These kinds of questions always make me think of a scene in "The Bishop's Wife" (1947) with Loretta Young. Her husband is an Anglican bishop too busy raising money for his new church to attend to his family at Christmas time. Heaven sends an angel, played by Cary Grant, to basically save the bishop's soul. He and Loretta have a beautiful day together, ice skating, shopping, whatever. The key scene is when they visit Loretta's friend, an older gentleman who is an avowed atheist.
The rules of this movie's world are Christian. The charming atheist is an outlier, an oddity, a unicorn. Angel Grant fixes the brandy bottle so that it always replenishes. (Such were the opinion of miracles mid-century. Free drinks!) In all their time with him, the Christians never scorn the atheist. He's wrong, obviously, but he's still a beloved friend. If he doesn't see the ever-filling bottle as proof of God, well then he has a nifty gift and that's fine. He's never threatened with cancellation (in the term of our era) or imprisonment (in the fever dreams of how people imagine Christian history). Was this version of human interaction ever actually true? I don't know, but I wish it were.
Of your categories, I'm not sure which one this would belong to. I want the Catholic world of the Post-Liberals, accompanied by the gentle acceptance that liberalism, personified in this movie, presents. As Greg Cook comments, it's a world of love. You're allowed to be wrong without being hated. I do think that the religious structure is a requirement, and I'm very sympathetic to the atheists' concerns about that. We all live in a religious structure now, the Wokeism, that is restrictive. We don't want another version of that. As a Catholic, I'm not even sure I would trust the Church at this point. All of our institutions have proven unreliable. Ultimately, I believe we will hang our hat back on Liberalism. It is the devil we know. Distributism, Monarchism, Benedict Options -- these are all too fringe for a Republic founded on the Enlightenment. We must rebuild within the framework we've been given.
Excellent essay, and I share your sense of tentative hope. Unfortunately, those with the power and the money have already chosen sides, at least in the US, and it is the side of the woke jihadists.
We do need a religious revival, but such revivals only come through the experience of great suffering. Because I do believe in God, I believe the West will be moving into such a period, if it is not stepping into it already.
On the larger questions you raise, if we see this world as the space and time we are allotted by God to find Him, then we need a society that works for believers and unbelievers. The US worked well for so long because we had liberalism along with a large majority of believers. Individual citizens supported limits, and legislators pulled from a believing citizenry legislated limits. Now that the citizenry is moving into unbelief, all sense of appropriate limits is fading, and liberalism will produce totalitarianism of left or right.
Reading this post the October 7 massacre and its aftermath, I wonder if this moment is the backlash against woke jihadism? Doesn't seem to be moving the dial back towards liberalism yet.
This a brilliant synthesis of the current state of play. I found it very helpful. Thank you. The big underlying difficulty with the Counterrevolution is, how do you argue against people who don't accept the validity of rational argument? This is a problem not only for the Paleoliberals but also for the Postliberals to the extent that their position is not based on an appeal to religious faith.
The new religion of Wokeism seems devoid of love. (And love is a word I could not find in translations of the Qu’ran.) If individuals cannot participate in relationships or webs of love, they wither. I am currently working my way through “Red, White, and Black,” a book of essays edited by Robert L. Woodson, Jr. and intended to counter “The 1619 Project.” Repeatedly, the writers in the volume point out the destruction of the Black American family as decisive in black culture over the past sixty years. The family is the best school of love. The opposite of love is selfishness, and no one has portrayed the effects of selfishness and love better than Dante: Hell (Inferno) reveals the end result of refusing love; Purgatory the burning out (like purifying a precious metal) of selfishness adulterating love; and Paradise the fruits of love freed of selfishness. Joseph Pieper offers a vision of love as leisure, and Leo XIII offered a view of working-class love. The criterion of love will be a rubric for determining of counter-revolutionaries committed to Christ should or should not affiliate with others. It’s one thing to share something in order to survive the Gulag, but another when rebuilding Christendom.
Perhaps if we get the ideas right, things will change Mr. Lyons?
Or perhaps organization, power, money, troops/street soldiers ...also matter?
At least as much and considering present reality more than ideas?
4 questions for you, they all are prefaced with 'Where is your ___"
1. Organization?
2. Money?
3. Troops/Street Soldiers/Organizers?
4. Path to power?
That is the synthesis you should seek.
I can answer your questions and mine the same: NOTHING.
None of any of it , no answers exist and nothing exists.
And all of the above categories I name are the path to power and indeed probably survival Sir.
Ideas DON'T matter next to Power, Soldiers [who swore in our new President], Money, Organizations, Bodies in the Street and the ah "Revolutionaries" clear path to power they hold.
And as the Marxists are pointing out over on Bellows this is the Elite Top Upper Class Capitalists cementing their hold on power by buying everyone who will take their coin and the path to power, namely the charming spawn of the Upper Middle Class embracing Maoism with a fat paycheck to crush the middle class non-conformers and the working class uppity MAGA peasants.
We also may have a different view of history: with rare exceptions like Mohammed I see every movement and idea that gains success and power - especially the Enlightenment - getting into fashion because it served cold worldly interests of Princes, Kings and in America's case men of property and land who did not wish to be the overseas white burgher coolies of the Crown. While the founders would have blushed to mention the Irish for instance certainly their fate was in view.
What's actually happening Sir is the End of the Enlightenment and the return of normal human history: Elites and Tyrants crush their peoples under their heel with force, fraud, bribery - all quite present in the current government - and squeeze them for all their worth. No 'idea' changes this fate and no idea ever did.
No idea gets us out of this, the only synthesis you should seek is organization, soldiers, money and a path back into power. The Victors decide what ideas are in fashion.
You're looking at this like a Leftist, my friend. I don't think Mr. Lyons ever suggested anywhere that ideas are soldiers, or that any of the stuff you mentioned isn't necessary. But he is a philosopher, and the philosopher's job is to think. This piece is merely a musing on some of the internal divisions within the Counter-Revolution and the fundamental questions that it will have to answer in order to make sense of itself. You are essentially telling him to shut up and focus on winning the war, which would be fair if he were distracting people from the fight, but this is more like an idle musing on a summer's day, pondering questions that will have to be answered someday if we ever win the war. We can only put off such questions for so long anyway, and while ideas don't fight wars, no revolution was ever successful without understanding what it was, what it was trying to do, and why. Force alone cannot lead to a successful revolution either.
