AltRight Radio: The Trajectories of the American Right

Paul Gottfried joins Richard to discuss the paleos, the neos, the Old Right, Buckley, and the conquest of the conservative movement by neoconservatives.

Richard Spencer responds to Lawrence Auster -- Austercized:

I don't write this as a plea for Larry to be more charitable towards me and my website, or for him to let a hundred flowers bloom or anything like that. Rigorous debate, in the Ancient Greek sense of agon, a testing of ideas, is important. And anyone who makes a serious argument should assume that he's right, his opponent's wrong, and his peers should accept his point of view and drop competing ones.

But it is possible for people to disagree and remain in a working coalition or "big tent." And in his recent blog posts on me and Alternative Right, in which AltRight gets all but condemned, Larry seems to misunderstand altogether what a coalition is.

Contrary to the charges that AltRight is hopelessly "inconsistent" -- a motley crew of Catholics, atheists, critics of Israel and Jews, et al. all under the banner of "traditionalism" -- what's remarkable is just how much everyone here agrees with one another on real, concrete issues.

Everyone thinks, for instance, that Obamacare is a disastrous addition to an already rotten healthcare system; everyone thinks immigration should not only be curtailed but changed to reflect America's identity as a Western European nation; everyone thinks the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are fool's errands (here we depart from Larry); everyone agrees that the current welfare/warfare state is a monstrosity and inimical to traditional culture; everyone wants to repeal affirmative-action and most anti-discrimination legislation; und so weiter...

So, we have a working coalition. And though I don't think we'll ever command a majority in these United States (as they are today, at least), there's a sizable contingent of the public that's on board with us. For this reason, and others, I don't think debating policy will actually ever be a crucial component of AltRight. (And since Obama will undoubtedly propose all sorts of new stimulus and welfare packages in the near future that we probably won't have time to address, readers can just assume that we're against them all.)

Larry is right, of course, that many of us disagree on fundamental -- philosophical and theological -- issues. But agreement in these areas is actually not a prerequisite for a coalition. For a century, the French far Right has been composed of "Nietzscheans" and ultra Catholics, and such an arrangement made up Francisco Franco's ruling regime. One could even argue that we have a stronger coalition than the postwar conservative movement, which is always looking for a Big Enemy (Communism, Terrorism) to unify itself against. So, Larry is making a problem where there need not be one.

NATO RIP? by Srdja Trifkovic

NATO: unnecessary and harmful -- In terms of a realist grand strategy, NATO is detrimental to U.S. security. It forces America to assume at least nominal responsibility for open-ended maintenance of a host of disputed frontiers that were drawn, often arbitrarily, by Communist dictators, long-dead Versailles diplomats, and assorted local tyrants, and which bear little relation to ethnicity, geography, or history. With an ever-expanding NATO, eventual adjustments -- which are inevitable -- will be more potentially violent for the countries concerned and more risky for the United States. America does not and should not have any interest in preserving an indefinite status quo in the region.

Qristina & Quinn Bachand - Home (MySpace; their youtube account)

Tim Chaisson and Morning Fold (MySpace)

Battle of Ideas: Capitalism – What Is it Good For?

Fora.TV

Speakers:
Sanjaya Baru,
Phillip Blond,
Dolan Cummings,
Frank Furedi,
Paul Ormerod

PāNu: KILL THIS BILL

Lothrop Stoddard

Thomas F. Bertonneau, American Nietzsche (part I) and American Nietzsche (part II)

(Hmm... American Renaissance article.)

Alternative Right: Anti-Christian or post-Christian?

Some have claimed that the website is anti-Christian; the charge had been levelled before at certain writers around Mr. Spencer when they were at TakiMag. Is there a fair charge, if this "alternative right" includes professing Christians among its ranks?

James Kalb concludes his essay published at Alternative Right, "The One, the Many, and the Alternative Right":

The theo-trad option

What the foregoing shows is that modernist--secularist, rationalist, reductionist--alternatives to liberalism don't work.

Like liberalism, they try to be more rational than the traditional order, and give us clear, demonstrable, forceful answers that will stand up in the modern battle of ideologies. They do that though by making the world smaller and simpler than it has to be for us to inhabit, and end up as crazy as liberalism and probably more violent.

