I'm reading this crazy article in The New Yorker, "Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America/The reactionary blogger’s call for a monarch to rule the country once seemed like a joke. Now the right is ready to bend the knee" by Ava Kofman.
I can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him, but The New Yorker wants me to feel that I do. The part about the pilots cracked me up. It's a joke, right?!
Adding tags to this post, I see I've written about Yarvin before. Did I take him seriously or was he even funnier last time? I'll publish this post, click on the tag, then update.
ADDED: The one old post — here, last January — is about a NYT interview with him. So his visibility to me has solely been a consequence of elite liberal media telling me to worry about him. The NYT interview is "Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening." But it wasn't the conservatives who elevated him to the point where I noticed him. It was liberal media asserting that he's important to conservatives. Is he?!
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I can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him, but The New Yorker wants me to feel that I do.
Isn't that sort of the NYT's purpose? Sell horror stories to the residents of Manhattan that always seemed to be based in the premise that they'll cease to be superior to the rest of the world.
I cannot take it seriously enough to spend time even clicking on "Now the right is willing to bend the knee."
"The eternal political problems of legitimacy, accountability, and succession would be solved by a secret board with the power to select and recall the otherwise all-powerful C.E.O. of each sovereign corporation, or SovCorp."
Enough about the Biden administration!
Never heard of him before.
Nope. Never heard of him. He can write some pretty stupid stuff, though.
Hobbits just want to grill.
What's a Curtis Yarvin?
Moldbug is an evolving internet conversation, nothing is supposed to touch grass here.
Yes. Yes, indeed. Although many prefer Andrew Tate. Others admire Tommy Flanagan.
It's just a nonstop talent show over on the far right--but to be honest they have nothing that matches up with Tim "Jazz Hands" Walz, and no one has got anything to top boys-who- think-they-are-girls athletes...those folks are winners!
Imagine being so provincial and smug that you still take cultural cues from the NYT. The idiots who claimed Versailles Palace wasn't intellectually demanding enough. They are no more connected to alternative politics than the average Facebook grandma is. Actually, the grandma would be smarter and more honest.
That's Tommy Flanagan, the Pathological Liar, not the ham actor or the jazz musician.
Is he?
Is there such a thing as experience in your world? Do you learn from history or do you just march through time each moment being an entirely new moment that is disconnected from the moment that just passed and equally disconnected to the moment about to come into existence?
You are reading the NY Times and the New Yorker. What does your history of reading these publications tell you about them. Why do you insist on trying to find an honest report in either one of those publications?
I get reading them to "see what the other side is thinking." But I don't think you do that, because you ask questions like "Is Curtis Yarvin someone that powerful conservatives (who? Lindsey Graham?) are listening to.
There's a reason that ONLY the New York Times and the New Yorker have ever mentioned this guy. And your history with these two publications should inform your decision-making with respect to deciding whether or not this time - THIS TIME! - they're not gaslighting you.
Does this guy exist? Sure. Does he write stupid stuff that the liberal media uses to tar paint Republicans. Yes.
That's it. There's always two or three whackjobs wandering around the nests of both political parties smelling their own farts that make it look like a clown show. Think Tim Walz, or Ross Perot.
That's what Yavin is. He's a fart smeller that the NY Times wants you to think is a smart feller.
Sheesh. Yet the commenters on this site are constantly trotting out a book written more than 50 years ago by Saul Alinsky as though it is the left wing bible, who I had never heard of before you all got obsessed with him (and I grew up in Chicago).
Although I would rather be ruled by one hundred random airline pilots than by the faculty of Harvard University, I want to reassure y'all that all of us right wingers in North Georgia are eager to "bend the knee" to whatever ruler the Davos crowd sends our way.
For pilots read "the first two hundred names listed in the Cambridge phone book" with a turn of the competence dial to 11. Yes, it's also a joke, but then what isn't?
If I could make them roll over and show their bellies like Yarvin does, I'd probably do it too. He's having the time of his life and making it work for him. In terms of actual policy, your time is better spent reading James Burnham at the source.
OMG - just this morning .. I thought - oh boi - I better bend the knee!
I'd rather be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than a secret board of airline pilots.
Curtis Yarvin accomplished what he set out to do ... get his name out there.
He needed it. Who's ever heard of him? It's like the Proud Boys or Q-Anon that the Left is/was always prattling about - no one I know has ever heard of these jokers.