The jobs not done until irresolvable contradictions are answered?
Actually “the job” never starts, which is the actual point of Conservatism. Ab Ovo.
The egg that never hatched, never will hatch, even to hatch an honest chicken (afraid).
His job is the job of the Intellectuals of Constantinople; to debate the gender of angels whilst the Turks massed outside the gates in 1453. Strangely the Turks didn’t think it was necessary to resolve Islam’s internal contradictions first.
Or last.
The proper time for such musings; NEVER.
Thank you for the compliment of thinking like a leftist; for they always win, and conservatives conserve nothing. Conservatives didn’t conserve the Ladies Bathroom.
This is no Revolution, its a struggle to survive; and the struggle will be won by the side that best “synthesizes” people, resources, will need the better organization and Path to Power than the others.
We the (?) have NOTHING, and the point now of the Philosophers is to make sure we never DO.
No alliance requires ‘ contradictions’ to be resolved first or we’d all learned German in schools growing up.
All these creatures and I suspect many commenters are paid to keep us squabbling forever, and to end on a positive note (for such creatures) its working.
If it stops working we’ll know.
Get behind the first warlord who’s got any game at all America, because these weak lunatics and their fawning captive opposition will get most of you killed elsewise.
The age of Airy thought is over, the Age of Iron has begun. Grab Iron and live, grab Air and die.
You are a foolish bull always seeking to charge, charge, charge, even off the side of the cliff. Any successful revolution requires a clear vision of what it aims to achieve, to make a case to the people that they ought to support it, and you cannot do that without philosophy. The Americans had *Common Sense* and the writings of the Founding Fathers laying the groundwork and justification for revolt before they took up arms, similarly with the Reds in Russia and the Jacobins in France (decades and centuries of discussion about "Notre Constitution" and the rights of Man). People who follow your approach launch terrorist attacks and putsches, get themselves killed, and unite the people in opposition to them, achieving nothing and worse than nothing, usually furthering their enemy's goals.
I can refute all of the above in detail, but I’d be arguing with conviction not judgment. Just this then; “ The Americans had *Common Sense* and the writings of the Founding Fathers laying the groundwork and justification for revolt before they took up arms,”
No- the Revolution started in 1775, Paine wrote after the Colonials we’re already fighting and winning and the Declaration came in 1776.
The Colonists didn’t build the Revolution around philosophy- they built it by deeds beginning in the 1760s and by using the Colonial government’s experience of raising and fielding armies in the French and Indian wars (thank you Mr. Pitt).
First the fight, then the paperwork.
Ready on Jacobinism and the Russian Revolution when you are…
But of course to quote TE Lawrence “opinions can be argued, convictions are best …”
Now as it happens you can relax. The Second American Civil War ran from Jan 2020 to Jan 2021- and the Democrats won this time.
Obviously both ideas and power/organization/money mattered in the American Revolution as you indicated initially yourself in your earlier post--"or perhaps organization, money, power, troops/street soldiers also matter."
But it seems to me that you then made a conceptual decision to move power to the more primary position over ideas. You appear to have chosen to conceptually slice the issue in a more narrow manner than you had originally.
Eoin's liberal firmware is so deep, it is hard to overwrite let alone process and take on what you are actually saying in an argument. Im not asking anyone to agree with you, but hes not hearing you. He can't.
That said, the Revolution WAS based on ideas to some extent; ideas shared with the Crown about the Rights of man, and since those were in place, the battle over taking our stuff was made plain, the underlying idea, that that would not do, as transparent to all as water is to a fish, even if folks did have to be reminded of it in pamphlets. What remained was a fight over us vs them.
When dealing with a foe that doesnt share your values (or cynically wears it like a skin suit) it is down to them taking our stuff and saying NO in return. Stuff in this case being dignity, self-autonomy, free speech, and yes finanacial resources. The Liberal Industrial complex, via academia alone has been stealing from everyday Americans for decades with very little return, since the development of the transistor, the lions share of material progress being from famously elite college drop outs in the industrial sector. What academia and the endless debates about Liberalism vs Marxism vs this vs that has produced is in fact a negative balance, misery and destruction. (French) Liberalism is too close to Marxism to take out its bastard twin. Perhaps English Liberalism, founded on strict lines of defense against incursions againt private property, gun and spesch rights is the way to go. But then again, this doesnt require any more discussion.
When the USSR fell, I was a kill joy, I said: "Its still Russia and even if they go full on Capitalist, they will then be our competitor. With all their natural resources and labor, mouths to feed and ambitions"
It would also help if you actually read anything either I or the writer of the article said instead of just slapping your imaginary labels on us - neither of us ever said that we should stop fighting until we resolve our internal differences. They will exist whether you think about them or not, and if we win, they will eventually have to be resolved one way or the other. Then again, given that the world is extremely simple for you, I presume your plan is just "shoot the leftists until we win, then shoot all the other members of my alliance, then shoot everyone else until I am dictator".
You called his thiking leftist. Ususally the woke would call him a fascist, but in this venue of the "based" and antiwoke you chose the leftists accusation, clever. this is a label you slapped on him, then accused him of the same. your replies here are leaning quite psychological in their elucidation and not taking on the objects of the discussion. Interesting, to a degree, in that all this tells me who gets it and who doesnt, and not to put too much value in the "thinkers".
Oh and in some ways it is extremely simple:
When they rig elections, democracy is dead.
When the supply lines are cut, you starve.
When they take your guns you cant defend yourself.
When they turn off the lectricity, all your ideas are just clacking on a keyboard and no on reads them.
Hyperbolic? What in the heck are we all worried about after all? Those things. Otherwise this entire discussion would be about how far some inconsequential social legislation goes to impact maybe some one we might know. WE're clearly past that. And this isnt just hypothetical. There has been an ineffective, intellectual spinning around, attempted deflection and distraction by the chattering classes (the RNC included) for 40 years. To no avail. None of this is new.
There are several strawmen presented in your rebuttal to Long Warred, but I'll address one (they are mainly false dichotomies, prompted by LW's emphasis on the real vs the ideal, as he, perhaps like me sees too much emphasis on the latter these days, as bridges burn and supply chains and currencies collapse)
My Lyons never suggested that and Long Warred never even implied he said that. I dont agree that LW is operating from a leftist frame, but I would respectfully assert that you are operating from a Liberal one. So be it.
