I’ve mentioned in the past that I am not much of a Moldbug fan. Maybe one day I’ll do an in-depth post on the subject, but for now just understand that I’m more than a bit skeptical about the NRx thing.There’s a whiff of Scientology to it, with Moldbug playing the L. Ron Hubbard role. To quote myself, I suspect some of these guys have spent too much time working on their Frodo costumes.

Anyway, Jayman and HBD Chick were discussing this, as it were, on twitter today and it touches on one of my complaints about the whole neo-reaction stuff. That is, it is inward looking and strangely immune to the vast storehouse of knowledge around them. They spend so much time talking to one another, they seem to have forgotten there’s a whole big world out there.

I’ll grant that many of the things discussed on the dark side are off-limits outside of the fringes of the Internet. Much of what I post here would get me tossed in jail if I were based in Europe and I’m pretty mild compared to some of the stuff, so I get why they would spend more time on the fringe stuff.  It is, however, an error to think that there’s nothing of value being discussed by mainstream sites.

All that said, the Puritan => Progressive idea is, to be blunt, ridiculous and Occam is correct to take issue with it. The Puritans cast a long shadow in the minds of Progressives only because they were a convenient foil. In the early 20th century no serious intellectual talked about the influence of the Puritans or Puritanical America. That was a fad that bubbled up in mid-century.

Early Progressives were overtly Protestant, mainly Episcopalian and Methodist. Go further back, and I can argue that the abolitionist movement was the first flowering of American Progressivism. It was a secular cause for spiritual reasons. Everything about American liberalism can be framed as a secular cause for spiritual reasons. This wonderful essay on the subject from The Weekly Standard is a nice introduction.

I think the way to look at it is this. On the Continent, the 30 Years War discredited Christianity as a legitimizing ideology. When vast swaths of civilization were plundered in the name of Christ, it was a tough sell as a legitimizing ideology. In its place began to flower nationalism as the source of legitimacy.

In America, something similar happened but much later. In the name of Christ millions of Americans were slaughtered in the Civil War to free a handful of black people from bondage. Both sides were sure God was on their side only to learn that God was not on either side. Onward Christian Soldier sounded a bit ghoulish after Sherman’s March. As a result, mainline Protestant Christianity lost its energizing appeal to the ruling classes.

Yet, those same crusading passions existed amongst both the victors and the vanquished. In the South, a uniquely American form of Christianity filled the void. In the North, a form of European socialism filled the void. Over the the last 150 years, both sides have battled a cold civil war over which side has the right answer to the Great Question.

The Southern model has one big advantage in that it is not Utopian. Evangelicals are under no illusions about the perfectibility of man. The great disadvantage is it relies on an an invisible man in the sky with whom you are required to have a personal relationship. In a world of increasing skepticism about the supernatural, this is a hard sell.

The Northern model has the advantage of being adaptable. Because it functions more like a cult or tribal network, the adherents need only worry about who is in and who is out. Early Progressives, for example, were all for neutering the poor. Then you know who came along and they had to shift gears. Since none of their scripture is written in a dead language, change is easy.

The big downside is that it is Utopian. The Abolitionists were sure they could recreate the city on the hill if they just killed off all the slave holders in the South. Wilsonians were sure they just needed to sterilize the unfit. Today they avoid talking about killing people, but nothing can be allowed to stop “progress.”

This is, I think, where many of the NRx types lose their footing. They simply don’t know enough about history. Instead, they rely on the mythologized version from the Left. The other day I had a right-winger complain to me about the persecution of gays by the GOP. I had to remind him that it never happened.

The other defect I sense is the need for a unified field theory of progressivism. That’s where the Frankfurt school, Marx, Rousseau and all the rest get in on the act. American Progressives certainly borrowed from their European counterparts, but they also made up their own things too. Eugenics, after all, was an American innovation. It’s better to look at European and American intellectual life as complimentary, stealing ideas from one another when practical.

The important thing, I think, is to not get trapped in the chain of causality. American Progressives developed in a different environment from their European counterparts. There’s no analog to the triumph of New Deal Democrats in European politics, for example. While they borrowed heavily from European intellectuals, it is a different branch with its own unique history.