What is Freedom? We have been told that freedom is the power to exercise our will to make choices without restraint. But for a Christian, freedom is something all together different. What is it? What is “freedom?” In today’s context we often associate the word “freedom” with the ability to exercise our
Political Theology
Centrist Caesars, Twitter X And The ADL On the competing visions of liberalism at the heart of Twitter X vs ADL war There’s an interesting exchange in George RR Martin’s Clash of Kings in which Varys, the scheming eunuch, and Tyrion ruminate over the ethereal nature of Power. The question fundamentally is where Power actually
The evil of banality On the consequences of unseeing our inheritance “A peculiar characteristic of our times is the combination of significant scenes with insignificant actors. … Yet one must concede the zeitgeist an infallible hand in picking out [so many trivial men]—if we consider it in just one of its possible aspects, that
THE STONE AGE MINDSET Over the last few weeks, I have been exploring Orkney. It is a cluster of small islands that are located an hour north of mainland Scotland by ferry. One of its most striking features is that it is home to several Neolithic tombs, stone circles and domestic complexes. These monuments
Living within the Machine: the Problem of Deism I talk a lot about the effects of technology, the technical system and the way of thinking called technique, but they are sustained by a way of seeing the universe that we might broadly call: "Deism" After a day of spreadsheets, emails, reports and meetings, Brandon was glad the day
The prejudice against prejudice On reclaiming language and speaking the truth Every object of knowledge demands a method of knowledge proper to it. In other words, the way to understand anything is to take every object of study on its own terms. Accept the given as it gives itself and allow it to exist
The Particularism of Joseph Schumpeter Re-reading Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy,[i] I’ve been struck by how insightful it is on many counts, not least his essentially elitist view of society inherited from Pareto and, related, his view that much of human thinking is non-rational and downstream of instincts, which is to
Three questions for Richard Hanania "It is sad to let them trap you in so little a box." Richard Hanania used to suck—he tells us so himself. This is the hardest kind of post to write. And if I do say so myself—not having anything to hide, since I never tried to protect
The obliteration of subjectivity On the destruction of inwardness in noiseworld In his 1958 essay Individuality and Modernity, the ever-astute Richard Weaver observes that much of our happiness is dependent upon our ability to maintain a delicate tension between our inner lives and the outer world. He assumes that our attention is, or at
The China Convergence Yes, the West is becoming more like China. Here is the real reason why. I do believe this is the longest thing I’ve ever written, but also the most important. Read with a stiff drink. – N.S. Lyons Differences and tensions between the United States and China have never
Man, Woman, and the Interregnum Tyrans In what I call the postmodern interregnum tyrans, there is an ever expanding and unhealthy conflict between the sexes. This gulf must be closed and if it is unnaturally prevented from doing so it will bring continuous disaster. Men and women need each other in proper balance, to regulate their
High Noon: The Warriors and The Merchants In my forthcoming book, The Prophets of Doom, a recurring feature of the analysis – which, in fact, goes hand-in-glove with analysis derived from elite theory as per The Populist Delusion – is the notion that there are four broad social types who may rule. Oswald Spengler called them the Four Estates,
The paranoid style of American precrime On the necessity of transcending leftard schizotemporality In Storm of Steel, his vividly gripping account of his experiences as an officer in the Great War, Ernst Jünger writes about a fellow soldier named Eisen, a plump little man who was always shivering in the trenches. To fight the cold, he
Leftism's Not Dead My final retrospective on Professor McManus I don't like to revisit old dialogues. Nevertheless, something about my recent interaction with online leftist Matt McManus stuck in my craw, and I found myself revisiting some of our previous talking points. Perhaps it’s because Professor McManus is one of the few
The metaphysics and politics of coffee My coffee has gone cold and so now I must contemplate the entire universe Every time you make yourself a cup of coffee, maybe while standing nearly lifeless (or half dead) in front of that coffee pot on a particularly dismal Monday morning, it is not difficult to take it
The Paradox of Tony Blair: The Schmittian Liberalism of Divine Right Carl Schmitt 101 is rooted in an insight by Thomas Hobbes who wrote: ‘It is men and arms, not words and promises, that make the force and power of the laws.’ From this Schmitt derives many of his core principles: all power is decisionist; neutrality is a myth; the essence
Hunting the white stag On the inevitability of hierarchies In the first of his Arthurian Romances, Chrétien de Troyes tells a rather odd story. At least, it is odd by modern standards; and modern standards should not necessarily be trusted. The story goes that a bunch of men, led by King Arthur, go out
The Faustian Left And The Sisters Of Fate Fate, Destiny and a Confused Bearded Lady This past week Fate as a concept has been on my mind quite a lot. I began considering Fate when I happened to come across a video of a female-to-male transexual who was crying because — now complete with a beard — she never knew
Dharma and Adharma “Do the needful.”