LW is operating from an Elite Theory mindset (IMHO). ANd my take on that is that liberal values wouldnt be nearly as touted as they are if Europe had not had so much material prosperity to spend the spare time developing them and the armies to promote them accross the world.
We can get in the weeds, productively, in fact to parse whether the Industrial Revolution is the product of technology or ideas. Its a fascinating thread to follow. If we start with the printing press, then we also know that the Bible was a big best seller at that time. The ideas and the machines that dissiminate them are interwoven.
Lets remember, after all, the Marxists didnt get this far with ideas, they had to be funded with Hollywood movies, Epstein compromat, academic chairs, student loans, and other billions of dollars and thousands of livetimes of effort, all poured on ideas that werent worked out, despite the thousands of academic papers, at least not rigorously enough to functionally work, make sense or win over even a plurailty of the population.
Yes, we can move forward without working out exactly which -isms are going to work. This back and forth is more of the same leftist problem; distanced, unconnected, top down solutions. Yes, the discussion is worthwhile to avoid further missteps, but it may not produce a "solution", it may only serve to avoid something worse than what we have now. Add in that it will remain a discussion by the very few about the fates of the rest of mankind.
To think we dont know what works now would be disengenuous. Freeing up markets and regulation lets a market decide what the monetary values of things should be. Allowing religious freedom allows each individual to decide what belief system works for them, etc.
Barring that formulation, simply defunding extreme leftism would be a good start to leveling the playing field of ideas.
TY for Your reply. This may not matter, as it's long after the fact. In answer to questions:
4 questions for you, they all are prefaced with 'Where is your ___"
1. Organization? Problem is such a multitude of organizations, right? The need is to pare them *down* to some reasonable number. M. Lyon's essay an attempt to provide a center for people gather around and figure out something that makes some sense. ICBW, probably am. But seems to me it's the philosophers who come up with the ideas that slogans are born from.
2. Money? Compared to the Woke Religion? Will always be miniscule. That's a distinct *advantage.* If one thing is clear, I hope, amongst all the parties above, I think it's clear that throwing money at problems tends to make things worse, right?
3. Troops/Street Soldiers/Organizers? To me? Needs a new political party in the U.S. Others need to figure out what works.
4. Path to power? My hope is through politics. But if not, then it comes down to Street Troops/Street Soldiers/Organizers You mentioned above. The reason the Rich Elites that are the High Priests of the Woke Religion are so vicious and are speeding so *fast* to our collective destruction is because, at the present time, the numbers are *against* 'em.
Most people who know anything are against the Fundamentalist Wokians. They're just plain repugnant, if You take a look at them. But they're so *vicious* that everybody's afraid to stick their neck out, right? Hopefully, the philosophers will come up with some things that encourage a critical mass of courageous people and, in turn, good lawyers to sue the crap outta these petty tyrants and put the "Fear 'o G*d" into them. So to speak.
I think this argument (specifically the central theme of liberalism creating a world without limits) would be improved by recognizing the people driving liberalism and enabling woekism, i.e. the elites, the players and winners of contemporary "meritocracy", themselves live their lives with freely chosen limits. Yes, they can leave school early, but tend not to. They can have sex early and without birth control, but tend not to. They can divorce, but tend not to. They can be neglectful parents, but tend not to (being instead intensely affectionate and involved). They can binge watch trash for hours every day, but tend not to - too busy with work and harder hobbies.
This is the culmination of the liberal rejection of limits coupled with the equally liberal lionization of the individual pursuing his self interest - in a world of unrestrained choices, the clear-headed individual rationally chooses to serve his self interest by cultivating his own self-restraint and civility.
And this points to a key distinction we need to make when talking about limits - external vs. internal, or imposed vs. chosen. Liberalism of course accepts the latter, but not the former. And this leads to one of the central contradictions and challenges of contemporary society - in order to succeed (live a safe, self-actualized life), you must choose your own limits, and indeed your own sources of meaning. This is hard (and the existentialists had something to say about it too). But maybe not as hard as being a serf born into a job and onto an estate, neither of which you could ever really leave. This is the Wizards' enlightenment argument, but in different terms, and without some of the Wizards' love of the "traditional".
We should also reflect on where limits come from. Liberalism generally rejects externally imposed limits (much to be said here on positive vs. negative rights and the expanding role of the state in liberal societies - granted), especially from traditional sources of authority, and this leads naturally to the deprecation of those institutions and the attendant atomization widely noted and criticized in liberal societies. But that atomization is not complete - one of the great transformations of liberal societies over the past 100 years is the elevation of the nuclear family. And this is where we see limits imposed, and indeed culture created, in the form of intense family expectations for behavior and comportment (including self restraint), which are then propagated, refined, and find general expression through networks of similarly situated families (i.e. communities).
And thence Wokeism. When successful families choose their own values, get together with each other and mutually congratulate each other on and reinforce those values (gay kid great, gay kid with Ds NOT great, unless he's passionate about art and shows real dedication to his craft, in which case great!, unless his art is racist...), and then because of their success begin expressing those values in louder and more public forums, it beings to look like a new ideology. And is. And people who are slightly or completely outside those circles experience it as a new set of externally imposed limits, which, being products of liberalism themselves, they instinctively and aggressively reject, as all good enlightened liberals should.
So the question then becomes whether wokeism will become so dominant as to destroy the foundational liberalism (no limits, choose your own adventure) on which it is built, or whether it is just another thread in the chaotic weave of liberal society, soon to be overtaken by, and incorporated into, something else. I think it will be the latter. Dogma and liberalism are intrinsically incompatible, and wokesim is so very small when contrasted with the total cultural dominance of liberalism, and moreover is not even dogma, despite its occasional flashes of vindictive power. The tenets and definitions within wokeism are constantly debated from within and without, and there is by definition (both under liberalism and under wokeism) no central authority, certainly not the current administration or the UN, capable of guiding its development. It is a cultural flowering, wild and fecund and overwhelming for now, but when god is dead and the individual supreme, everyone chooses their own garden, and this garden is already being sanitized, corporatized, hybridized, and tamed.
