I’ve still been a bit too busy/distracted/unwell to produce very much here, but I am following the discussions. (Here‘s an interesting one at Isegoria). I have unformed thoughts that need more work.
Nydwracu is a young man with a fair bit to say, mostly on twitter, and only some of it incomprehensible to those of us not au fait with Japanese cartoons and whatever popular beat combos the kids are listening to these days. I’ve stuck him in the sidebar now that I’ve bitten the bullet of moving to the new Blogger renderer. “Why I am not” seems to have gone dark these last 6 months.
I’ve ploughed through a lot of Breivik’s rant/manifesto/whatever, without being very impressed. He could have done with paying more attention to what sort of society he wants to live in, and less to what medals the Knights Templar should be handing out to terrorists.
I’m pondering whether I should reconsider my attitude to feudalism; I’ve maintained that the drive to appropriate feudal privileges to the crown up to the 1600s was a good thing, enabled by better communication and administration, but Buckethead makes the point that military technology was a key driver of the process, in the form of the shift of power from mounted knights to massed pikemen/musketeers. Is current military technology compatible with unitary power? Something to think about.
I’m still concerned about the viability of an atheist reactionary movement. Since I’m opposed to political activism, I see the only reactionary possibility being a cultural development laying the basis for a future reactionary regime. I’m not sure it’s realistic for us to advance a reactionary culture outside of the churches. It may be the most we can be is cheerleaders for Christian reactionaries. But their struggle is initially and primarily against progressives within their own churches, and there’s little we can do to help them from outside.
Does Arnold Kling’s vision of a Diamond Age style emergence of traditionalism offer an alternative? The problem is surely that the progressive regime does not permit such traditionalist groups to live within it. In Stephenson’s version, I think the old order collapsed first, and “Vicky” society originated within the political vacuum.
Christian reactionaries are 1/1000 of Christian progressives. Yet atheist reaction is an oxymoron. We need something else. And we'll get it. Of course it might be too late.
Atheists, or at least secularists, can most obviously help by attacking the enemies of Western reactionaries – Universalists, Muslims, and pagans – whilst "forgetting" to attack Catholicism and the Orthodox communions.
I've thought about this and I see two problems. One is that a secularist's ethic would come under question ("why us and not them"). Another is that on a slow day he might get sidetracked into chasing after perceived enemies, like Jews, or like Mormons and the other Protestants. Cue the long and grinding flamewar.