Red Caesar and Blue Caesar came from him I think. People thought it was an accurate analysis of human nature. When people are frustrated, they look to someone to make it better.
Do these "powerful conservatives" who support him have names? Or are the just more "anonymous administration sources"?
I see Freder beat me to the Saul Alinsky analogy. Now all he has to do is figure out that it points both ways.
The Best Knee Bending Ever Produced.
Billions in property damage! Rage! All hail.
Scott Alexander has read Yarvin through the years and had an interesting piece on him a month ago. Excerpt:
"In the late 2000s, Moldbug wrote some genuinely interesting speculations on novel sci-fi variants of autocracy. Admitting that the dictatorships of the 20th century were horrifying, he proposed creative ways to patch their vulnerabilities by combining 18th century monarchy with 22nd century cyberpunk to create something better than either. These ideas might not have been realistic. But they were cool, edgy, and had a certain intellectual appeal.
"Then in the late 2010s, as soon as his ideas started getting close to power he dropped it all like a hot potato. The MAGA movement was exactly what 2000s Moldbug feared most - a cancerous outgrowth of democracy riding the same wave of populist anger as the 20th century dictatorships he loathed. But in the hope of winning a temporary political victory, he let them wear him as a skinsuit - giving their normal, boring autocratic tendencies the mystique of the cool, edgy, all-vulnerabilities-patched autocracy he foretold in his manifestos."
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out
As an airline pilot I want to reassure everyone that we do In fact run everything
Andrew Tate = fraud.
I soloed at age 16 so have a long claim to ruler status.
It was liberal media asserting that he's important to conservatives. Is he?!
@Althouse, not hardly! Let’s face it, the sort of people who write for the New Yorker, New York Times, and Washington Post have no idea what a conservative is or believes. The right is a boogey man, and all the lefty writers have left to them are ever-wilder tales of the boogey man.
So essentially, Jarvin is a globalist that wants to dissolve national borders and turn the world into a Set of warring fiefdoms.
Why would the liberal media tell everyone that conservatives are supporting some completely unknown nut job that is doing exactly what they are Trying to do?
It is a total mystery. I can’t think of a logical explanation why Democrats and their globalist masters would project their own desires onto conservatives. It just makes no sense.
The very fact that the NYT's is giving him space, and the New Yorker is "worrying about him" shows he's no real threat and just a clown. An amusement figure for the liberal/leftists that reads both publications.
Anyone who says in the 21st century, "Y'know what we need? A monarchy" can written off immediately. We used to have absolute monarchs. And now we don't. Because monarchy doesn't work. Its the best they could do back in ye olden times, but we've moved on.
Here's the thing: The power elite control society. They are liberal/leftists. The only way the Right can contest their power is through the use of the masses. Talking about monarchy and "Good dictators" is a deliberate misdirection.
One thing about the "Right" is they're full of con-men and morons. They love babble about the "rule of the mob" and "Democracy is terrible". But the power elite is completely liberal/left. So, how you gonna change things, charley?
He is a political philosopher, and there's nothing wrong with coming up with new ideas on what the size and scope of ideal government should be. He's extremely far from power and his ideal isn't going to happen overnight.
But its reasonable to think about these things. Taiwan removed an entire provincial layer of government. Vietnam is getting rid of middle layer itself.
The USA already has an experiment with smaller political units in it: states, and county government.
People already say LA county is too big, for example.
its not a big deal.
I know some pilots. Outside their professional environment they can be a wild bunch when they cut loose. Are ready for that?
Also, I have a student license. Does this qualify me for judgeship, or some other functionary role?
Althouse: I can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him...
J.D. Vance takes Yarvin's perspective seriously. James Pogue wrote about this in some detail a few years ago:
"Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets. They’re not MAGA. They’re not QAnon. Curtis Yarvin and the rising right are crafting a different strain of conservative politics."
- Vanity Fair, April 20, 2022
The New Yorker has to build him up to make it worth tearing him down, which it does, all in one article. That's not a normal way to proceed.
Oh he's a political philospher. Well ok, except he's a bad one.
J.D. Vance takes Yarvin's perspective seriously.
Really? Vance is VP of the USA. I assume Yarvin has been invited to DC to talk to Vance. Oh wait....
The New Yorker has to build him up to make it worth tearing him down, which it does, all in one article. That's not a normal way to proceed.