That's why, I suppose, Alternative Right found it advisable to define itself as "magazine of radical traditionalism," where "radical traditionalism" is defined (I also suppose) in a "big tent" fashion to include people other than the Integral Traditionalists.

A big tent is a nice place to discuss things, but it doesn't tell us how to understand the world and organize human life. What's needed to deal with the issues we've run into is some more particular view that--no doubt along with other requirements--accepts that universals, particulars, and intermediate arrangements are all necessary and real. None reduces into the others, and each has its role:

* Universals provide the setting that determines the nature and significance of particulars.
* Particulars give universals reality and function.
* Intermediate arrangements look both ways. From one direction they bring universals down to earth and make them particular standards individuals can deal with. Instead of Duty we have particular duties to attend to. From the other direction, they connect individuals to more universal concerns by making them part of something concrete larger than themselves.

The basic issue for an alternative right, then, is what can bring particulars, universals, and intermediate arrangements into a stable and satisfying common order that respects each. Unless we have some such principle we're not going to be able to propose anything that works better than liberalism.

And that, of course, is a religious question. The basic question for the alternative right, then, is which religion best presents a cosmic order that does justice to all its elements. The issues really are that basic. Secular rationalism won't solve them. Assertion of particular identity and denunciation of universals wouldn't solve them even if that move made sense for Western man. We need something beyond those things.

He doesn't give his own answer here, but I don't think it is Islam. Alas, I can't access the comments so I don't know what others have written in response to the essay. Mr. Kalb professes Catholic Christianity to be the answer. Only a few of the commentors assert a belief in Christianity; others reject Christianity or do not think that the theo-trad option is viable.

See his "Is Christianity for Wimps?"

Insight Scoop: Carl Olson interviews Fr. Robert Cook, President of Wyoming College: Discovering Wisdom in the Wilderness.

Catholic Light: Pope Benedict minds sex abuse (the letter)

Rod Dreher recently criticized the pope for not doing what is necessary, namely, removing bishops who are responsible for covering-up and other sorts of malfeasance. Commentors have lambasted the attempt to defend papal inaction behind a false "conciliarity." Is it possible for a bishop to be removed from office for malfeasance? What would be the correct canonical procedure for this? And would the Orthodox be content with the sort of ecclesiology this sort of papal power represents? Having a bishop removed from office is not the same as declaring him cut off from communion, or a pretender to the bishop's chair. Who should be able to declare a bishop unfit for office? His brother bishops? The faithful? The priests who are under his authority? All three groups, working in tandem?

John Allen, Will Ratzinger's past trump Benedict's present?
Insight Scoop: Pope Benedict XVI's Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland
If the Pope is responsible, what about the Secretary of Education?

Worse than the Red Cross?

@TAC mentions this report by Debbie Schlussel about Sean Hannity's "Freedom Concerts": Sean Hannity’s Freedom CONcert Scam: Almost None of Charity’s $ Went to Injured Troops, Kids of Fallen Troops; G5s for Vannity? which includes a rejoinder to the response by Freedom Alliance. If the allegation is true, then one has even more reason not to respect Sean Hannity as a "conservative." Those stars participating in the concerts should be contacted and notified so that they can do their own investigation and issue a press release. (If they acquiesce in this, or are complicit, then is a boycott necessary?)

I read the comments left by devout vegans for this blog post. They may be consistent with respect to their principles, but their equating the moral value of animals with that of human beings is bewildering. How else can one explain such a smug and yet wrong-headed worldview other than pride? Is liberalism the source of the view that death is the greatest evil, followed by pain and suffering? (Hence killing is always morally wrong or evil because it brings about death.) I also looked at this website, Vegetarians are Evil, which is run by a certai blogger.

Mark Sisson, My Escape from Vegan Island

Yes: 8 Keys to a Successful Commons by Elinor Ostrom
Advice on how to govern our commons by Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom.

1. Define clear group boundaries.

2. Match rules governing use of common goods to local needs and conditions.

3. Ensure that those affected by the rules can participate in modifying the rules.

4. Make sure the rulemaking rights of community members are respected by outside authorities.

5. Develop a system, carried out by community members, for monitoring members’ behavior.

6. Use graduated sanctions for rule violators.

7. Provide accessible, low-cost means for dispute resolution.

8. Build responsibility for governing the common resource in nested tiers from the lowest level up to the entire interconnected system.

