Ideology

Conservatarian: Down with unnecessary labels

Charles Cooke of National Review is one smart cookie. His cover story on the cult of charlatan Neil deGrasse Tyson is a must-read for anyone dubious of progressivism. Like many of his polemics at Bill Buckley’s legacy publication, Cooke deftly tarnishes the idol of simple, left-wing secularists who scoff at Bible-toting bumpkins in flyover country. Truly, few things top a good takedown of a cultural icon.

With such talent, I was disappointed by the title and subject of Cooke’s forthcoming book. Don’t get me wrong: I’m sure the thing will be well-written and full of keen insights laced with erudite quotations. But the name turns me off. Cooke is calling the book, The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right’s Future. It sounds like a cool, promising subject brought down by a neologism that will fit shoulder-to-shoulder in an ocean of increasingly pedantic political labels.

To be sure, Cooke is far from the first thinker to utilize the term “conservatarian.” His “manifesto” seems like an attempt to pioneer its launch into the popular lexicon though. The book’s synopsis describes Cooke’s offering as a “call to arms” that can “help Republicans mend the many ills that have plagued their party in recent years.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I also don’t find anything wrong with libertarians or conservatives. From a political perspective, I easily identify with the non-aggression principle of libertarianism. When it comes to worldly matters and personal disposition, I hoist my flag with Tory conservatism. And on some issues, such as the plight of the poor, I can be a downright bleeding heart liberal.

But what’s the difference? And should it really matter what label we use?

These are questions that constantly come up when discussing political matters. Matters of governance are often talked about in terms of ideology, rather than the utility or ethical nature of the law. Balancing the budget is called a “conservative” policy. Easing punishment for drug offenders is seen as “liberal.” Rarely is public policy talked in terms of common sense. That’s because ideological labels are a tribal contest. Each has their cheerleaders and detractors, similar to professional sports. The difference is that Nancy Pelosi’s collagen-stuffed face can’t be fixed with a skirt and pompoms, and Karl Rove is about as agile as an obese penguin.

Lumping ideas into firm categories leaves out the messiness that follows public policy. Just like spouses, there is no perfect government. Logrolling exists for a reason. Democracy, whether representative or pure, is a give-and-take system. Laws come out of the legislative process with all kinds of inputs from people with varying perspectives. No policy embodies the core philosophy of Edmund Burke or Paul Krugman. Compromise is the only universal in representative government.

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Britannus Americanus: A Letter from a Jacobite

FROM THE PEN OF AN AMERICAN.
TIME, DATE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED.*

O Britannus Americanus! That great Spectre by which the entire World knows most keenly the Mind and Wit of the Puritan,—a Form of Mankind whose presence upon the Earth we should, as I will shortly endeavour to shew, not much have suffered without,—New England, the Symbol living and breathing of the Usurpation by which the Anglo-Saxon has found himself, in your mad Twenty-First Century, abolish’d by his own hand, in its grand Accusations against the fornication and impurity of other nations reveals itself,—if you, my Dear Reader, would countenance such a comparison,—to be Babylon’s Whore reconstituted, and the said Whore has perhaps too late begun to choke upon her Luxury and Splendour that we might save ourselves, that she might not choke us too with the Wine of her mad Fornication, our greatest Efforts to spew it from our mouths notwithstanding.

What a grand Irony it is for me to make such a Proclamation, recalling that New England’s own Theologians spoke in so similar a manner. Finely unlike the Puritans, you will however note, my Dear Reader, that I do not claim the Authority of the Good Lord, nor His Glory, nor even His particular Favour. In the present Treatment I aim merely to shew, with brief specimens from the relevant History as necessary, that the Anglo-Saxon Race, perhaps once granted indeed the Favour of the Lord, has most surely lost it,—or as it would be said in the old Chinese Tradition, that he is now without the Mandate of Heaven.

The said Usurpation by which England would appear to have lost the Divine Mandate is that by which she declared her rightful King to have lost it himself. Hear me, Britannia, where you have still ears to hear: You have wrongly killed your King, Charles the First, a Good King and a Good Christian! You were furthermore given the blessing of Cromwell’s demise, only to allow the overthrow of James the Second and Seventh by William of Orange! You dare still to give this latter Usurpation the happy Appellation of “the Glorious Revolution”! It ought not to give the Reader any great shock that I am therefore a Jacobite; that I am of the sure belief that England’s last chance for Redemption was,—and perhaps remains if God’s Mercy should allow it,—the restoration of her rightful Line of Kingly Succession.

I am not without fear,—as I assume the Reader to be so intelligent to suppose,—that the Jacobite position cannot be but a Symbol and a kind of Moral Statement. For Old England’s Ruination is New England’s Ruination, and New England’s Ruination is that of the whole World.

O Britannus Americanus, you great whore among Nations! You have cast away the yoke of Old England only more easily to despoil the riches of a New World! It is only a natural consequence, then, that America should find her Manners and Customs to an ever-augmenting degree untethered to anything which might best be called Anglo-Saxon. For it is you, New England, you who are to blame for the Fall of the Old American South, the Exploitation of the Old American West, and the Overthrow of the World’s Old Order; it is you who brought the frenzied burning of supposed witches to a new Continent and who, after ages have passed, taken Sodomy as a Sacrament with the very same Ferocity with which you once punished it!; and it is you, indeed, who have left us,—we the sad Remainder who speak your time-tested Tongue,—sarded and sodomised, so coarsely fuck’d, by a Novus Ordo Sæclorum over which even you no longer reign! By your thousand prides and your myriad vanities, the Possibility is not at all faint that we all may perish! I can only pray that the divers Nations with which you share North America will unchain themselves from you, just as you so duplicitously unchained them from Old England.

