Category Archives: Counterrevolution

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The Great Courses

A guest post by commenter Bill:

Often, it seems, traditionalists only figure out that they are traditionalists well after their youth. Certainly that is the case for me. If you realize late that the default history you know and the default reality you inhabit bear little relationship to what happened and what is happening, respectively, then what do you do?

But it is worse. Knowing little about history, art, philosophy, music and a lot about economics and statistics once seemed not just reasonable but desirable. Adam Smith’s pin factory and the benefits of specialization and all that. But now knowing little of these subjects seems absolutely intolerable. Furthermore, burdened with obligations of career and family, it’s not as if I can go back to college. And where would I go anyway? What to do?

“Read books” is fine advice. But time constraints mean that it will take a long time. Converting time spent behind a steering wheel to productive use seems wise. So, I have spent a lot of time over the last few years listening to courses from The Great Courses. Here is a list of courses I found both high quality and conflicting with consensus reality in the US:

World of Byzantium

Philosophy of Science

After the New Testament

History of Science to 1700

History of England from the Tudors to the Stuarts

I have three questions for readers. First, what other courses from this or another provider are similarly both 1) good and 2) strong where consensus reality is weak? Second, I came across this specifically Catholic competitor to The Great Courses. It looks unpromising to me, but does anyone have experience with it? Third, does anyone have further general suggestions for post-formal-education autodidacticism?

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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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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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Interest, delusion, and parrots

A guest post by commenter Bill:

Perhaps Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch  is their most iconic work. A customer brings a dead parrot back to the store from which it was bought, claiming that it was dead upon purchase. The clerk/owner responds, persistently, that the parrot is not dead. Hilarity ensues.

There is something compelling about watching parrot mongers at work: asserting the sky’s pinkness, insinuating the evil of pink-sky-deniers, frothing and threatening. It’s not just for comedy sketches. Parrot-mongers are rife. Get the parents of an ugly, stupid, clumsy, and nasty child talking. Ask, in the Art History Department, about the value of a BFA. Ask an investment banker about the value of “financial innovation.”

Parrot-mongers look foolish. Somehow, they know they look foolish. Thus, they must have a reason for their parrot-mongering. Often, as in the examples above, it is soothing their pride or resolving the dissonance between what is actually true and which truth would be in their interest. While this is not benign, one sympathizes.

When this straightforward explanation is lacking, though, what is going on? Behind the Iron Curtain, the populace generally sold parrots for the Communist elite. As Havel, Solzhenitsyn and others explain, one sold the regime’s parrots, at one level, to avoid punishment and, at another, to reassure the elite that they remained in power. Still, though, this was about interest—the regime’s interest in resolving the conflict between the elite’s mismanagement of the country and, well, their desire to remain the elite. Furthermore, it remains very easy to see the connection between the lies, the people telling the lies, the elite mandating the lies, and the elite’s interest motivating the lies.

Putting the Communists to shame, the US is overrun with parrot mongers. But, in our case, the connection back to the interest of the elite motivating this is much less apparent. Whose interests are served by the race denial parrot? By the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming parrot? By the war between religion and science parrot? By the blank slate and gender equality parrots?

Commenters on the right, whether secular or religious and whether neo or paleo, have tended to take as our task refutation of the parrot-mongers. We have decided to be John Cleese. While this has value, pace the Asch conformity experiment, it seems overdone. It seems as if we, like John Cleese as consumer or like Charlie Brown as placekicker, are taking our tormenters at their word where their word is clearly not good.

If treating the parrot-mongers as honestly deluded is mistaken, then treating them as dishonestly interested in fooling us is better. But, then, what’s their program? Cui bono? And what is the right countermove?

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The Futility of Liberalism and the Hope of Traditionalism

Introduction

Why another essay about liberalism? Because the common man needs to be equipped to defend himself.

And speaking of the common man, for whom is this nine-thousand-word essay written? For the man who understands some things about the ubiquitous liberalism but has not yet been properly schooled.