CNN: Drug criminals block roads in Mexico

The trouble started January 18 when a Gulf cartel member killed top Zeta lieutenant Victor Mendoza. The Zetas demanded that the Gulf cartel turn over the killer, but the narco group refused. The Zetas, composed mostly of former elite military troops, had been the armed enforcers for the Gulf cartel since 2001. The Zetas have become more independent in recent years, and the all-out war between the two cartels indicates the split is apparently permanent.

Mexican marines stand during the presentation of Alberto Mendoza Contreras alias "The bad kid", a suspected leader of the Beltran Leyva cartel, in Monterrey March 19, 2010. Drug violence has exploded across Mexico since President Felipe Calderon came to power in late 2006 and set the army on smuggling gangs. Turf wars between rival cartels and security forces have killed nearly 19,000 people in three years, with the worst of the bloodshed seen in northern border cities. (Reuters/Daylife)

Students smile as they pose for pictures in front of a pile incinerated drugs at the 20th Cavalry Regiment military base in Ciudad Juarez March 18, 2010. More than two ton of narcotics, including marijuana, heroine and cocaine, were incinerated as part of the Chihuahua joint operation, in which the federal government sent thousands of soldiers to curb drug violence in Mexico's bloodiest city on the U.S. border. (Reuters/Daylife)

Soldiers escort Jose Alfredo Soto, a.k.a. "El 7," as he is presented to the press in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Wednesday, March 17, 2010. According to the army, Soto is an alleged member of the drug gang "La Linea" and is a suspect in the January massacre of 16 people in Ciudad Juarez, many of them teenagers. (AP/Daylife)

It's time to deal with Peak Oil

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute

The "Peak Oil" concept -- that the world’s petroleum-production rate will soon reach its maximum and commence an inevitable decline, with negative economic consequences — has been around in scientifically articulated form at least since 1998; long enough to see it confirmed in significant ways.

(original)

Christopher Check, Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, Pray for Us!

The land that spawned Oliver Cromwell has given the Irish enough sorrow for the world to share, and anyone doubting the trials of Irish in America might look into the cruelty they endured as conscripts in Zachary Taylor’s army, cruelty that, along with our ill-treatment of the Mexican female population and desecration of Catholic churches south of the Rio Grande, drove the San Patricios to defect and fight for the Mexicans during the war even Ulysses Grant called unjust. My affection for Irish protest songs draws no end of ridicule from Tom Fleming and no end of patient sighs from Fr. Hugh Barbour. Both men, with scholastic precision, have explained to me why English folk songs are musically and morally superior...

Those arguments would come in handy for agitating various people at Christendom... haha.

Mr. Check concludes his piece:

Italian holy cards probably have not helped us form the image of Saint Joseph invoked by these two great popes. But an understanding of the Patron of the Universal Church as her militant protector from the forces of revolution is one we should cultivate. Fathers especially. After all, it is fathers of Christian families, Charles Péguy observed, that are today’s counter-revolutionaries.

Do Catholics need a men's movement? Probably not, but Catholic men should invoke the aid of St. Joseph as they live up to their vocation and try to bring about sanity in an insane world.

When will it end.

The Jobs Bill and Other Faux Remedies, by Alan Nasser

Greenspan Returns, by Mike Whitney

A Time-Release Depression, by Alan Farago

NYT: Rediscovering Salsa, the Soul of Mexico in a Bowl

Catholic Light: "Medjugorje under the magnifying glass"

JMG, Energy Concentration Revisited

Someone has written a response to his previous posts: Limits on the Thermodynamic Potential of Archdruids by Stuart Staniford, Early Warning (original)

Asia News: Pope: economic crisis opportunity to think of a more "human" development model
The crisis overcome more successfully by those companies able to follow a moral and caring behaviour towards people and the territory. Development, in any field of human existence also implies openness to the transcendent.

Beijing admits: Gao Zhisheng "was sentenced"
The Christian lawyer, targeted by authorities for his fights for human rights and religious freedom, has vanished into thin air since February 2009. The authorities admit for the first time he was sentenced for subversion against the state. The protests of the international community.

Kim Jong-il sentences official to death for failed currency reform
Pak Nam-gi, a 77-year-old technocrat, was charged with “deliberately ruining the national economy”. Sacked in January, he was executed last week. He served as scapegoat for the failed currency reform promoted by Kim Jong-il.

