Tag Archives: Reaction

On Reaction and PUAs

This post on the nature of women has made the Twitter rounds and some, such as Anissimov, are calling for a war on the manosphere and/or the PUAs. (I’m not sure how many see the distinction between the two).

Before I begin, I read the story emashee posted a week or two back, and felt no pity for the subject of the post. I still feel no pity. She’s a moral agent who has made her moral choices. She’s choosing to live the life of a whore and receiving a whore’s wages.

That being said, she does seem somewhat on the verge of repentance, so I did pray she finds Jesus. She can’t change her own nature, but God can.

The only person I feel any pity for in that story is the man who’s the intended target of her story. You just know she is going to shred his heart and soul in the future, and he’s walking into it blindly (the letter is unsent). If something does come of it, the decent man will likely find a cold bed or hot divorce in the future. Dealing with girls like that is like sticking your member in a meat grinder.

As the Bible warned many a times, the path of the adulteress leads to death.

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Now, onto my main point. I must reject the war between reactionaries and PUAs some are trying to brew.

PUA’s are not the problem; they never were the problem. They didn’t create modern society and they are not the ones maintaining it. They are simply immoral men taking what they can from the decaying ruins. They’ve been handed a bag of complete shit and been told to enjoy eating it. How can you blame them for not wanting to?

If I wasn’t a Christian, you can bet I’d be out there taking what I could myself.

In addition, Dalrock has already established shaming PUA’s won’t work.

Finally, PUAs are not hurting anyone innocent. Only sluts will succumb to them, and the sluts they are hurting would have simply slutted it up with someone with ‘natural game’ (or less game) and been hurt anyways.

There is no social cost to PUAs, casual sex was a norm before PUAs. Mystery didn’t build the clubs he practiced game in and the club sluts were already looking for sex before he first sarged. It’s not like club sluts would magically have become wives if Mystery had decided to play video games instead.

Does anyone honestly think that PUA’s were at fault for the woman’s problem in emashee’s post?

Day game might be worrisome, as it extends the reach of the PUAs beyond club sluts and might intrude on women who may be marriageble. But given that a day game conversion rate of 2.7% and a number close rate of 25% are considered great, it’s pretty clear that only the sluttiest sluts will be taken in that way. So little chance of a decent women being ruined there.

PUA’s are not ruining marriageable women; they are using sluts.

Sluts are sluts, wives are wives, and the two should not be confused. Those complaining about PUA’s ruining women miss this point and doing so leads to Sheol.

Don’t mistake me, I’m not lionizing PUAs. PUAs are degenerate scumbags.

But, except for some of the deluded “left her better than when I found her” types, they’ll usually cop to that. Acknowledging their own guilt makes them closer to repentance than the sluts and progressives who stand sanctimonious.

Putting the blame for modern sexual relations on PUA’s misses the reactionary point and allows other, more insiduous forms of degeneracy to destroy society.

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PUA’s are not the enemy. So who is?

The enemy is the adviser counseling young men to be nice guys and wait to marry used-up sluts.
The enemy is the father who pays for his daughter to live on campus.
The enemy is the mother who protects her son from struggle.
The enemy is the preacher that teaches God will bring that perfect soul mate if you just wait.
The enemy is the college becomes a place of partying signalling rather than strict academics.
The enemy is the journalist who glorifies premarital sex.
The enemy is the aunt encouraging her daughter to date around and delay marriage.
The enemy is the person who expresses disgust at the thought of a 16-year-old marrying.
The enemy is the person who calls a 15-year-old a child.
The enemy is the public school that infantilizes young people.
The enemy is the person who encourages long-term relationships.
The enemy is the person who encourages marriage based on romantic love.
The enemy is the person who encourages delaying child-birth.
The enemy is the organization encouraging ‘family planning’.

In case you don’t realize it yet, the enemy is you.

The enemy is the culture which has been completely taken over by the long march.

It is the culture that has separated sex, romance, procreation, and marriage from each other.

It is the culture that infantilizes young men and women and encourages them to avoid responsibility.

It is the culture that has destroyed the family.

You are a product of that culture. You are that culture.

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This is the question to those other reactionaries condemning PUA’s, have you had sex outside of marriage?

If so, you are just as strong a degenerative influence on the marriage market as the PUA’s. In fact, you are probably are more degenerative influence than the PUA’s.

The PUAs are obvious degenerates. Nobody thinks the PUA’s are doing good, not even the PUA’s themselves.

On the other hand, there are many subtle forms of degeneracy that are widely accepted and hardly noticed. By being so they are far more potent forces of degeneracy.