And yet here you are building up the article to tear down the New Yorker.
Just like the Rules for Radicals obsessives here.
Problem: The NYTs is accused of being a leftwing echo chamber.
Solution: Invite some Rightwinger to talk about his ideas. But make sure he's a clown that has no ideas that have popular appeal. Aka - completely harmless.
"The eternal political problems of legitimacy, accountability, and succession would be solved by a secret board with the power to select and recall the otherwise all-powerful C.E.O. of each sovereign corporation"
That sounds exactly like the cabal that installed, and then replaced the nominal President of the United States. So now we know how well that setup works.
Moldbug came up with the idea of "the Cathedral", the collection of "liberal" institutions supporting and feeding upon the modern American state. The very pinnacle of the Cathedral is Harvard University. This term is fairly widely used within the intellectual right. Probably the most powerful person who takes Moldbug at all seriously is Michael Anton, who wrote the "Flight 93 Election".
Taking him seriously is not the same as wanting to put his plan into effect. His critique of democracy, is that in a democracy, since no one owns the nation, everyone loots it. Which is not false. His support of monarchy should be seen as an alternative, in which someone does own the nation, and therefore takes pains to defend and improve it.
Anyone who could write this:
To prevent a C.E.O. from staging a military coup, the board members would have access to cryptographic keys that would allow them to disarm all government weapons, from nuclear missiles down to small arms, with the push of a button.
Is so disconnected from reality that nothing he says is of interest to me.
Cryptographic keys to disable every weapon down to pistols? What could possibly go wrong with that idea?
Charlie said...
“What's a Curtis Yarvin?
A big ball of gas. The rebels blew up the Death Star at the Battle of Yarvin in the original Star Wars movie.
From the 2022 Vanity Fair article linked above by Che Dolf:
"Part of why people have trouble describing this New Right is because it’s a bunch of people who believe that the system that organizes our society and government, which most of us think of as normal, is actually bizarre and insane. Which naturally makes them look bizarre and insane to people who think this system is normal. You’ll hear these people talk about our globalized consumerist society as “clown world.” You’ll often hear the worldview expressed by our media and intellectual class described as “the matrix” or the “Ministry of Truth,” as Thiel described it in his opening keynote speech to NatCon. It can be confusing to turn on something like the influential underground podcast Good Ol Boyz and hear a figure like Anton talk to two autodidact Southern gamers about the makeup of the regime, if only because most people reading this probably don’t think of America as the kind of place that has a regime at all. But that’s because, as many people in this world would argue, we’ve been so effectively propagandized that we can’t see how the system of power around us really works.
"This is not a conspiracy theory like QAnon, which presupposes that there are systems of power at work that normal people don’t see. This is an idea that the people who work in our systems of power are so obtuse that they can’t even see that they’re part of a conspiracy."
And then three years later, in 2025, we have learned about the media conspiracy to cover up Biden's cognitive decline, which allowed the Deep State to run the government during his administration. We also have seen the exposure of the Biden Crime Family's enrichment by foreign sources, and they were just the tip of the iceberg. We have learned of the huge amounts of fraud from the money being shoveled to non-profits like USAID to then launder money back to the government, primarily but not exclusively Democrats. These are not "conspiracy theories." However suspicious of you were of the federal government prior to this year, you probably weren't suspicious enough. The people that this writer was criticizing were right all along about the nature of the federal leviathan.
Cryptographic keys to disable every weapon down to pistols? What could possibly go wrong with that idea?
It's actually rather intriguing. OBVIOUSLY this system would not and could not ever encompass small arms. But that's an advantage to We the People. Every weapon more sophisticated than a heavy machine gun has electronics these days, and their vulnerability to this sort of deactivation increases as you go from tactical weapons at the company and battalion level up to strategic weapons of mass destruction, i.e. from artillery-targeting computers to drones to bomber aircraft to surveillance satellites to nuclear weapons. So the more likely a weapon is to be useful to a tyrant or deranged warmonger, the more likely it is to have multiple weak links susceptible to electronic disruption, leveling the playing field with the masses of the people armed with AR-15s and farmer's shotguns.
Wince said...
"Enough about the Biden administration!”
Agreed. Yarvin simply wants to change the palace guard when it comes to who rules over us.
Hassayamper said...