Putting the Woke Away For the past couple of years, I have talked a lot about containment as a key strategy of power. I defined and outlined what that entails in an article called ‘On Containment’. We used to talk about this as ‘Back to Fresh Prince’, but since I started this substack, as
Metamodernism A quick peak under the mask of the will to oscillate Charlie Kaufman’s 2008 film Synecdoche, New York is possibly the quintessential postmodern film. It makes use of all the stuff we intuitively associate with postmodernism: irony, deconstruction, pastiche, relativism, and, of course, the rejection of big stories as
Liberal Subversion There is liberalism in many of us, and many see this as harmless or even good, but it is insidious. It tears at our core instincts, and leads us to destruction. We must tear this away from ourselves if we wish our civilization to survive. Our liberal paradigm seems harmless,
Liberalism vs. Democracy: Which is the more entropic force? Mike from Imperium Press is one person whose articles I read without fail: he’s always interesting, seldom wrong, and more often than not I agree with him. You should subscribe to him. However, recently, he wrote a piece with which I disagree, or at least which is at odds
The psychopolitics of mimicry On the destruction of the human being and the plague of identities Recently, a TikTokker showed how limb lengthening surgery made it possible for him to go from being five feet five inches tall to six feet tall. Mary Harrington perceptively and hilariously suggests that the TikTokker in question is
Conspiratorial realism A rather rough speculation on why conspiracy theories might turn out to be true It is remarkable that very young children, without ever being taught, will realise that absolutely nothing in the world explains itself. This is what’s behind that infamous why phase. Kids will ask why until grownups,
Destroying Differences As I explained on Lambster last weekend, “What the Right and Christians Must Learn from Each Other”, egalitarians hold a view of man as alienated from God and each other through our differences. This tragic alienation can only be resolved by losing our differences and being reabsorbed. …tragic alienation will
Lazy Jack An exegesis of a folk tale Consider your life as a question. How will you, as this live hermeneutical forcefield, as this mode of perception irregularly used by strangers, be an answer to this world that questions you; and how will you allow the world to answer the question of
HOLY MOUNTAINS AND THE AMERICAN DISEASE I recently took a month’s long trip to Canada. It was a trip I had always wanted to take since I was a boy; to leave the old world and venture to the bastion of freedom that was the Americas. What I had always imagined was more the frontier
God's been sacked A memo to all staff “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889). To all staff, To curb rumours, we want to bring to your attention a matter of some importance. As you are already
Upheaval Interview: Matthew B. Crawford A dialogue on embodied reality, self-governance, and technocracy with the mechanic-philosopher Matthew B. Crawford is a philosopher. Actually he’s more like a modern Renaissance man: a self-taught auto-mechanic and one-time custom motorcycle shop owner, a repentant former D.C. think tanker, a best-selling author with an undergraduate education in
The question concerning AI Thinking about inhuman pseudo-intelligence with Martin Heidegger “We look into the danger and see the growth of the saving power. Through this we are not yet saved. But we are summoned to hope in the growing light of the saving power. How can this happen? Here and now and in
Digging craters to catch the rain A brief guide to thinking in four directions “In the form in which it comes, a thought is a sign with many meanings, requiring interpretation or, more precisely, an arbitrary narrowing and restriction before it finally becomes clear. It arises in me—where from? How? I don’t know. It
Chimpanzee Power Politics A couple of months ago, I produced a video entitled ‘Chimpanzee Power Politics’. It focussed on the pioneering work of the primatologist Frans de Waal. In his book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, de Waal analyzed the behavior of a group of Chimps housed at Burgers Zoo in
A RATIONALIST’S ARGUMENT FOR IRRATIONALISM “Some men have been rational for short periods- this is the sum total of the appearance of Reason in History. But they have never made history, as it is irrational.” (Yockey, 2022) I don’t believe that I am the first young man to become enraptured by the ideas of
Fridge Theory Of Politics Lessons from Elite Theory Introduction It is a common pastime in these online circles to bemoan the loss of a civilization that was. Whether it is the glory days of the 1950's economic boom, the patchwork-tapestry of culture and innovation that was the European renaissance, or even the Roman empire
Doom Further thoughts on the war on reality The nominalist revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.1 If so many people hadn’t succumbed to a fringe philosophical development in the middle ages, the world would look very different. If nominalism had not sprung up,
The Temptations of Carl Schmitt A long look at the man of the moment in a totalizing age of strife “Today will be very instructive for those still clinging to the idea of returning to norms and sacred institutions,” tweeted one popular young right-wing commentator shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft ruling
CYCLICAL HISTORY – A BRIEF INTRO TO GLUBB, TAINTER, AND TURCHIN Among the thinkers who work within the broad school of cyclical history, many fall into one of two major camps: those who intuit or infer patterns in existing histories or narratives, and those who model the ebbing and flowing from a statistical viewpoint. The latter can more robustly verify the