A healthy society rests on the family unit.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

A healthy society rests on a man leaving his parent’s household, taking a wife for himself, and raising children.

But you say, “Why does he not?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. (Malachi 2:14-15, ESV)

Any healthy society will be structured so as to encourage responsibility and independence in young men, so they can take wives, build a life together, and create the next generation of responsible adults.

Anything that takes away from this prime societal focus is degenerative. Small deviance will build on small deviance and eventually corrupt and destroy the civilization.

I am sure many reactionaries intellectually hold to and practice deviancies which destroying our society. We should eradicate these before we start hypocritically pointing out the degeneracies of the PUA’s.

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So, what should a reactionary, non-degenerative view of sexual relations entail?

We must first understand that sex belongs in marriage and nowhere else. Romance belongs only in the path to marriage and marriage itself and nowhere else. Children belong in the married family and nowhere else. Marriage is for life and nigh unbreakable.

Without rock-solid marriage as a societal foundation, paternity is always in question and sexual access comes without investment. Men who don’t know the paternity of their children and have easy sexual access have no incentive to invest in the future of society, leading to the degeneration of society.

Any minor deviance from combining these four is entryism  and will lead to more minor deviance, inevitably leading to our current disordered sexual marketplace.

If you accept or practice anything else, you are a degenerate and just as bad an influence as the PUA’s, maybe even more so, because you’re reinforcing existing accepted degeneracy rather than being an unaccepted outsider.

Although romance is confined to marriage and the path thereto, marriage should not be based around romance. Eros is poor foundation for marriage. Marriage is a social obligation to your spouse and to your community to provide for each other and for your children, the future of the society.

An LTR is not marriage as it rejects the social obligations marriage entails.  Nothing is marriage but marriage.

Next, we must accept the biological fact that people physically become adults at puberty. God and/or evolution designed humans that way. If marriage is delayed more than a few years beyond puberty, young adults will generally engage in sex and romance outside of marriage. Only those with the lowest time preference (or the most sexually unattractive) will delay, and a society can not function if it depends on everybody to have low time preferences.

Anything but young marriage* will inevitably lead to our current sexual marketplace.

By young I mean actively considering in their early teens and anybody not married by their early-20s is considered an old maid or eccentric bachelor.

If you discourage teen marriage, if you think the 14-year-old a child, if you show disgust towards marriage between 15-year-olds, etc. you are encouraging degeneracy.

Once married, marriage should be nigh unbreakable: divorce should only be granted for adultery and, maybe, persistent physical violence and it should always be at-fault.

Anything else, encourages divorce, encourages the dissolution of the family, and discourages marriage, along with all the negative effects those entail. To accept anything else is to accept degeneracy.

Artificial birth control should be disallowed for the unmarried and strongly discouraged by society for the married. ‘Family planning’ should be shunned. Married couples should be encouraged to give birth to many children.

Anything else seperates sex and romance from procreation, which will inevitably lead to the speration of sex and romance from marriage. This will lead to the current sexual marketplce. It is degeneracy.

This is what society must enforce for a stable family, the building block of civilization. Anything else will lead to the decline of the family, and thereby the decline of the nation and its civilization.

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The PUA’s are degenerates. In any functional society, they would be hunted down, exiled, whipped, and/or hanged. Cold, casual sex is harmful to the participants, to the family, and to society at large.

Engaging in short-term and long-term sexual relationships apart from marriage is also harmful. The hook-up engenders sex and separates it from marriage, romance, and procreation; relationships separates both romance and sex from both procreation and marriage, which is just as harmful.

The sexual STR is nothing more than an extended hook-up.

The LTR creates relationships not based on mutual commitment before society as a replacement good for marriage. Discouraging both marriage and stable family formation. They replace the societal commitment of marriage for the selfish pursuits of individuals. Without unbreakable commitment before the community, the relationship unit is not a stable way to raise children and it reduces the surety of paternity, which is necessary to encourage men to invest in their children.

These are particularly more insidious than hook-ups, because no one except a few damaged individuals think hook-ups are a good and beneficial way to live their life. But many people think the serial monogamy of STR’s or LTR’s are positive and acceptable. It’s a form of degeneracy we don’t see.

But most harmful of all is divorce. It destroys that marriage which is already built, ruins families, hurts children, and strongly discourages marriage.

All are destructive to society and engender the decline to our current broken sexual marketplace. We should be encouraging a return to traditional sexual mores.

