Category Archives: Civilizational Twilight

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The Eye of Sauron

The Behemoth Prism program, under which the Federal NSA snoops on essentially all the phone calls and web activity of all Americans, is operated for the ostensible purpose of protecting us from Moslem terrorist plots developing on American soil. We do indeed need to counter the threat of terrorism within our borders. But there would be no such terrorism in the first place – or, at least, very little – if there were no Moslems in North America. What it amounts to, then, is that our governors are keeping track of everything Americans say electronically *so that* they can keep welcoming Moslems to this country with open arms – and keep alive the threat of Moslem terrorism. The program is needed so that the program can be kept needful.

Would the Prism program exist if there were no Moslems in North America, or therefore any Moslem terrorism? Of course. It’s just that in that case our overseers would be forced to trot out some other rationale for its existence; war with EastAsia, perhaps, rather than with NearEastAsia.

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Must a Traditional Man Accept Modern Marriage?

A guest post by Dalrock.

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Alan Roebuck recently asked Can Man Live Traditionally?

Alan answered yes, and went so far as to argue that a man has an obligation to marry even though this means marrying in a legal and social regime which has done all it can to eradicate traditional marriage, and even if this means marrying a woman who wouldn’t have been considered appropriate to marry by tradition minded men of past generations.

As a member of what I have dubbed the traditional marriage group within the manosphere, I asked Alan if he would be interested in me providing a response as a guest post. Alan very graciously accepted. I suggested this because while I differ in some important aspects with Alan’s position on the topic, I was impressed with his willingness to go against the grain of our thoroughly feminised culture and acknowledge the unpopular truths regarding what our society has transformed marriage into. While I think it is unlikely that opinions will be changed on either side, my hope with this exchange is that each of us will better understand the positions of the other. Continue reading →

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A Girardian Commentary on John the Baptist

For those who take an interest, Angel Millar has published my essay on Gustave Flaubert’s “Herodias,” a tale of John the Baptist, and one of the Three Tales (1877), at his People of Shambhala website.  We think of Flaubert as the consummate social novelist (Madame Bovary [1856] and A Sentimental Education [1869]), but he was also, despite not being much of a believer, a powerful religious thinker (Salammbo [1862] and The Temptation of Saint Anthony [1874]).

The essay is also a meditation on the function of the Holy Spirit.  Here is the link: http://peopleofshambhala.com/herodias-of-flaubert/

The essay explores additional themes such as the relation of mimesis and crisis and the relation of text and conscience.

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Where we are, and where we’re going

At the heart of the liberal enterprise is the cult of the free and equal new man, totally liberated from all bonds of authority, tradition, morality, culture, civility, and God: self-defining, self-actualizing, and self-ruling.

This anthropology of the superman is necessarily deranged, tending, as it does, toward a psychotic refusal to deal with reality on its own terms. Hence it gives us the pervert who mutilates his genitals, slips on a sundress, and calls himself a woman. The project is sinful in conception and mad in its end, and therefore doomed to failure.

But this same anthropology can never admit to the possibility of failure precisely because it cannot admit to being constrained by reality. It can only understand its failures as the result of opposition by others, and therefore it implicitly acknowledges the presence of the untermensch — literally, the low man whose captivity to the same bonds which the superman abhors makes him an impediment to the flourishing of the free and equal new man.

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Can Man Live Traditionally?

The problem with TradCons is that it [sic] proposes men behave according to traditional behaviours while the underlying rules that supported that behavior doesn’t [sic] exist.

- A commenter at Oz Conservative

…traditionalism is a collectivist ideology.

The problem is tradcon thinking and language has been completely taken over by feminism.

-An individual calling himself “Pro-male/Anti-feminist Tech,” at his blog

It is said by many (not just the individuals quoted above) that since the traditional rules of traditional society have been overthrown, a person cannot live traditionally without incurring a severe penalty.

In response, we traditionalists say that indeed, man must always make some accommodations to his environment. But to be properly virtuous, a man or woman must not live just for himself. He must also live a life that contributes to his family, his people, his religion, and his nation.  And this can only be done by living, to a greater or lesser extent, traditionally.

The topic is large, and this post will only respond directly to one of its manifestations: It is said by some in the Manosphere that we traditionalist conservatives are betraying men by urging them to act according to traditional rules of chivalry towards women, with the result that women have the advantage over men. In brief, they say we traditionalists urge men to submit to women. Continue reading →

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The Metastasy of Wickedness

The basic operation of every society is maintaining its essential order – the order that makes it the society that it is – in the face of adversity. It is the work of tradition: of transferring to rising generations the essential order of their forefathers, amended at the margin, or accidentally, so as to cope with changes in the environment.

This interminable project of social reproduction requires practical wisdom. And practical wisdom is possible only to the virtuous man, and then only to the extent of his virtue. Societies live or die, then, depending upon their preponderant degree of virtue. This is just as true for societies of multi-celled organisms – i.e., for men themselves – as it is for societies of men. It is true for any social organism: for the family, for the tribe, clan or people, for the church, for the guild or business enterprise, for the town or for the nation.