Is 수상한 삼형제 ultimately subversive of tradition?

Last week's episodes of Three Brothers on KBS America featured a Lunar New Year religious ceremony/sacrifice for the ancestors. Eoyeong told Isang that she had to stay with her father to perform the ceremony, since her family had no sons and she was the oldest. Isang decided to stay with her until the ceremony was performed, and then they went over to his parents'. This might seem to be a reasonable compromise for a tough situation, but rules in a patriarchal society exist in order to delimit and apportion duties. Why couldn't Eoyeong's father have waited for them to return? Probably because Isang and Eoyeong would have to remain at his parents' for much of the rest of the day. Still -- what is the traditional Korean understanding of the wife's relationship to the husband? Is it like the traditional Chinese one, in which the wife, upon marrying, is no longer a member of her family but is now a part of her husband's?

The family may survive despite all of the aberrations. (The oldest son is married to a single mother. The second is tempted to stray with a high school friend who works for him.) But at what cost? A scriptwriter can very much push an agenda through the moral of a story and the manipulation of emotion. Will the family, especially the mother, be able to reconcile itself to modern Korea, with all of its recent social developments? Will the customs of the past be discarded as being irrelevant to the times? I have read that these days, more and more sons are moving in with the family of the daughter-in-law. What explains this trend?

It does highlight though the dilemmas that exist in strict Confucian societies. If the wife is the oldest in her family and there are no sons, who will care for her parents when they get old? If she is married to a man who is not the oldest son in the family, it seems humane for them to care for her parents. But should this be established as a norm? Or only permitted as a concession to circumstances? Maybe the traditional customs are more flexible than I think they are, but if the reaction of the mother to what is going on is any indication, they are still rather "rigid."

The Value and Meaning of the Korean Family
Family- Korean Language Practice

The Catholic ghetto

While voluntary or intentional communities may have some inherent problems, I can understand why Catholic laity might wish to move to a place near a Catholic institution (such as Christendom College) or monastery (such as Clear Creek). (Is there anything similar to Shenandoah Shores in Santa Paula, CA?) It is easy to be dismissive of such communities as being sheltered and parochial. Catholics who do not exercise hospitality and the social virtues towards a perceived outsider merely because he is not Catholic rightly deserve censure, but I do not believe this is a flaw of Catholics who join such communities. Being part of a real cult, on the other hand, is cause for greater concern, but I am talking about Catholics who move to a location because of its reputed orthodoxy, not Catholics who join an ecclesial movement or some organization and form a "parallel church."

Many do so first of all because they wish to raise families in wholesome, orthodox parishes and environments. Secondly they wish to live with other Catholics with the same desires, and have Catholic friends. I believe the cultivation of friendships with other Catholics is something neglected by most American Catholics today, who are more likely to rely on the associations made primarily on similarity of interests and on the basis of a shared workplace and so on. Other than the elderly, few regularly socialize with fellow parishioners. Or so it seems here in the Bay Area.

Today, I was thinking about this point again, that Catholics should be networking not for themselves, but also for the sake of their children. When the time for the children to marry comes, it will be easier to find a Catholic spouse if such a network is large and wide, rather than small and limited, as it is for most American Catholics. Given the nature of marriage, a shared understanding of sex roles is as important as having the same religion. How can a happy marriage be possible between a Catholic traditionalist male and a Catholic "feminist," even if he acquiesces to the demands of feminism? Mark T. Mitchell's latest should be a reminder that even if people share a commitment to relocalization and strengthening community, a community cannot be possible without shared mores, including those governing men as men and women as women. A laissez-faire attitude regarding personal stances towards patriarchy and feminism can last only so long, since eventually a community must mix with itself by giving its children in marriage to one another, if it is to have a single identity. A large city or polity can better tolerate communities with different mores within its boundaries, especially if political power is exercised by a few and it does not aim at the common good, but only at the good of individuals and families. I believe that in smaller polities, though, different mores will lead to conflict, and possibly physical division of the community or separation.

Public Discourse:Corporations and the University Robert C. Koons, March 16, 2010

Robert C. Koons replies to a letter concerning his recent article, “What Will Replace Behemoth State University?”