But we should not be making a fight between reaction and the PUAs and should not be taking a harsh purging line for sexual degeneracy (at this point; come the restoration, we can decide what to do with degenerates).

As it stands, the PUA’s are potential allies. They see some of the truth and are effective at spreading it. The PUA sections of the manosphere function as an excellent dark enlightenment gateway. I came to Moldbug and neoreaction through the mansophere and I’m sure many others first taste of the red pill was through the PUA’s.

On a more pragmatically harsh note, the PUA’s strip the modern sexual market place down to its roughest and dirtiest and display it openly for all to see. A few years of reading of the PUA’s pillagings will likely turn many naive young men towards a more patriarchal society. A couple decades in the brutal hands of the PUA’s and I’m sure many women will be more willing to support a return to the loving, protective embrace of patriarchy.

Railing against the degeneracy of PUA’s, while accepting other sexual relationships apart from marriage is hypocritical and counter-productive. PUA’s are not the problem, they are not harming the innocent, and they are performing some minor pragmatic positives. They are the symptom of a larger problem.

We should focus on the root problems rather than the symptoms.

We should intellectually bind sex, romance, procreation, and marriage into each other and fight the infantilization of young men and women.

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* The combination of later marriage, strict society-enforced sexual mores on women, harsh anti-divorce laws, and socially acceptable prostitution may also potentially function, but would not be optimal. 

Breeding and Dysgenics

Gromar is wondering how to get intelligent women to breed to avoid dysgenics.

My question: why do we need intelligent women to breed?

Most intelligent women have options (exciting careers, schooling, etc) apart from family. Because they have these options they are going to base their breeding habits on the societally-approved feminist script.

Changing the entire script will be almost impossible, as will making significant numbers of women go against the herd.

Wouldn’t it be much easier to convince intelligent men to breed many children with women of average intelligence?

Mating doesn’t have to be assort itself by intelligence. Most men would naturally prefer a pretty face and sweet disposition to intelligence anyways. Convincing them to do what they want to do naturally should be simpler.

As a side effect, if smart men start marrying and breeding with dimwits, while smart women end up aged, lonely, and barren, future smart women may clue in.

To Mark Shea and Commenters

Mark Shea derides Dark Enlightenment with a bit of snark and sarcasm.

As socially maladjusted jerks always do, they trumpet their moral repulsiveness as a mark of “courage” and declare anybody who holds to actual Christian beliefs about the moral evils of racism are part of something called “The Cathedral” (an amorphous bogeyman compact of designated enemies critical of racialism).

I would like to point out the morally repulsive words of a few socially maladjusted jerks:

I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie; my conscience joins with the holy Spirit in bearing me witness that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and separated from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kin according to the flesh. They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever. Amen.

And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

One of them, a prophet of their own, once said, “Cretans have always been liars, vicious beasts, and lazy gluttons.” That testimony is true. Therefore, admonish them sharply, so that they may be sound in the faith,instead of paying attention to Jewish myths and regulations of people who have repudiated the truth.

When will Mark Shea and his followers rise up and condemn this evil? How dare these people love their own race and call other races dogs and liars.

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Also, some of his commenters have commented on the evils of autocracy. I would like to point out the evil words of these same evil people on autocracy:

Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear to good conduct, but to evil. Do you wish to have no fear of authority? Then do what is good and you will receive approval from it, for it is a servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword without purpose; it is the servant of God to inflict wrath on the evildoer. Therefore, it is necessary to be subject not only because of the wrath but also because of conscience. This is why you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, devoting themselves to this very thing. Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

They came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion. You do not regard a person’s status but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” They brought one to him and he said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They replied to him, “Caesar’s.” So Jesus said to them, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’ They were utterly amazed at him.

When will Mark Shea and his commenters condemn these evil authoritarians?

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I left a comment simply posting the Bible verse locations, then a sarcastic comment along the lines of: “How dare that that wicked, wicked Jesus and infernal Paul say those things?”

It seems either the Bible or sarcasm are not allowed there. Given that half of Mark’s post was sarcasm and/or snark, I’ll guess the former.

Creeping Horror

Here’s a fun little test to either help internalize the creeping horror or introduce someone new to the mind virus.

The first step is to find a moderately obscure topic you would know far more about than your average English grad would. It can be anything: something related to your career, a hobby you’re deep into, your religion, an academic area you’ve studied extensively, or even pastel ponies. Choose something of which you have a deep knowledge.

You must avoid anything your average SWPL “knowledge-worker” would know; so avoid things related to coffee, indie music, HBO, pretentious literature, etc. (Alright, pastel ponies might not work). Also make sure to avoid anything overly subjective or too mainstream.

