Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Conservatism

  • Roger Kimball on Roger Scruton (1944-2020) on Tradition, Authority and Prejudice

    Here: Sir Roger wrote several times about his political maturation, most fully, perhaps, in “Why I became a conservative,” in The New Criterion in 2003. There were two answers, one negative, one positive. The negative answer was the visceral repudiation of civilization he witnessed in Paris in 1968: slogans defacing walls, shattered shop windows, and…

  • Scruton Quits the Sublunary

    Sir Roger's earthy tenure lasted a mere 75 years.  Philosophy is an old man's game, as I heard it said in my youth; Sir Roger fell short of the Russellian by 22 years.   Steven Hayward of Powerline: In the introduction to his book The Meaning of Conservatism, Scruton writes that “Conservatism may rarely announce itself…

  • American Conservatism

    My brand of conservatism could be called American. It aims to preserve and where necessary restore the values and principles codified by the founders. Incorporating as it does elements of classical liberalism and libertarianism, American conservatism is far from throne-and-altar reaction. While anti-theocratic, it is not anti-religious. It stands for individual liberty and its necessary…

  • 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…

  • Bergoglio the Benighted Aims to End Latin Mass Permission

    There was and is something profoundly stupid about the Vatican II 'reforms' even if we view matters from a purely immanent 'sociological' point of view. Suppose Roman Catholicism is, metaphysically, buncombe to its core, nothing but an elaborate  human construction in the face of a meaningless universe, a construction  kept going by human needs and desires noble…

  • Obesity is Not a Disease

    Contemporary liberals spout nonsense about an 'epidemic' of obesity or obesity as a public health problem.  True, we Americans are a gluttonous people as witness competitive eating contests, the numerous food shows, and the complete lack of any sense among most that there is anything morally wrong with gluttony.  The moralists of old understood something…

  • Political Hatred: A Look Back at Nixon

    Has any president of the United States been the object of deeper hatred than Donald Trump? Abraham Lincoln perhaps. But in recent decades only Richard Nixon comes close.  Both Nixon and Trump elicit mindless rage, and for similar reasons.  The elites hate both because they have no class.  That's the short answer. For nuance we…

  • Matthew Schmitz on George Will

    The True Con in First Things.  Unnecessarily harsh? You decide.

  • Are You a Right-Wing Extremist? Take this Test!

    The following is from a Salon article. The enumeration is mine; I did, however, preserve the order of the bulleted list in the Salon piece. After each item you will find brief and not-so-brief commentary by your humble correspondent. The XRW chart contains 20 examples of behavior which could indicate right-wing extremist values and suggest…

  • Michael Anton on Tucker Carlson

    Here

  • Damon Linker on Never-Trumping Neo-Cons

    Why do never-trumping neo-con nitwits such as the bootless Max Boot allow Donald Trump to live rent-free in their heads and drive them crazy?  That's my formulation of the question, not Linker's,  but he provides a good answer to it ( emphases added): More fully than any other faction in the American commentariat, neocon pundits…

  • A Good Summary of the Political Thinking of Carl Schmitt

    Carl Schmitt on Political Power by Jürgen Braungardt.  Excerpt: Political existentialism? Schmitt is a political existentialist in the following sense: ‘The political’, that mode of human experience that expresses itself in interpersonal relations of power and struggle, is logically and temporally prior to all political institutions. It is expressed in the distinction between friend and enemy, which is from…

  • On Voting, Discrimination, and My Type of Conservatism

    My brand of conservatism includes an admixture of classical liberalism. Thus my conservatism is neither of the 'throne and altar' nor of the 'alternative right' variety. But I am open to challenge from intelligent and good-natured critics to my right. Among the intelligent and civil alt-right critics I include Jacques who writes: In your recent…

  • It’s Rich

    The National Review has an editorial in support of Judge Kavanaugh. What's rich, however, is that the same cruise-ship conservatives refused their support to Donald Trump the conditio sine qua non of both the Gorsuch and the Kavanaugh nominations. Jeb! would not  have beaten Hillary. 

  • 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,…