But beware the fantasy of resurgent religion. That ship has sailed, sent on its permanent way not by wokeism but by liberalism and enlightenment, and the resulting destruction through trade wealth and social revolution of the ignorance (illiteracy) and hierarchies that reinforced state religion (it was all state religion before the Reformation, which of course was an early paroxysm of liberalism) and the flourishing of science that kicked out from under religion one of its last legs - the need to explain the terror and magnificence of the natural world. Wokeism does nothing to limit the power of those factors, and is not nearly terrible enough to inspire dyed in the wool liberals (nearly everyone) to clamor for new external limits.
1. I understand that Bari Weiss was all in favor of cancel culture, as long as it was people she didn't approve of that were getting cancelled.
2. Norman Borlaug never claimed that here were no limits to population growth or resource consumption. He merely claimed that his innovations bought humanity some time.
That may be, but it is important to understand that Borlaug was aware that his Wizardry had limits. Or that we should be careful not to make claims for Wizardry that the Wizard himself didn't make.
You "understand" a scurrilous accusation that you post without any factual back-up? That's well beneath the level of discourse at this particular substack, IMO. And also completely off point.
There are some responses to the liberalism question that don't fall into your dichotomy. For instance, Scott Alexander's Archipelago idea (described at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/ ) proposes that instead of a single society with a homogenous culture or a coordinated power structure enforcing liberalism or some form of postliberalism on everyone, we have a variety of smaller subcultures or sub-societies with their own norms of whichever sort, with people being free to live in those whose norms they find most congenial. (He presents this as just another instantiation of the basic philosophical justification for liberalism, but it is quite different from classical liberalism.) However, while the Internet is well suited to such a model, elsewhere it would (as even Alexander admits) be very difficult to make work & even more difficult to implement.
In any case, I agree with previous commenters that all these ideological questions, unless they fracture the 'counter-revolution' thoroughly enough to prevent cooperative actions, are much less important in the short term than "How can we regain power/influence?"
This sounds very patchwork-y, which is crypto-neoreactionary if you don't mind the phrasing, but with patchwork proper, it would involve extreme confederation (or city state) design.
Great primer on post-liberalism and where it has come from in a US context.
For the UK story, suggest you look at the work of Phillip Blond, whose 2010 book Red Tory and work since has been an inspiration to many of the writers you mention. Some other post liberal UK writers you might enjoy: Mary Harrington, Maurice Glassman, Adrian Pabst, John Milbank.
The essence of liberalism is corrupted, it has moved away form individuality, and has moved to group identities, inevitably when it gains ground for one particular aberrant group, gives impetus to move for acceptance of additional aberrant groups. Societal dysfunction is served by a liberal Oliver Twist pathological excess, the hunger is never satiated. Requesting more and when rejected adopts a pathological radical reactionary behaviour. Society is then coerced by a screaming domination of a vulnerable injured party to oblige by irrational moral arguments, that although have one foot tentatively in reality, the other is floating in the abyss of nonsense, making the later stage liberalism irrational. The argument, then in opposition to contemporary liberalism is where does it end. Rousseau, in fact when challenged on his peoples assemblies and the undemocratic nature of them, replied we will make them into numerable groups where no one group has dominance. Although Rousseau is quoted consistently in social and political thought, he was forever equivocal and hard to pin down. https://emancipator1.substack.com/p/a-broad-strokes-assessment-of-the
A fool, I’m going to answer the 4 questions before I read your argumentation:
1 save liberalism, it is the embrace of rational inquiry and egalitarian participation
2/ rationality is our only salvation
3/technological capitalism must be sustained because it properly addresses human duplicity with the creative destruction of animal spirit, it needs be rebalanced to offset greed but it’s inherent violence is elixir to our mendacity.
4/ new balance, fuck ya, what kinda question is that - nihilistic bullshit - a new balance is always achievable, it’s just a matter of how many people have to die.
I’m gonna read your argument later today or tomorrow because I’m busy now but, also, I owe it to myself to formulate my own ideas.
1/ I am definitely post liberal ( not paleo), time to defend obligation, human rights need a time out, the paleo argument does lead back necessarily to oppression.(NS is clearly a post liberal).
2/ “source of meaning “: people want meaning and a community that tells them they’re good people and give them a sense of belonging. As for rationality, it is all we got.
3/ I’m a prophet all day long, practical and fair is my mantra. The competition of capitalism saves us from referees, government sorts that will distort everything . Henry David Thoreau opined (paraphrasing) - “if someone says they’re coming to help you run the other way”.
4/ yes counter revolution achievable: the wizards are right, the prophets like me should be mostly be in charge but also overthrown occasionally.
NS you make me happy and extraordinarily enthused, thank you.
I need to reread Your comments, as well as the article, Sir RJF. I have my own opinions, as always, I posted above. But mebbe this all a dead thread by now?
On the first question, the differences are rather less than it at first appears. Since while it is true both sides take a different view of liberalism, they define "liberalism" in rather different ways.
These kinds of questions always make me think of a scene in "The Bishop's Wife" (1947) with Loretta Young. Her husband is an Anglican bishop too busy raising money for his new church to attend to his family at Christmas time. Heaven sends an angel, played by Cary Grant, to basically save the bishop's soul. He and Loretta have a beautiful day together, ice skating, shopping, whatever. The key scene is when they visit Loretta's friend, an older gentleman who is an avowed atheist.
The rules of this movie's world are Christian. The charming atheist is an outlier, an oddity, a unicorn. Angel Grant fixes the brandy bottle so that it always replenishes. (Such were the opinion of miracles mid-century. Free drinks!) In all their time with him, the Christians never scorn the atheist. He's wrong, obviously, but he's still a beloved friend. If he doesn't see the ever-filling bottle as proof of God, well then he has a nifty gift and that's fine. He's never threatened with cancellation (in the term of our era) or imprisonment (in the fever dreams of how people imagine Christian history). Was this version of human interaction ever actually true? I don't know, but I wish it were.
Of your categories, I'm not sure which one this would belong to. I want the Catholic world of the Post-Liberals, accompanied by the gentle acceptance that liberalism, personified in this movie, presents. As Greg Cook comments, it's a world of love. You're allowed to be wrong without being hated. I do think that the religious structure is a requirement, and I'm very sympathetic to the atheists' concerns about that. We all live in a religious structure now, the Wokeism, that is restrictive. We don't want another version of that. As a Catholic, I'm not even sure I would trust the Church at this point. All of our institutions have proven unreliable. Ultimately, I believe we will hang our hat back on Liberalism. It is the devil we know. Distributism, Monarchism, Benedict Options -- these are all too fringe for a Republic founded on the Enlightenment. We must rebuild within the framework we've been given.