Having chosen your topic, look for articles in the mainstream news on the topic. Try the big ones: CNN, the NYT, the Washington Post, or, in Canada, the CBC. Having found a few articles from a few different sources read them.

Notice every time they are inaccurate, make a factual mistake, leave out something important, make a logical fallacy, write something that doesn’t make sense, or otherwise distort reality.

Having done this, think on the fact that every other topic covered by the media has errors to the same extent, except you don’t notice because you don’t know more about that topic than your average J-school graduate.

Then consider how you, and most everybody else, becomes informed about things they don’t know of.

This is where the horror sets in.

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To let the horror creep in more, look to your career. Remember that obscure regulation nobody outside your particular occupation or industry would know of, the one that: made society worse, was borderline insane, the government had no business being in, allowed a person/company to rob the taxpayer, made your job more miserable than it should be, and/or was just pointless busywork to employ bureaucrats?

You probably never talked of it to anyone other than possibly the occasional rant to a friend or two or some co-workers.

Now think on the fact that there are thousands of other occupations and industries you are not employed in and where you would not be able to know that obscure regulation.

Give it a few minutes for the horror to dawn.

What’s in a Name?

The best way to identify the goals and predict the actions of a leftist or bureaucratic (redundancy) organization is to assume they are the opposite of what the name of the organization would imply if the organization were named honestly.

Thus, an organization with social justice in its name is generally both both rending social bonds and committing mass injustice.

A leftist organization with community in the name is usually destroying said community.

An organization evoking peace is generally dedicated to spreading chaos.

A leftist organization labelled Christian can generally be found destroying Christian values and hollowing out churches.

A leftist organization with prosperity or anti-poverty in its name will be creating as much poverty as possible.

The Monarch and the Poor

Calvin on the monarch and the poor:

“As God had promised to extend his care to the poor and afflicted among his people, David, as an argument to enforce the prayer which he presents in behalf of the king, shows that the granting of it will tend to the comfort of the poor. God is indeed no respecter of persons; but it is not without cause that God takes a more special care of the poor than of others, since they are most exposed to injuries and violence. Let laws and the administration of justice be taken away, and the consequence will be, that the more powerful a man is, he will be the more able to oppress his poor brethren. David, therefore, particularly mentions that the king will be the defender of those who can only be safe under the protection of the magistrate, and declares that he will be their avenger when they are made the victims of injustice and wrong. . . .

“But as the king cannot discharge the duty of succouring and defending the poor which David imposes upon him, unless he curb the wicked by authority and the power of the sword, it is very justly added in the end of the verse, that when righteousness reigns, oppressors or extortioners will be broken in pieces. It would be foolish to wait till they should give place of their own accord. They must be repressed by the sword, that their audacity and wickedness may be prevented from proceeding to greater lengths. It is therefore requisite for a king to be a man of wisdom, and resolutely prepared effectually to restrain the violent and injurious, that the rights of the meek and orderly may be preserved unimpaired. Thus none will be fit for governing a people but he who has learned to be rigorous when the case requires. Licentiousness must necessarily prevail under an effeminate and inactive sovereign, or even under one who is of a disposition too gentle and forbearing. There is much truth in the old saying, that it is worse to live under a prince through whose lenity everything is lawful, than under a tyrant where there is no liberty at all.”

The Brown Scare: Duck Edition

I’m a little late on the bandwagon, so by now you’ve probably heard that Phil Robertson was suspended by A&E from the reality show, Duck Dynasty for some comments made during an interview with GQ. I made a small series of tweets when I first came across the event.

This event is significant because it is the first time the brown scare has impacted a particular person this well known to the mainstream. Sure, Watson, Dickenson, Summers, Richwine, Derbyshire, et al. were victims of the witchhunt, but none of those names are ones the average Joe on the street would rcognize. Sure, Chic-Fil-A was persecuted, but its a faceless corporation; who’s ever heard of Dan Cathy?

But Duck Dynasty is huge and Phil Robertson is a recognizable individual. It’s the most-watched nonfiction show of all time and A&E’s highest rated show fo all time. He is somebody your average middle-American knows and likes.

The culture war has been raging for a while, but mostly in words and on the political level. Phil shows the red states, the vaisyas, how far the the progressives are willing to go to enforce ideological conformity. It shows how much the elites truly do detest middle America. It makes the culture war personal by showing that they’re ready and willing to not just denounce you, but to steal your livelihood simply for speaking what you think.