“Every weapon more sophisticated than a heavy machine gun has electronics these days, and their vulnerability to this sort of deactivation increases as you go from tactical weapons at the company and battalion level up to strategic weapons of mass destruction…”
I am thinking of the opening to the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.
Never heard of him. But I suspect the same people, so familiar with Nazism that they can identify anyone that is, will tell me everything to know about him.
The New Yorker is putting a lot of effort into establishing a straw man. Curtis Yarvin is a blogger that nobody has heard of, and he trying to drum up interest in his wacky ideas.
Soon, we will start hearing how anything Trump says is a dog whistle to Yarvin and his legion.
It's not hard to see that Democrats would rather argue guilt-by-association, than defend open borders, sanctuary cities, dicks in the girls locker room, keeping a dotard as president, ending discrimination by increasing discrimination, government corruption and endless wars.
I know some pilots. Outside their professional environment they can be a wild bunch when they cut loose. Are ready for that?
Of all my close friends, the one with the most disordered personal life is flying left seat in a 747.
Joe Bar said...
“Also, I have a student [pilot’s] license. Does this qualify me for judgeship, or some other functionary role?”
I dunno. But just to be prepared, you should practice issuing a TRO.
I'd rather be governed by the first 100 names in the Boston phone book than a secret board of airline pilots.
Me too, but that's not a random selection. Names with "Aa" at the beginning are not necessarily representative of all Americans, and those in Boston certainly are not. I'd say "100 names picked at random from all those filing a 1040."
"His critique of democracy, is that in a democracy, since no one owns the nation, everyone loots it. Which is not false."
Okay, so what? Its nothing new and has been said for ages. Democracy has flaws. So what? Every Governerment system does. The only thing that matters is: What to replace it.
Talking about Democracy is useless unless you have something better to replace. There are a lot of things wrong with it. Marriage has flaws. Got a better substitute?
The other problem with Yarvin, is he's very uhhh "philosophical". Which means he loves talking about abstract theories, which is fine. But unless it deals with the real world and the here and now, its useless. Its just wool gathering and blah blah.
Again, this is a weakness of the Right. This love of putting on powdered wigs and drinking some port while yapping about "The federalist" or Edmund Burke or "Gosh, why don't we have a King?". Its a substitute for the real world and taking real action to change it. No wonder the NYT's gives him space. A harmless nobody. Might as well bay at the moon.
As a card-carrying right wing nutcase, I can unequivocally state that:
a) I have never heard of Curtis Yarvin;
b) His proposal is about as far from "conservative" as anything I have ever heard; and
c) Airline pilots??!! WTF?
I've heard of him, his critique is about how democracies turn into mob rule, it's as old as Tyttler and Cicero if memory serves,
"Might as well bay at the moon."
Hmmm. At least you didn't say, "Might as well write comments about people you don't know on some pictures-of-the-sunrise blog".
I would say it's federalism on steroids, new york and california already operate as autonomous states, maybe texas and florida should as well,
This is an NYT 20 something wet dream. They had to use airline pilots because saying that military service would qualify people to be voting citizens would be too obvious. Next, NYT says, kill the bugs.
Let me guess: All the "Pilots" will be (1) Unionized and (2) Democrats. The Tell is that this was not suggested during the Biden Administration.
" it's as old as Tyttler and Cicero if memory serves,"
Older. Basically, the critique of democracy is about fifteen minutes younger than democracy. Churchill wrote that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". And Churchill had some experience of democracy.
take Athens they went from monarchy to democracy to oligarchy, Rome did much the same, by similar dynamic
“Is he.” Is who?
We are far beyond believing lefty journalists are merely stupid. They are malevolent and/or psychopathic.
now did he say this, or did the author infer, jane mayer has a history of doing this,
as one person I talked to, who noted how she ellipsed everything he said,
Yarvin is brilliant and interesting, but does not tend to look at what might possibly could go wrong with his ideas, only what would be good if they worked. He should continue to be allowed to be brilliant and interesting.