Excellent essay, and I share your sense of tentative hope. Unfortunately, those with the power and the money have already chosen sides, at least in the US, and it is the side of the woke jihadists.
We do need a religious revival, but such revivals only come through the experience of great suffering. Because I do believe in God, I believe the West will be moving into such a period, if it is not stepping into it already.
On the larger questions you raise, if we see this world as the space and time we are allotted by God to find Him, then we need a society that works for believers and unbelievers. The US worked well for so long because we had liberalism along with a large majority of believers. Individual citizens supported limits, and legislators pulled from a believing citizenry legislated limits. Now that the citizenry is moving into unbelief, all sense of appropriate limits is fading, and liberalism will produce totalitarianism of left or right.
>"Unfortunately, those with the power and the money have already chosen sides, at least in the US, and it is the side of the woke jihadists."
True for the moment, but my sense is that this commitment is rather soft, and could shift with a strong enough public backlash.
Reading this post the October 7 massacre and its aftermath, I wonder if this moment is the backlash against woke jihadism? Doesn't seem to be moving the dial back towards liberalism yet.
This a brilliant synthesis of the current state of play. I found it very helpful. Thank you. The big underlying difficulty with the Counterrevolution is, how do you argue against people who don't accept the validity of rational argument? This is a problem not only for the Paleoliberals but also for the Postliberals to the extent that their position is not based on an appeal to religious faith.
The new religion of Wokeism seems devoid of love. (And love is a word I could not find in translations of the Qu’ran.) If individuals cannot participate in relationships or webs of love, they wither. I am currently working my way through “Red, White, and Black,” a book of essays edited by Robert L. Woodson, Jr. and intended to counter “The 1619 Project.” Repeatedly, the writers in the volume point out the destruction of the Black American family as decisive in black culture over the past sixty years. The family is the best school of love. The opposite of love is selfishness, and no one has portrayed the effects of selfishness and love better than Dante: Hell (Inferno) reveals the end result of refusing love; Purgatory the burning out (like purifying a precious metal) of selfishness adulterating love; and Paradise the fruits of love freed of selfishness. Joseph Pieper offers a vision of love as leisure, and Leo XIII offered a view of working-class love. The criterion of love will be a rubric for determining of counter-revolutionaries committed to Christ should or should not affiliate with others. It’s one thing to share something in order to survive the Gulag, but another when rebuilding Christendom.
And as my wife said in our evening discussion, Wokeism is lacking grace. There is no forgiveness for transgressors.
Perhaps if we get the ideas right, things will change Mr. Lyons?
Or perhaps organization, power, money, troops/street soldiers ...also matter?
At least as much and considering present reality more than ideas?
4 questions for you, they all are prefaced with 'Where is your ___"
1. Organization?
2. Money?
3. Troops/Street Soldiers/Organizers?
4. Path to power?
That is the synthesis you should seek.
I can answer your questions and mine the same: NOTHING.
None of any of it , no answers exist and nothing exists.
And all of the above categories I name are the path to power and indeed probably survival Sir.
Ideas DON'T matter next to Power, Soldiers [who swore in our new President], Money, Organizations, Bodies in the Street and the ah "Revolutionaries" clear path to power they hold.
And as the Marxists are pointing out over on Bellows this is the Elite Top Upper Class Capitalists cementing their hold on power by buying everyone who will take their coin and the path to power, namely the charming spawn of the Upper Middle Class embracing Maoism with a fat paycheck to crush the middle class non-conformers and the working class uppity MAGA peasants.
We also may have a different view of history: with rare exceptions like Mohammed I see every movement and idea that gains success and power - especially the Enlightenment - getting into fashion because it served cold worldly interests of Princes, Kings and in America's case men of property and land who did not wish to be the overseas white burgher coolies of the Crown. While the founders would have blushed to mention the Irish for instance certainly their fate was in view.
What's actually happening Sir is the End of the Enlightenment and the return of normal human history: Elites and Tyrants crush their peoples under their heel with force, fraud, bribery - all quite present in the current government - and squeeze them for all their worth. No 'idea' changes this fate and no idea ever did.
No idea gets us out of this, the only synthesis you should seek is organization, soldiers, money and a path back into power. The Victors decide what ideas are in fashion.
Good Luck.
You're looking at this like a Leftist, my friend. I don't think Mr. Lyons ever suggested anywhere that ideas are soldiers, or that any of the stuff you mentioned isn't necessary. But he is a philosopher, and the philosopher's job is to think. This piece is merely a musing on some of the internal divisions within the Counter-Revolution and the fundamental questions that it will have to answer in order to make sense of itself. You are essentially telling him to shut up and focus on winning the war, which would be fair if he were distracting people from the fight, but this is more like an idle musing on a summer's day, pondering questions that will have to be answered someday if we ever win the war. We can only put off such questions for so long anyway, and while ideas don't fight wars, no revolution was ever successful without understanding what it was, what it was trying to do, and why. Force alone cannot lead to a successful revolution either.
💩💩.
The jobs not done until irresolvable contradictions are answered?
Actually “the job” never starts, which is the actual point of Conservatism. Ab Ovo.
The egg that never hatched, never will hatch, even to hatch an honest chicken (afraid).
His job is the job of the Intellectuals of Constantinople; to debate the gender of angels whilst the Turks massed outside the gates in 1453. Strangely the Turks didn’t think it was necessary to resolve Islam’s internal contradictions first.
Or last.
The proper time for such musings; NEVER.
Thank you for the compliment of thinking like a leftist; for they always win, and conservatives conserve nothing. Conservatives didn’t conserve the Ladies Bathroom.
This is no Revolution, its a struggle to survive; and the struggle will be won by the side that best “synthesizes” people, resources, will need the better organization and Path to Power than the others.
We the (?) have NOTHING, and the point now of the Philosophers is to make sure we never DO.
No alliance requires ‘ contradictions’ to be resolved first or we’d all learned German in schools growing up.
