Post: #26

(12-10-2013 07:59 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  A lot of these "dark enlightenment" or neo-reactionaries are straight-out white nationalists, Nazis, anti-Semites and nutballs.

I am not a white nationalist for many reasons ranging from the fact that I think it is silly to exclude smart outsiders from your group (in this respect, I am broadly pro-Australia's points based immigration policy) to the fact that I am unlikely to ever live in the West again to the corollary to that if I ever have children they will most likely not be white. However, there are two points to make about white nationalists.

Firstly, it's silly to characterise a lot of NR as being about white nationalism. It's essentially about culture/politics. Secondly, ethnonationalism is something that largely seems to only be bad if it comes from white people. It's trickier in the sense of New World countries, but in Europe, the people there have existed there for thousands of years and are now being colonised. Colonialism was said to be a bad thing outside of the West, but is touted as a good thing for the West. There are huge regions within many Western European nations that are, to all intents and purposes, not Western culturally anymore. I'm not talking about superficial stuff like there are lots of different restaurants. I mean that all sorts of really deep stuff, right down to judicial proceedings, are not Western anymore in such places. There is a bizarre irony that many of the tenets of liberalism have been completely rejected and replaced in such places. Homophobia, sexism, etc. are rife, yet the silence on this contradiction from the left is deafening. Further to this, a complaint about this is that it has occurred under anti-democratic conditions. The people of Western Europe were not asked to vote on this, in general, and when they have been asked to vote on this and voted "incorrectly" (e.g. Switzerland banning minarets), they're decried as racists. So democracy is only good if you vote the "correct" way. Anyway, as I wrote above, it is not even about race. It is about culture, specifically the issue of assimilating vs supplanting.

Quote:The only reason people would advocate for absolute monarchy or fascism is that they've forgotten how bad absolute monarchy or fascism is.

There are many things to say about this. Firstly, there is hardly any consensus within NR as to what the best system of government would be, that's why there is the "neo" part in the name. Many people realise that it would be both impractical, and probably not even desirable, to try to fully return to some sort of mythical golden age, if only because we have already lived history since then and so could not return to the same state of mind (i.e. that you can never see something the first time twice). Some people do advocate monarchy. Some people do advocate fascism. There is lots of disagreement. Others advocate limited republican franchise a la the nineteenth century in places like Britain or the US. There actually is a very good argument, or set of arguments, for only land owning males being allowed to vote. Others advocate something along the lines of anarcho-capitalism. There are those who think there will be some Heinlein-esque technological escape to the stars.

NR is not even prescriptive. However, it is descriptive. What it acknowledges is two things. Firstly, Western countries are not even democratic anyway. Society is driven and controlled partly by a true plutocracy. Seriously, the two presidential candidates in the last US election spent billions on their campaigns and were/are beholden to the plutocracy anyway. Is this even debatable? Simultaneously, society is also driven by something defined as the "Cathedral", which covers many things, not limited to the bureaucracy, the media, academia, and many other formal and informal networks of very undemocratic institutions. These sometimes overlap with the democratic process, but mostly, they are completely beyond our control.

We already live in an oligarchy. The divide between rich and poor is only going to increase. The middle class is being hollowed out and we will eventually have open oligarchy. There have been recent hints about this from some of these Cathedral clowns with Tyler Cowen telling us we'll have to get used to eating beans and Thomas Friedman telling us we'll have to rent out our couches via AirBnB to make ends meet.

From this, we get to the second point, that modernity is extremely dysfunctional. We can draw many parallels between feminism, modern female behaviour and the disenfranchisement of men, fat acceptance and all the rest of the things people complain about on this site to plenty of other issues within society from unsustainable national debt to what absurdly passes for education and so on. As I wrote above, there is not even consensus on how to fix these issues, merely that there are such issues.

Quote:Even if the USA is moving towards something like semi-authoritarian France or Singapore, it would still be a hell of a lot better than living in a Christian version of Saudi Arabia or in Franco Spain.