*The auspices by whose guidance I was given the letter above would be so foreign—and perhaps even distasteful—to the sensibilities of the present day that they would be almost impossible to articulate without a serious risk of miscomprehension. Let it suffice to note the striking resemblance of quills to wands.

Vox: The most biased speakers, the most obvious questions

The midterm elections have come and gone. Predictably, the Republicans retook the Senate, profiting off a feeling of general unease with the Obama Administration. The commentariat class was abuzz with speculation over the meaning of the election and what it portends for the pomp and decadence show known as the presidential election. Nick Gillespie of the libertarian Reason magazine naively believes the election results mean nothing because both parties are “going extinct.” Politics is a team sport with intense loyalties. The jackass and elephant aren’t leaving American life any time soon.

As journalists debate over how a Mitch McConnell-run Senate will govern, they all agree on one thing: the sanctity of the process that brought Republicans to power. Progressives, in particular, love the voting process. They revere it like a religion, and treat casting ballots as no different than worshiping at the altar. Every Election Day brings columns and blog posts about the importance of “making your voice heard.” These puff pieces laud democracy as the god that brought simpletons to the promised land.

Likewise, the writers often play a cunning game of pretending to be open-minded and independent, while simultaneously hacking for their preferred political party. No other media outlet wears this veil better than Vox. Run by former Washington Post blogger and self-styled “wonk” Ezra Klein (and financed heavily by the corporatist giant General Electric), Vox is supposed to be a home of objective analysis for plebes too busy to read stacks of white papers. It’s just a coincidence that every conclusion Klein and crew come to happens to be über progressive. Vox is the journalistic embodiment of the hack Stephen Colbert trope “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Such ideological motives should arouse suspicion in conservative-minded observers.

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When will The Baffler post the Thiel v. Graeber debate?

Screen Shot 2014-10-28 at 5.51.13 PM

They said it’d be up in a week or two, on September 21st. It’s October 28th.

Technical difficulties? Or is there some other reason?

Update: Graeber thinks he won:

How ’bout the Baffler lets us decide?

GamerGate and the incentives of threats

The GamerGate fiasco has brought with it the ugly phenomenon of internet threats. If we are to take our assumptions from the media narrative, then the side that is correct at the end is the one that received the most threats, and has capitalized best on these threats.

The incentives to make threats are literally less than zero. There are only disincentives. Anyone with reasoning abilities can see this, particularly based on the proportion of anti-GG coverage devoted to the threats.

Progressives simultaneously understand and do not understand this. There have been a number of blunders where “threats” turned out to be bogus, with obvious intent to stir up public hatred for GamerGate and initiate a spiral of silence by making #GamerGate feel dirty on the tongue of most.

There are astronomical incentives to appear to be a victim of threats. This truth has been leveraged many times in the form of fake threats.
fake threats

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Intellectual bankruptcy, gaming, and schmuckbait

Sometimes, I wonder if it’s possible to create a schmuckbait-to-thinkpiece conversion ratio. It plays to both sides of the cultural political debate: Just find one thing that triggers a person, and they write some longform piece that is all about “THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH EVERYTHING.” Sometimes, they even throw in some intellectual criticism as though to settle the score in a smart way. It’s fun, fascinating, and you can probably make a drinking game or bingo or both about whatever cultural tragedy du jour is a meme. And really, that’s what memes that trigger emotions are: Schmuckbait. We’ll be getting to our colleague and latest victim to this in a moment.

Given that I’ve recently acquired a Nintendo DS and have been playing the Zelda games on there with some enthusiasm after having been consoleless since 2007, you might think I have some opinions on #GamerGate/#GameOverGate/Zoe Quinn. I actually don’t, really. Been too busy living off Twitter lately (though a rebirth is in order). But more importantly, I’ve come to understand that once you bring gamers into an argument, you might as well take your ball and go play elsewhere before they start calling you a faggot who likes to be fudgepacked by niggers in the ass (redundancy intentional) or a camwhore slut who deserves to be raped and murdered (and lord help you if you’re non-white or TG). Why? Simple:

A group gathering on the Internet + anonymity and/or lack of consequences = High chance someone’s going to act like a fuckwad.

We who have had enough experience in the gaming business refer to this as the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or the GIFT. Supposedly devised either by Jerry Holkins or Mike Krahuliak (I think the former, since the latter just seems to have intellectual Tourette’s), it explains why most Internet discourse ends up turning into a shitstorm, more than anything else.  Gamers just happen to be specialists at this because, well, hormones + competitiveness + overstimulation = mental vomit. While this matter has long been limited to the forums and other dank locations of the Internet, Twitter and Tumblr and other social outlets have caused the GIFT to be amplified by 1800 decibels. It’s enough to punch out a black hole the size of the Solar System. Why? Our inane propensity to share things as though they were shiny. Even if it’s our own dick pix.

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