Now that the working-to-middle class whites now have a sampling of the elites hatred towards them, hopefully they will see the class war being waged against them.

For hate is the only explanation* for this: Duck Dynasty is insanely profitable and popular for a second-rate cable network previously best known for Law and Order reruns. There is absolutely no business reason to mess with a formula that works. Any fool can see that the 77% of America that are Christian vastly outnumber the <4% of America that is gay.

The cultural elites hate the conservative low-to-middle class whites that are the primary consumers of the show and they hate the Christian morality and traditional family structures the show portrays.

They wish to destroy these whites, their lifestyle, and their morality.

Oh, how the elites at A&E must rue how their attempt to mock the rednecks has backfired. I would have loved to see their faces when they realized their laugh-at-the-rednecks show become popular for all the ‘wrong’ reasons. It’s Archie Bunker all over again.

In a cultural wasteland of “reality” programming showcasing degenerates, freaks, perverts, broken homes, blackened souls, and empty, twisted hearts, Duck Dynasty focuses on a normal, functional, loving family holding to a solid moral framework and enjoying their lives. It presents a cultural alternative to the broken, empty world the cultural elites are trying to force onto the masses.

Whatever our opinions of TV, the simple fact is most Americans are consumers of TV. Duck Dynasty is one of the few shows to show working-class whites, Christianity, and traditional morality in a positive light and it is one of the few that gives the masses something moral and uplifting.

For this Duck Dynasty and Phil Robertson deserves support.

*There is a very small chance this was a publicity stunt by A&E. I don’t think its likely, but you never know.

Labels and Libertarianism

Michael Anissimov has put out the 5 premises of neoreaction with which a someone must totally agree to be a neoreactionary. He argues that “anyone who disagrees with any one of them is almost certainly not a reactionary.”

I agree fully with all the points except possibly #4, which got me thinking about the rather petty problem of self-labelling. Particularly the fact that my self-descriptive label on my about page has been “reactionary libertarian” since I last updated it months ago.

I hold to a form of libertarianism, anarcho-monarchism, as the optimal form of government for English people, something which I just commented on that a couple weeks back. If asked I’d describe myself as a reactionary anarcho-monarchist.

But then again, I don’t “make personal freedom axiomatic“; rather I hold to the principal of subsidiarity. I do not “refuse to consider the negative externalities of that freedom to traditional structures” but rather I believe these structures are best preserved by distributing power primarily to the individual, family, and the community to best “foster community, family, and social cohesion”.

I definitely do hold to the “socialism” of “family and friends helping each other of their own free will.” (I wouldn’t call it socialism though).

Rather than not caring “if a libertarian society would leave many out in the cold” I have thought of the problem of natural slaves, although, simply having strong community values and mores from birth would probably take care of the problem.

I don’t think any who have read my blog are overly concerned about me being “excessively materialistic” in my outlook.

It would seem his criticisms of libertarianism do not apply to me or my thinking.

So, maybe I fall into the category of “theoretically compatible with libertarianism, but is not compatible with the mood and spirit of libertarianism”?

Or am I simply an unwitting entryist?

Could it be possible I’m “lonely and want friends to debate politics with, or [am] intrigued by the personalities of reactionaries, though they are not one”?

Or maybe by rejecting the axiom of a natural right to freedom, I am simply not a libertarian, whatever the similarities?

Maybe it’s time to retire the libertarian label.

I’ve worn it for many a year, but maybe I’m in the ideological territory of post-libertarianism and the label no longer fits.

Neoreaction and Subsidarity

One of the themes of neoreaction is that different groups of people will naturally evolve different forms of government and a government that is optimal for one group may fail when applied to another.

For example, anarcho-monarchism may be right for the anglosphere, but would likely fail outside of the natural institutions and culture that have evolved within the anglosphere.

As Bryce puts it:

The insight of neoreaction, contrasting this, is that the differences between groups do significantly determine the optimal form of governance. To different groups, different political doctrines. Insofar as different treatment of groups is institutionalized, it tends to be institutionalized in respect of the differences those groups. A different group of people calls for a difference in evaluation. This will not and in most cases should not be simplistic, but again, the most optimal forms of evaluation are not going to be able to be wielded by every society.

If national groups require differing forms of government would not regional, or local groups require the same. Two different counties, towns, or even neighbourhoods may have different optimal forms of government.