Yarvin's marginal importance "to conservatives" has less to do with his corporate-monarchist schtick than with the core critique of elite journalism that he developed during his formative time as a disarmingly captivating blogger. That was during the mid-aughts, when he wrote under the pen-name "Mencius Moldbug" and surely must have crossed your radar from time to time. His explication of entrenched machinations that lie behind what was then lazily called "media bias" (crystalized in his concept of "The Cathedral") struck me then as a slyly subversive rebranding of radical critiques that would have been associated with Noam Chomsky (e.g., his "Propaganda Machine"). Regardless, it made for entertaining and provocative reading, and I suspect that Moldbug introduced a lot of intellectually curious people to the concept of Overton's Window, which has since assumed greater importance in the trajectory of political discourse. I think it's telling that the New Yorker dwells on the more eccentric elements of "Moldbuggery," and Yarvin's tongue-in-cheek tone in playing to their script is pretty obvious.
to be rhetorical, do any policy makers deal with the real world, as it exists, do they even know what that is,
In European history, there have been both hereditary and elective kings, and people who started out with one kind often, after some experience, switched to the other.
I've heard of Curtis/Mencius, but I only know of his ideas through the critique that others make of them.
I had to look him up.
I believe that the guys who put together the US Constitution and Bill of Rights put together a blueprint for a federal republic which was designed precisely with the explicit intent of preventing the very thing that Yarvin proposes--a government of entitled credentialed expert "leaders". There is nothing "conservative" about this. Note that among the primary tenets of our Constitution are the rights of all citizens to speak, to worship, and to bear arms (to keep the bastards from taking our rights away).
yes and the cargo cult that came with wilson, has largely dismantled the republic, and was spread by fdr and later lbj,
there is always the problem of the good king or czar, certainly Henry the 8th wasnt, King William of Orange maybe, George 3rd obviously not,
There's nothing better than a society led by a wise, virtuous king or a highly competent principled benevolent dictator, yes, nothing better - but the only problem is, there are none around.
The pilot idea is a thought experiment. That's obvious. The idea that we will always do things the way we do now is temporal provincialism. Other societies chose leaders in a variety of ways. Some worked better than others. What we do now, even within the scope of what the Constitution permits, is not carved in stone for eternity. Assume the questions are: Who should rule? How would you identify them? How would you choose them? Would our current system provide good answers to those questions? Can it be improved? Directionally, what might be better? Yarvin is an interesting and provocative thinker, and he sometimes couches serious ideas or questions as jokes.
"Hmmm. At least you didn't say, "Might as well write comments about people you don't know on some pictures-of-the-sunrise blog".
Well achtually gamma, I'm not the subject of Althouse blog post nor is the NYT's and the New Yorker writing articles about me. Nor is anyone - even me - asserting my ideas amd statements are important.
Got any more Teenage girl snark and eyerolls ?
"Yarvin is an interesting and provocative thinker, and he sometimes couches serious ideas or questions as jokes."
Assumes things not in evidence. And it'd be better if he presented serious ideas in a serious manner. I can't think of a single impressive thinker who crouches his serious ideas in jokes.
I assume the real reason he presents them as "Jokes" is so when challenged he can say: "Hey, I was just joking".
its the gordian knot, they will write about you, if you don't give them an opportunity, they will make things up, if you do you have a chance some of your message will come through,
With the senate filibuster and a near perfect split in party affiliation combined with partisanship at the expense of national loyalty you can argue that Republican democracy is dying in the US.
When Congress can’t pass legislation in regular order nothing is repealed and courts will impose law that the majority of the people now hate. Sunsetting all law and appropriation would help but, too late now.
What we do now, even within the scope of what the Constitution permits, is not carved in stone for eternity.
It is not. Our brilliant founders even came up with a system for democratic/federalist amendment of our Constitution.
How about screwing around with some other country's foundations before taking an axe to those of the most successful and free nation on Earth?
Neither the New Yawker or the Times are serious publications,
Curtis Yarvin isn't "calling for a monarchy." This is another example of someone totally misreading something simply to try and use it against people that they disagree with.
What he seems to be calling for is Globalism, which is more in line with what liberals want than conservatives.
Wikipedia calls Yarvin far-right.
no I think that would be the opposite of globalism, what worked for the 13 colonies, might not work for 50 states in the disparate nature we find ourselves,
Enough about the Biden administration!
To many it is obvious this is a ‘muddy the waters’ think piece designed to confuse the rubes as to which party is interested in a post-democracy America strategy. They came close, if Hillary had won her supremes would be backstopping it right now…
I’m amused by the variety of shit they’re trying to get to stick..