All these creatures and I suspect many commenters are paid to keep us squabbling forever, and to end on a positive note (for such creatures) its working.
If it stops working we’ll know.
Get behind the first warlord who’s got any game at all America, because these weak lunatics and their fawning captive opposition will get most of you killed elsewise.
The age of Airy thought is over, the Age of Iron has begun. Grab Iron and live, grab Air and die.
You are a foolish bull always seeking to charge, charge, charge, even off the side of the cliff. Any successful revolution requires a clear vision of what it aims to achieve, to make a case to the people that they ought to support it, and you cannot do that without philosophy. The Americans had *Common Sense* and the writings of the Founding Fathers laying the groundwork and justification for revolt before they took up arms, similarly with the Reds in Russia and the Jacobins in France (decades and centuries of discussion about "Notre Constitution" and the rights of Man). People who follow your approach launch terrorist attacks and putsches, get themselves killed, and unite the people in opposition to them, achieving nothing and worse than nothing, usually furthering their enemy's goals.
I can refute all of the above in detail, but I’d be arguing with conviction not judgment. Just this then; “ The Americans had *Common Sense* and the writings of the Founding Fathers laying the groundwork and justification for revolt before they took up arms,”
No- the Revolution started in 1775, Paine wrote after the Colonials we’re already fighting and winning and the Declaration came in 1776.
The Colonists didn’t build the Revolution around philosophy- they built it by deeds beginning in the 1760s and by using the Colonial government’s experience of raising and fielding armies in the French and Indian wars (thank you Mr. Pitt).
First the fight, then the paperwork.
Ready on Jacobinism and the Russian Revolution when you are…
But of course to quote TE Lawrence “opinions can be argued, convictions are best …”
Now as it happens you can relax. The Second American Civil War ran from Jan 2020 to Jan 2021- and the Democrats won this time.
That part is over.
Obviously both ideas and power/organization/money mattered in the American Revolution as you indicated initially yourself in your earlier post--"or perhaps organization, money, power, troops/street soldiers also matter."
But it seems to me that you then made a conceptual decision to move power to the more primary position over ideas. You appear to have chosen to conceptually slice the issue in a more narrow manner than you had originally.
Why?
Eoin's liberal firmware is so deep, it is hard to overwrite let alone process and take on what you are actually saying in an argument. Im not asking anyone to agree with you, but hes not hearing you. He can't.
That said, the Revolution WAS based on ideas to some extent; ideas shared with the Crown about the Rights of man, and since those were in place, the battle over taking our stuff was made plain, the underlying idea, that that would not do, as transparent to all as water is to a fish, even if folks did have to be reminded of it in pamphlets. What remained was a fight over us vs them.
When dealing with a foe that doesnt share your values (or cynically wears it like a skin suit) it is down to them taking our stuff and saying NO in return. Stuff in this case being dignity, self-autonomy, free speech, and yes finanacial resources. The Liberal Industrial complex, via academia alone has been stealing from everyday Americans for decades with very little return, since the development of the transistor, the lions share of material progress being from famously elite college drop outs in the industrial sector. What academia and the endless debates about Liberalism vs Marxism vs this vs that has produced is in fact a negative balance, misery and destruction. (French) Liberalism is too close to Marxism to take out its bastard twin. Perhaps English Liberalism, founded on strict lines of defense against incursions againt private property, gun and spesch rights is the way to go. But then again, this doesnt require any more discussion.
When the USSR fell, I was a kill joy, I said: "Its still Russia and even if they go full on Capitalist, they will then be our competitor. With all their natural resources and labor, mouths to feed and ambitions"
It would also help if you actually read anything either I or the writer of the article said instead of just slapping your imaginary labels on us - neither of us ever said that we should stop fighting until we resolve our internal differences. They will exist whether you think about them or not, and if we win, they will eventually have to be resolved one way or the other. Then again, given that the world is extremely simple for you, I presume your plan is just "shoot the leftists until we win, then shoot all the other members of my alliance, then shoot everyone else until I am dictator".
Hmm 🤔.
I read what he and you wrote and rejected it.
As for your plan;
Yes, that’s who’s going to win, that’s how he’ll win, and that’s how he’ll rule.
Well, he teased it all out of you. Enlightening.
You called his thiking leftist. Ususally the woke would call him a fascist, but in this venue of the "based" and antiwoke you chose the leftists accusation, clever. this is a label you slapped on him, then accused him of the same. your replies here are leaning quite psychological in their elucidation and not taking on the objects of the discussion. Interesting, to a degree, in that all this tells me who gets it and who doesnt, and not to put too much value in the "thinkers".
Oh and in some ways it is extremely simple:
When they rig elections, democracy is dead.
When the supply lines are cut, you starve.
When they take your guns you cant defend yourself.
When they turn off the lectricity, all your ideas are just clacking on a keyboard and no on reads them.
Hyperbolic? What in the heck are we all worried about after all? Those things. Otherwise this entire discussion would be about how far some inconsequential social legislation goes to impact maybe some one we might know. WE're clearly past that. And this isnt just hypothetical. There has been an ineffective, intellectual spinning around, attempted deflection and distraction by the chattering classes (the RNC included) for 40 years. To no avail. None of this is new.
There are several strawmen presented in your rebuttal to Long Warred, but I'll address one (they are mainly false dichotomies, prompted by LW's emphasis on the real vs the ideal, as he, perhaps like me sees too much emphasis on the latter these days, as bridges burn and supply chains and currencies collapse)
My Lyons never suggested that and Long Warred never even implied he said that. I dont agree that LW is operating from a leftist frame, but I would respectfully assert that you are operating from a Liberal one. So be it.
LW is operating from an Elite Theory mindset (IMHO). ANd my take on that is that liberal values wouldnt be nearly as touted as they are if Europe had not had so much material prosperity to spend the spare time developing them and the armies to promote them accross the world.
We can get in the weeds, productively, in fact to parse whether the Industrial Revolution is the product of technology or ideas. Its a fascinating thread to follow. If we start with the printing press, then we also know that the Bible was a big best seller at that time. The ideas and the machines that dissiminate them are interwoven.
Lets remember, after all, the Marxists didnt get this far with ideas, they had to be funded with Hollywood movies, Epstein compromat, academic chairs, student loans, and other billions of dollars and thousands of livetimes of effort, all poured on ideas that werent worked out, despite the thousands of academic papers, at least not rigorously enough to functionally work, make sense or win over even a plurailty of the population.