Because of this the principle of subsidiarity fits naturally within neoreaction:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

Subsidiarity is often a basic and explicit principle of reaction, particularly Catholic reaction, but in neoreaction it tends to be implicitly accepted but not formally acknowledged. For example, Moldbug’s patchwork is inherently subsidiaritist in nature, but I do not remember coming across him explicitly promoting the principle. Searching google for neoreaction and subsidiarity, bring up mostly Nick Steves‘ comments and a bit of Bryce’s work, as would be expected.

The primary purpose of this post is to make more  encourage neoreactionaries to pay more explicit attention to, what I believe to be, an underlying principle of neoreaction, subsidiarity.

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From this, a reactionary basis for libertarianism or anarchism can be reached. Rather than basing libertarian thought around such things as non-existent human rights, libertarian thought can be derived from the subsidiarity principle.

The individual is the smallest and simplest human organization possible. If everything is to be governed by the smallest and simplest organization capable and an individual is capable of governing itself, it stands to reason that libertarianism is the optimal form of governance.

The problem with this formulation is that not all individuals are capable of governing themselves. Natural slaves, those constitutionally incapable of governing themselves, present a challenge to this form of organization.

Thus we come back to the original theme, different groups of people will have differing optimal forms of governance.

In a society with few, if any, natural slaves, anarcho-monarchism would be the optimal form of government. Most people could govern themselves, the presence of a king would ensure his citizenry refrained from trying to govern each other, and the few natural slaves could easily be cared for through private, charitable organizations.

Thus, for Englishmen, a self-reliant people used to freedom and self-organization with strong natural social institutions, anarcho-monarchism is the optimal form of governance.

For other peoples, with a higher proportion of natural slaves, other more restrictive forms of governance may be necessary.

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From this we can also discern a factor in why the size and power of government has increased while the non-English population has increased.

As non-English populations have been imported into English countries, the proportion of natural slaves have increased. More natural slaves necessitates more governance.

Thus, immigration from countries where the populations lack English virtues of self-reliance, spontaneous self-organization, and freedom will necessarily lead to more governance.

This is but one reason why immigration, particularly from incompatible cultures, should be severely restricted.

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We now come to the post that inspired this post, a Town without Big Corporations:

There is no question in my mind that this town has saved itself from eventual decline. Not only is it much less ugly and depressing than nearby towns with chain stores but one has the sense that the people who live there identify with it as a community and feel some loyalty and pride. I say that based on my experiences simply talking and listening to the people who live there. So even if it allowed chains, but restricted their garish signs, the town would be worse off.

Instead of a Pizza Hut, there are individually-owned pizza restaurants and a couple of young entrepreneurs take a traveling wood-burning oven to the farmer’s market. People raise goats, sheep and chickens and sell the meat. There are a number of cheese makers who seem to do reasonably well and who sell things immeasurably superior to corporate cheese.

According to free market radicals, this town is engaging in practices that are fundamentally wrong. It is engaging in explicit protectionism in favor of small businesses. Or free market radicals will say that it’s okay to do this kind of thing here and there on a small scale, but the underlying principle of restricting commerce is immoral and tyrannical.

First, Laura is simply incorrect, but incorrect in an understandable way that almost every person is incorrect today.

The free market and large corporations are not one and the same. In fact, corporations, particularly limited liability joint-stock corporations, are a government-manufactured and -enabled institution that distorts the free market. The corporate takeover of the Anglosphere is not a product of free markets, but rather another government intrusion into the private lives of English citizens.

While I can’t say with utmost certainty, but removing the government-created, limited liability, joint-stock corporations from the free market would most likely halt the corporate takeover of the Anglosphere. How many would be willing to become involved in a world-spanning enterprise and be held responsible for the entirity of what the organization does?

Neoreactionaries should oppose the corporate system, as they are another failing of modernism.

Aside from that though, as a free market reactionary, the free market is the most efficient method of wealth-production in almost all cases; this is historically unarguable.

But wealth-creation efficiency is not the end of society; different peoples may have differing goals for society.

In societies without the basic levels of common trust, neutral courts, and non-corrupt government found within the Anglosphere, the free market may not function at all and/or what may be called a “free market” may be nothing of the sort and may actively harm people.

In the Anglosphere, I would not oppose economic regulation by the king, but I would oppose any regulation by our current democratic, national governments. Almost all economic regulation in our national democracies is created for the good of the state-created corporations, and almost all work against the independent entrepreneur.

Not to mention national regulation thoroughly violates the principle of subsidiarity.

On the local level though, local communities should be free to regulate commerce as they wish. Our social institutions have been annihilated by modern progressivism; some local regulations over commerce should be fine until the English people reassert their historical freedoms under the king.

