Conservatism

The radicals are the only ones we read

Remember the donkey, Benjamin, from Animal Farm? He is a dissident intellectual who sees how things really are, providing exposition to the reader about how the ridiculous, surreptitious deception defines the post-revolution farm. He’s not a resister, he’s not a rabble-rouser and he’s not counter-revolutionary. He is passive, and he passively speaks the sober truth, with neither a delusion of living under a reasonable system or delusion of being able to change that system. That’s the only reason why he can occupy his strange position — he is an utterly defeated fellow with nothing to lose and no reason to speak anything but the harsh truth. This is the mystique of the neoreactionary.

The neoreactionary is the guy at the end of the movie that tells everyone exactly how he feels about them. He’s already lost his job, or lost the battle, or he’s just had an epiphany about how he’s been full of shit the whole time (does anyone else remember Talk Radio?) That’s why people actually read neoreactionary blogs instead of those of, say, Stormfront.org buffoons, despite the two being about equal in political incorrectness. Where white nationalists might have laughable fantasies about a “white revolution” and coming neo-Nazi order, neoreactionaries are acutely aware of the insurmountable obstacles that face an anti-mass movement. Nick Land writes:

Neoreactionary realism, in contrast, is positively aligned with the recession of demotic sustenance. If this were not the case, it would exhibit its own specific mode of democratic politics — an evident absurdity. Any suggestion of frustrated rage, tilting into terroristic expressions, would immediately reveal profound confusion, or hypocrisy. Lashing the masses into ideological acquiescence, through exemplary violence, cannot imaginably be a neoreactionary objective…

“What is to be done?” is not a neutral question. The agent it invokes already strains towards progress. This suffices to suggest a horrorist response: Nothing. Do nothing. Your progressive ‘praxis’ will come to nought in any case. Despair. Subside into horror. You can pretend to prevail in antagonism against ‘us’, but reality is your true — and fatal — enemy. We have no interest in shouting at you. We whisper, gently, in your ear: “despair”. (The horror.)

Compare this to the embarrassing pretensions of power that “anti-establishment” types have: libertarians saying “smash the state,” feminists saying, “smash the patriatrchy,” and socialists saying, “smash capitalism.” There is clearly no smashing of any of these types going on and no plausibility of it happening either. It’s a game of make-believe that the neoreactionaries do not play.

Progressive intellectuals, even the Marxist ones, are toiling in the status quo. Apparently fresh academia-intelligentsia-social media trends are just new exegesis of old progressive canon. Criticism of Patricia Arquette’s progressive Oscar acceptance speech is being made from the exact same assumptions about the nature of justice human interaction that Patricia Arquette’s speech itself is built upon. Even conservatives attempting to implement conservative ideas work within the status quo by using proxy arguments: “We should cut welfare because welfare leads to bad results for the poor,” or the ever eye roll inducing, “Liberals are the real racists for supporting affirmative action!” Both of these talking points, regardless of their truth value, are ultimately competing in the rat race of finding creative ways to dignify progressive assumptions. Conservatives don’t seem to realize that their proxy arguments are always going to be inferior to the real thing. This doesn’t mean that the progressives are wrong — they are just operate in the same kind of criticism-insulated environment that the medieval scholastics existed in.

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Anti-Work is the latest inane idea from left-libertarianism

I call myself a libertarian, but boy do libertarians get on my nerves.

The freedom philosophy used to be about trashing government aggression and poking fun at statism. But thanks to the rise of left-libertarian organizations, the philosophy has been infiltrated by ignorant hacks. Libertarianism is now chock-full of whiners who want smaller government for the wrong ends.

My friend Julie Borowski clued me in on one such specimen. His name is Nick Ford and he is a tad different from your run-of-the-mill leftist-libertarian. Ford backs a novel cause: abolishing work. From what I can determine, he detests working in a typical office setting and finds it stifling to his creative genius, or something.

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We’re going back to Iraq and boy is it depressing

Mark Twain’s quip about history was wrong; it indeed repeats. Unfortunately the repetition is of bad things, rarely good.

After promising to roll back the folly that was the Iraq War, President Obama is taking us back to the graveyard of empires. He recently presented Congress with an “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” to go after the growing Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The president has been using airstrikes on ISIS for 6 months already. Under current law, he’s supposed to request Congress’ imprimatur after 60 days of carrying out military action. But, hey, what’s a little thing like law to get in the way of bombs?