Yes, we can move forward without working out exactly which -isms are going to work. This back and forth is more of the same leftist problem; distanced, unconnected, top down solutions. Yes, the discussion is worthwhile to avoid further missteps, but it may not produce a "solution", it may only serve to avoid something worse than what we have now. Add in that it will remain a discussion by the very few about the fates of the rest of mankind.
To think we dont know what works now would be disengenuous. Freeing up markets and regulation lets a market decide what the monetary values of things should be. Allowing religious freedom allows each individual to decide what belief system works for them, etc.
Barring that formulation, simply defunding extreme leftism would be a good start to leveling the playing field of ideas.
TY for Your reply. This may not matter, as it's long after the fact. In answer to questions:
4 questions for you, they all are prefaced with 'Where is your ___"
1. Organization? Problem is such a multitude of organizations, right? The need is to pare them *down* to some reasonable number. M. Lyon's essay an attempt to provide a center for people gather around and figure out something that makes some sense. ICBW, probably am. But seems to me it's the philosophers who come up with the ideas that slogans are born from.
2. Money? Compared to the Woke Religion? Will always be miniscule. That's a distinct *advantage.* If one thing is clear, I hope, amongst all the parties above, I think it's clear that throwing money at problems tends to make things worse, right?
3. Troops/Street Soldiers/Organizers? To me? Needs a new political party in the U.S. Others need to figure out what works.
4. Path to power? My hope is through politics. But if not, then it comes down to Street Troops/Street Soldiers/Organizers You mentioned above. The reason the Rich Elites that are the High Priests of the Woke Religion are so vicious and are speeding so *fast* to our collective destruction is because, at the present time, the numbers are *against* 'em.
Most people who know anything are against the Fundamentalist Wokians. They're just plain repugnant, if You take a look at them. But they're so *vicious* that everybody's afraid to stick their neck out, right? Hopefully, the philosophers will come up with some things that encourage a critical mass of courageous people and, in turn, good lawyers to sue the crap outta these petty tyrants and put the "Fear 'o G*d" into them. So to speak.
TY to M. N.S. Lyons, in particular.
That is the synthesis you should seek.
thatnks for digging into the topic.
Late reply.
We have potential and that is all.
They have everything else - except perhaps the now Constitutionally unmoored military and police- for the Republic is dead and the Oath with it…
TY for the reply. Hope You're wrong, but not at all sure You are.
I think this argument (specifically the central theme of liberalism creating a world without limits) would be improved by recognizing the people driving liberalism and enabling woekism, i.e. the elites, the players and winners of contemporary "meritocracy", themselves live their lives with freely chosen limits. Yes, they can leave school early, but tend not to. They can have sex early and without birth control, but tend not to. They can divorce, but tend not to. They can be neglectful parents, but tend not to (being instead intensely affectionate and involved). They can binge watch trash for hours every day, but tend not to - too busy with work and harder hobbies.
This is the culmination of the liberal rejection of limits coupled with the equally liberal lionization of the individual pursuing his self interest - in a world of unrestrained choices, the clear-headed individual rationally chooses to serve his self interest by cultivating his own self-restraint and civility.
And this points to a key distinction we need to make when talking about limits - external vs. internal, or imposed vs. chosen. Liberalism of course accepts the latter, but not the former. And this leads to one of the central contradictions and challenges of contemporary society - in order to succeed (live a safe, self-actualized life), you must choose your own limits, and indeed your own sources of meaning. This is hard (and the existentialists had something to say about it too). But maybe not as hard as being a serf born into a job and onto an estate, neither of which you could ever really leave. This is the Wizards' enlightenment argument, but in different terms, and without some of the Wizards' love of the "traditional".
We should also reflect on where limits come from. Liberalism generally rejects externally imposed limits (much to be said here on positive vs. negative rights and the expanding role of the state in liberal societies - granted), especially from traditional sources of authority, and this leads naturally to the deprecation of those institutions and the attendant atomization widely noted and criticized in liberal societies. But that atomization is not complete - one of the great transformations of liberal societies over the past 100 years is the elevation of the nuclear family. And this is where we see limits imposed, and indeed culture created, in the form of intense family expectations for behavior and comportment (including self restraint), which are then propagated, refined, and find general expression through networks of similarly situated families (i.e. communities).
And thence Wokeism. When successful families choose their own values, get together with each other and mutually congratulate each other on and reinforce those values (gay kid great, gay kid with Ds NOT great, unless he's passionate about art and shows real dedication to his craft, in which case great!, unless his art is racist...), and then because of their success begin expressing those values in louder and more public forums, it beings to look like a new ideology. And is. And people who are slightly or completely outside those circles experience it as a new set of externally imposed limits, which, being products of liberalism themselves, they instinctively and aggressively reject, as all good enlightened liberals should.
So the question then becomes whether wokeism will become so dominant as to destroy the foundational liberalism (no limits, choose your own adventure) on which it is built, or whether it is just another thread in the chaotic weave of liberal society, soon to be overtaken by, and incorporated into, something else. I think it will be the latter. Dogma and liberalism are intrinsically incompatible, and wokesim is so very small when contrasted with the total cultural dominance of liberalism, and moreover is not even dogma, despite its occasional flashes of vindictive power. The tenets and definitions within wokeism are constantly debated from within and without, and there is by definition (both under liberalism and under wokeism) no central authority, certainly not the current administration or the UN, capable of guiding its development. It is a cultural flowering, wild and fecund and overwhelming for now, but when god is dead and the individual supreme, everyone chooses their own garden, and this garden is already being sanitized, corporatized, hybridized, and tamed.
But beware the fantasy of resurgent religion. That ship has sailed, sent on its permanent way not by wokeism but by liberalism and enlightenment, and the resulting destruction through trade wealth and social revolution of the ignorance (illiteracy) and hierarchies that reinforced state religion (it was all state religion before the Reformation, which of course was an early paroxysm of liberalism) and the flourishing of science that kicked out from under religion one of its last legs - the need to explain the terror and magnificence of the natural world. Wokeism does nothing to limit the power of those factors, and is not nearly terrible enough to inspire dyed in the wool liberals (nearly everyone) to clamor for new external limits.