Sex – A Response to Scott Alexander

Scott over at Slate Star Codex has created the Anti-Reactionary FAQ, probably the first rational, comprehensive critique of neoreaction. (It also turns out he like Turisas. Huzzah!) Much respect goes to Scott for this; it was a comprehensive and fair work (unlike some pieces of drek), which, over time, (neo)reactionaries will have to respond to. Michael has already done a short, preliminary response, while Jim has critiqued one particular aspect of the FAQ.

My humble blog was mentioned a couple of times. He mentioned my analysis of how the communists won, and quickly analyzes a Republican platform in response. I’ll provide a greater response to this in the future, when I have the time for a decent one.

For this post, I’ll concentrate on his section “5: Are modern ideas about race and gender wrongheaded and dangerous?” where my post, One More Condom in the Landfill, was referenced. I will be working on the gender aspect for this post and will respond by section number. So, my focus will be on 5.1-5.3, as 5.4 gets into stuff on social justice rather than sex itself. I should note Bryce has already made a post concerning this, but his is more theoretical in nature, so I will make my own.

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5.1

Sexual surveys on lifetime partners are usually not fully reliable, as the number can vary significantly depending on estimation strategies. Women underestimate, men overestimate.

The data on lifetime partners is, as he points out, minimal. 6 for men in 1970 and 2006, 2 for women in 1970 and 4 in 2006. He ends up using French data instead, but the French are not English and have a different culture, so I’m not sure if this would hold.

Instead, let’s look at bastardy rates, a more easily measured proxy for promiscuity. As we can see on this graph of CDC data from the Heritage Foundation, bastardy has been on a steady increase since some time around 1960.

This steady increase has occurred despite the increasing availability of both the pill and abortion. It is obvious that sluttiness and promiscuity has increased.

If we look back to one of Scott’s sources we find this gem:

American illegitimacy ratios in the eighteenth century and after the Civil War seem to have been about one or two percent, well below the five or six percent found in England and Wales at the time(s) (Smith, 1980, p. 372; Wells, 1980, pp. 354-55; Laslett et al., 1980, p. 18) and very far below the 30-plus-percent ratios found in the U.S. in the 1990’s.

Imagine a bastardry rate of only 2%.

It is obvious sluttiness has increased drastically.

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5.1.1

In this section, Scott ignores the religious argument, and I will too, for one argues with one’s (reasonable) opponents on grounds both can accept.

The decline of marriage would be the major argument, as he acknowledges. He posts this graph but misses the commentary on the graph.

The commentary states:

My own hypothesis is that a higher partner count (up to 5-9 or so partners) is correlated with age and maturity in dating experience. Older women, and women with more dating experience, are more likely to have learned which personal qualities will work best for them in a marriage partner. As a result, such women choose more wisely and tend to experience lower divorce rates. Now, it also happens to be the case that older women have had more time and occasion for pre-marital sex! Specifically, I suspect it’s not the 5-9 pre-marital sex partner count per se that drives the relative drop in the divorce rates, but rather it’s the maturity and experience that women have acquired while they’ve dated more men.

Scott does not take this confounding variable into effect in this piece.

This one chart comes from unpublished data from anonymous source. Sadly, it is the only source I know of where divorce risk is measured by number of premarital partners.

Most data either looks at either whether a person had premarital sex or not, or lifetime partners, which can be confounded by additional sex partners post-divorce.

If we look at data posted by the Social Pathologist elsewhere:

Only four nationally representative studies have examined whether premarital sexual experiences are linked to divorce (Heaton, 2002; Kahn & London, 1991; Laumann et al., 1994; Teachman, 2003). Nevertheless, the core finding—the association between premarital sex and increased risks of divorce—is robust[Ed]. Teachman (2003) found that women who had sex only with their future husbands did not have higher risks of marital dissolution, which suggests that the premarital-sex effect on divorce is related primarily to having sex with multiple partners

Each additional sexual partner increased the odds of infidelity by 7% while increasing years of education seem to decrease the risk by 10%.

The most salient finding from this analysis is that women whose intimate premarital relationships are limited to their husbands—either premarital sex alone or premarital cohabitation—do not experience an increased risk of divorce. It is only women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship who have an elevated risk of marital disruption. This effect is strongest for women who have multiple premarital coresidental unions.

Here’s some data showing adultery risk is higher for promiscuous women.

Here’s another chart showing that delaying sexual activity reduces divorce risk:

Here’s a chart, it counts all partners not just premarital ones:


Even beside divorce, there’s a large array of social and personal ills that come from promiscuity and higher numbers of sexual partners.