The intended reader, then, is intelligent, perceptive and fairly knowledgeable of the general ways of the world and therefore naturally senses that there is something wrong with the status quo. The intended reader knows the basic liberal rules of society and knows that they are held to be obviously true and good, but he has enough knowledge to sense that these rules are wrong. So he does not need to be convinced about the basic nature of liberalism; this essay assumes that the reader can recognize liberalism from a general description of it.

But the intended reader, ready to learn and also knowing that he needs to learn, has not yet discovered how properly to think about liberalism. This essay (a major expansion of my “Liberalism 101”) presents an introduction to proper thinking about liberalism. It also introduces the reader to the antidote for the poison of liberalism.

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The Essay Itself

Something is fundamentally wrong with the modern world. If you sense this, you have taken a great step toward wisdom. But what exactly is wrong?

There are many specific troubles, too many to count. But let us consider some examples.

Observe first that not only is there great trouble in our times but, even more alarmingly, the authorities often approve of (and are often the main source of) the trouble, such as:

Legitimization, even celebration, of sexual disorder. Since disorder is bad, why do they celebrate? Continue reading →

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Reclaiming Beauty

Fellow orthospherean Kidist Paulos Asrat has a new project, with a new site: Reclaiming Beauty. She’s just gotten started, and already it’s well worth a look. Those who are interested in architecture and design will find it particularly interesting.

And sad. Our civilization was once much more beautiful than it has been since the Second World War. Is not the sheer ugliness and discomfort of modernism in design a sufficient indication of modernism’s philosophical wickedness and falsity?

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Synchronicity alert: I went over to Kidist’s site to grab the URL so I could paste it supra, and found that she had just posted there my Amazon review of physicist John Barrow’s book on beauty, wherein I make a point parallel to the argument in my second paragraph above:

… animal minds and bodies subjected to natural selection are in big trouble if they embody propositions about the world, and therefore about the appropriate way to behave, that are in any important way essentially wrong.

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Introducing the American Traditionalist Society

The American Traditionalist Society does not exist. Not yet. But it is in the serious planning stages.

The Society’s purpose, in brief, is to help foster a more properly ordered American nation through the spiritual, intellectual, and moral renewal of Americans, both individually and collectively. This renewal will be a vast undertaking, and any organization can only help this process, not control or direct it. Nevertheless, concrete organizations large and small devoted to this purpose will be needed.

Here, by way of further introduction, are three brief statements:

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Brief Description of the American Traditionalist Society

The American Traditionalist Society is dedicated to spreading proper—that is, traditionalist—conservatism. We call all people to understand and repent of liberalism, and we seek the renewal of American society.

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Traditionalism Briefly Defined

Whereas liberalism denies man all that sustains his spirit, traditionalism restores the life-giving ties between a man and his people, their past, and his God. It restores wisdom and common sense by reconnecting man to the eternal order of being, a multifaceted order that is spiritual, moral, intellectual, religious, social and physical. Whereas contemporary thinking is fundamentally unwise outside of the procedures of the natural sciences and technology, traditionalism seeks to fill this void and strives for justice, truth, beauty, and the proper ordering of society.

Our traditionalism is therefore not simply a longing for the past. Since the present is radically defective, we naturally look to the past for a model of a more properly-ordered society, but we do not aim to recreate the conditions of the past. As Lawrence Auster has said,

“Traditition” is but one dimension of traditionalism. Traditionalism is, first, an orientation toward the transcendent structure of the universe–the natural, social (including historical and traditional”), and spiritual orders that make us possible.  Each society orders itself uniquely according to those orders. So traditionalism is not just the past tradition, it’s our active relationship and tension with the order of the world, but always grasped and expressed uniquely and newly in each time and society according to the particularities of that society.