-What he seems to be calling for is Globalism, which is more in line with what liberals want than conservatives.
no I think that would be the opposite of globalism, what worked for the 13 colonies, might not work for 50 states in the disparate nature we find ourselves,
He's calling for federalism with a higher degree of unity at the top, and a more robust subsidiarity at the bottom.
Never heard of Yarvin. I wouldn't mind spinning off crazy statelets such as New York, leaving the sensible bulk of us to live in peace.
https://www.propublica.org/people/ava-kofman/p2 yeah she would never get a clue,
At an old job, one of my coworkers was a Navy Vet who was previously stationed on a Nuclear Sub. The job was only moderately technical, but was high volume and fast paced. There were countless opportunities to screw up, which I did, often. The Navy vet pretty much never made a mistake. He wasn't smarter than everyone, or more educated, he was just razor sharp to an uncanny degree. We all were just in awe of him. Anyway... I'll bet people like that are over represented among pilots (and surgeons). So they got that going for them.
Reading for Freder: https://www.yahoo.com/news/hillary-clinton-saul-alinsky-letters-155526953.html
Go talk to Yahoo circa 2014 and leave us.
"A patchwork of statelets with our own sovereign ruler." We're way ahead of him here in Florida. We're trying to figure out how to keep DeSantis from leaving due to term limits.
I know, I know. I've long screamed FOR term limits. Now we finally got a good one, and he's actually in a limited position.
Anyway, we're hanging out at airport lounges looking to corral some pilots as they leave, just to get their bourbon-filled views on how we get this done.
Does Yarvin suggest anything about who selects the "secret board?" The one that has the power to eliminate any "CEO" who annoys or disobeys the secret board? Or how?
What absolute nonsense.
https://nouvelledroite.substack.com/p/meeting-with-the-father-of-neoreaction he shows a little naivete,
https://www.maxraskin.com/interviews/curtis-yarvin joking serious you decide,
"Yarvin is brilliant and interesting, but does not tend to look at what might possibly could go wrong with his ideas,"
That second clause absolutely takes him out of the category of brilliant.
American conservativism is antithetical to this brilliant philosophy. Case-in-point: Lincoln. While all things are tolerable. It does not figuratively or literally draw and quarter the baby into profitable... viable parts.
Sheesh. Yet the commenters on this site are constantly trotting out a book written more than 50 years ago by Saul Alinsky as though it is the left wing bible,
Ever think we're 'trotting out' that book because your party adheres to damn near everything he wrote? And applies those tactics to the right on a daily basis?
take Athens they went from monarchy to democracy to oligarchy, Rome did much the same, by similar dynamic
I would say Rome went from monarchy to oligarchic republic to monarchy again, but yeah, you've got a point
In our current system a lone unelected, unaccountable judges in random districts have the power to overrule the President and make law for the entire country. Maybe the President should be able to appeal these judicial rulings to a panel of airline pilots.
So are the Progs attacking Yarvin by associating him with conservatives or are they attacking conservatives by associating them with Yarvin? Maybe both.
"Is he?! "
He's a very fringe figure, but the fringe that has read him is the more intellectual type. Very few fully agree with the man, but he's gotten a lot of people to have hard conversations and contemplations about the fundamental nature of governance.
Yarvin (Moldbug) was a very interesting writer, as mentioned above, in the 2000's when he had the Mencius Moldbug blog. He was driven out of blogging because his career was in experimental software architecture, and when Yarvin was outed as Moldbug he started suffering professional retribution, losing job opportunities, conference slots, etc. His initial interest was, as you may have noticed, in classical Chinese philosophy, Confucius and Mencius, etc. And in that world rule by scholars (or supervised by scholars) was definitely on the menu. Its about as conservative a take on political philosophy as there can be.
His other threads were about subsidiarity, and monarchy. Subsidiarity is/was THE Catholic political philosophy. Not that you would notice nowadays, but I come from an earlier time. Subsidiarity has been influential in Europe in recent decades, notably in Spain, which has implemented regional governance, driven in large part by the Basques and Catalans. Spain post Franco effectively gave its regions a high degree of regional autonomy (more in most ways than US states) and both delegations in the Cortes (parliament) steadily work to expand the autonomous envelope. Subsidiarity BTW was invented in the 19th century, and endorsed by the Papacy, to oppose the centralising projects of Bismarck. The Church liked the system of independent German statelets better. That too is about as conservative a political project as you could ask for.
Che Dolf said...
Althouse: I can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him...
