are strong enough to cut down the laws, then you are the law and you can do whatever you want to do to achieve your goals.
“All power comes from the barrel of a gun.”–some Oriental.
Z-man’s essay reminds me of this quote from Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons:
You beat me to it, but I must say I’m with Thomas More on the matter.
At least for now: as long as we’re gaining adherents, mob rule is not in our interest.
I disagree with the assertion that the only alternative to obsessive adherence to the current rules is mob rule. This is a false dichotomy conservatives have been fond of using since they discovered Thomas More. These polar opposites are of no use because no one lives at either end, not even the radicals. We always exist in the realm of exception. What matters, the only thing that matters, is who shall overcome whom in deciding the exceptions. It is either those who value the spirit of the law or those who reject it. The letter of the law is never… Read more »
Yep. Conservative in Congress or in various groups have plenty of tools to fight back that doesn’t involve anything radical. They could simply employ the same lawfare as the Left. There are plenty of conservative lawyers and even a few judges out there. But, of course, they don’t. Even Trump won’t do anything like that if he was elected. However, something tells me that Vance – if Trump would let him – would. I think that this rising elite – Vance and King Cobra come to mind – are far more comfortable playing the same game as the Left. Just… Read more »
Yes this is at the heart of Carl Schmitt’s argument – his critique of liberalism in this regard applies equally to conservatism in its present warped form. “Liberalism” without any opposition is tantamount to mob rule anyway, as we have seen from St George and covid forward.
But Robert Bolt used dichotomic imagery to suggest that you can no more be a little radical than a little pregnant.
And here’s the thing: once we win, we’re going to need new laws, and we’d be pressed to come up with something better than what America already has.
The problem is institutional capture, not the institutions.
Sure, but how did the institutions become “captured”. They once were a bastion of support for the “old” America. For example, Harvard had a Jewish admissions quota.
Simply cleaning house won’t stop the problem of rat infestation, you’ve got to plug the holes or they’ll return.
Cleaning house – recapturing the system from below would go a long way and it hasn’t even been tried.
Harvard is increasingly rendering itself irrelevant exactly because of racial quotas – the important battle is in primary schools. A group of five-six determined parents ready to dedicate three months work, could coup most local school boards in America.
And the law is like a net. You can’t make one without holes.
America has a plethora of bad laws, and neither the constitution nor the institutions was any impediment to them – because they rest on false assumptions about man and government.
The good thing about America is that bad laws can be repealed without chopping people’s heads off.
Less than a century after America’s laws really came into effect, 600,000 people fatally had bullets put in them. That’s not decapitation, but close. How many have been murdered by blacks since? I imagine the number is far, far higher.
But Washington is William Roper in the play, he’s the guy that cut down the law to get to the devil.
And gems like this from Mr Z are why I come here. He has me thinking about Aristotle (1) and Carl Schmitt (2), and here on the West Coast it isn’t even breakfast time yet.
(1) “The city (polis) comes into being for mere life, but exists for the good life.”
(2) “Sovereign is he who decides the exception.”
Robert Bolt, who wrote that screenplay, was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain until 1968. He was also a member of the Committee of 100. He was married four times. Yet people constantly quote his words as being those of Sir Thomas More.
It’s a paradox that the more laws and regulations a society has to write, the more lawless it becomes in practice.
“If it’s not explicitly against the codified law, it is there fore legal” ignores the unspoken social norms and customs that underpin a society and a civilization.
The “just go back to ‘muh Constitution” boomers surely must be starting to see this? Young people definitely do.
I’ve no printable solutions. “Diversity is our strength!” definitely undercuts the idea of a unified cultural and social norm though.
Conservatism is simply dorky white dudes wishing that it could be “morning in America” again with Ronald Reagan ascendant in 1985. In the following years, all they are now is a stalking horse for the regime, the Washington Generals of politics. They are stuck in a time loop and have nothing to offer people. They believe in magic dirt and that anyone can come to America from a Third World hellhole and become a flag-waving, patriotic “American.” I think people are slowly waking up to the demographic future of this country. We are quickly headed to a one-party state like… Read more »
Somebody once observed that it is always 1932 for the Democrats and always 1980 for the Republicans.