There is other information, but it all points to the same conclusion; the more sexual partners and the younger the woman is when first having sex, the more likely the risk of divorce.

By focusing only on that single chart, Scott misses a wide array of data which all tell the same story: a slutty women is a divorce risk and an adultery risk.

Even if we accept that one chart alone, Scott’s argument falls apart.

Being a virgin leads to a greatly lowered chance of divorce, a fact Scott just shrugs and dismisses it, accepting that premarital sex is an inescapable norm among the non-religious .

The whole point is that premarital sex should not be the norm. People (at least those intending to marry) should not be having premarital sex.

A doubling  (or tripling) of the divorce rate is not something we should just accept. It is damaging to the very fabric of society as parents’ divorce is associated with an increase in almost every socially non-desirable trait we measure (from poverty to crime to poor educational achievement).

[Edit: Removed two charts that did not fit with the main point and simply confused things. Moved a few things around, added a bit, and generally improved section 5.1.1. Thanks Ozymandias. 25/10/2013]

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5.1.2

In a broad perspective the point is correct – empirically, men with more psychopathic traits, less agreeableness, and greater narcissism have more sexual partners.

He agrees on this point, but goes on to equivocate between men and women, then essentially shrug his shoulders (“I have no idea how to solve the object-level problems”).

The reactionary project (at least those that aren’t PUAs) is attempting to do more; we have a model we know works from history and we are trying to reimplement it.

Simply allowing the cads to run amuk and having the good men go without is a recipe for social disaster, I’ve outlined here, here, and here.

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5.2

He accepts that divorces have elevated, but doesn’t acknowledge there is a steady, long-term trend of increase since 1860 and divorce rates per married couple still remain almost double what they were at 1960.

Also, he says that progressivism has created a natural memetic “immunity” meme to divorce.

I would suggest instead the decline of divorce is instead linked to the decline in marriage rates; ie. those who are less committed to marriage and more likely to divorce are moving in together rather than marrying then divorcing, driving the divorce rate down.

You can see this easily in the chart Scott provided:

Divorces spike, then as marriage rates decline so to do divorce rates per married couple, but this rate remains almost double what it was in 1960. The decline in divorce rates per population is decreasing, simply because the family is disintegrating by not getting married.

He asks why progressives are less likely to divorce:

College-educated women have about half the divorce rate of the non-college-educated (source). More conservative states have higher divorce rates than more liberal states (source). Atheists have divorce rates below the national average (source). Some of these factors seem to remain even when controlling for wealth and the other usual confounders (source, source).

The education and atheist arguments are mistaking IQ and/or a low time preference for progressivism (atheists tend to be smarter on average than religious folks because most unintelligent people stick with their default philosophy, which, in the US, is religious). Conservative (ie. Southern) states would likely have high divorce rates due to high levels of blacks which have a much higher levels of divorce. (Nevada, likely has the highest divorce rate for what seems like a self-evident reason; Vegas).

Essentially what Scott has shown here but not noticed is a long-argued contention of reactionaries: smart upper-class folks can have progressive values and still function because they are smart upper-class folks, but when applied to the less intelligent lower classes these values are socially destructive, because poor, stupid people do not have the time-preferences to function despite the harm from these values.

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5.3/5.3.1

Here he essentially argues that the depopulation of the US doesn’t matter because foreigners with foreign values are immigrating here and replacing native Americans. Also, you’re a racist if you think this is a problem.

I will just say that this is exactly the problem that reactionaries have with depopulation; he’s not actually refuting anything, he’s simply confirming our arguments. (Also, every reactionary is used to being called racist, so, that won’t really work).

If Scott can’t see the problem with foreign populations with different cultures and values replacing the current population, I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince him here.

I just hope he doesn’t mind losing his progressive values when non-progressive minorities start voting against progressive laws.

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5.3.2

He’s probably right here on the effects of low-IQ fertility on intelligence, which is why I don’t (or at least try not to) espouse the idiocracy line. The effects of dysgenics through fertility are something that will not substantially effect us, in and of themselves, for a very long time, too long a timeline to worry about overmuch now.

Instead our focus would be on the mass importation of low-IQ immigrants, which will have a more immediate effect on society.

I would also focus on the effects of single-parent, low-IQ homes with many children on the national treasury through government welfare, education, and health programs. This problem will rear its ugly head far sooner than dysgenics due to fertility rates will.

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So, there we have my first kick at the FAQ. I’m sure there will be others down the road.