Thus the basic task of social existence, the quotidian moral housekeeping that is the sine qua non of successful social life, is the attainment and maintenance of virtue. The first and most basic product of society then, is righteousness. All other economic production is founded upon it. Worldly success – survival, vigor, prosperity, strength – is the fruit of practical wisdom, of applied virtue. Prosperity, then, is a fairly good indication of virtue.

There are to be sure in this Fallen world many ways to get rich by wickedness. Thus the fact that a man is rich is no sure indication that he is mostly righteous. But even ill-gotten wealth, such as that of the thief or gangster, is the product of a kind of virtue – a corrupted and ill-directed excellence, yes, but an excellence nonetheless (the competition among gangsters is keen, and ruthless; only the best survive). Likewise for the wealth of the corrupt executive or politician. The excellence of these sorts of men lies in their ability to game the system: to exploit the niches created by defects of the social order.

Such men are always with us. And indeed, they are not altogether useless, or they would never have succeeded at what they do. The corrupt politician succeeds by pleasing his constituents and his customers; the thief succeeds by pleasing his fences with the goods he offers; the Mafioso succeeds by pleasing the customers of his drug distribution system. The social utility of such men derives quite directly from their gaming of the system. In effect, their exploitation of defects in the system design corrects for those defects, or at least compensates for them.[1] Their gaming activities are similar in some ways to arbitrage. Like the arbitrageur, the wicked exploiter restores some equilibrium or other, and compensates for a defect of society.[2]

Can the system be gamed? It will be. Indeed, it ought to be.

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It Will Take More Than Evangelism

From the popular, influential, and usually-right-on-the-money conservative Protestant blog “Pyromaniacs” comes a post that illustrates an important gap in understanding. The post is correct and important, but something is missing.

Here are some quotes:

One of the greatest dangers of the political activism of the so-called “religious right” is this: It fosters a tendency to make enemies out of people who are supposed to be our mission-field, even while we’re forming political alliances with Pharisees and false teachers.

To hear some Christians today talk, you might think that rampant sins like homosexuality and abortion in America could be solved by legislation. A hundred years ago, the pet issue was prohibition, and mainstream evangelicalism embraced the notion that outlawing liquor would solve the problem of drunkenness forever in America. It was a waste of time and energy, and it was an unhealthy diversion for evangelicals and fundamentalists during an era when the truth was under siege within the church. Lobbying for laws to change the behavior of worldly people was the last project evangelicals needed to make their prime mission in the early 20th century. Just like today. Remember Galatians 2:21: “If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” And Galatians 3:21: “If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” Continue reading →

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Kermit Gosnell, high priest of the American civil religion

The Kermit Gosnell case is very interesting to me. On the one hand, most people seem rightly horrified at the prospect of plunging a scalpel into a baby’s spine because mom wants to backpack across Europe next summer (or whatever). On the other hand… hello, this just is what abortion is like, as anyone can see who isn’t being medicated futilely for something. Gosnell wasn’t lying when he said that “that’s how it was supposed to go.” That’s how it goes every single time. The right’s affectation of disproportionate horror over Gosnell is more or less a tacit concession of the leftist conceit that it doesn’t really “count” as murder if the baby is on the wrong side of the birth canal.

This case is indeed a horror show, not because it’s so exceptional but because it’s so banal for us, so utterly routine.

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Say “No” to Same-Sex Pseudo-Marriage

The officially-mandated legitimization of same-sex pseudo marriage is absurd, contemptible and even evil. So naturally our ruling elite are enthusiastic about it, and the regular people are increasingly falling into line.

It therefore seems likely that homosexual pseudo-marriage will soon be enshrined into law throughout the United States. Our nation—at least most of our leadership class—is eager to defy God, nature and human tradition.

As traditionalists, we of the Orthosphere know that the legitimization of homosexuality—currently the most popular of the destructive leftist fads—is a great wrong. Let us therefore summarize the reasons why it is wrong so that those capable of acknowledging reality can at least have the satisfaction of a clear statement on this important topic.

We will not, of course, convince our opponents. And so we will not try, that is, we will not attempt to dot every “i” and cross every “t.”When someone is wrong about something as obvious as the superiority of heterosexuality to homosexuality he is not wrong because of inadequate reasoning. He is wrong either because he dares not defy the spirit of the age, or because his spirit rebels against God.

So we will simply make a series of true assertions, and not attempt to rebut every pseudo-objection raised by the other side. Continue reading →

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Forgive them, Father

… For they know not what they do.

How many of our secular interlocutors have really heard the Gospel? Very few, I wager. If they had really been praught the Gospel, had learned what the Christian religion actually teaches, then they could never think that “if all things need to be caused, what caused God?” was a serious argument. Yet they routinely trot out just such nonsense as if it were absolutely unanswerable. They have no clue that they are not even talking about the same things we are; no clue that they are engaging in mere malapropism.

But this is hardly surprising, given the post-war collapse in Christian philosophical morale. With the very officers and professors of the churches running about for the last few decades demythologizing everything they can lay hands on – a wave of iconoclasm far more radical and dangerous than we have ever seen, that has in many churches overturned even the Creeds and the Scriptures – how could anyone be serious about catechesis, or preaching the Gospel, or evangelizing?

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