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When it comes to analogizing the Crusades with ISIS, let’s remember the virtue of humility please

President Obama is some teacher. As a “senior lecturer” at the University of Chicago Law School, he reportedly presented an impartial take on the Constitution and civil liberties. He wasn’t a radical, using critical theory and identity politics to undermine the Republic. Instead, he taught objectively while lecturing about American law.

That Barack Obama is gone. Away from the classroom, we’ve learned the president isn’t so generous to his opponents. At times, he proves his own description of himself as the smartest guy in the room. His supercilious nature was on display recently at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. With Islamic radicalism swallowing up greater swaths of the Middle East, Obama took to presidentsplainin’ why some broad reflection should be used in judging the new caliphate. Surprisingly, his arrogance was not totally off the mark.

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Rand Paul and judicial activism

In a recent piece here at The Mitrailleuse, Robert Mariani writes the following crucial sentences:

“Words are useful insofar as they have publicly agreed upon definitions. From definitions, we can have discourse that leads to some sort of useful truth.”

Amen to that.

At the Heritage Foundation’s recent Conservative Policy Summit Senator Rand Paul made the case that conservatives should abandon their preference for “judicial restraint” and embrace a more “activist” Supreme Court. George Washington University Law professor Orin Kerr helpfully attempted to delineate the different meanings people ascribe to the loaded term “judicial activism” a few years ago. He conjures up five distinct possibilities. So what, exactly, does Dr. Paul mean when he implores conservatives to think twice about restrained courts? What definition is he operating on?

First, let me humbly offer mine.

I propose that the charge of judicial activism can be levied wherever judges operate outside of their proper job description. If courts exist to know, interpret, and apply law, then any decision not resulting strictly from a process of interpretation involving general good will toward getting that interpretation correct is an “activist” decision. This does not mean any decision passed under the guise of subjective interpretation counts as whole and good, rather that interpretation had to be deliberated in good faith and free of inappropriate influences.

This may be labeled a procedural definition of activism as opposed to one that focuses on outcome. Professor Kerr offers that a decision itself (to strike down or leave intact a law), its implications for the scope of judicial power, its consistency with precedents, and its subjective accuracy (right/wrong) are all potential reasons people see a ruling as activist. These are outcome-based definitions as they focus on how the decision and its contingent effects help define restraint or activism, and I ultimately see Kerr’s lone remaining explanation (“the decision was motivated by the Justices’ personal policy preferences or was result-oriented.”) as the closest to a true procedural characteristic. 

Outcome-based definitions are inadequate in my view because we require information on how that verdict was reached. Seeing if a decision passes some static test is not enough. Court deliberation is a process and it is here that dubious motivations enter, not after the fact. Noting that a court decision cut against precedent tells us nothing of why it did so and it does nothing to illuminate the purity of intent, or lack thereof, of those deciding. (Admittedly it is in this view of activism as ignoring precedent where my narrow focus on process is most likely to falter, as one may view the application of previous law, regardless of subjective opinion, as part of a court’s “job description” I invoke above.)

It is true that an outcome-oriented definition may simply function as a signaling device for the process itself. For example, if the decision expands judicial power we may condemn it because we infer perverse reasons for why it was reached. But this would only mean these activist definitions collapse into a proper procedural view, however helpful they may be on their own.

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Grand pronouncements are nice but having a full life is better – the truth about Charlie Hebdo

Progressive journalist and civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald has a motto: “Misapplying private death etiquette to public figures creates false history and glorifies the ignoble.” He rejects the idea that atrocious public figures deserve a reprieve from condemnation upon their death. By his philosophy, if they commit sins in the public square, then let ‘em have it once they croak.

I don’t agree with Greenwald on this invidious practice. For respect’s sake, we shouldn’t pounce before the blood is dry, even on the most mendacious figures. We’re all guilty, on occassion, of the same motivations that inspire the worst dictators. Some period of time is owed before pointing out personal failings.

In that spirit, I think the requisite amount of time has passed to comment on something disturbing about the whole Charlie Hebdo shooting affair. While I agree with Pat Buchanan that desecrating sacred objects is neither wise nor worthy of celebration, my beef is more specific. Following the shooting, government leaders and the Fourth Estate celebrated the unqualified right of free speech of all people (the blatant contradiction of criminalized Holocaust denial in Paris didn’t faze the showboats). The outpouring of support was bolstered by repeatedly dredging up an old quote by Charlie editor Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier. In an interview conducted after the 2011 firebombing of the magazine’s office, the head of the iconoclast publication declared, “This may sound pompous, but I prefer to die standing up than live on my knees.”

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