A couple of nitpicks:
1. I understand that Bari Weiss was all in favor of cancel culture, as long as it was people she didn't approve of that were getting cancelled.
2. Norman Borlaug never claimed that here were no limits to population growth or resource consumption. He merely claimed that his innovations bought humanity some time.
Certainly don't mean to put words in Borlaug's mouth; here just relating Mann's use of him as an example of Wizardry, which I think works well enough.
That may be, but it is important to understand that Borlaug was aware that his Wizardry had limits. Or that we should be careful not to make claims for Wizardry that the Wizard himself didn't make.
You "understand" a scurrilous accusation that you post without any factual back-up? That's well beneath the level of discourse at this particular substack, IMO. And also completely off point.
Anyway, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/bari-weiss-resignation-new-york-times-victim-cancel-culture
Weiss says that the accusation that she campaigned for a Columbia professor to be fired is false:
https://twitter.com/bariweiss/status/971557407175462913
The article conspicuously sites no sources for that accusation.
Well, that settles something, I guess.
Nope. All your citations are of opinion pieces, no uncontested facts (such as actual quotes of things Weiss actually said publicly) in any of them.
They're all just haters, all just making things up to pick on poor little Bari.
Including the ones written by people who witnessed Weiss in action..
I see what you did there. ;)
Oh, and here's some more.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-real-war-on-free-speech/
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-real-war-on-free-speech/
No doubt "baseless".and scurillious" even. Bari herself probably says so.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-falsely-denies-her-years-of-attacks-on-the-academic-freedom-of-arab-scholars-who-criticize-israel/
https://benjiwheeler.medium.com/no-bari-weiss-is-not-just-asking-questions-1e858b29db9c
Meow?
I don't speak cat.
I can hear your pearls clacking.
Bari is not to be trusted. She is part of the problem. WAS and IS still.
Well worth a look at John Gray's Enlightenment's Wake for much of the elements of Deneen's argument.
There are some responses to the liberalism question that don't fall into your dichotomy. For instance, Scott Alexander's Archipelago idea (described at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/ ) proposes that instead of a single society with a homogenous culture or a coordinated power structure enforcing liberalism or some form of postliberalism on everyone, we have a variety of smaller subcultures or sub-societies with their own norms of whichever sort, with people being free to live in those whose norms they find most congenial. (He presents this as just another instantiation of the basic philosophical justification for liberalism, but it is quite different from classical liberalism.) However, while the Internet is well suited to such a model, elsewhere it would (as even Alexander admits) be very difficult to make work & even more difficult to implement.
In any case, I agree with previous commenters that all these ideological questions, unless they fracture the 'counter-revolution' thoroughly enough to prevent cooperative actions, are much less important in the short term than "How can we regain power/influence?"
This sounds very patchwork-y, which is crypto-neoreactionary if you don't mind the phrasing, but with patchwork proper, it would involve extreme confederation (or city state) design.
Great primer on post-liberalism and where it has come from in a US context.
For the UK story, suggest you look at the work of Phillip Blond, whose 2010 book Red Tory and work since has been an inspiration to many of the writers you mention. Some other post liberal UK writers you might enjoy: Mary Harrington, Maurice Glassman, Adrian Pabst, John Milbank.
The essence of liberalism is corrupted, it has moved away form individuality, and has moved to group identities, inevitably when it gains ground for one particular aberrant group, gives impetus to move for acceptance of additional aberrant groups. Societal dysfunction is served by a liberal Oliver Twist pathological excess, the hunger is never satiated. Requesting more and when rejected adopts a pathological radical reactionary behaviour. Society is then coerced by a screaming domination of a vulnerable injured party to oblige by irrational moral arguments, that although have one foot tentatively in reality, the other is floating in the abyss of nonsense, making the later stage liberalism irrational. The argument, then in opposition to contemporary liberalism is where does it end. Rousseau, in fact when challenged on his peoples assemblies and the undemocratic nature of them, replied we will make them into numerable groups where no one group has dominance. Although Rousseau is quoted consistently in social and political thought, he was forever equivocal and hard to pin down. https://emancipator1.substack.com/p/a-broad-strokes-assessment-of-the
When you hear them say “this is for the greater good,” run! One size fits all is good for those in control.
A fool, I’m going to answer the 4 questions before I read your argumentation:
1 save liberalism, it is the embrace of rational inquiry and egalitarian participation
2/ rationality is our only salvation
3/technological capitalism must be sustained because it properly addresses human duplicity with the creative destruction of animal spirit, it needs be rebalanced to offset greed but it’s inherent violence is elixir to our mendacity.
4/ new balance, fuck ya, what kinda question is that - nihilistic bullshit - a new balance is always achievable, it’s just a matter of how many people have to die.
I’m gonna read your argument later today or tomorrow because I’m busy now but, also, I owe it to myself to formulate my own ideas.
Reply to myself.
1/ I am definitely post liberal ( not paleo), time to defend obligation, human rights need a time out, the paleo argument does lead back necessarily to oppression.(NS is clearly a post liberal).
2/ “source of meaning “: people want meaning and a community that tells them they’re good people and give them a sense of belonging. As for rationality, it is all we got.
3/ I’m a prophet all day long, practical and fair is my mantra. The competition of capitalism saves us from referees, government sorts that will distort everything . Henry David Thoreau opined (paraphrasing) - “if someone says they’re coming to help you run the other way”.
4/ yes counter revolution achievable: the wizards are right, the prophets like me should be mostly be in charge but also overthrown occasionally.
NS you make me happy and extraordinarily enthused, thank you.
I need to reread Your comments, as well as the article, Sir RJF. I have my own opinions, as always, I posted above. But mebbe this all a dead thread by now?
I have the habit of re-reading Lyons at least three times, he is on the mark, he is my instructor.
Good. That means I have a lotta reading in front-a me.
I made this into a personality quiz:
https://red-beard.medium.com/a-counter-revolutionary-personality-quiz-d577a87b3aa8
On the first question, the differences are rather less than it at first appears. Since while it is true both sides take a different view of liberalism, they define "liberalism" in rather different ways.
What if spiritualists are called neo-believers? You suggested getting suggestions ... :)
The Washington Senators really screwed up by not signing Fidel as a pitcher (he was pretty good. True story).