The USA is already largely there. You're also missing the point regarding religion. Modern progressivism is fundamentalist, intolerant and expansionistic. It fills the vacuum of a modern proselytising religion in the supposedly post-religious West. Indeed, NR actually traces modern progressivism back to New England puritanism or people such as Oliver Cromwell. Nietzsche also noticed this in the 19th century when (I'm paraphrasing him here) he said English socialism was essentially Christianity without Jesus. For more on this topic, I would recommend reading Mencius Moldbug's Richard Dawkins Got Pwned. It's an extremely long (seven part) essay, but it is highly illuminating.

I am an atheist. However, I find modern progressives just as scary as Christian fundamentalists, Islamists or any other bunch of do gooding busy bodies who have to inflict themselves upon everyone else and who inevitably resort to force (including hounding you out of a job) to do so. They also live under the motto of "no enemies to the left, no friends to the right", which is why their ideas and policies become increasingly extreme over time. As I wrote above, just look at what happens regarding thought crime on the issues of sex or male:female relations. Now extrapolate that to all sorts of other areas. If you can take the red pill on feminism, you can take it on progressivism in general.

Post: #27

(12-10-2013 10:46 PM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  Modern progressivism is fundamentalist, intolerant and expansionistic.

Modern liberalism is simply a slower road to the same destination already visited by means of the superhighways of socialism (i.e., Nazism) and communism. History repeats in cycles and waves, enabled by the short memories of the lazy, the greedy, the stupid, and the ignorant.

I can already see the writing on the wall regarding the modern welfare states and their inevitable metamorphosis into police states. As the non-producers begin to outnumber the producers amongst the electorate, the non-producing majority will willingly vote to exchange their liberty for unearned government benefits gained by extensive wealth transfer. That is exactly why only property owners could vote in the early days of the Republic.

Those welfare states will inevitably resort to force to confiscate enough wealth to keep the masses happy -- and to ensure the continued status of the political elite. Bread and circuses. Welfare and war.

Post: #28

I think its inevitable that we end up with an income guarantee type of system. Robotics, 3D printing and globalization with end shit tons of jobs and people will willingly give up almost any kind of privacy or freedom for their rent check each month. Brave new world type situation is what I expect in the upcoming 20-30 years.

Post: #29

@Feisbook Control Brilliant and very informative answer sir. Thank you.

Post: #30

(05-11-2015 09:13 PM)captain_shane Wrote:  I think its inevitable that we end up with an income guarantee type of system. Robotics, 3D printing and globalization with end shit tons of jobs and people will willingly give up almost any kind of privacy or freedom for their rent check each month. Brave new world type situation is what I expect in the upcoming 20-30 years.

The cultural imperative to "have a job" is approaching obsolescence unless humanity experiences a massive setback. The question then is how to occupy people's time constructively rather than destructively.

Post: #31

I've been reading up on constitutional history myself recently. A few pro-monarchist critiques of democracy (I think they call themselves neo reactionaries), and some older Greek material regarding monarchy/tyranny, aristocracy/oligarchy, and democracy/ochloracy (damn those ancient Greeks were smart).

One conclusion that I've come to is that democracy itself is inherently Leftist, and may in fact be the ultimate root and source of Leftism, rather than Leftism being a separate phenomena. I've been quite excited by this idea actually, as I feel I'm getting closer to answering the question 'what is the nature of the Left?'.

One thing people should note is that just because you attempt to give everyone equal power through the vote, does not do away with the unequal nature of men. Some men are smarter, more socially savvy, and more ruthless and amoral than others. These are the so called 'plutocrats' which occupy the void created in society by the absence of an aristocracy and monarch.

People complain about the 'money in politics', the corruption, the subsidies and favourable regulations to special groups, the lucrative government contracts and the military industrial complex, as though these are just blights on democracy that should be remedied. What they don't understand is that these are actually a direct structural result from democracy itself.

A mixed constitution is best, and an unchecked king/nobels/masses with absolute power is the biggest cause of social problems. The worst constitutional mistake the US made was the 17th amendment, and the UK the 1911 Parliament Act.