For most of the people reading this post, the only political paradigm they’ve known is the Left-Right dichotomy. In the United States, citizen participation in that dialectic has long meant supporting either democrats or republicans–both at the ballot box and in the public square. Libertarianism existed as a compromise position where folks who wanted low taxes, the better to afford porn and weed, could feel intellectually superior while dodging the racistsexistbigot hexes that liberals hurl at Conservatives.
Yet a cursory glance at the current state of political discourse suffices to show that the old paradigm is breaking down, if not already broken. Not that long ago, the Left claimed to oppose big business and censorship. Now they publicly celebrate when the biggest corporations that ever existed collude to censor college-age kids with no institutional power.
The knee-jerk Conservative response is to cry hypocrisy. That just illustrates the useless decrepitude of Conservatism. They’ve been calling democrats hypocrites, socialists, and the Real Racists™ for decades now. If insanity is trying the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, Conservatives are daffier than the rainbow-haired Xanax poppers they claim to oppose.
By now it’s obvious to even the densest Conservative partisan that his self-styled leaders have gleefully sold him out. Here we see the Conservative Case for Critical Race Theory.
“But that’s David French!” normieCons may object. “He’s a #nevertrump grifter!”
That he is. Now here’s CPAC, which just hosted Donald Trump, also giving their stage to a septuagenarian who goes around in drag as a cynical grift or a symptom of derangement–you decide! Note also the blonde eTHOT, of whose ilk BoomerCons are so enamored, tripping over herself to support the perverted huckster. Conservatism used to present itself as a drawing room full of pipe-puffing intellectuals. Now it’s the side show tent to the Left’s big top.
Libertarians have probably been laughing along up to this point, smugly secure in how smrt they are. Well, not so fast, because here’s Reason Magazine peddling sob stories for Bill Kristol brand “invade the world, invite the world,” lunacy.
Say what you will about democrats and republicans. The former zealously follow their secular religion. The religion is crudely bloodthirsty, and they lie about it, but they really do believe. Conservatives, too–at least the rank and file ones–are really convinced they have principles. In practice, those principles only regulate the heat under the pot democrats are boiling us in, but they’re held in good faith.
The most loathsome position is affecting the Liberal moral frame in a calculated play to maximize pleasure. This is the camp that still trots out the stale chestnut, “It’s nobody else’s business what I do in my own bedroom!” That proposition has been obsolete since the late aughts, and it was always a transitional compromise. “Keep the state out of my bedroom” turned into “Bake the cake, bigot!” on a dime.
Conservatism at least slowed the Death Cult’s march for a while. Libertarianism unwittingly aided it by abandoning morality for pragmatism. The Cult fights exclusively on moral terms, and fanatics beat pragmatists every time. Ironically, the folks patting themselves on the back for being free thinkers are just more NPCs programmed to be exactly what the Cult wanted. They’ve been programmed to disarm themselves against their own destruction.
The Death Cult completely co-opted the old Left-Right paradigm. Continuing to think and act within it only advances the Cult’s civilization-wrecking creed. To have any hope of thwarting their insane vision, we need a new paradigm. But first, we must reject the old one.
Don’t support people who hate you. Support creators who want to entertain you.
The left/right dichotomy is more of a dichotomy between the death and pop cults than anything else.
Really clicked for me when I was flipping through stations on a drive and came across a rant from Sean Hannity. He was talking about how divided the nation was, and how it would be continue to be divided until we had some shared culture and values. The way he talked about it it almost sounded like he was going to talk about the importance of a shared Christian foundation, but of course he didn’t. Instead he talked about the importance of having politically neutral major sporting events. And it had to be specifically the MLB, NFL and NBA. No creating an unwoke alternative or simply enjoying games that you play with your friends and neighbors.
Yes, the Pop Cult is to the Death Cult as Con Inc. is to the Democrat Party.
The new paradigm:
“I want to create a utopia” versus “I love my people.”
I think it’s even simpler than that: “I love people” vs “I hate people.” All utopian dreams are misanthropic and totalitarian, even (and perhaps especially) the ones that make a lot of noise about compassion and tolerance, but inevitably turn out to be cynical grabs at power, because they flow from pride, indulge greed and envy, and rationalize wrath. The utopian sees people as things. He imagines he knows what is best for them, but he cannot, because he does not value them in themselves. A person animated by charity, by contrast, desires the good of the beloved, even if he can’t say in any detail what that looks like.
GK Chesterton mentioned it when he talked of the propaganda pamphlet fiction that Fandom has wrecked the book industry with:
“The weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motorcar or balloon.”
In order to believe utopia is possible you have to fundamentally misunderstand humanity at it’s core, and believe you are above them in order to supply the answers that they just can’t get with their inferior brains.
In essence, to be a humanist is to hate humanity.
Mr. Cowan, it’s been a while since I’ve read Heretics. I think Mr Chesterton was discussing H. G. Wells, but I can’t be quite sure. Could you refresh my memory?
I don’t remember the exact work it originates from, but Heretics sounds right.
That aside, I forgot exactly what it was in reference to.
I was always partial to Curtis Yarvin’s Law and order vs. Chaos and Destruction paradigm.
True God versus False Gods.
It’s always been the fundamental choice of ‘choose today whom you will serve’. The new paradigm is the same as the most ancient paradigm.
Brian,
Is Soharb Aharmi’s intregalism and Adrien Vermeule’s administrative state natural law saplings of the new perspective or distractions?
xavier
Considering that Ahmari got trounced in a debate against David French, his political ideas are unlikely to be saplings of anything.
Brian
Thanks. I read his tweets from time to time.
xavier
Faith. Family. Fatherland.
The problem in the West is that the paradigm has been Liberalism vs Liberalism since WW2 in the West. When the Catholic priest, Dr. Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany wrote Liberalism is a Sin in 1886, (http://liberalismisasin.com/) he was talking about Classical Liberalism. Liberalism, Socialism and Communism have all been condemned by the Church, in Quanta Cura, the Syllabus of Errors, and many encyclicals and writings by Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X.
Would be nice to follow a paradigm based off of these documents, especially Rerum Novarum. Liberalism gave us Modernism, the ultimate heresey, and her bastard spawn of socialism, communism, feminism, sexual liberation, etc etc.
Btw, sorry for being away so long. The older website’s use of Google/Blogspot kept locking up the com box for me. I appreciate the new website.
Glad to have you back.
I fully cosign your comment.