J.D. Vance takes Yarvin's perspective seriously. James Pogue wrote about this in some detail a few years ago:
"Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets. They’re not MAGA. They’re not QAnon. Curtis Yarvin and the rising right are crafting a different strain of conservative politics."
- Vanity Fair, April 20, 2022
Quoting Vanity Fair for a perspective on what Vance thinks.
How to say you are a moron in a more subtle way.
buwaya said...
His other threads were about subsidiarity, and monarchy. Subsidiarity is/was THE Catholic political philosophy. Not that you would notice nowadays, but I come from an earlier time. Subsidiarity has been influential in Europe in recent decades, notably in Spain, which has implemented regional governance, driven in large part by the Basques and Catalans. Spain post Franco effectively gave its regions a high degree of regional autonomy (more in most ways than US states) and both delegations in the Cortes (parliament) steadily work to expand the autonomous envelope. Subsidiarity BTW was invented in the 19th century, and endorsed by the Papacy, to oppose the centralising projects of Bismarck. The Church liked the system of independent German statelets better. That too is about as conservative a political project as you could ask for.
A focus on more regionalized government would put government closer to the people it rules.
This would make it a lot harder for the leftists to steal other peoples stuff using government.
It makes sense he would be a scary person to use to haunt people's dreams.
If you can find the old Moldbug essays they are well worth a read. As for the utility of political philosophers, well, the US itself is the product of a few people who were guided by a some notable political philosophers.
Buwaya!!!! I thought you were dead.
I am ill. I have had TIAs and developed Cardiomyopathy (used to be lumped in with Congestive Heart failure) My father died of that 25 years ago, and I suspect my grandfather as well, so at least I have a good idea how I am going to go, and I am pretty happy about that, there certainly are worse things. One day it will be quick and clean. I have had a reduction in my lifestyle, hiking up and down hills isn't on the program anymore, but the typical low intensity urban lifestyle is still workable. Can't run up the stairs when I lose patience with the elevator.
https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/ - I think most of the Mencius Moldbug essays are here.
As for funny writers not being worth reading - pfui. Peter Drucker was a funny guy. And better yet there is a lot of (substansive) Drucker in Scott Adams "Dilbert" comics. If I were king of an MBA program I'd make "Dilbert" a six-unit course.
Buwaya, I'm pleased to see you posting again, and I hope your health holds.
buwaya said...
So what you're saying is you're going to be around for awhile longer. Good.
buwaya--hang in there.
If this is "conservative", count me out: And in that world rule by scholars (or supervised by scholars) was definitely on the menu. Its about as conservative a take on political philosophy as there can be.
"[...] intellectuals must be eliminated. The intellectuals are like the roots of the tree. If the roots of the tree are left untouched, the tree will grow again.” A public administration insight after my own heart.
Yay! buwaya's back.
“So essentially, Jarvin is a globalist that wants to dissolve national borders and turn the world into a Set of warring fiefdoms”
The problem is that for the left (including NYT, New Yorker), the US is far too powerful. Their solution? Give the UN more power, but maybe some extra votes, for the extra national states created out of the US.. But, of course, give the CiComs and Indians even more votes. That would be fair. Of course, living in the most powerful country on the planet, many of ask the simple question: Why? We fought and died for that. We earned that position the hard way.
Hillary Clinton wrote her Wellesley thesis on Alinsky. She wrote to him and met with him. He was an inspiration to her and to Barack Obama who followed in Alinsky's footsteps by turning to community organizing in Chicago. Influence on two leading Democratic leaders amounts to a lot more than anything that could be said of Yarvin and Trump, who may not even have heard of him.
Alinsky has often been misunderstood by the right. His book wasn't a plan for changing the country. It was about tactics, not about end goals. But since it was about tactics, one can see his mark across today's left -- perhaps across politics in general -- but certainly on today's left.
Yarvin-Moldbug's influence has largely been on tech types. People who admire Ayn Rand, Robert Heinlein and the latest futuristic babble. Breaking up the country and being ruled by kings or airline pilots isn't something anyone actually involved in politics is going to advocate seriously -- or even aspire to behind the scenes.
Buwaya -- prayers and best wishes.
conservative=ancient , plus reverence for even more ancient custom. You simply can't get more ancient in the field of political ideas than the Confucian schools. What people today conceive of as "conservatism" was in its origin times extremely radical.
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