Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Alternative Right

  • Who Am I? Personal Identity versus Political Identity

    Preliminary note: what has been exercising me lately is the question whether there is a deep common root to the political identitarianism of the Left and the Right, and if there is, what this root is. Nihilism, perhaps? I wrote: . . . my identity as a person trumps my identity as an animal. Part…

  • The New Right: More Combative, Less Conservative

    Culturally, the Left won; so what's to conserve? The Old Right, bow-tied and bespectacled, gentlemanly and erudite, has proven impotent to slow down, let alone stop, the Left's long march through the institutions and their subversion of them. Assembled in their well-appointed 'cucksheds,' the likes of George F. Will fiddle with ideas while the Republic…

  • On Transcending Tribalism

    Jonathan Haidt: Humans are tribal, but tribalism can be transcended. It exists in tension with our extraordinary ability to develop bonds with other human beings. Romeo and Juliet fell in love. French, British and German soldiers came out of their trenches in World War I to exchange food, cigarettes and Christmas greetings. The key, as…

  • Anarcho-Tyranny: Where Multiculturalism Leads

    Samuel Francis: Unwilling to control immigration and the cultural disintegration it causes, the authorities instead control the law-abiding. This is precisely the bizarre system of misrule I have elsewhere described as “anarcho-tyranny”—we refuse to control real criminals (that’s the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that’s the tyranny). The Francis article is from 2004.  What…

  • The Dissident Right

    Here: The dissident right is, to some degree, a reaction to the shift on the Right, among the Buckleyites mostly, to embrace the blank slate and egalitarianism. This was mostly due to the infestation of neoconservatives and libertarians. The neocons brought with them that old Marxist belief that society can be willed into any shape…

  • Paul Gottfried versus NeoCon Mythology

    Here: Professor Gottfried goes on to examine several examples of these purges, correcting the errors of those who have distorted the record. For example, many have claimed that Buckley’s 1965 denunciation of the John Birch Society was because the Birchers were guilty of anti-Semitism. This is simply slander. Whatever their other errors may have been,…

  • In What Sense are We Equal? Equality, Natural Rights, and Propositionism

    Michael Anton (Publius Decius Mus), in a review of Thomas G. West, The Political Theory of the American Founding  speaks of an "error,"  . . . from a certain quarter of the contemporary Right, which holds that any appeal to equal natural rights amounts to “propositionism”—as in, the “proposition that all men are created equal”—which…

  • The Left Eats Its Own: Andrew Sullivan

    Despite 'credentials' that ought to endear him to the Left, Mr. Sullivan has learned the hard way that he still has too much good sense to count as one of them: As for objective reality, I was at an event earlier this week — not on a campus — when I made what I thought…

  • ‘Diversity’ is Not a Dirty Word

    Contrary to what some alt-righties of my acquaintance seem to think, 'diversity' is not a dirty word. To quote from my old entry, Diversity and Divisiveness: Liberals emphasize the value of diversity, and with some justification. Many types of diversity are good. One thinks of culinary diversity, musical diversity, artistic diversity generally. Biodiversity is good,…

  • Paul Gottfried on Propositionalism

    Here: White nationalists are not really nationalists since they are engaged in a globalist enterprise. They are reaching beyond traditional nation states and seek to unify all peoples of a certain race, partly by demonizing other races. But propositionalists like Buckley and the neoconservative journalists are likewise involved in a global pursuit. They are not…

  • More on Tribalism and the Identitarian Right

    This entry continues the discussion with my Right-identitarian interlocutor.  My current position is one of rejection of both Left- and Right-identitarianism. I am open, however,  to a change of position. That is part of what makes me a philosopher as opposed to an ideologue. I wrote in my critique of Dennis Prager: "The correct view…

  • Who am I? Personal Identity versus Identity Politics

    Preliminary note: what has been exercising me lately is the question whether there is a deep common root to the political identitarianism of the Left and the Right, and if there is, what this root is. Nihilism, perhaps? I wrote: . . . my identity as a person trumps my identity as an animal. Part…

  • A Version of Alt-Right Identitarianism

    My right-wing identitarian sparring partner makes a good response to my attempt, earlier today, to locate a common root of both right-and left-wing identitarianism.  My responses are in blue. …………….. Wouldn't you agree, on reflection, that the bolded passage [from a NYT article] is a straw man? "Both sides eagerly reduce people to abstract color…

  • An Identitarian is an Identitarian, Left or Alt-Right

    And a pox on both houses, say I. What strikes me is what they have in common. Here is something from the NYT that makes sense (emphasis added): In the most memorable sentence in “The First White President,” Mr. Coates declares, “Whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet…

  • Mirror Images

    Leftist whining about 'cultural appropriation' and Alt-Right denial of the universality of certain cultural goods may be mirror images of each other.  The shared assumption is that cultural goods are not universal but can be owned. The theorem of Pythagoras has his name on it but neither he nor his descendants own it.   The…