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The American Traditionalist Society: Our Raison D’être

Since roughly the 1960s, America has pursued a determined course of self-destruction in the name of liberalism. Our nation is now in a state of undeniable crisis. The federal government, close to insolvency, openly defies the Constitution and asserts its increasingly unaccountable and tyrannical power over the states and over the life of every individual. Our borders have been effectively erased, our language weakened, and our cultural foundations overturned. Our major institutions have been undermined from within. The media and popular culture have marginalized decency and virtue and made filth, transgression, and every kind of nastiness the new norm—a norm unquestioned by anyone in the mainstream culture, including conservatives. Our leaders pontificate that we must be tolerant above all else, and so many draw the natural conclusion that life is absurd. With the official-in-all-but-name denial of the God of the Bible and of any transcendent truth, many young men and women have become demoralized, leading lives that are amoral, selfish, and dissipated.

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The response of institutionalized conservatism to this catastrophe has been wholly inadequate, for it has assumed that our nation is fundamentally sound and that we need only oppose the latest liberal initiatives. Failing effectively to challenge the false and evil premises of liberalism or even to acknowledge that these premises now hold effective control over all aspects of American society, the organized conservatism of our day has, at best, only slowed the rate of destruction. It is therefore time for a new, a traditionalist, conservatism which recognizes the dominance and falsehood of liberalism and the need to restore the traditional American way of life, yet updated to suit the times. It is time for men and women of good will to stand together before God, repent of their liberalism, and turn their hearts and minds toward the formation of a new social and political order, an order based on God, the wisdom of the ages, and that which is enduringly true in the American and Western tradition. We seek to foster a better order through the spiritual, moral and intellectual renewal of individuals, families, churches, and other fundamental units of society, leading naturally to an organic renewal of American society.

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To this end, ever in debt to our forebears and beholden to posterity, the American Traditionalist Society is devoted.

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[End of statement.]

Stay tuned for further details.

Note:  Since this is an occasion for, if not exactly celebration, then at least optimism and dedication, comments that are primarily or entirely hostile will be deleted / blocked. Disagreement that is respectful and at least somewhat rational will, of course, be allowed.

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Jeffersonian’s Proposal for the Peaceful Separation of Liberal and Conservative Americans

In 2010 Lawrence Auster published a proposal, by an anonymous reader called “Jeffersonian,” for the peaceful secession of conservatives from liberal America. Now Jeffersonian has written an expanded and fuller account of his proposal, and it has again been published at VFR.

Mr. Auster has decided, in view of his declining health, not to host a discussion of the new essay. He has left it to other blogs to host the discussion. The Orthosphere is honored to be one such blog.

To read Jeffersonian’s essay, click on the above link. [Update: I have added the full text to this post.] Continue reading →

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“The all-powerful arm of God is necessary” to deliver the Church

I recently came across this letter (h/t to Fr. Z.) written by Bishop (now Saint) Alphonsus Ligouri in 1774, on the occasion of the death of Clement XIV, concerning the coming election for the next Pontiff. Plus ca change, I guess.

As regards my opinions concerning the present state of the church with relation to the election of the new Pope, what opinion of any weight could a miserable, ignorant, and unspiritual person like myself possibly give? There is need for prayer and much prayer. All the human science and prudence that there is cannot extricate the church from the present state of relaxation and confusion in which every section finds itself; the all-powerful arm of God is necessary. Continue reading →

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A Simple Proof that Liberalism is Bad and Must be Repented of

The reader probably knows this already. But here at the Orthosphere we’re not just interested in conversing among ourselves. We’re also interested in evangelism, in spreading the word.

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And what is the word we spread? That the current system is fundamentally broken and wicked, and that we must all repent of the liberalism that is killing us spiritually, intellectually, emotionally and socially.

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So there is a need for simple and visceral proof that liberalism is wrong, proof that anyone who has been paying attention to the world can acknowledge as valid. Here’s one such proof:

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Ask yourself: According to our leaders, what is the greatest social good?

The answer is obvious. They all say it is diversity.  All of Western Civilization is currently organized around the moral principle that diversity is the greatest good, and opposition to diversity is therefore the greatest evil.

[John Q. Public knows that diversity is held to be an important social good. He may not be aware that it is held to be the highest social good, but that realization will come later, if he pursues the line of thought that we are opening up here.] Continue reading →