It’s definitely always 1938 in the GAE. Just the other day Susan Rice came out and compared Trump to Chamberlain. I’m starting to wonder how long normie can keep falling for this schtick.
So, basically, a Franco is the answer to arrest the march of the radicals? I think the US elite is afraid of this and for a long time now has been selecting incompetent kiss-butt generals (like Mark Milley) who are genetically incapable of even thinking the name “Franco”.
So Carl Schmitt and Mao are right. “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?”
The biggest problem with the American conservative movement is that they have accepted the enormous lie of egalitarianism, first propounded by avowed communists like Boaz and furthered by more recent Harvard communists like Stephen Jay Gould…The attending lie is “racism”, which lacks a definition but is used to make whites and asians submit to the invasion and promotion of dumber and much more violent blacks, average IQ in America being 85….There is really no way out of this mess as long as those lies are dominant in Western culture…
Off Topic:
Last December, the Z Man posted a link to a publisher in Texas called Falling Marbles Press. Some of their books are pretty good.
For example: this recent release about a kid who joins the Navy over 50 years ago is a reminder of how things used to be and good for some laughs.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DBZ9TZD4
Fantastic column today. Thanks.
[…] The Zman posted this morning about the death of conservatism and pondered what will become of the people that used to be “conservatives”: The Answer To Death […]
A favorite trope of old westerns:
Give him a fair trial, then hang ‘m
The Henry George essay was exquisite.
Thank you for posting it.
The liberal order has the media on its side, the only weapon that matters. Rather than invest money in conservative think tanks and lost causes, the opponents to liberalism would be wise to fund their own media. The wonderful thing about the media is that you can make money off it. There is a market for non-liberal movies, TV, and music that’ll pay to sustain the cycle of innovation. As the market sustains you, you can interweave your own political messages into your media offerings, the way Disney does with multicult films such as Mulan. Anti-liberalism should find itself a… Read more »
Endlessly shilling oneself at others’ sites reeks of something odious.
Yep, poor form, which is why I try never to read postings from such individuals, nor visit their site.
Now hold on. I’ve only made it through the first paragraph, but you’re going to have to make a distinction between the original libertarians, who wanted a return to the State’s Rights of the 10th Amendment before Prohibition and the New Deal Federal agency system, and the post-Buckley ‘libertarian’ shills screeching “Corporations can violate the Bill of Rights!”
I get it, we’re weak pussies appealing to process and authority. The Left, corraling the labor racketeers of the union vote, successfully made welcome the strong sigmas willing to do criminal acts to get what they want.
Okay. Reading the rest, I see that just as Buckley conservatism (which you taught us about) was to derail the Birchers from Noticing the UN,
Rothbard-Freidman “economic libertarianism” was to defang and derail the Constitutional libertarians, replacing Anglo sensibilities with blank-slate Kalergi Merchant consumerism…leading to the absurdity of Reason magazine quacks and Skeptic Society deniers.
In other words, it was in the interest of certain folks.
My inner antisemite is thus mollified.
Now on to the rest of the article. Will avoid triggering.
Oh damn. I abase myself.
This is really, really good. This is why They win.
And, this is how they subvert the Aryan honor system, as demonstrated through millenia.
They can mold us to be slaves, and have, but the good news is that we, too, revert to the mean.
Nattering nabobs of negitivity.
The sky is always falling
All hope is lost, ad nausiem.
Yes The systeem is too corrupted to fix, whatever that means to you.
One other old chesnut that actually is true. There are no revoltionaries with a full belly or some such.
No one is willing to take up axes & torches. Guess we all gotta suck it up then.
Where is William Wallace when you need him ? Not here.