26 Comments
User's avatar
Laura Creighton's avatar

Typo: you meant 'trans over cis' and not its reverse?

Helen Dale's avatar

Cheers & updated (not in the email you all received, alas, but it is what it is).

Laura Creighton's avatar

I am reading "The Virtue of Nationalism" by Yoram Hazony which is attempting to point out a way for renewal. And the concept of "subsidiarity" has left its Catholic roots and is being discussed more in the mainstream. But yes, more academic work in the humanities by those who reject the notion of the blank state and see Western culture as a positive good are badly needed.

the long warred's avatar

Answer;

Through 🤜🏻🗡️🔥💀

Hoarder of Grain's avatar

Absolutely magnificent on first reading and I am confident it will improve each time I visit it.

Featuring Sargon, Niall and Marc Andreessen no less!

You two are spoiling us, more please.

the long warred's avatar

People need to get out of their circle more, the replacement system is young, angry men.

“Both the postwar policy regimes are dying. Yet it is not at all clear that any useful replacement is struggling to be born.”

I suppose it could mean useful to who… I don’t think the “replacement” will care nor should they.

Rather Curmudgeonly's avatar

I very much like how you note the problems start with the conflict between Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau (though he remains un-named); perhaps the biggest problem is that we're still arguing about which of them is right, when really none of them are up to the challenges we live with now.

Neural Foundry's avatar

Stunning analysis of how bureaucratic pathologies from keju systems are basically repeating in Western institutions. Seen this firsthand in academic settings where Theory mastery completly trumps real-world competence. The Minnesota welfare fraud example really drives home how blank slate delusions enable elites to ignore blatent cultural incompatibilities. Dunno if national populism has actual policy solutions tho, seems like we're stuck between a dying regime and just critique.

Frederick Roth's avatar

This treatment of the Somali welfare fraud issue is actually quite generous. And the greater issue of mass immigration from 3rd world countries too. It assumes good faith and merely poor process is to blame for the stuff ups.

The reality is that the bourgeois left is driven by a guilt/punishment/compensation complex. It knows full well that these demographic shifts are harmful but pushes them deliberately because it believes all the suffering in the world is the West's/white people's fault and we must compensate "the other". The compensation is mostly paid out by working class people through processes such as offshoring jobs, later mass immigration.

the long warred's avatar

Yes well there’s also $Billions in Swag, there’s that too. Even the most troubled conscience must eat, and eat well.

Now the Somalis like the others are just Fungible Tokens, the real money goes to upper class whites. It’s coast to coast by the way, indeed USAID made it International.

youlian troyanov's avatar

Brilliant.

Nathalie Martinek PhD's avatar

Excellent piece that defines the conditions, like rigidity and hollowness, that pre-empt institutional decay. The Platonic impulse strikes me as less philosophical and more psychological: a desire for a clean slate because existence has become intolerable. When progress accelerates too fast, people stop trying to adapt and start trying to overwrite the world with something they can control.

GrouchyOldGeezer's avatar

A superb, even if miserable, analysis. Thank you for your time and expertise.

Will Whitman's avatar

Curious about the sweep of time and postwar trends? It is all here and all of it rings true. In the end, blundering blank slate multiculturalism (the battle of all against all) requires totalitarian social control but people tend to dislike heavy social controls. Meanwhile, citizens wake each day to the usual misleading persuasions of traditional and digital media, plus bitter campaigns taking place on university campuses. There is administration by proxy through NGOs. Foreigners and billionaires can buy them to do so. Hidden governmental psychological operations take place. It is a battle without soldiers in uniforms or guns. We are not living in peacetime. Interestingly, the more educated participate rather fiercely. For utopians, it is a matter of life and death of the psyche.

the long warred's avatar

Yes well it’s working itself out, including the nowhere part (Utopia).

Evan Maxwell's avatar

Dense and instructive discussion. It's particularly valuable on a day when Minnesotans, caught in denial of some very basic human truths, are working hard to prove they can't say the loud parts. Instead, the most progressive of them are fighting to protect what they see as truth by demonstrating in the streets with $2,000 firearms that have a tendency to go off all on their own, thus furthering the chaos that was being protested in the beginning.

the long warred's avatar

But at least Minnesota has an answer to Helen’s question. As does ICE.

the long warred's avatar

I don’t know about Australia and wish Australia well but Americans can see exactly where we’re going.

We 🇺🇸 can also anticipate the replacement:

The Strongest.

the long warred's avatar

“Such intellectual resources as national populists do have are focused far more on general critique of the neoliberal policy regime, not the painstaking work of policy development.”

Is it possible that national populists don’t care about intellectual resources? Or trust policy developers?

Or intellectuals?

Why would they?

How can they if they wanted to ?

They don’t.

Rather Curmudgeonly's avatar

One elite or another will form the next policy. There is much to distrust in a policy elite that leaps in front of a populist movement to claim leadership. But I wouldn't expect an organic elite development from national populists, since populist movements tend to be incoherent at a policy level.

the long warred's avatar

Laws fail.

Bullets work.

coherently.

Evan Maxwell's avatar

Dense and instructive discussion. It's particularly valuable on a day when Minnesotans, caught in denial of some very basic human truths, are working hard to prove they can't say the loud parts. Instead, the most progressive of them are fighting to protect what they see as truth by demonstrating in the streets with $2,000 firearms that have a tendency to go off all on their own, thus furthering the chaos that was being protested in the beginning.