THE CRISIS OF MODERN SECULARISM Modern Secularism is in crisis. There is a common view that traditional religions are in their own crisis, which is largely true, there is a certain amount of ignorance of how our ideas of secular society are being completely changed, if not supplanted. While this is not a strictly new
Monarchy and the Mind of the Matriarch Three short essays about one thing Opening my notepad today, I happened on three notes that added up to one essay. The first read “The biggest intellectual mistake of the 20th century”, the second “The Benefits of Monarchy”, and the last simply “The Woman Question”. Perhaps the sum will be
The art of descandalisation On outrage porn, mimesis, and forgiveness One of the signs of our time is the almost overwhelming prevalence of so-called outrage porn. That colloquialism refers to things that provoke shock or indignation, whether by design or default. And, my goodness, there’s a lot of it around. Probably we did
Dispatch: The Children's Crusade A self-hating generation comes of age “An ancient axiom of politics teaches that a spoiled people invite despotic control. Their failure to maintain internal discipline is followed by some rationalized organization in the service of a single powerful will. In this particular, at least, history, with all her volumes vast,
The Luddites and Linus Torvalds Escaping Modernity's Bind There is a man standing on the neck of modern thought and his name is Ned Ludd. Really, I hated Ned before I knew his name, despite him not being American, not being my contemporary, and, well, not being real. As a legend, as an archetype, the
IDEOLOGICAL AMNESIA Ideology, like religion; matters to people. So much so that it will make them throw away their lives in the hopes that their chosen doctrine will be empowered. No amount of money will convince a man to sacrifice his life in such a way. Clearly, ideology matters, with differing contents
The great discarnation The ontology of the work of AI and its hermeneutical insignificance “I dont have nothing only words to put down on paper. Its so hard. Some times theres mor in the emty paper nor there is when you get the writing down on it. You try to word the big
40 Lessons from Warhammer 40k Learning from the Grim-Dark Future free, text It's time to talk about everyone’s favorite science fiction pulp setting: Warhammer 40000. Since its inception, this extended fictional universe (designed as the backdrop for miniature war-gaming) popularized the image of the "Grim-dark" future. Of course, most of 40k's core ideas are
The incoherence of rights Thinking about ethics with Marshall McLuhan “A friend of mine who tried to teach something about the forms of media in secondary school was struck by one unanimous response. The students could not for a moment accept the suggestion that the press or any other public means of communication could
Transcendences Between limits and possibilities One of the most natural of human desires, a desire that is arguably at the very centre of everything we are and do, is the desire for transcendence. But as with all natural things, all apparent givens, this desire is part of the background of life.
The Hungry Country Three Trials and Three Acquittals “…respect for the memories and deeds of our ancestors is security for the present and seed-corn for the future.” —Richard Taylor Lares and Penates Somehow through the centuries my family has managed to retain some of that “older religiousness” of the early American yeoman. We
Orderly Queues to Nowhere It’s a free country, ain’t it? “Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietam servitutem." Sometimes I just can't believe this is the same place I grew up. When I was a kid everybody recited that ancient American catechism: "It's a free country, ain’t it?" But I can't remember the
Liberalism No Work, Very Sad Sometime last month I found myself drawn again into a conversation (conflict?) with the “radical centrists” Adam and Sitch. Most of the exchange was civil, but towards the end my interlocutors on the radical center continuously accused me of being “evasive” and hiding what I really believed as a right-winger.
ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL Working carefully, methodically, diligently, he makes a tiny little capsule. It is hidden, safe, barely perceptible to his predators. Enclosing himself, he lays dormant, silent for about two weeks. Then, he emerges. Now with wings, now a creature of flight, a caterpillar has changed into a butterfly. Or did he
BUILD YOUR TRIBE The globalized, disenfranchised, sterilized, secularized, urbanized, and the personalized world which our children are being born into idolizes the deracinated individual above all else. The deracinated individual is rootless, isolated, and bereft of both heritage and meaningful ties to the culture of their ancestors. The deracinated individual is therefore easily
A PASSING THOUGHT ON SPENGLER’S CYCLE The Spenglerian cycle, at least in part, has been accepted as the God-given truth by most on the side of it. I argue elsewhere that this is due to Spengler being a prophet and not a philosopher. Yet even prophets have trouble predicting the entire future, and every theory has
THE HIGH TECH HALFWIT Last summer, I was amazed to watch my five-year-old daughter get on her first bicycle and immediately ride it like she had been doing it all her life. She didn’t need a push first or someone to hold on and give her a sense of safety. There were no
LESSONS FROM HOPPE: YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE There are forms of organizations that cause society to degenerate. This is the underlying theory in much of Hoppe’s work, from “Democracy: The God that Failed” to “Getting Libertarianism Right”, and there are lessons to be taken here for any right-winger, even those who reject the Austro-libertarian approach of
THOMAS CARLYLE: THE DIVINITY OF ORDER Despite the pains and lengths man has suffered to legislate and manage post-industrial society, we find ourselves living in a state of disorder, and that we have lived in a growing state of it for centuries at the least. No matter the quantity of data and peer-reviewed studies that suggest